Just say we will suck less than everyone else

Telegraph UK:

World power swings back to America

The American phoenix is slowly rising again. Within five years or so, the US will be well on its way to self-sufficiency in fuel and energy. Manufacturing will have closed the labour gap with China in a clutch of key industries. The current account might even be in surplus.

Assumptions that the Great Republic must inevitably spiral into economic and strategic decline - so like the chatter of the late 1980s, when Japan was in vogue - will seem wildly off the mark by then.

Telegraph readers already know about the “shale gas revolution” that has turned America into the world’s number one producer of natural gas, ahead of Russia.

Less known is that the technology of hydraulic fracturing - breaking rocks with jets of water - will also bring a quantum leap in shale oil supply, mostly from the Bakken fields in North Dakota, Eagle Ford in Texas, and other reserves across the Mid-West.

“The US was the single largest contributor to global oil supply growth last year, with a net 395,000 barrels per day (b/d),” said Francisco Blanch from Bank of America, comparing the Dakota fields to a new North Sea.

Total US shale output is “set to expand dramatically” as fresh sources come on stream, possibly reaching 5.5m b/d by mid-decade. This is a tenfold rise since 2009.

WORTH A READ

Despite the wonderful outlook here, note that all these developments in energy depend on an admin which allows FOSSIL ‘EARTH WARMING’ fuels to be developed, refined and used.

As far as closing labor gaps with China, not buying.

But as long as huge intertwined banks, which MUST BE too big to allow failure exist our entire financial existence is in jeopardy. The banks have to be broken up and an analogous Glass Steagall structure imposed to guard the moral borders of finance products.

Right now it looks as if we will be COMPELLED to help Europe in its Greek default death spiral in order to prevent Greece from become the Lehman of nations. I can’t see any other way to prevent catastrophe. But this HAS to be followed by a new American admin and REAL REFORM. If Greece goes down, and takes a few large Eurobanks with it, we are headed for the REAL result of September 2008.