trade trouble

TRADE TROUBLE

Let’s just say that for the sake of argument, the PetroDollar collapse is a bit more gradual than I envision.  I’ll be the first to admit that I can be a bit too paranoid at times.  Yes, in the end I’ll be right and everyone else will be wrong, what with their 300 year long collapse and their 200 year long Fracking Oil, but I acknowledge that while I’m not timing the actual collapse I do try to time the duration of events unrolling and that might not be the smartest thing to do.  We might see our global trade position take a huge whack upside the head but it might not be as instantaneous as I am worried about.  Might, being the operative word here.  So, let’s try to wargame out the elimination of most rather than all of the global trade we depend on.  The Pentagon itself is dependent on 80% of its components being supplied by fuzzy foreigners.  Eighty.  Friggin.  Percent.  And these guys are supposed to be thinking strategically? 

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Before I go on a tirade over the imbeciles running our military ( oh, gee, look, Congress mandating that all the uniforms the military wears must be from domestic companies.  But don’t worry about those computer chips that comes from China which runs, well, everything ), let’s just say that the military actually is doing better than the rest of us for the most part, the Military Industrial Complex being about it for the domestic factories still running anymore.  And, again, we travel back to yesteryear during the Great Rice Shortage not even a decade ago ( like New Orleans with its still ruined neighborhoods, some examples just simply must remain poster children you keep returning to ) to see how trade disruptions treat you the consumer.  Because we are ALL consumers, no mater how far along with “self sufficiency” and stockpiling you are.  How many months was it before you could buy rice?  If Japan had not dipped into its strategic reserves, it would have lasted even longer, and those reserves were more economic than military and won’t be repeated as Japan is still hamstrung by Fukishima.

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Now, granted, rice ( and other food crisis such as when Russia withheld wheat from trade during the droughts ) is more indicative of population and food production and climate  issues ( which are only getting worse, despite reprieves ) but it also highlights how easy it is for trade to be completely shut down when only some of the supply system is disrupted.  After Fuki, it was half a year before flash memory was again freely available.  And that was after Japan had already outsourced manufacturing to other areas.  Other items are far too centralized, such as one city in China churning out 90%+ of the globes underwear.  Granted, we can all pull our gross, stained, elastic stretched whitey tighties out of the rag pile and have something to wear over our private parts ( Seinfeld reference “there’s just a thin layer of gabardine between him and us!” ) if need be, and I don’t envision a communist plot to deny us the clothing to contain our precious bodily fluids, but what else do you need to know about how vulnerable everything we need is to disruption?

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The UK was on wartime rationing during the fifties ( for those who refuse to remember historical dates due to overpaid public school teachers being more retarded than the drop-outs they encourage, WWII ended in 1945.  And, no, Spastic Sam, I don’t hold public educators in any high esteem in any general way.  There are always a few good ones, but the industry as a whole are full of scumbags, asshats, lazy whores and douches ), long after there were any U-Boats to be concerned with.  They had allowed themselves to become far too dependent on imports to feed themselves.  Given their economic condition, and the state of their colonies, is it any wonder they still couldn’t get enough trade years later ( of course, I wouldn’t put it past us Yanks to lend a hand in their misery, if we were holding them hostage for Cold War bases )?  And you know where I’m going with this.  Oil feeds us.  We are more vulnerable than Britain ever was after the war.

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So, let’s say that we lose thirty percent of our oil imports.  And that is being generous as far as optimism goes.  At the same time the fracking oil wells are losing production.  It wouldn’t be alarmist to assume a drastic fall in our oil from 18 million a day to twelve.  We had already gone from twenty to eighteen, the result of gasoline consumption taking a big squishy as unemployment shot up.  How do you expect to do any of the following: drive to your job.  Drive to go to entertain yourself.  Find any shoes or clothing.  Find a thrift store open.  Keep your job.  Find any car parts.  Buy any lumber to cover your windows that were broken in the riots.  It doesn’t take our economy going from 18 million barrels of oil per day to ONLY domestic sources of eight to disrupt our economy.  We could be seeing relative law and order and government functionality and still experience widespread trade disruption.  Sure, the lights would stay on ( until spare parts couldn’t be delivered ) as well as the Internet, perhaps, but what of your other daily activities?

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Retail stores would mostly all close.  Mail order stores  have the same suppliers.  The Post Office could deliver far less, less of the time.  Inflation would be jacked up to pay the bills.  Unemployment would be phenomenal.  We JUST had near trade disruption when a container shipper went bankrupt and suddenly the financial clearing house they used almost didn’t extend the credit to allow them to dock or unload ( it would have had knock on effects ).  I’d be stocking up on everything you can be mitigate some of the effects of the above.  It is never a bad idea, anyway, as quality falls as prices rise.

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