| This is good stuff and he covers a lot of important indicators. One thing I discovered in 2001, and validated from 2002-2007 is that monetary policy is a massive indicator of the direction of countries. Once you understand economics (Economics in one lesson by henry hazlitt is a very readable place to start, but Austrian business cycle theory is the real deal) you can see how things are going to go pretty clearly. Which is why in 2001 when the mises institute was predicting a housing bubble (long before even Krugman advocated creating a housing bubble) ABCT let me know that it would eventually pop. I put this theory into practice with a variety of financial instruments and profited from it. The thing about real science is it lets you make predictions. Oil is very critical and this guy is onto some really good stuff... but economics in a broader sense and monetary theory in specific, is also hugely relevant. The biggest tragedy of this kind of knowledge, though, is watching people make bad decisions (like buying houses they couldn't afford) based on nonsense they were told (essentially propaganda). Even someone who knows you a long time and thinks your a genius will believe CNN, politicians and their own desire to buy a house and "get in on the action" over wise counsel. Which ultimately left me with this conclusion: People get the world they create, and they are complicit in its creation. How many people who hate the PATRIOT ACT and NDAA voted for Obama? How many should have known? How many people who wanted prudent financial management voted for Bush? How many should have known they would get deficit spending? How many were tricked into voting for one of these guys with the idea that the alternative was so much worse...when in retrospect they aren't that bad (Bush, for instance, never cracked down on abortion like we were told to fear in 2000, and he was in office 8 years.) What if everybody actually demanded their government was honest, prudent, and abided by the constitution? So, yes, use everything you can to understand geopolitics, because we're in a time of great upheaval- or close to it. The future for the USA is dimmer than the past, unfortunately, no matter which major party wins the next several elections. |
Hardly. I fail to see how the domestic oil boom is a liability, technologically superior energy sources will win in the long run more quickly with a stable economy in the west. Which political party wins is practically irrelevant in the long term as today's liberal morphs into tomorrow's conservative in an unstoppable march of progress.