How geopolitics of energy, the USD and turmoil in Western Democracies can affect your business

Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine was the latest in a series of crises that have engulfed the world and affected businesses, countries and societies. Then there was covid, the US-China tensions, the rise of Trump and other strongmen political leaders, the current banking crisis. Are we truly in an age of permacrisis?

Helen Thompson helps us make sense of what's going on. She looks at how slow-moving forces in the energy and currency markets have created tensions within, and between major countries. We are just seeing the first signs of these cracks.

Helen's book Disorder : Hard Times in the 21st Century was on the Financial Times Shortlist for Best Business Book and anyone in business should join us to learn from Helen how geopolitics can affect business and society.

00:00 Introduction
01:01 Energy's outsized role in geopolitics
11:06 The USD as geopolitical strength
20:17 Could hydrogen tip the balance in energy geopolitics
23:30 Decoupling will be difficult
28:14 Prospects for the USD
32:26 Is sovereignty an illusion for other countries?
36:07 The loss of loser consent threatens Western democracies
39:31 Future geopolitics will be difficult and unstable

[conradchua]

thanks @nvictor for the questions and comments. I am now learning more about Guyana and the oil discoveries there. Hope you can join us for future episodes of the Balance sheet series.

[sunroad]

The reported increase in the US shale oil production since 2010 might be a result of poor auditing of what’s actually imported into the US of conventional oil vs what’s really produced nationally of all oils.
From 2003, war/sanctions-torn Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Sudan, Iran have become more and more failed states and nobody knows what oil shipments from those nations have ended up – entirely looted – unaudited – since.
There is a rhythm in what we see happening in the Middle East regularly - 1948 (Arab-Israeli War), 1956 (Suez War), 1967 (Arab-Israeli War), 1973 (Arab-Israeli War), 1980 (Iraq-Iran War), 1991 (Gulf War), 2003 (US/UK occupation of Iraq), 2011 (Arab Spring), 2023 (Gaza War).
The Ten-Year interval appears the period where finite oil reserves deplete more and more to the ground, and the West comes and intervenes - forcefully.
Forcefully pushing the population by the agency of War into energy-deprived reality periodically, such as tent-camps-for-the-masses - has become a must since 1948 to spare some fuels - in Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Sudan - and counting.
When energy looted - it turns - curse.
A curse that destroys in humans consciousness, reasoning and the future.
Karl Marx, Nikola Tesla, Einstein, Balfour, Huxley, Orwell, Turing and 20th Century Physicists/Economists - should be forgiven for thinking their systems can last forever.
Finite fossil fuels are dangerously hypnotic to humans, their consciousness, reasoning and mental capacity.
Humans were not ready morally, ethically and intellectually to start the mass extraction of fossil fuels with the advent of the steam engine 300 years ago.
The Magna Carta requires today overhauling – adding to it the right for humans to understand what Energy really is - before any other commandment;
“In any system of energy, Control is what consumes energy the most.
No energy store holds enough energy to extract an amount of energy equal to the total energy it stores.
No system of energy can deliver sum useful energy in excess of the total energy put into constructing it.
This universal truth applies to all systems.
Energy, like time, flows from past to future” (2017).