Month: January 2020

Davos WEF Update #1.4, 1/19/20

A lone Occupy Wall Street protester sits in front of Federal Hall, across the street from the New York Stock Exchange, in New York June 8, 2012. More than eight months after Occupy Wall Street stormed the global stage, decrying economic inequality and coining the phrase "We are the 99 percent," the movement appears to be losing steam. Donations to the flagship New York chapter have slowed to a trickle. Polls show that public support is rapidly waning. Media attention has dropped precipitously.

WEF claims to do good. Others doubt it.

As the World Economic Forum oligarchs convene in Davos, Switzerland, check out the heart-felt doubts of an Occupy Wall Stree activist invited to Davos, Micah White. The Anonymous guy above reading the China Daily might as well be me, but I am upfront, hardly anonymous.

Klaus Schwab, the WEF founder, would be held in vile contempt by neoliberal champion Milton Friedman. Here’s why:

  • Friedman and orthodox neoliberal ideologues regard unfettered capitalism as Pareto Optimal (best of all possible worlds), meaning that we can’t do any better than that! All this impressive theoretical effort derives from a grand-theory deduction (Tinbergen), not from induction based on data, such as today’s news. And tomorrow’s.
  • Schwab regards corporations as potentially, not yet actually, responsible and transparent social agents accountable to stakeholders. Costco provides a model mission and, yup, Walmart may be heading in that direction. Ray Dalio and even BlackRock, the largest investment corporation, have publicly declared such revision in their mission statements, with results. Corporate Social Responsibility does occasionally happen, so, as economist Kenneth Boulding states: “If it exists, it is possible.” Don’t go crazy yet: Profits provide the engine of capitalism (Shaikh).

Fossil fuels may provide the signal as to which of these models prevail. Divestment in coal is the litmus test for financial behemoths. Watch the coming Aramco IPO for insights about the future of these models of corporate behavior. The Aramco IPO will assess such variables as the adequacy of corporate governance, transparency and integrity, and, critically, the long-term price of a barrel of oil. The Saudi oil powerhouse appears to produce sweet product at the cost of $4/barrel. Their proven reserves appear to be 268 billion barrels and the sunk infrastructure investment is enormous, and vulnerable to sabotage. Do the math. As I write, the market price is about $65/barrel and the IPO has been valued at $1.85 trillion, to the chagrin of the Crown Prince who expected over $2 trillion to support his tottering feudal welfare state. See my notes. The worst event for Aramco: Petroleum reserves become stranded assets as climate destruction takes over.

Micah says:

At the heart of the World Economic Forum is the conviction that decisions are best made when the interests of all stakeholders are served. Explaining this concept in 1971, Schwab wrote:

Why I lost confidence in WordPress.

Because I am locked out of my legacy blog, I am unwilling to again trust WordPress, dirty and vulnerable but powerful and convenient.

  • Even as I write this blog entry, I notice plugins that I did not, and would not, choose.
  • Spam, spam, more spam. Use filters, but must give away data.
  • Few authors, including me, understand the complicated CMS and SQL engine. HTML need not be complicated. I have spent probably twenty hours on this. Should I really be hand-editing PHP and SQL scripts?

Bulletin Board 2020, #1.3

WordPress locked me out since November.

Why the lapse? I am still locked out of my original blog, with my dedicated server support team unable to remedy: lots of my writing has been lost. So, I have lost confidence in WordPress blogging. Here, I keep to work on the fly while I concentrate on HTML5 in my legacy ProfWork.org site, where I have published over a thousand pages without a server hitch, not so WordPress.

What’s on my mind now.

In this blog, I identify long-term, strategic cases and trends worth watching:

  • Does the Aramco IPO provide a tell on energy future: Less than $2 trillion? See my Evernote. Key questions:
    • Will the shale fracking boom continue?
    • US oil demand through 2121: recession or growth slowdown?
  • The World Economic Forum, about to convene at Davos, will focus on global cooperation about what has abruptly topped public opinion concern: climate.
  • The recent media attention to population slowdown, with profound long-term consequences, such as to China and the USA.
  • Will GDP growth slowdown in the USA in the 2020s? The Congressional Budget Office forecasts GDP deceleration and surging federal budgetary deficits. [I will dig out the source.]
  • Attention to hotspots such as the burning alive of the Amazon and of Australia — while their respective governments persist in climate denial.
  • I will not cover the upcoming Presidential election in the USA but comment only if warranted in covering the concerns above.

Enough substance to digest.