Alas, poor Europe. I knew it well, Horatio.
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 18, 2026 23:33
VIEWED: 7239
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The end of the "age of abundance", where abundance means hot showers, street lights at night, eating meat, warmth in the winter...
Multiple EU "leaders" tell their people to suck it up.
Beginning 30:30
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Quote:
... That’s as stark as it gets: the leadership in Moscow is making it very clear, to internal and international audiences, the new deal consists in slow cooking the Kiev racket inside a massive cauldron while polishing its status of financial black hole for the collective West. Until we reach boiling point – which will be a revolution or a putsch.
In parallel, The Lords of (Proxy) War will continue with their own strategy, which is to pillage an enfeebled, fearful, Europe, then dressing it up as a perfumed colony to be ruthlessly exploited ad nauseam by the imperial oligarchy.
Europe is now a runaway TGV – minus the requisite Hollywood production values. Assuming it does not veer off track – a dicey proposition – it may eventually arrive at a railway station called Agenda 2030, The Great Narrative, or some other NATO/Davos denomination du jour.
As it stands, what’s remarkable is how the “marginal” Russian economy hardly broke a sweat to “end the abundance” of the wealthiest region on the planet.
Moscow does not even entertain the notion of negotiating with Brussels because there’s nothing to negotiate – considering puny Eurocrats will only be hurled away from their zombified state when the dire socio-economic consequences of “the end of abundance” will finally translate into peasants with pitchforks roaming the continent.
It may be eons away, but inevitably the average Italian, German or Frenchman will connect the dots and realize it is their own “leaders” – national nullities and mostly unelected Eurocrats – who are paving their road to poverty.
You will be poor. And you will like it. Because we are all supporting freedom for Ukrainian neo-nazis. That brings the concept of “multicultural Europe” to a whole new level.
MORE AT http://thesaker.is/all-the-way-to-odessa/
We should not be too smug. There's a lesson and a warning in it for us too.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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When trade endangers national security. Europe and the Economics of Blackmail
By Paul Krugman
During the Reagan administration I sat in on a few cabinet-level meetings, and I recall in particular one involving European plans to build a pipeline that would greatly increase gas imports from the Soviet Union. Some officials were searching for ways to deter the project, but nobody had any good ideas.
But those officials weren’t wrong to worry that dependence on Soviet — later Russian — gas would create strategic vulnerability. Indeed, Europe’s dependence on Russian gas has arguably become the biggest risk now facing the world economy.
Russia is a third-rate economic power, but it and Ukraine are, or were, major suppliers of some important commodities. When Vladimir Putin invaded his neighbor, prices of wheat — a lot of which is grown in the “Black Earth” belt that stretches across Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan — and oil, much of which is extracted in the Ural Mountains, soared.
More recently, however, much of the price shock from the war has receded. According to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, world food prices have given up most of their wartime surge. And oil prices have also come down substantially from their peak.
What’s happening in these cases is that both agricultural commodities and oil are essentially traded on world markets, which for better or worse allows a lot of flexibility. For example, Russia can sell its oil to India instead of Europe, and Europe can in turn buy Middle Eastern oil that would otherwise have gone to India. Add in a good U.S. wheat harvest and factors like weak oil demand from a troubled China, and the overall commodity price shock is turning out to be smaller than many feared.
There is, however, one exception, and it’s a doozy: European natural gas.
Unlike the markets for oil and wheat, the market for gas isn’t fully global. The cheapest way to ship gas is normally via pipelines, which breaks the world into separate regional markets defined by where the pipelines run. The main alternative is to ship gas in liquefied form, which is how it gets to markets not served by pipelines, but this requires specially designed shipping and terminals, which can’t be added rapidly in a crisis.
Which brings us to the current moment. Russian gas deliveries to Europe have plunged about 75 percent from a year ago. The Russians claim to be experiencing technical difficulties, but nobody believes that; this is clearly a de facto embargo intended to pressure the West into cutting off support for Ukraine. And the result has been an incredible surge in European gas prices.
If you want a historical comparison, the roughly tenfold recent surge in European gas prices dwarfs the oil price shocks of 1973-4 and 1979-80, which played a big role in the stagflation of the 1970s.
It’s probably not a coincidence that the latest price surge began in mid-June. That’s more or less when it became clear that Russia’s second offensive in Ukraine — the one that followed its disastrous initial attempt to seize Kyiv — wasn’t going to achieve decisive results, and that the military balance was likely to shift in Ukraine’s favor as Western weapons arrived. So Russia turned to economic warfare instead.
Europe is making up for the shortfall in part by importing liquefied natural gas, especially from the United States, which produces a lot of natural gas from shale. But the capacity for L.N.G. shipments is limited, which is why U.S. natural gas prices, while up, haven’t surged nearly as much as European prices.
How is this all going to play out? Sophisticated, advanced economies have enormous capacity for adaptation, and Europe has been building up its gas stocks to get through the winter; the continent will find ways to manage even if it’s receiving very little Russian gas. But a bout of high inflation is inevitable, and a European recession seems extremely likely.
That said, macroeconomic considerations are probably secondary to the question of how Europe will co
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Paul Krugman hasn't been right about anything in 10 years.
Why do you listen to that asshole whenever his lips move?
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:Russia is making huge windfall profits in Europe by reducing the amount of natural gas sold to EU to 25% of the normal amount. By restricted the flow of gas, Russia is getting 10 times the normal price for gas. Here are the prices:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Paul Krugman hasn't been right about anything in 10 years.
Why do you listen to that asshole whenever his lips move?
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=TbgV
Putin has learned the lesson about how Capitalism works. By restricting supply, prices and profits will increase!
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:I discovered that Signym is lying. Russia has been reducing the supply of natural gas to Europe since last year as a way to cheat the people of the EU out of money by raising prices, raising total profits, and restricting natural gas supply. The blame for this goes to Putin, not to the EU leaders. But because Signym is a liar, Signym blames the wrong people.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The end of the "age of abundance", where abundance means hot showers, street lights at night, eating meat, warmth in the winter...
Multiple EU "leaders" tell their people to suck it up.
After many months of warning signs, Russia’s latest moves to squeeze natural gas flows are a red alert for the EU
The gas crisis in Europe has been building for a while, and Russia’s role in it has been clear from the beginning. In September 2021 – five months before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – the IEA pointed out that Russia was preventing a significant amount of gas from reaching Europe. We raised the alarm further in January, highlighting how Russia’s large and unjustified reductions in supplies to Europe were creating “artificial tightness in markets” and driving up prices at exactly the same time as tensions were rising over Ukraine.
After Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February, nobody in Europe or elsewhere could be under any illusions about the risks around Russian energy supplies. Just a week after the invasion started, the IEA released our 10-Point Plan to Reduce the European Union’s Reliance on Russian Natural Gas, setting out the practical actions Europe could take. It stressed the need to maximise gas supplies from other sources; accelerate the deployment of solar and wind; make the most of existing low emissions energy sources, such as renewables and nuclear; ramp up energy efficiency measures in homes and businesses; and take steps to save energy by turning down the thermostat.
More from the International Energy Agency: IEA at https://www.iea.org/commentaries/coordinated-actions-across-europe-are
-essential-to-prevent-a-major-gas-crunch-here-are-5-immediate-measures
A graph of Russian natural gas flow to the European Union, January 2019-July 2022 is at
https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/russian-natural-gas-flo
w-to-the-european-union-january-2019-july-2022
The graph makes it obvious that Putin had a plan to strangle Europe since last year. Signym blames EU leaders for Putin strangling Europe.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:I discovered that Signym is lying. Russia has been reducing the supply of natural gas to Europe since last year as a way to cheat the people of the EU out of money by raising prices, raising total profits, and restricting natural gas supply. The blame for this goes to Putin, not to the EU leaders. But because Signym is a liar, Signym blames the wrong people.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The end of the "age of abundance", where abundance means hot showers, street lights at night, eating meat, warmth in the winter...
Multiple EU "leaders" tell their people to suck it up.
You're an idiot or a liar or both.
The European leaders sanctioned Russia, after they enacted "green" energy initiatives.
The blame does NOT go to Putin. The blame goes to the Leftist European leaders as well as our own, since the US Dollar still drives the world economy.
Go ask Greta Thunberg. If you can find her. She's going to be hiding for her life in her gated community.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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GERMANY decides to shut down their nuclear reactors (2011)
Quote:
How Fukushima (triggered Germany's nuclear phaseout
https://m.dw.com/en/how-fukushima-triggered-germanys-nuclear-phaseout/
a-56829217
EUROPEAN UNION pressures Bulgaria to reject South Stream, a supply of Russian gas to southern Europe through a Ukraine-independent southern route (2014)
Quote:
EU asks Bulgaria to stop work on Gazprom's South Stream pipeline
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-eu-southstream-bulgaria-idUKKBN0EE0
SU20140603
UKRAINE refuses to pay Gazprom $2-3 billion for gas delivered. Gazprom shuts off gas to Ukraine (2014)
Quote:
Russia Cuts Off Gas to Ukraine
https://borgenproject.org/russia-cuts-gas-ukraine/
UKRAINE engages in the fictitious "reverse flow" of gas, siphons gas from supplies headed to the EU through its territory (2014)
Quote:
Is it legal? Ukraine seeks to fill ‘gas gap’ with reverse flows
https://www.rt.com/business/166520-ukraine-reverse-gas-flows/
Seeing that Ukraine is an unreliable gas transit area, MERKEL (Germany) asks Putin for a NordstreamII to supply more gas than NordstreamI (2015)
Why Is Merkel Backing the Pipeline That Appeases Putin?
https://www.newsweek.com/why-merkel-backing-pipeline-appeases-putin-42
0252
EUROPEAN NATIONS end long-term contracts for gas delveries seeking lower spot prices, get hit with later prices increases instead (Oct 2021)
Quote:
Europe made mistake in ditching long-term gas deals — Putin
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/06/europe-made-mistake-in-ditching-long-t
erm-gas-deals-putin.html
Has Russia shut off gas deliveries? No.
EUROPEAN UNION, UK and USA ban the Russian central bank from SWIFT, making ruble-to-dollar conversion impossible and ultimately requiring payment in rubles for Russian gas (Feb 26, 2022)
Quote:
US, EU, UK to sanction Russian central bank, block SWIFT
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/us-eu-uk-agree-remove-select
ed-russian-banks-83134585
Has Russia shut off gas? No.
GERMANY decides to end certification of the fully-completed NordStream II after battling multiple delays introduced by the USA and EU nations, leaving Russia hlding the bag for construction costs (Feb 22, 2022)
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/22/germany-halts-certification-of-nord-st
ream-2-amid-russia-ukraine-crisis.html
Has Russia shut off gas deliveries to Europe? No.
GAZPROM offers ruble to dollar conversion for payment processing (April 2, 2022)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-01/gazprom-starts-tell
ing-clients-how-to-pay-for-gas-in-rubles
Has Russia ended gas delveries? No.
POLAND ends contracts with Russia for gas
Quote:
Poland ends deal to receive Russian gas after rouble dispute
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/poland-ends-deal-receive-r
ussian-gas-after-rouble-dispute-2022-05-23/
Has Russia shut off gas deliveries? No.
UKRAINE shuts off natural gas pipeline supplying Europe with natural gas (May 2022)
Quote:
Ukraine Cuts Off Russian Natural Gas Pipeline Supplying Europe
https://www.voanews.com/a/ukraine-cuts-off-russian-natural-gas-pipelin
e-supplying-europe-/6567439.html
Has Russia shut off gas deliveries to Europe? No.
Meanwhile, the main source of energy to Europe is not gas (altho Germany depends on it) but oil . The EUROPEAN UNION sanctions Russian oil deliveries
Quote:
EU sanctions against Russia explained
What goods cannot be imported from Russia to the EU?
... The list of sanctioned products includes among others:
crude oil and refined petroleum products, with limited exceptions (with phase out of 6 to 8 months)
coal and other solid fossil fuels (as there is a wind-down period for existing contracts, this sanction will apply as from August 2022)
gold, including jewellery
steel and iron
wood, cement and certain fertilisers
seafood and liquor (e.g. caviar, vodka)
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/sanctions/restrictive-meas
ures-against
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Quote:Be real about the human race. The majority are stupid, lazy, ignorant, dishonest, greedy and, to put whipped cream and a cherry on top of this sundae, motivated by crazy ideas and passions. It is no surprise that with all those negative attributes the majority of humans have been living in poverty for the last few hundred thousand years. There has never been a Garden of Eden, despite Jean-Jacques Rousseau imagining humanity has fallen into decay during modern times. Humans lived in decay since their beginning.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
So, it looks to any objective observer that EU and its various member states have shot themselves in the face, over and over and over, energy-wise.
In addition to their unrealistic immigration policies and cultural disintegration ("we are citizens of the world" ... without worldwide voting rights, of course) and dysfunctional Covid responses, the EU is rapidly committing suicide.
It is no surprise when a democracy makes stupid decisions because that is what stupid people do when they make their personal decisions. A democracy amplifies, not attenuates, the stupidity to fill nations and continents. But that doesn't mean every human is as incompetent as the majority. Some actually know what their goals are and how to get there expeditiously, which is the only reason humanity has made some recent progress. It is not surprising if the EU does not handle this crisis well. But maybe it won't end disastrously because there are smart people in the EU. With some luck and a great deal of hard work, they will counterbalance the stupidity of the rest of the EU citizens who will never understand what was done to save them from starving, freezing in winter, and burning up in the heat of summer.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:So basically this " crises" is of the EU's own making, and has nothing to do with Russia.
Originally posted by second:Quote:Be real about the human race. The majority are stupid, lazy, ignorant, dishonest, greedy and, to put whipped cream and a cherry on top of this sundae, motivated by crazy ideas and passions. It is no surprise that with all those negative attributes the majority of humans have been living in poverty for the last few hundred thousand years. There has never been a Garden of Eden, despite Jean-Jacques Rousseau imagining humanity has fallen into decay during modern times. Humans lived in decay since their beginning.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
So, it looks to any objective observer that EU and its various member states have shot themselves in the face, over and over and over, energy-wise.
In addition to their unrealistic immigration policies and cultural disintegration ("we are citizens of the world" ... without worldwide voting rights, of course) and dysfunctional Covid responses, the EU is rapidly committing suicide.
It is no surprise when a democracy makes stupid decisions because that is what stupid people do when they make their personal decisions. A democracy amplifies, not attenuates, the stupidity to fill nations and continents. But that doesn't mean every human is as incompetent as the majority. Some actually know what their goals are and how to get there expeditiously, which is the only reason humanity has made some recent progress. It is not surprising if the EU does not handle this crisis well. But maybe it won't end disastrously because there are smart people in the EU. With some luck and a great deal of hard work, they will counterbalance the stupidity of the rest of the EU citizens who will never understand what was done to save them from starving, freezing in winter, and burning up in the heat of summer.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
And if course you blame this all on "democracy". My god, you must really despise the average person!
So why do you keep dissing the average person anyway, when you have three fine examples of thoughtful hard-working average people right here in this board!
But the EU is NOT a democracy in any sense of the word, and neither is NATO, the ECB, or the WEF, and they seem to be making stupid decisions and forcing them on EU member states.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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