rcsmitheco.bsky.social
Author of, "The Real Oil Shock: How Oil Transformed Money, Debt, and Finance." Economic history PhD specializing in renewable energy, petrocapital, finance & energy, financial markets, and the tech industry. Host of "A History of Capitalism" podcast.
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That's why any serious plan on climate change is going to need a sweeping policy regime that simultaneously takes care of & firmly supports the communities & workers who once depended on carbon extraction for their livelihoods while also totally breaking the carbon industry's power & influence.
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Even Harvard says that's how it went down.
So yeah, climate change didn't start as some act of intentional evil.
It has definitely gotten worse since it was first proven thanks to very deliberate, thought-out, & long-running acts of evil by the worst offenders.
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Now, granted, I am inclined to believe it is a bubble based on @edzitron.com 's excellent reporting on this industry, the deeper problems in the Stargate project that he's covered, and Microsoft's decision to pull back on their AI investments generally.
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They are very smart at certain things, like winning at politics, but that doesn't mean they are smart at other things, like governance or authoritarian consolidation. It helps that a lot of the highest-level advisors to Trump et al are certifiable crackpots.
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I'm morbidly curious to see what Lutnick has to say about this.
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That's one way of saying we are in for what's shaping up to be the nastiest economic downturn since 2020.
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Now I think Lutnick is full of it. He's proposing doing what simply cannot be done & flies in the face of recent developments like China walking away from trade talks.
BUT, even if he was telling the truth, we'd still be in for an immediate, sharp recession followed by stagflation.
#EconSky
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Speaking of summer tourism, the US is taking a $12b hit to its international tourism sector. That, alone, doesn't kill US tourism generally but it will hit a lot of tourist districts right when they need to rake in the money. The inevitable supply shortages will make that worse.
#EconSky
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Here's the stuff on the imports side and for the record, we are *still* dealing with the aftereffects of the relatively more controlled 2020 lockdowns on a global scale. This dive has guaranteed an economic shock going into the summer tourist season.
#EconSky
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That's a great way to get everyone to start speculating as to when, not if, the same government that's setting tariff policy at random will also do a first-in-history default on US debt.
That will go quite nicely with the imports and tourism slumps already underway.
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It is & it isn't.
I think the tariffs fit as being an instrument for causing chaos & upheaval. I think, however, they think the tariffs are a silver bullet solution when they aren't & are assuming the resulting chaos will automatically benefit them instead of backfiring.
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Careful, don't give them any ideas. They probably haven't messed with it yet because they don't know what it is.
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I remember how the auto industry suffered serious disruptions due to the Fukushima disaster, and that was a temporary, exogenous shock. The fragility of auto supply chains are a known quantity that reasonable economic planners would've accounted for.
Shame we seem to lack for reasonable planners.
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Why do so few know about this?
What if regenerative, renewable materials materials required decentralized, participative, re-democratized approaches just like renewable energy?
The answer is: DO IT.
Do not wait for the bus.