Putin’s War Is A Disaster For The Global Economy — Gail Tverberg

by
Mike Norman
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• In a world with inadequate resources relative to population, conflicts are likely to become increasingly common.
• World economic growth very much depends on growing energy consumption.
• There is little reason to believe that Russia will “give up” in response to sanctions imposed by the United States and other countries.

Even without the war, the situation has been developing for some time. It has long been recognized that the planet's resources are insufficient for the entire world to live at the same standard as the developed West, which is the aspiration of developing countries, e.g., China and India, with populations over over a billion. Thus, their aspirations must be thwarted by the West.

This is one basis of The Great Reset conspiracy theory that is now widespread. There is a germ of truth in it, however, like many conspiracy theories that add highly speculative explanation sparsely and selectively backed by evidence. However, Western neoliberalism is based on the assumption that nationalism and representative democracy are insufficient tools for world governance, which should be in the hands of the "masters of the universe," who understand how the world works. Effective governance would be through what amounts to corporate totalitarianism operating through unelected international institutions. This is hardly a new concept and Carroll Quigley described it in "Tragedy of Hope."

The upshot is that the geopolitics and geoeconomics of the developed nations are based on neoliberalism, which implies neoimperialism and neocolonialism for a reason, namely, to secure resources for the West and its allies and to prevent the emergence of competing economic and military power centers, ergo, the attempted containment of Russia and China, both of which have accused the US and its allies of seeking to constrain their development.

Generally, the reason for this Western policy is explained by pursuit of "hegemony," but hegemony is a fancy word for control, and the control of resources and use of resources is the reason for pursuing hegemony in the first place. It is not just a vanity project, or a game of king of the mountain.

Gail Tverberg is an actuary rather than an economist, which has its advantages and disadvantages. I have not interacted with here since she was writing chiefly about peak oil. At that time, she was out of paradigm with MMT. Her predictions at the time did not turn out.

She has this pretty much right though, although the US is in this for the long haul.

ECNS (Chinese state-sponsored media)
China urges Britain to abandon colonial mindset, stop interfering in Hong Kong affairs