free html hit counter Peak Oil Debunked: 423. MIKE RUPPERT, THE "PROPHET"

Saturday, September 19, 2009

423. MIKE RUPPERT, THE "PROPHET"

Just when you thought he'd checked himself into a good psychiatric facility....

Mike Ruppert roars back as the star of a new feature film "Collapse".


Owen Gleiberman posts a rave review from the Toronto Film Festival:
I said in my first post from Toronto that you could feel the anxiety of the economic crisis in any number of the films here. Yet even as I wrote that, I could never have guessed I’d end up seeing a movie that would tap into those anxieties with the power and terror of Collapse. It’s one of the few true buzz films of the festival (by the time I got to it, I’d heard a dozen people talking it up), yet the movie, which is 82 minutes long, consists of nothing more than an on-camera interview with Michael Ruppert, a former Los Angeles police officer who became a rogue investigative reporter and author.

A bluntly unassuming and rather plain-looking man in his late fifties, Ruppert sits in what looks like a brick bunker and talks about where he thinks the United States is now headed. It is not a pretty picture, but it’s not a naive one, either. Ruppert has more than a perception — he has a welter of facts, a restless and skeptical intelligence, a grasp of history that is professorial in the best sense, and an ability to slice and dice the platitudes of mainstream media. He’s like Noam Chomsky as a gripping pundit of doom. The drama of the movie, and it’s intense, is that even if you want to argue with him (and you will, since he’s predicting very bad things), you can’t dismiss what he’s saying.

He starts out with a trump card of credibility. In 2006, Ruppert predicted the economic crisis — I mean, he really saw it coming. We’re shown clips of him from that year, and there’s nothing vague or abstract about his statements. He glimpsed the whole house of cards in prophetic detail: the sub-prime mortgage crisis, the inevitable breakdown of a system built, like a gold-leaf castle in the air, on leverage. His astonishingly acute foresight seizes your attention, and so you’d better believe that you’re sitting up and listening as he starts to talk about “peak oil,” the term that’s used to describe the fact that the majority of oil reserves on the planet have, in all likelihood, already been depleted, and that the remaining supply will now perpetually be in decline. (He cites reports that the Saudis have resorted to off-shore drilling — infinitely more costly than on-shore — as evidence that they’ve begun to see the bottom of their wells.)
Now for the reality check...

Mike Ruppert, September 21, 2005:
While I had serious doubts about America's ability to recover from Katrina, I am certain that - barring divine intervention - the United States is finished; not only as a superpower, but possibly even as a single, unified nation with the arrival of Hurricane Rita.Link
Mike Ruppert Jan. 9, 2009:
*I can pretty much bet that as many as 50-75 new Executive Orders will be announced within 72 hours of the inauguration.

*I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a couple of days with 700+ point losses in the Dow over the next ten days to two weeks.

*Reports have suggested that China may dump half of its $1.4 trillion dollar holdings within the next two months.

*As I correspond with a number of key friends and researchers around the world we have all concluded that it may be just a matter of weeks (yikes!) before we start seeing major disruptions in everyday life.

*Soon it will be necessary for me to look at topics which we've mentioned in passing. These include civil unrest, camps, emergency communications and preparedness as the threat of societal breakdown becomes imminent. It's time to start doing that.Link
Mike Ruppert, Nov. 25, 2008:
-"The end" of the U.S. economy by March or April.
-Gold $2000 an oz. by March
-People starving and screaming for food by August
-Conditions 10x worse than The Great Depression by August
-Oil above $100, gas above $3.00 by Summer.Link
Mike Ruppert, Sept. 13, 2005:
"I predict we will soon see a national draft, and Canada will not harbor U.S. deserters as it did during Vietnam, as it is now a virtual U.S. colony." Link
Mike Ruppert, April 25, 2009:
"Now, with the swine flu outbreak just developing, it is clear that the dieoff has begun..." Link
Astonishingly acute foresight... LOL. Ruppert is a complete wingnut "truther" with a long history of BS predictions, extreme paranoia and mental health issues.

Update 9/28/09:
Mike Ruppert found guilty of sexual harassment, hit with $125,000 fine.
The state labor board has ordered author and conspiracy theorist Michael C. Ruppert, to pay more than $125,000 to a former female employee he was accused of sexually harassing.

State Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian, ordered the former Ashland businessman to pay Lindsay Gerken $2,713 in lost wages. Avakian then tagged on $125,000 in damages for the woman's mental and emotional suffering for an award of $127,713.

[...]

Avakian said Gerken was fired a week after Ruppert asked her to have a sexual relationship with him and she refused.

The most startling incident occurred when Ruppert came to Gerken's office door "wearing only his underwear and a smile," according to a BOLI release.

[...]

In an interview Thursday, Ruppert did not deny he presented himself to Gerken in his underwear.

[...]

"At the trial it was evident that one person was telling the truth, and another was not," he said. "All of (Ruppert's) businesses have failed and creditors a mile long are after him."Source
It's also worth mentioning that Delmart "Mike" Vreeland -- a primary source for Ruppert's conspiracy theory screed Crossing the Rubicon -- has been sentenced to 336 years in prison for pedophilia:
A Douglas County man has been sentenced to 336 years to life in prison after he was convicted of luring two boys into performing sex acts and making child pornography by giving them drugs and money and promising them a drum set.

Forty-two-year-old Delmart Vreeland was convicted in 2006 of 13 felony charges, including inducement of child prostitution, sexual assault, sexual exploitation of children and distribution of cocaine. Earlier this year, he was convicted of six habitual criminal counts.Source
by JD
---------
Major hat tip to Andrew Ryan for keeping tabs on Mike and compiling most of this material. Hopefully he'll check in soon with more material for this article.

95 Comments:

At Saturday, September 19, 2009 at 10:56:00 AM PDT, Blogger BN said...

Great work as always JD!

 
At Saturday, September 19, 2009 at 11:35:00 AM PDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks for the tip. Can't wait to see it!

HDT

 
At Saturday, September 19, 2009 at 12:00:00 PM PDT, Anonymous not scared said...

meanwhile back in the real world it looks like our financial system is shored up compared to last fall.

 
At Saturday, September 19, 2009 at 12:17:00 PM PDT, Anonymous AndrewRyan said...

Great post, JD. Thanks for the hat tip. A post on Ruppert's predictions is always good for a laugh. Does the trick every time. You've done a great job outlining most of his kooky predictions in 2009. I was able to find a few more gems from late 2008, regarding his freakout/sensationalism over the Mumbai attacks:

-I do not know how many other corporations are affected; but they will be many, if not most of the Dow 30 and the Fortune 500. And I can tell you that on Friday morning, any customer or client of Citigroup, Symantec or Hewlett-Packard will be unable to get customer assistance over the phone. Warranty service for these corporations will stop.

-The Achilles tendon of globalization has just been severed. (he says this not once, but twice! He must have been really serious!)

-Ordinarily, I would go out and start researching to see how bad the exposure is but I already know that it is catastrophic. The markets will do all our research and reporting very quickly for us. Citigroup will be devastated. Its CEO Vikram Pandit, is Indian.

I am certain that this was the intended outcome of the attacks.


-The analytic construct for Mumbai I have is this:

It is clear that the United States is imploding and that its economic, military and political influence are dying.


Link.

Oh yea, and one more for the road:


What scares me most about the Mumbai attacks is the following:

3. At this level of sophistication I would expect the capacity for a "follow-on" in the near future. If the intent of the attack is to put the United States completely out of business it will have to do so quickly.

8. This is an absolutely brilliant and potentially fatal blow aimed precisely at the weakest spots we have mapped in "Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil" and at "From The Wilderness".

 
At Saturday, September 19, 2009 at 5:15:00 PM PDT, Anonymous Basset Hound said...

Let's see his concrete predictions.

The end of the US economy by March or April? WRONG!

Gold 2000 bux an hour by March? Whong-O!

People starving and screaming for food by August? Wrongarooney!

Conditions 10x worse than the Great Depression by August? Wrongey wrong wrong!

Oil above $100, gas above 3 dollars by summer? Wrongster. Here the price of gas is going down again.

Like Dismal Jimmy Clusterfuck Kunstler, Mike the mouth couldn't predict tomorrow's sunrise. And neither of them could fix dinner.

Basset Hound

 
At Saturday, September 19, 2009 at 5:23:00 PM PDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

To compound his humiliation, note that he mentioned in one of the posts that the failed corn crop of this year would cause people to be screaming for food by August. However:

"The U.S. Department of Agriculture said this month that it expects the domestic corn crop to rise to 12.954 billion bushels, up 7 percent from a year earlier and the second-biggest in history."
(article)

 
At Saturday, September 19, 2009 at 6:01:00 PM PDT, Blogger JD said...

"I predict we will soon see a national draft, and Canada will not harbor U.S. deserters as it did during Vietnam, as it is now a virtual U.S. colony."
Mike Ruppert, Sept. 13, 2005
Link

 
At Saturday, September 19, 2009 at 6:08:00 PM PDT, Blogger JD said...

"Now, with the swine flu outbreak just developing, it is clear that the dieoff has begun..."
Mike Ruppert, April 25, 2009
Link

This is like shooting fish in a barrel. Google Mike Ruppert -- get a hysterical wrong prediction.

 
At Saturday, September 19, 2009 at 7:12:00 PM PDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

As a contrarian investor my guess is that as soon as this movie hits the big screen, it will be the start of the biggest boom the world has ever seen.

DB

 
At Saturday, September 19, 2009 at 7:52:00 PM PDT, Anonymous OilFinder said...

"-"The end" of the U.S. economy by March or April.
-Gold $2000 an oz. by March
-People starving and screaming for food by August
-Conditions 10x worse than The Great Depression by August
-Oil above $100, gas above $3.00 by Summer.


Gee I dunno. It's September already and even my cat just had a nice meal.

;-)

 
At Saturday, September 19, 2009 at 9:26:00 PM PDT, Anonymous AndrewRyan said...

OK, the map we made is dead-bang accurate. Although the speed at which this is happening is just breathtaking. So, I am beginning to suspect that either all major world leaders have read Rubicon and planned accordingly (I'm not that self-centered)

[....]

You know, H5N1 is breaking out in China and now erupting in Canada with three dozen poultry farms shut down. In China, however, there has been bird-to-human transmission with at least five deaths. Ecologically the carnage is devastating everywhere. Australia is melting under record heat and drought. The American Southeast is freezing. And now Geography is starting to act like gravity unleashed. Mother Earth is joining the game.

Shit, I had to turn everything off tonight and just sit and be still.


-Mike Ruppert, February 2009.

By the sound of this sensationalism, he made it sound like the world was ending tomorrow. LOL. Or he's just a paranoid schizophrenic.

Link

LOL, this is fun.

 
At Saturday, September 19, 2009 at 11:03:00 PM PDT, Blogger AngryToaster said...

I bet Miss Cleo has better predictions than this!! Why do people still believe him. I'm asking seriously. He's very.... special.

 
At Sunday, September 20, 2009 at 2:38:00 AM PDT, Blogger JD said...

I'd forgotten about the "divorce" between Dale Alan Pfeiffer and Ruppert which I chronicled in #116. Unfortunately Dale deleted that material, and all we have left is this bit which antimatter quoted:

DAP (Sept. 2005): In the month since I left FTW, Mike Ruppert has tried to milk the Energy Roundtable list for the information he used to receive from me. He has also printed editorials stating that the US is going to collapse within the next few months, implying that all of the recent hurricanes were created intentionally through weather control technology, and suggesting the need for legislated population regulation.

 
At Sunday, September 20, 2009 at 2:39:00 AM PDT, Blogger JD said...

I really enjoyed this beautiful comment from the movie's website:

"There's also a strong suggestion that Ruppert has walled himself into his own point-of-view by accepting only the information that supports his sweeping theories. And in several immensely poignant moments, we can also see an angry, lonely, vulnerable man whose life epitomizes the title as much as the globe does."

 
At Sunday, September 20, 2009 at 2:58:00 AM PDT, Blogger JD said...

Turns out some of that Dale Alan Pfeiffer stuff was archived:

Previous entries in this blog explain my dissatisfaction with FTW. Unfortunately everything came to a head in the months of August, after our move to Appalachia. The final row began when I wrote an article for FTW about peak oil and the working class. In this article, I stated that the working class needed to band together to achieve the eventual goal of a general strike and the transformation of society into a true democracy. Evidently, Mike Ruppert and Jamey Hecht both disagreed with this article. I am sure Mike Ruppert has no desire to see his own staff unionize, much less turn FTW into a democratically run business.

...

Please note, Pfeiffer, as far as I can tell, is not repudiating the Peak Oil theory, but simply it's use in non-progressive ways. So this is about Ruppert and not about Peak Oil. But he does end with this:

Quote:In the month since I left FTW, Mike Ruppert has tried to milk the Energy Roundtable list for the information he used to receive from me. He has also printed editorials stating that the US is going to collapse within the next few months, implying that all of the recent hurricanes were created intentionally through weather control technology, and suggesting the need for legislated population regulation.

Numerous people have told me they have no use for Mike Ruppert and that his website is going down the tubes. And since leaving, I have learned of other former employees who received even worse treatment from him than I did, along with others who have had very bad encounters with Mike Ruppert. I even found out about a lawsuit for defamation of character which was filed against Mike Ruppert last year. I have not heard how this lawsuit was decided, and Mike has certainly never mentioned it. If the plaintiff won, then I can see why Mike has no money.

Perhaps I was wrong in my accusation about how Mike used me. Maybe he was right. I drew the only conclusions I could based upon what was happening. He kept me out of the loop on most of the business at FTW, including articles dealing with subjects that I was being retained to edit. Other people have told me that I did not draw the wrong conclusions. Mike used me to become a noted authority on peak oil and to lend credibility to his speculations. And he has done a very good job of muddying up and sensationalizing the issue of energy depletion.
Link

 
At Sunday, September 20, 2009 at 8:48:00 AM PDT, Anonymous AndrewRyan said...

Had to search back in a few years to find this one, but it's one of my favorite "Ruppert moments" -- when he frantically writes his own ~65 paragraph send off before running to Venezuela. You can almost see his paranoid schizophrenia condition in these quotes, full of paranoia and illusions of grandeur. Ruppert always thinks something is going on and that he's crucial to getting to the bottom of it.


The burglary that took place at the new FTW offices in Ashland, Oregon on Sunday, June 25th of this year was the equivalent of my Kristalnacht,
Ruppert comparing a (possibly staged) burglary of his offices to a night when the Nazi's destroyed thousands of Jewish owned buildings and a prequel to the Holocaust. Broken FTW computers....the Holocaust....same difference, right?

I do not know where I will spend the rest of my days. Maybe in Venezuela, maybe in Mexico with the Zapatistas, maybe in Bolivia, maybe in France, Germany, or even Russia. But because Venezuela has become the singular world leader in resisting US domination under the courageous, intelligent, and inspired leadership of Hugo Chavez, I want to begin the rest of my days here.

[...]

But at 55, as I looked at the smashed computers and realized that I had humiliated the government one too many times, I understood two things. I was too old to go on fighting these increasingly ugly and dangerous battles. And there was nothing left in the United States worth fighting for. The next battle would surely mean death for me.

[...]

The economy and government of the United States of America are my enemies and the enemies of the entire human race and even of the American people themselves.



Link.

Very dramatic indeed. Of course, if you sift through all the bullshit, you get to the bottom of what he's really after, and what the whole thing is about:

FTW needs your help now. We need donations. We need sales. Very soon we will have a new DVD which will show you my last two public appearances ever in the United States. It will be my farewell message to all of you even as I say hello in a new form. After FTW’s current, considerable expenses and staff are paid, some of that badly-needed money will find its way to me in Venezuela where I sorely need it.

 
At Sunday, September 20, 2009 at 9:26:00 AM PDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ruppert's only real error is impatience. The next bubble will pop in ~2013 and virtually everything Ruppert's predicted will come to pass in one form or another.

Load up on on frozen pizza, kids.

HDT

 
At Sunday, September 20, 2009 at 4:29:00 PM PDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"The next bubble will pop in ~2013"
How prescient of you HDT.
What bubble would that be pray tell?

DB

 
At Sunday, September 20, 2009 at 7:07:00 PM PDT, Blogger Ari said...

HDT,

So basically what you're saying is that no matter what Ruppert says, he can't ever be wrong?

 
At Sunday, September 20, 2009 at 7:46:00 PM PDT, Anonymous Sam M said...

HDT's kind of Doomer rhetoric just makes me think of Doctor Claw at the end of every episode of Inspector Gadget - "I'll get you next time Gadget! Next time!"

 
At Sunday, September 20, 2009 at 8:55:00 PM PDT, Blogger AngryToaster said...

Everyone is going to die..someday. MY TIMING IS JUST OFF! Awesome logic HDT LOL

 
At Sunday, September 20, 2009 at 11:36:00 PM PDT, Blogger JD said...

The next bubble will pop in ~2013 and virtually everything Ruppert's predicted will come to pass in one form or another.

If you said that at peakoil.com in 2004, you'd have been laughed off the board as a cornie in deep denial.

 
At Monday, September 21, 2009 at 4:31:00 AM PDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

JD,

You're a one trick pony with your cheap shots. Sure Ruppert's a blowhard sometimes, but, and unlike you and your acolytes, he at least got his facts straight and has been more right than wrong over the years. Can't wait for you and Ari's opus on how the world is actually a giant magic pudding which replenishes itself constantly, no matter how hard we flog it, or how many people live on it.


John Teo

 
At Monday, September 21, 2009 at 5:00:00 AM PDT, Blogger Hanley Tucks said...

Speaking of fruit loop doomers, Gail has a new article up, asking if there's a silver lining to any collapse scenario. Other than her oil stocks, I suppose she means.

My response.

 
At Monday, September 21, 2009 at 6:23:00 AM PDT, Blogger JD said...

John,
Anyone who thinks the USA is going to be terminated by a hurricane is so obviously delusional and mentally retarded that there's really no reason to pay them any heed whatsoever.

I am really eager to see the movie, though. Crazy people are really interesting. Have you ever watched any interviews with Charles Manson, or this amazing 1967 footage of L. Ron Hubbard? It's a shame we can't get all three of them together in the same room for a panel discussion.

 
At Monday, September 21, 2009 at 6:33:00 AM PDT, Blogger Ari said...

John,

Ruppert has gotten ONE thing "right." That is, he "predicted" the market collapse. However, all he had to do to get that was to stand on the shoulders of others like Roubini and Krugman.

Other than that, if you think Ruppert is so prescient, point out what amazing predictions he's made.

 
At Monday, September 21, 2009 at 6:36:00 AM PDT, Blogger JD said...

Kiashu,
Good stuff, but I've read posts on your blog which take those themes into much deeper detail. I know a lot of the readers here would enjoy your work, so if you've got any links, please feel free to post them. Kiashu's blog is called green with a gun. Highly recommended.

 
At Monday, September 21, 2009 at 7:18:00 AM PDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

John,
Anyone who thinks the USA is going to be terminated by a hurricane is so obviously delusional and mentally retarded that there's really no reason to pay them any heed whatsoever.


Like I said, he is a bit of a blowhard, but I don't think it has anything to do with some mental defect. More a case of crying wolf once too often, except the moral of that story was that the wolf indeed did eventually come.

I am really eager to see the movie, though. Crazy people are really interesting. Have you ever watched any interviews with Charles Manson, or this amazing 1967 footage of L. Ron Hubbard? It's a shame we can't get all three of them together in the same room for a panel discussion.

Now that would be something! Perhaps with you, Colin Campbell, Isaac Asimov and Curly Joe as the adjudicators...

Peace.

 
At Monday, September 21, 2009 at 7:31:00 AM PDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ari,

John,

Ruppert has gotten ONE thing "right." That is, he "predicted" the market collapse. However, all he had to do to get that was to stand on the shoulders of others like Roubini and Krugman.


Until the SHTF no one was listening much to Roubini either. As for Krugman, did he make such a bold forecast?

Other than that, if you think Ruppert is so prescient, point out what amazing predictions he's made.

That was one pretty big call Ari. Most - even many peak oilers - didn't believe it could happen. You see for most of them, (like us overfed affluent lapdogs, feasting from the table of a setting oil age), they hadn't known any another reality. Property prices had always gone up, and would continue do so into the foreseeable future.

 
At Monday, September 21, 2009 at 7:33:00 AM PDT, Blogger Ari said...

Anon (HDT or John?),

Even if you're blind, you'll hit something if you fire enough shots. That doesn't mean you're necessarily aiming for anything or even remotely accurate.

Even if you just randomly guess things you'll be right SOMETIMES. It doesn't make you some great soothsaying prophet, however.

 
At Monday, September 21, 2009 at 8:04:00 AM PDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anon (HDT or John?),

Even if you're blind, you'll hit something if you fire enough shots. That doesn't mean you're necessarily aiming for anything or even remotely accurate.


Even with a trigger happy approach it appears that Ruppert still has a better strike rate than all of Wall Street, the Fed, Treasury, Capitol Hill and the mainstream media put together.

Even if you just randomly guess things you'll be right SOMETIMES. It doesn't make you some great soothsaying prophet, however.

Who said anything about prescience? You don't have to prescient to understand that things like oil are finite, with a beginning a middle and an end. Or that binging on cheap credit will eventually make the economy incredibly sick. There the sorts of things Ruppert was "predicting" way back when. Most people in charge don't even get these basics.

John

 
At Monday, September 21, 2009 at 8:06:00 AM PDT, Blogger Ari said...

Until the SHTF no one was listening much to Roubini either. As for Krugman, did he make such a bold forecast?

Other than the talking heads, pretty much anyone with half a brain knew that housing was a bubble. Hell, I remember doing a section on market bubbles in a risk analysis class I did and housing was a huge subject even years before Lehman.

I mean, even the Wall St. guys knew that a time of reckoning was coming, but they thought they could "contain" the issue by diversifying and praying for "decoupling."


That was one pretty big call Ari. Most - even many peak oilers - didn't believe it could happen. You see for most of them, (like us overfed affluent lapdogs, feasting from the table of a setting oil age), they hadn't known any another reality. Property prices had always gone up, and would continue do so into the foreseeable future.


Property prices do tend to rise in the long-run. Manhattan real estate is still worth more today than it was 50 years ago. However, bubbles are not sustainable.

That "nobody believed it could happen" is just false. Plenty of people believed it could happen. They just weren't the loudest talking heads at the time.

And like I said before: make enough predictions and you'll be right about something. It doesn't make you prescient.

 
At Monday, September 21, 2009 at 8:23:00 AM PDT, Blogger Ari said...

John,

Even with a trigger happy approach it appears that Ruppert still has a better strike rate than all of Wall Street, the Fed, Treasury, Capitol Hill and the mainstream media put together.

Well, by your standard we could just use a Magic 8 Ball.

Besides, there's a reason why Greenspan called it "irrational exuberance." Because it's IRRATIONAL. That still doesn't mean that the guy on the street with the sign that says "The End is Nigh" is worth listening to all of a sudden.

Besides, there were at least a few people on Wall St. who were saying "RED ALERT RED ALERT." Unfortunately, by then it was way too late for most of the highly leveraged banks to really do much, except for hedging in commodities and pretend that "decoupling" would save their hides.

We know what happened.

Who said anything about prescience? You don't have to prescient to understand that things like oil are finite, with a beginning a middle and an end. Or that binging on cheap credit will eventually make the economy incredibly sick. There the sorts of things Ruppert was "predicting" way back when. Most people in charge don't even get these basics.

Nobody thinks that binging on cheap credit is "good" per se. But also, the people in charge tend to understand that debt, in and of itself, isn't bad. That's something that's sadly lost on many of the doom and gloom types, who think that any debt is necessarily a bad thing.

Regardless, however, you're still not making a good defense of Ruppert, when the fact remains that a Magic Eight Ball could have done the same thing he did.

 
At Monday, September 21, 2009 at 8:28:00 AM PDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ari said;
Other than the talking heads, pretty much anyone with half a brain knew that housing was a bubble.

Well given the way the mess was allowed to unfold then this would rule out most of the buyers and sellers who entered/purveyed such foolish arrangements.

That "nobody believed it could happen" is just false. Plenty of people believed it could happen. They just weren't the loudest talking heads at the time.

Those in power still only want to believe that this is just a garden variety recession, and have engineered things to have it appear that way. People may be talking about the real issues involved in the bust up, but sweet F.A. has been down about them by those at the top.

John

 
At Monday, September 21, 2009 at 8:34:00 AM PDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Ruppert has gotten ONE thing "right." That is, he "predicted" the market collapse."

So did I. I even predicted exactly what the response would be to cascading cross defaults on derivatives. This was in 2005.

I don't, however, think that just because we had a (predictable) financial crisis due to over-leveraging that we are all careening off the doom cliff.

We might have high inflation and we might have a Japanese style "lost decade" but we're not entering doom alley by any stretch of the imagination.

DB

 
At Monday, September 21, 2009 at 8:52:00 AM PDT, Blogger Ari said...

John,

Well given the way the mess was allowed to unfold then this would rule out most of the buyers and sellers who entered/purveyed such foolish arrangements.

Actually, it was perfectly rational for pretty much all of the actors to do what they did in the short run. It was the long run that would be a bitch for them.

People don't participate in bubbles thinking that there's no chance for a peak and decline. They participate in them because there's a chance for a nice quick buck. The goal is to make money and get out before the other schmucks. It's a game of chicken.

Those in power still only want to believe that this is just a garden variety recession, and have engineered things to have it appear that way. People may be talking about the real issues involved in the bust up, but sweet F.A. has been down about them by those at the top.

Nobody in charge has responded to this recession by treating it as such. The major i-banks converted themselves to bank holding companies for goodness' sake! The governments of the world have engaged in the largest interventions probably in the history of the modern world. The Fed has engaged in one of its most aggressive moves in its history. Regulations are pumping out left and right.

This recession has been treated as anything BUT "garden variety."


DB,

Exactly.

 
At Monday, September 21, 2009 at 10:04:00 AM PDT, Blogger Anaconda said...

Please,

Mike Ruppert was a Los Angeles police officer that retired, and wanted another gig (perhaps, Ruppert originally wanted to be a paperback writer...of potbelly crime fiction).

He looked around and saw the "doomer" community, and knew that "doomers" drink up predictions of "bad things" happening like the proverbial Kool-Aid.

And Ruppert parlayed that into a nice little following which paid money for his brand of Kool-aid.

Not much different from the original Kool-Aid dispenser, Jim Jones.

There will always be prophets of "doom"...and sadly there will always be people eager to drink the Kool-Aid.

It's called a market and Ruppert wanted his share of it...

It's older than the old saying, "there's a sucker born every minute..."

One thing about an old cop, they know about human misery and can get pretty cynical -- just the attitude you need to get into the "doomer" market.

 
At Monday, September 21, 2009 at 12:19:00 PM PDT, Anonymous Katie said...

What does debunking Mike Ruppert have to do with debunking peak oil? Clearly he is just another fundamentalist - I wouldn't make same claim towards overshoot, peak oil, limits to growth etc.

 
At Monday, September 21, 2009 at 1:39:00 PM PDT, Anonymous Anywhere said...

Katie,

"Debunking peak oil" is a reference to debunking the doom/collapse that some insist is inevitable with the peaking of oil, not a refutation of the peaking of oil.

There's a statement at the top of the blog to that effect.

 
At Monday, September 21, 2009 at 2:12:00 PM PDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"There's a statement at the top of the blog to that effect."

Yes. The "disclaimer for idiots".

That brings a tear to my eye.

DB

 
At Monday, September 21, 2009 at 2:34:00 PM PDT, Anonymous Benny "Boom, No Doom" Cole said...

BTW, dudes, the Fat Lady is singing for this recession. Asia already out of it, France and Germany already growing again.
It was a baddie, but it is over.
Meanwhile, we have a honking glut to the moon of natural gas, and oil tankers are laying in for months ar Malta with no place to offload.
This is Peak Oil?
I say we are on the cusp of another 20-year-boom in global GDP. A lot like the last one, except better.
The Oil Era is ending, and with a whimper, not a bang. OPEC's business model -- offer consumers high and erratic prices, and unreliable supply -- is not one I see taught in business schools.
The world will transition past oil, seamlessly, effortlessly.
Personally, I approve. Urban air could much cleaner, post-ICE.
Bring it on.

 
At Monday, September 21, 2009 at 4:01:00 PM PDT, Blogger AngryToaster said...

DB,

Off topic..Do you have a blog where you have posted some of these predictions? Thanks!

Benny,

I wish I could agree, but CRE is about to explode. I think we are going to have round 2 coming along shortly :(. The bad debt needs to be flushed out of the system. Until that happens, we can not recover.

 
At Monday, September 21, 2009 at 10:40:00 PM PDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Off topic..Do you have a blog where you have posted some of these predictions? Thanks!"
You can no longer reach it but if you google the following you will see the date (2005) and get the gist proving I did predict it.
"2cents.dailyreckoning.com dan browne derivatives meltdown"

DB

 
At Tuesday, September 22, 2009 at 9:13:00 AM PDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

OD:

ALSO... I had forgotten about this one but my gut feel in early 2006 was that Iceland was about to collapse. Here's proof:
Google the following:

"2cents.dailyreckoning.com dan browne meltdown in iceland"

DB

 
At Tuesday, September 22, 2009 at 5:36:00 PM PDT, Anonymous Benny "Boom, No Doom" Cole said...

OptimisticDoomer:
Yeah. CRE. But a couple of things. The recovery is underway. The CRE guys just have to hold on for a year or so.
The second thing is that banks won the approval to not "mark to market" bad loans on CRE. In other words, banks can wait for a few years until the market recovers.
So, less foreclosures, more forgiveness, extensions etc. Not pretty, not "the right thing" moral hazard wise, and another example how rich guys always find a way to dodge the bullet, while Mr Homeowner in Palmdale gets kicked out on his pick-up driving ass.
Oh well. I don;t think CRE will amount to much, Already, plenty of buyers snifing around SoCal office buildings, which are very cheap to buy. Industrial has already firmed.
The Fat Lady is singing on this recession, and thank goodness. Spray some tonic in her throt, as she is going to be belting out some hits long and loud by the end of next year, and for many, many more years after that.
Soon, the Fat Lady is going be shaking her giant booty, and her big boobs bouncing up and down like zepplins in a wind storm.
You want to miss out on this?
The world has never seen so much investable capital, so much R&D, such rapid exchange of information.
World stock markets have largely recovered. Yeah, everybody is stupid except doomsters.
Always invest after a debacle.

 
At Tuesday, September 22, 2009 at 6:41:00 PM PDT, Anonymous Kevin L. said...

Wow, thanks for the laugh JD! I can't decide which collapsi-nutbag is funnier - Ruppert or Orlov. In 2007 Orlov and his wife sold their Boston apartment in exchange for a "survival capsule" - a sailboat armed with solar panels, half a year of propane, foodstuffs and water, and they live on it full-time. And Mike Ruppert made this movie. I can't decide which is more precious. I'm not saying people shouldn't be preparing for the worst (that'd be plain stupid), but if people are going to do it, they should just stock up 6 months-worth of supplies and learn gardening, not listen to doomsturbators.

 
At Tuesday, September 22, 2009 at 8:20:00 PM PDT, Blogger Unknown said...

"The world has never seen so much investable capital, so much R&D, such rapid exchange of information.
World stock markets have largely recovered. Yeah, everybody is stupid except doomsters."

Yeah, optimism is all well and good, but you're optimism is as irrational as the doomsters' pessimism.

Japan stumbled around in a recession/depression for almost 19 years now.

We are taking the same well trodden off-ramp to recession. Plenty of "capital, and r&d and fast internet service in Japan. But did this pull them out of their recession?

Of course Japanese culture didn't completely collapse, dogs and cats are not sleeping together in the streets, nor is Mad Max the Prime Minister of Japan.

Be that as it may, the recession is far from over. And world stock markets are in fact just another bubble buoyed by Central bank liquidity. When the spigot turns off, this market bubble deflates just like in 2001.

There is unprecedented debt load for consumers, businesses and government alike. This debt will not soon be liquidated. Thus the recession grinds on.

 
At Tuesday, September 22, 2009 at 10:09:00 PM PDT, Blogger Hanley Tucks said...

Huh, they deleted my comment on Gail's article. I didn't even use any rude words, I just asked exactly what was going to kill off "90% of the world population in a few years," since we'd have to lose 95% of our food to do that, and around 50% of it is produced with no fossil fuel inputs worth speaking of...

I pointed out that even commie Korea only lost 5% of its population in a few years with a big plunge in fossil fuels, and that took floods, deforestation, and a corrupt government withholding aid from the people to manage...

I guess that Olduvai graph thingo Must Not Be Questioned.

 
At Tuesday, September 22, 2009 at 11:26:00 PM PDT, Blogger JD said...

Huh, they deleted my comment on Gail's article.

What a crock. If TOD can't handle a reasonable, low-key comment like that, they really are a groupthink shithole.

 
At Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at 2:42:00 AM PDT, Anonymous RebelFarmer said...

"Crude oil futures for delivery in 2015 are currently trading near $85 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. "

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=az5H8H0exfDE

Any thoughts about this: normally peakoilers complain that they are not heard in the media. What about if they UNDER-estimated their influence, and traders and investors become afraid from all the predictions that have been made in the media and start buying up more future stocks of oil, and driving up current prices with it.

Peakoilers would see in the rising prices a scarcity that they have predicted. But in fact, what they see is the result of what they partly have been causing themselves.

I say this because it reminds me on what happened with the "multiculturalism debate" in the Netherlands. You know this debate went totally wrong, resulting in a transformation of a tolerant country to one of the most hostile ones in Europe towards immigrants. What went wrong here is that the proponents of multiculturalism have too long profiled themselves as underdogs, because they felt that they were not heard, while in fact a lot of policy attention was paid towards it. The problems of "integration" (in the beginning still a very not-political correct term in the NL) were in fact so huge, that it seemed like that the government did nothing to help to close the gap between newly immigrated people and the established Dutch. This was utterly condemned by the "new right", who believed that all the governmental support just aggravated the problem: it prevented that immigrants were confronted with "necessity" that they should "integrate". Like I said: this was in the beginning language only expressed by extreme right in the NL, now it is common sense (and I emigrated to France...)

Anyway, back to oil: the biggest hatred and accusation from "oilpeak-deniers" or "climate change deniers" come from the fact that "money-squandering schemes" or "taxpayer money" are spilled to create a "no-growth" scenario, while in fact according to them this money should be spent on stimulating growth, because only growth can compensate for pollution.

Now, I don't predict that the whole climate debate will finally come back this ideology, but maybe if peakoilers would reflect more about their own position in the debate, there would be less an ideological war as I can see right now between them and its "debunkers".

I think the Oil Drum and Peak Oil Debunked are already doing a relatively good job in trying to stay "objective". And although I agree it is like fighting a war, which necessitates scientific theory to back up eachothers' ideological and moral standpoints, both parties need people who are above the party lines.

Personally I am in favor for searching for no-growth scenarios (and for a world without borders ;-) but I did some economics on my university and with this background I can't see yet a serious theory that can guide a transformation. The Stiglitz commission might be a beginning. But massively claiming no-growth already as an ideology, because we feel have not enough (media/governmental) support might make its own fear come true: indeed no-growth but one without solidarity.

 
At Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at 7:46:00 AM PDT, Blogger JD said...

Reminder: ANONYMOUS POSTS WILL BE DELETED.

 
At Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at 7:51:00 AM PDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

JD, you and your little Greek chorus of yay-sayers are a textbook example of groupthink.

HDT

 
At Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at 9:08:00 AM PDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"JD, you and your little Greek chorus of yay-sayers are a textbook example of groupthink."

HDT. Is anyone deleting your comments?
No. Unlike the groupthink on TOD we like to have a few monkeys around to keep us straight.

DB

 
At Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at 9:09:00 AM PDT, Anonymous JEUB said...

I agree with JD 110%;

//insert meaningless comment about how doomers suck here

Now we've shown them.

//insert outofcontext/incorrect facts denying climate change like "THE WORLD IS ACTUALLY COOLING!!!1"

//insert fantasy idea about beaming down energy from the moon

//insert cherry picked statistic from biased energy blog showing there is a glut in [resource of the month here]

/world saved

/sarcasm

/post

;)

 
At Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at 11:11:00 AM PDT, Anonymous DoctorJJ said...

//insert outofcontext/incorrect facts denying climate change like "THE WORLD IS ACTUALLY COOLING!!!1"

Well, actually it is cooling.

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/tc02vsIPCC.jpg

But, hey, don't let facts get in the way of your agenda.

DoctorJJ

 
At Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at 11:51:00 AM PDT, Blogger Ari said...

JEUB,

Where has JD posted that the world is cooling?

Also, I don't understand the hard-on that so many of the detractors have for JD blogging about future energy scenarios. Nowhere does he say that it's the ONE solution, but he explores ideas for the sake of exploration. Besides, it was one post in a body of over 400 posts. It's become the random detractor strawman of choice, but it really doesn't say much about the rest of the blog.

Honestly, I don't see a lot of terribly well thought out rebuttals to the broader arguments made here-- there are a few interesting and challenging pessimists (HDT can be fun to debate with, for one), but it's mostly silly potshots like yours.

JEUB and Dr. JJ

While it IS true that temperatures have either not gone up or have come down in the past decade, depending on how you measure temperature, how you interpret that is the more interesting question. I tend to believe that it doesn't invalidate the most important tenets of global warming theory (big t theory, for all you pot shot types), but it does mean we need to take another look at various models.

 
At Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at 12:18:00 PM PDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Also, I don't understand the hard-on that so many of the detractors have for JD blogging about future energy scenarios. "

I do. We're attacking their religion. Wars are started over less.

DB

 
At Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at 1:08:00 PM PDT, Anonymous JEUB said...

jeez ari lighten up it was a joke

 
At Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at 1:11:00 PM PDT, Anonymous JEUB said...

@DoctorJJ:
I long learnt that continuous arguing on the internet was pointless, but my parting shot is:

http://images.google.co.uk/images?q=climate%20change%20graph&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi

You can probably pick and choose any graph you want to prove your point either way. Who said your graph is 'the facts'

 
At Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at 2:01:00 PM PDT, Blogger Ari said...

JEUB,

Can we chalk it up to the fact that it's impossible to know when people are going for lulz on the Internet? It's really hard to parse that you're making a joke from your post, in my opinion (for what that's worth.)

In regard to "the facts," the fact is that there are a number of ways of measuring "temperature." A lot of the graphs your link shows, however, don't appear to be up-to-date, or are simply model runs.

GISS and UHA both show flattish temperature trends for the past decade. I think Hadley does as well, but I may be wrong there.

SLR is interesting to me, since I think it's the most important issue for the developed world, but to the best of my knowledge, SLR has not accelerated much (if at all) in recent times. We'll see what Greenland does, of course... woo...

 
At Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at 6:07:00 PM PDT, Blogger wchfilms said...

Japan stumbled around in a recession/depression for almost 19 years now.

We are taking the same well trodden off-ramp to recession. Plenty of "capital, and r&d and fast internet service in Japan. But did this pull them out of their recession?
...
There is unprecedented debt load for consumers, businesses and government alike. This debt will not soon be liquidated. Thus the recession grinds on.


I semi agree. Yes, the debt load will take a while to burn down to better levels. A friend of mine has a house of 17 years that he refi'ed to buy a car, so now he can barely make the payments, which basically means not much discretionary spending for him at all. However, despite a lot of people doing this, not everyone did this. A lot of people are or nearly debt free, and own their house outright, for example and just keep on like they've been doing.

However, I think the chances of a long semi-depression/stagnation like Japan for the United States at least is pretty remote. It seems like Japan lost its mind at the end of the 80s for a few years, then when it crashed, they ran back into their shell and have been hunkered down ever since.

 
At Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at 7:09:00 PM PDT, Anonymous Soylent said...

"Until the SHTF no one was listening much to Roubini either. As for Krugman, did he make such a bold forecast?"

Hell, Krugman RECOMMENDED a housing bubble.

http://blog.mises.org/archives/010153.asp

Keep in mind that mises.org is a fairly nutty anarcho-capitalist leaning institution; you can just skip to the quotes if you don't lean that way.

It's classic Keynes; he argued that the remedy for the boom-bust cycle is not a higher rate of interest to get rid of the boom(i.e prevent the bubble from forming), which he argued would lead to a permanent quasi-slump, but rather to lower interest rates following the boom, which he argued would lead to lead to a permanent quasi-boom.

Enjoying your quasi-boom yet?

 
At Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at 7:22:00 PM PDT, Anonymous DoctorJJ said...

JEUB,
Who said my graph is the facts? Well, anyone who claims they have the absolute facts when it comes to climate should be viewed very skeptically. However, the graph I linked is based on what is considered by most climate people, to be the authoritative data set, the SPPI composite index, which is the mean of surface data and satellite data. The IPCC projections which are overlaid on the graph and clearly in contrast to what is actually happening, are freely available from the IPCC themselves.

DoctorJJ

 
At Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 12:49:00 AM PDT, Anonymous JEUB said...

DoctorJJ,

"But, hey, don't let facts get in the way of your agenda."

"anyone who claims they have the absolute facts when it comes to climate should be viewed very skeptically."

Exactly

 
At Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 5:35:00 AM PDT, Anonymous DoctorJJ said...

JEUB,
I can confidently say that it's a fact that the globe is currently cooling. I have many data sets to back that up. Actually, most of the AGW'ers will even admit that the globe is currently cooling. They have been trying to dismiss it as natural variation in a long term upward trend, but that is beside the point. Do I, or anyone else, know the current temperature of the globe as an absolute fact? No? We do have various datasets, with all their inherent flaws. Do we know the reason(s) behind the recent temperature variations as absolute facts? No.

There is quite a difference between saying it is a fact that the globe has cooled over the past 6-8 years and saying "I have all the absolute facts regarding climate change". AGW'ers tend to fall into the latter category. They know all the facts, they are absolutely sure of themselves, the science is settled, they or their research should never be questioned. That's what you should be skeptical of. You obviously have an agenda behind your comments. I was simply inserting some data.

DoctorJJ

 
At Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 10:27:00 AM PDT, Anonymous JEUB said...

Does your post mean we should do nothing?No

Does your post give those who wish to do nothing reason to?Yes

(In my opinion)

 
At Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 10:46:00 AM PDT, Anonymous JEUB said...

@DrJJ
PS: haha I don't have an 'agenda', your usual nonsense; same old dog food!

 
At Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 11:58:00 AM PDT, Anonymous DoctorJJ said...

"Does your post mean we should do nothing?No

Does your post give those who wish to do nothing reason to?Yes

(In my opinion)"

I never said we should do nothing. That's the disconnect that warmer's can't understand. This is also the part that I liken to the Peak Oil argument. Should we do nothing? We should do something. Absolutely! Even if climate change is an complete hoax, I don't think anyone would argue that spewing more pollutants into the air is a good thing. Obviously, we should decrease our FF use. But, and this is the main point, we should make those changes in a well thought out, controlled, economically sensible manner. The same goes for peak oil. Should we change and use less oil? Of course. Should we crash our economy and our way of life right now for something that probably won't effect us for years, when we could use those intervening years to sensibly mitigate???
Transitioning away from FF's too soon and too hastily would be very costly and I'm not just speaking monetarily. I certainly don't think we should rush to do that for the sake of climate change, when you consider how fragile those threads of "science" are that back the AGW'ers movement.
Like the inaccuracies and fear mongering if President Obama's speech to the UN. Come on. Give me a physical f'ing break.

Bottom line:
I think we all have the same goal. Use less fossil fuels and make the world a better place. I chose to go about attaining those goals with education and sensible solutions. Peak oilers and AGW'ers try to get there with scare tactics and quasi-religious beliefs. Sadly, most of the peak oilers and AGW'ers have some kind of underhanded financial incentive, like Al Gore.

DoctorJJ

 
At Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 12:24:00 PM PDT, Anonymous JEUB said...

Well said DoctorJJ :)

As for the underhand financial incentive - that seems to be there whether you believe in peak oil or not and same with climate change.

I find I read this site more than the peak oil sites, but my only criticism would be the constant attack on "doooomers" and doom debunked - most people only get motivated to change somthing when faced with doom. JD, for instance, is spurred on by his crusade against doom; hence this blog.

 
At Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 12:47:00 PM PDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"most people only get motivated to change somthing when faced with doom."

In fact, most people freeze like a deer in the head lights when faced with doom. This is illustrated by safety studies boeing conducted in the 70s on how to make jetliners safer and easier to exit from in the event of a crash landing.
What they found is that many of the people sat in their seats and died of smoke inhalation rather than try to escape. It took several years before they realized that most people, when faced with imminent doom, freeze in their tracks.

Sorry no cigar.

DB

 
At Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 12:55:00 PM PDT, Anonymous JEUB said...

@DB: I guess it depends on the person. It's a little different when faced with a decline that is going to take, even at full speed, a couple of years but probably decades compared to being stuck in metal tube with a fire at one end and everyone screaming. I can see the analogy though

I don't smoke

 
At Friday, September 25, 2009 at 9:44:00 AM PDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

You people are just oh-so missing the action, like really. Ruppert was just found guilty of sexual harassment. See press report at:
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/september212009/boli_suit_9-21-09.php

The final decision in the sexual harassment is posted at:
http://www.boli.state.or.us/BOLI/LEGAL/docs/FOpdffiles/From_the_Wilderness.pdf

The index page for this decision can be found at:
http://www.boli.state.or.us/BOLI/LEGAL/H_FO_Boliin.shtml

 
At Friday, September 25, 2009 at 11:32:00 AM PDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yes, another press article worth reading, with a statement from the Oregon Commissioner:
www.dailytidings.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090925/NEWS02/909259996/-1/NEWSMAP

 
At Friday, September 25, 2009 at 12:14:00 PM PDT, Blogger Ari said...

JEUB,

The problem in this case, I think, is that the loudest voices are telling us that peak oil is going to be a "ROCK YOUR FACE OFF" insta-doomsday. The first thing people see when they look into peak oil is LATOC and Mike Ruppert and all the woo-woos who claim that we're all screwed yesterday.

 
At Saturday, September 26, 2009 at 8:53:00 AM PDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Disclaimer for Idiots!

This is a blog for idiots by idiots, original thoughts or differing opinions will be deleted!

Case in point, Jay Wee declares himself ‘weaned from fossil fuels’ while living in a nation that imports 90% of its energy, food, and raw materials - and no, he does not live in a grass hut and survive on hand caught fish and hand raised rice. Jay Wee lives in a carbon fired apartment, travels in carbon fired transport, blogs on a carbon constructed laptop, and consumes carbon fertilized food.

Better yet, Jay Wee thinks the end of fossil fuels will not have a deleterious impact on his life.

And of course racist, misogynist, and bigoted posts are heartily encouraged.

Doh!

Homercleous

 
At Monday, September 28, 2009 at 7:04:00 AM PDT, Blogger Ari said...

Homercleous,

Give an example of, "racist, misogynist, and bigoted posts," please.

 
At Monday, September 28, 2009 at 5:23:00 PM PDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

One of your best posts yet JD. Great work here outing this nutjob !

 
At Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 6:02:00 AM PDT, Anonymous AndrewRyan said...

From Ruppert's blog, 9/25/09:

In the meantime I cannot pay the rent due on Oct. 1 and don't expect to see any money until maybe December or January from either film or book. I am evaluating options now and will send a more complete post soon.

[...]

I'm in good health, helping to write and sing some original songs which you may be able to hear after a professional mastering. They might even turn up on iTunes with some respected musicians, engineers, singers and composers in the mix.

[...]

I'm not trying to raise money for an appeal now. I just want to pay the rent. For those who would like to help me -- and I have no shame in asking -- please send your donations to:

Mike Ruppert
c/o Rubiconworks
10736 Jefferson Blvd. #618
Culver City, CA 90230


LOL, still begging for handouts because he "can't pay his rent". And this is before his ball busting lawsuit that he's now found guilty of. God this guy is a fucking joke, hope you enjoyed any/all of your assets while you had 'em, Mikey!

 
At Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 12:45:00 AM PDT, Anonymous Julio said...

HMMMM

i hope these scathing personal attacks you do are actually credible.

I think personally that seeing him speak he is by far superior to any others investigating 9/11 et al

he doesn't seem like a lunatic

plus some of his prediction are just speculation, his personal opinion not based on his research
of course i could be wrong.

I wonder what rupperts response would be to this blog

 
At Thursday, October 1, 2009 at 7:14:00 AM PDT, Anonymous X Doomer said...

Good grief, that Ruppert is a real sick puppy. Excellent work JD yet again.

 
At Saturday, October 3, 2009 at 9:12:00 AM PDT, Anonymous Ruppert's Shrink said...

09/25

"I'm not trying to raise money for an appeal now. I just want to pay the rent."

9/30 [5 days later]

"For the time being any donations for the legal defense fund can be mailed to:

Mike Ruppert
c/o Rubiconworks
10736 Jefferson Blvd., PMB 618
Culver City, CA 90230

Make checks payable to me because we haven’t set up a fund yet and need to be able to cash them right away.

I can’t say thank you enough times or with enough feeling to get across how I feel about those of you who have rallied one more time to my (our) defense in support of the lives we hope to save.

If there are any lawyers or accountants out there with experience in legal defense funds, I need help."

I think the last three words sum things up for Mr Ruppert.

 
At Tuesday, October 6, 2009 at 5:55:00 AM PDT, Anonymous Linda Lou said...

Since we now have Ruppert's shrink participating in this blog, I would like her/him to tell us how to tell the difference between sexual harassment and a sex offender. Like, if daddy comes to his little girl near naked and tells her unless she does this that or the other she will never get any food again, well ---

 
At Tuesday, October 6, 2009 at 4:42:00 PM PDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Okay, so he's bi-polar or something. I think it is possible to see that his defensive posture is the result of this sensitivity to what is really a difficult time, some of which he extrapolated very well. How you actually behave when the economy is getting worse is not the issue with him. It is that he is onto something. He is telling uncomfortable truths about the feet-of-clay leaders of this country. We are not prepared for shortages of oil (as a country like China becomes powerful), we are a nation of grasshoppers, not ants, we don't remember a major war or major deprivation (the veterans of foreign wars could never convey to the civilians just what a state of war is like), we prize the big spenders and ignore or laugh at the savers, etc. There is peak oil - Ruppert did not invent it - and though he may have reacted to its symptoms in a way which is considered neurotic, that doesn't mean that acting cool and ignoring the shape of things to come is somehow self-protective. Maybe gold isn't at $2000 yet, but believe it or not, today some economists have started talking about it as the world's reserve currency or at least one of them in a "basket". The almighty dollar cannot be forced to be accepted at the point of a gun. Ruppert is weird, but he is also onto this eight year crisis we had beginning in 2001. Is it going to get worse? Ask the forgotten victims of Katrina. They been down so long it look like up to they.

 
At Wednesday, October 7, 2009 at 4:29:00 AM PDT, Anonymous Linda Lou said...

So, "Anonymous" comes in and says that Ruppert's sexual offender behavior is "bipolar or something" with the "something" being "sexual offender or its equivalent." Ruppert's sexual deviancy (sexual harassment does correspond to deviation from the accepted norm) is just his own personal way of responding to this crisis? Just don't buy that excuse.

 
At Saturday, October 10, 2009 at 9:31:00 PM PDT, Blogger lysander said...

I thought I'd die laughing when I read that Ruppert has got to shell out the loong green for his...*ahem*...little problem. Back in the day when I believed his crap I was overwhelmed with the stories that he and the asshats at LATOC were pumping out.Then I wised up. What a pair of money grubbing ego-maniacs- Mike Ruppert and Matt Savinar. You have a great site here, I really appreciate your work and your sense of humour.

 
At Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 4:32:00 PM PST, Blogger Unknown said...

I believe that to say that Ruppert is exclusively a conspiracy theorist is to not only discredit him, but all those people who have been taken advantage of. Specifically, I want to ask a few questions. Namely, peak oil is documented on numerous sources of media, and while you, the writer of the blog have an approach that believes that this phenomena is a few years off, it is nonetheless something the U.S. is going to have to deal with. Additionally, stating that the financial system is out of its recession is invalid mainly because the world is based on a fractional reserve system which by default enables there to be the ability for entire segments of a country to default due to variable interest payments and uncertainty. To claim that the financial system is stable versus the alternative that it is merely propped up by a delusional stimulus package is naive at the basic level. I guess my point is that, to simply dismiss Ruppert as a conspiracy theorist is an easy way to sweep the information under the rug and delay having to deal with it until it gets worse. So why I understand that the things said may be fuel for "doomers", the bottom line is that even if it isn't true today, it still could be true in the future, whenever that may be.

 
At Friday, January 1, 2010 at 1:08:00 PM PST, Blogger EscapeKey said...

This is terrible debunking. You're attacking his character, and not his movie. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

If you want to debunk it, start with going through the information presented with regards to peak oil, and continue down the road to address alternate energy forms etc.

 
At Friday, February 5, 2010 at 2:16:00 PM PST, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I just found out about this in the last week after seeing Collapse and now i'm reviewing info from both sides with an open mind. one question i want to pose here, is what is your opinion/reaction to the graph that Ruppert uses to show the world's population growth?

you can see the chart here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population_curve.svg

now it doesnt take a mathametician to see that asymtote cannot continue forever. its a question whether this growth is caused by oil/industrial revolution, but there is no question that it is strongly correlated with it.

the second thing is you should really stick to debating the facts. anytime i hear people pull out words like 'wingnut', 'nutter', and 'tinfoil hat', i pretty much know i can dismiss you as easily as you dismiss those you label with ad-hominem attacks.

the fact is people are wrongly convicted and imprisoned every day. there was a story a year or two ago about a judge from Pennsylvania who it turned out had sent hundreds of youth to juvenille detention over the years on false charges and that he was taking bribes to do it.

I appreciate the quotes where Mike 'got it wrong', thats helpful, but not about him getting 'convincted' of a 'crime' by a 'court'. thats pretty irrelevant to the issue at hand imo.

 
At Sunday, August 21, 2011 at 8:36:00 PM PDT, Anonymous WayneD said...

Well, we have had the worst economy since the Great Depression. Ruppert may be off in his timing on 2000 gold, but it is now above 1800. Not bad for a prediction. I would consider taking him serious. Oil is in limited supply. This is fact.

 
At Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 9:06:00 PM PDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Michael Ruppert is doing some great work and I enjoyed Collapse. His only mistake was in putting a definitive time frame on his predictions. Remember that his views are also echoed by the likes of Schiff, Faber, Gerald Celente, Alex Jones and many more. This empire may be able to hobble on another few years at best (with war and violence being its #1 export) but its days are clearly numbered. Whatever faults M.C. Ruppert has, he will be remembered by future generations as someone who at least tried to wake up a day-dream nation of morons.

 
At Monday, August 29, 2011 at 6:05:00 AM PDT, Anonymous OOPS said...

Now JD how about you'll predict future to such a degree of detail and then we'll review it couple of years down the road?

Got balls - go ahead and put in in writing - then I'll review them later.
You can't - be a man, just shut up.

Besides, how convenient - an opponent was sex. harrasing a women, another one is a pedophile.
Like NOT RELATED TO THE TOPIC but
very, very convenient.... We'll when people in power want to get over someone - the guess what? He is a pedophile! We won! And here is a witness of him doing this and saying that! We won again!

 
At Friday, March 2, 2012 at 6:33:00 AM PST, Blogger Elmo said...

Heheh... Again, the "Debunker'Debunkers" demand facts and figures. It seems to me that JD gave plenty of facts and figures, from what could only be the most credible source possible: Mike Ruppert's own website.

But, to be fair... We should try to "Debunk Peak Oil"? Why? Peak oil isn't the lie in question... MIKE RUPPERT is! He's nothing but a sad little man, who sits around in his underwear, searching the internet for any little tidbit of information that he can attach his name to, hoping that you and I will mistake him for some kind of Holy Man. The only thing "amazing" about the man is that, even to this day, he still hasn't caved under the weight of his own bullshit, and applied for work at McDonalds. But I guess that only demonstrates how many GULLIBLE IDIOTS there are in the world!

 
At Thursday, April 5, 2012 at 12:01:00 AM PDT, Blogger C. D. Musser said...

That is correct...kinda, but it fails to flesh out a more unabridged Keynesian philosophy regarding cyclical econometric modeling and needs to include the elasticity of demand for fossil fuels as a depleting resource (for which there is very little at this point). MR is certainly not the best 'embassador' for peak oil economics, but the simple fact that the petroleum (and it's broadbrush applications) needle is deeply embedded in virtually all facets of industrialization, is at face value a very deep concern.
CDM

 
At Wednesday, May 9, 2012 at 10:47:00 PM PDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

EVERYONE who knows anything at all completely understands just TWO THINGS that you need to understand:

1. Mike Ruppert was one of four original 9/11 Truth Movement founders, and

2. The 9/11 Truth Movement has been hijacked by certifiable trolls, moles and more (Alex Jones, who got started in the same town, in the same year, as the known Israeli intel gathering company, Stratfor, recently canceled a speaking tour once that fact went public-- Jones' website and the Stratfor website have the same mission statement, verbatim. You can easily check this for yourselves).

Oh, and here's one further point, about sites like this, so that makes it 3 items you really need to understand:

3. Stuff you read on sites like this is one of two things: Oil company disinfo, or what else? U.S./Israeli 9/11 Perps Cabal intel disinfo? We're not stupid out here.

Mostly though, all we're hearing from you is more distracting and time-wasting noise, noise, noise.

DJ

 
At Thursday, November 8, 2012 at 4:24:00 AM PST, Blogger chris ml said...

You are misinformed and seem to be conducting a personal vendetta.
You do not show your face either.

from the cambridge university science dept

 

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