The Planned Collapse of Europe By Richard Miller (London)
It is truly a dark winter for Europe, as the globalists seem set on destroying the cradle of Western civilisation in its heart land. High energy costs are leading to rapid deindustrialisation, with as notable example being German steelmaker ArcelorMittal, one of the largest steel production facilities in Europe, shuttering production. Closures of aluminium smelters, copper smelters and ammonia production plants have also occurred. Ammonia is a necessary element for fertiliser, and now there has been a drop of 70 percent in European production. Along with the Russian shutdown of gas, and the likely US destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, a crime that they seem to have got away with, we are seeing the collapse of Europe being played out. This deindustrialisation and depopulation, is what the World Economic Forum ghouls were gloating about.
“In yet another truly astonishing announcement that demonstrates the desperation of this hour, German steelmaker ArcelorMittal, one of the largest steel production facilities in Europe, has shuttered operations due to high energy prices.
“With gas and electricity prices increasing tenfold within just a few months, we are no longer competitive in a market that is 25% supplied by imports,” said CEO Reiner Blaschek.
This comes after announced closures of aluminium smelters, copper smelters and ammonia production plants over the last few weeks. Ammonia — necessary for fertilizer — is now 70% offline in the EU.
Adding to the misery, in just the last 24 hours, Russia announced a complete ban on natural gas exports to Europe until the West’s economic sanctions are lifted. This means the Nord Stream 1 pipeline is now shuttered for the foreseeable future, since delusional NATO countries are incapable of correcting their errors and backing down from Russia.
With steel and other industrial metals also offline, one wonders how Western Europe is supposed to function over the next six months of winter:
No steel = No industry (or industry jobs)
No fertilizer = No food
No natural gas = No electricity or heat
In essence, three of the pillars that allow a modern society to function are being severely crippled by economic sanctions and sky-high energy prices across Europe.
And it’s only the first week of September. The cold weather hasn’t even arrived yet. No matter how much natural gas is already stored for the winter, Europeans are facing both sky-high costs and scarcity on a level that hasn’t been experienced since World War II.
There simply isn’t enough energy available to power European cities and heat all the buildings this winter, and there’s not enough food in the pipeline to feed everyone in 2023, either.
Take that, Putin!
California’s rolling blackouts may begin today
The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting today that rolling blackouts may begin in California this evening. There’s simply not enough electricity to meet demand, so thousands of homes and businesses are going to be forcefully disconnected from the power grid. This is after the state begging electric vehicle owners to avoid charging their EVs from 4 – 9 pm. (Question: What happens if millions more Californians buy electric vehicles and plug them in?)
Via the Chronicle:
State officials anticipate needing 48,817 megawatts of electricity Monday, which would leave the state with a 2,000 to 4,000 megawatt deficit, according to the California Independent System Operator.
Ruh-roh. It turns out that dismantling the power grid infrastructure in order to appease left-wing greenies doesn’t keep the lights on. This must be incredibly confusing to the Leftists, given that they thought if all fossil fuels were shut down, a magical utopia would spontaneously emerge. Instead, they’ll be burning candles, cranking wind-up radios and crapping in buckets when the water towers run dry due to lack of electricity for the water pumps.
Welcome to Collapsifornia.
To combat the rising prices of electricity and food, Gov. Newsom has just signed a bill requiring fast food restaurants to pay as much as $22 / hour to workers. This is going to bankrupt many restaurants in California, worsening the lack of food options and job opportunities for locals. Via the WSJ:
“You can’t charge enough for food to offset what will happen from a labor perspective,” said Greg Flynn, president of Flynn Restaurant Group, which operates franchise brands in 44 states and owns 105 restaurants in California.
Mr. Flynn says he donated to Newsom’s political campaigns. It turns out you always get the tyranny you support. As long as oblivious Californians keep voting for Democrats, they’re going to continue collapsing into destitution and authoritarianism.
Where are all the people in Jackson, Mississippi crapping?
Don’t forget that the entire municipal water system has failed in Jackson, Mississippi, meaning there’s no water to flush toilets. It begs the question: Where are all the people crapping there?
If they’re crapping in the toilets, they have to hand-carry water to flush them. Where are they getting all that water?
Or maybe they’re crapping in buckets and tossing the contents in the back yard. That’s going to create a nightmare for the Health Dept and some interesting conversations among neighbors, especially when it rains again.
How are businesses functioning in the city if there are no working toilets? When locals need to get together for a meeting, do they ask to meet at the corner of Cholera and E.Coli? Seriously, at what point does all the feces become a public health issue reminiscent of a collapsed Third World nation like Haiti?
It’s all breaking down
All by design, globalists are decimating the pillars of civilization in order to cause collapse and depopulation. They are attacking:
- Food
- Energy
- Health (vaccines, bioweapons)
- Supply chains
- Finance
- Elections (massive rigging / mules)
- Liberty and self-defense
- Weather / geoengineering
The overarching goal is to exterminate the vast majority of the human population, then enslave the survivors.
The oblivious masses are going along with it, having no clue that if they took multiple covid jabs, they’re probably already dead.”
“As bad as Europe’s energy shortage was in the wake of sanctions the EU imposed on Russia following the invasion of Ukraine, it is about to enter a crisis mode.
This week, Russian authorities completely shut down the Nord Stream pipeline indefinitely, allegedly for “leaks” in the system, though many believe it’s just President Vladimir Putin’s latest measure to punish his European neighbors for their sanctions.
The outage could take a few days, a few weeks, or months — though any disruption to Europe’s natural gas supplies is fatalistic at this point, as winter rapidly approaches.
A photo of the alleged oil leak that was posted online looks minuscule and gives more weight to theories that Putin is behind this latest move.
The move is a “shocking development” and a massive blow to the European continent, which has spent the past 10-15 years moving away from reliable fossil fuels and nuclear power in lieu of unreliable and much more expensive “green” energy: Wind, solar, and hydrogen.
The pipeline shutdown comes as European nations were scrambling to top off natural gas storage centers ahead of winter and attempting to forecast what Putin may or many not do in the coming weeks as the ‘energy war’ continues.
That means that Europe will now be forced to rely even more on… well… Russian gas, in the form of much more expensive LNG resold by China. And after tumbling by more than 50% in the past few days, we fully expect European gas prices are about to go super parabolic and take out all time highs as soon as trading returns on Monday.
The news promptly sent spoos sliding back under 4000 as any hope Europe’s energy hyperinflation was finally over were just steamrolled by the Russian president.
What this will mean for European NatGas prices is anyone’s guess when the pols and experts wake up Monday morning while in the U.S., Americans celebrate labor by not working. But Goldman Sach’s Samantha Dart has offered a view, and it’s not good, via Zero Hedge:
We believe this will reignite market uncertainty regarding the region’s ability to manage storage through winter, driving a significant rally from Monday, potentially mimicking the August highs, should the issue at NS1 remain unresolved. However, we reiterate our view that even in a scenario where NS1 remains at zero, we estimate NW European gas markets can balance with Bal Summer TTF prices in a 215-230 EUR/MWh range (depending on how much the lower NS1 flows are offset by lower German re-exports of Russian gas), vs our 176 EUR TTF expectations under NS1 at a 20% flow.
Importantly, our price scenarios rely on our estimated demand elasticity of 1 mcm/d per 1.8 EUR move in prices. Hence, a potential decline in observed demand elasticity poses an upside risk to our price views. Specifically, should demand elasticity drop by half, for example, vs our original estimate, we estimate balance-of-summer TTF prices up to 290 EUR/MWh would be required to take storage to 90% full under a zero-flow NS1 scenario.
“A renewed rally of European gas prices on the back of today’s NS1 news will likely also heat up the debate around government intervention in the market, with most statements from public officials so far pointing towards an intervention in electricity markets,” she wrote.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg News noted, this latest pipeline shutdown “marks a dramatic escalation in Europe’s energy crisis — and comes just as prices were easing. If the shutdown persists, it puts households, factories and economies at risk, weakening Europe’s hand as it backs Ukraine in the war against Russia.”
Said another way, “millions of virtue signalers will be cold, hungry and in the dark this winter but at least they will have a Ukraine flag in their Twitter bio,” Zero Hedge principle Tyler Durden quipped.”
“Energy has become so expensive in Germany that the (soon-to-be former) economic powerhouse of Europe is now seeing a manufacturing shutdown that threatens to collapse the nation – and eventually the entire continent.
Calling the situation “alarming,” economic minister Robert Habeck announced that while industry has been working over the past several months to reduce gas consumption, including by switching to alternative fuels like oil, many companies have just “stopped production altogether.”
“It’s not good news,” he said, “because it can mean that the industries in question aren’t just being restructured but are experiencing a rupture – a structural rupture, one that is happening under enormous pressure.” (Related: Germany is about to lose at least half of its crop harvest as well due to drought.)
Year-ahead electricity prices in Europe soared to record highs this past week, only to drop by half not long after. Still, the price is obscenely high – see the graph at this link – and manufacturers are responding by closing up shop.
“Europe is facing economic devastation and depression at a scale that will make 2008 seems [sic] like a walk in the park,” reports Zero Hedge about the situation.
Germany’s excessive operation leverage is “much more than Lehman Brothers,” warns financial expert
Everything from large industrial companies to small trading firms and medium-sized businesses – all of these make up Germany’s “Mittelstand” – is feeling the crunch. And firms within each of these sectors are shutting their doors because it costs too much to keep operating.
“Wherever energy is an important part of the business model, companies are experiencing sheer angst,” Habeck added.
Keep in mind that every business relies on energy – cheap energy, to be more specific. Without it, conducting business, especially in a globally competitive economy, quickly becomes impossible.
It turns out that large swaths of the German economy rely not on not just cheap energy but Russian energy, which Europe is refusing to buy due to United States-led sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine.
Other regions supply gas as well, but not as inexpensively as Russia, which holds some of the world’s largest reserves of oil and gas. Unless Germany starts buying from Russia once again, which does not appear likely, then Germany’s economy will go bye-bye in the coming months.
Habeck basically confirmed this, stating that the Russian energy competitive advantage that Germany has long maintained “won’t come back any time soon, if it ever comes back at all.”
Over the weekend, financial expert Zoltan Pozsar said much the same, explaining that Europe faces a “Minsky moment” triggered by excessive financial leverage – meaning the highly corrupt markets and financial system that feed them are once again to blame for this calamity.
“And in the context of supply chains,” Pozsar added, “leverage means excessive operation leverage: in Germany, $2 trillion of value added depends on $20 billion (worth) of gas from Russia … that’s 100 times leverage – much more than Lehman’s (Lehman Brothers).”
Meanwhile, the Nord Stream 1 (NS1) pipeline is once again closed for “planned maintenance.” This means that no Russian gas is flowing to Germany right now.
“The outage comes with European countries already laboring under sharp price rises as a result of dwindling Russian supplies,” reports the Hedge. “Prices have more than doubled since Russian exporter Gazprom first restricted deliveries through Nord Stream 1 three months ago.”
Siegfried Russwurm, the head of Germany’s main business lobby, BDI, says that recent interest rate hikes in the U.S. coupled with slowing growth in China is hitting Germany with a second punch because China is one of the country’s largest export markets.”
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