Matt Taibbi’s new piece in Rolling Stone explains how Financial Reform has been gutted

For those who don’t read Rolling Stone on a regular basis, Matt Taibbi is one of the better financial writers of our time.  He has done multiple pieces on the shenanigans that pass for legitimate business on Wall Street and their lackeys we know as politicians.

“It’s early May in Washington, and something very weird is in the air. As Chris Dodd, Harry Reid and the rest of the compulsive dealmakers in the Senate barrel toward the finish line of the Restoring American Financial Stability Act – the massive, year-in-the-making effort to clean up the Wall Street crime swamp – word starts to spread on Capitol Hill that somebody forgot to kill the important reforms in the bill. As of the first week in May, the legislation still contains aggressive measures that could cost once-indomitable behemoths like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase tens of billions of dollars. Somehow, the bill has escaped the usual Senate-whorehouse orgy of mutual back-scratching, fine-print compromises and freeway-wide loopholes that screw any chance of meaningful change.”

continued at Rolling Stone

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You can make your own conclusions after reading the entire article.  I have made mine.  I have no doubt that he gives us an apt description of how D.C. works.  Thus, it seems logical that if the system is unchangeable, then it is collapsing upon itself as we watch.  There is no other way to describe the aggregate of events.

Peak Oil is ending the growth assumption in the system.  If the system won’t adapt, then it will die.

Matthew Simmons says Gulf Oil Leak 120,000 Barrels

Simmons showed everyone why Saudi has peaked in oil production with his book, Twilight in the Desert: the coming Saudi Oil Shock.

And now he tells us that the Gulf oil leak may be as large as 120,000 barrels per day, which would give us an Exxon Valdez size disaster every couple days.  This may seem over the top, but the Government and BP are most certainly lowballing it.

The other suggestion he has is to bomb the well head in order to get the surrounding rock to block the flow.  He doesn’t think there is any hope of stopping the heavy flow any other way.  And to just let the reservoir empty into the Gulf is an intolerable disaster.

Simmons comes in at 6:07 on the video:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32450072/vp/37322455#37322455

If you don’t know about Peak Oil, then you might want to educate yourself…

Jeffrey Brown explains that Saudi Arabia has peaked, and will have slowly declining output from now on.

Which leads me to question whether that is true or not.  Then I stumble upon this article about the Saudi’s taking a serious look at Nuclear Reactors to power their capital, Riyadh.

Now, why would they be looking at Nuclear energy unless they are no longer able to increase production on a whim.  They probably want to be able to continue to sell their one major export to other countries.  This would indicate also that their domestic energy demand is rising.

We find more on that topic from none other than the Chief Executive Officer of Saudi Aramco, Khalid al-Falih.

“Saudi Arabia’s long-standing status as a swing producer of crude oil could be drawing to a close according to the head of national oil company Saudi Aramco.

Global oil exports from Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer alongside Russia, will start to wane in the coming years as domestic demand surges and spare capacity drops…“

It seems the evidence for Saudi’s Peak is stacking up fast.

This is not good news folks.  If this is true, then we have passed World Peak for Oil production.  This would also explain alot about the crunch happening in the Global Economy.  This would also mean that there is not going to be any kind of substantial recovery.  We are in store for a slow slide down the available energy curve.  Less and less energy available per capita.  Trillions of dollars lost in the stock market.  In short…..the Greatest Depression.

This is the Oil Age, Historical/Future Oil Consumption, with some perspective to human history:

This is the Population curve, which will eventually match the Oil = Available Food curve above:

If you have questions or would like to know more you should start with the LATOC link in my blogroll.

Peak Oil: The End

This is a great transcript from an interview with Matt Simmons about Peak Oil, a topic not covered very often in the MSM.  If you want to understand the root of the Financial Crisis and why it is not going away, then start researching this topic.

http://jutiagroup.com/2010/05/14/peak-oil-the-end/

“Welcome back to Turning Hard Times into Good Times. I am your host, Jay Taylor, and I am very pleased to have with me Matthew Simmons. He is the founder and now chairman emeritus of Simmons & Company International. Mr. Simmons is a prominent oil industry insider and one of the world’s leading experts on the topic of peak oil.

Mr. Simmons was motivated by the 1973 energy crisis to create an investment banking firm catering to oil companies, and in his capacity, he served as energy adviser to U.S. President George W. Bush. Matthew Simmons is a member of the National Petroleum Council and the Council on Foreign Relations.

He believes careful assessment of Saudi Arabian oil reserves to be the most significant issue, shaping petroleum politics, and he is the author of Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy.

His examination of oil reserves’ decline rates really was very, very significant in his work and so we are going to ask him more about that. Welcome, Mr. Simmons, to Turning Hard Times into Good Times.”

GOM Oil Leak Larger than Previous Estimates…..and E.T.’s

We now have the WallStreet Journal question about a 25,000 Barrel per day leak not being denied:

Here and first printed Here

And now some scientists are saying leak is between 56,000 and 84,000 Barrels per day:

NPR and CNN

This would mean that it dwarfed the Exxon spill a week or two ago.  More evidence that the Gov. Corp. is lying to us.

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On a completely different subject:

Retiring State Congressman Henry McElroy Jr. makes a suprising admission

This is a must watch video, even if you think this stuff is tin.