Implications of OPEC trading in Euros

What could we really do about it under present circumstances? We're in the same position as the British when the Sterling Standard died.

 

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Kmguru, I heard that point of view; however, even with that factor in mind, sales are down this fall by a greater percent than expected. Everyone is predicting recession will start in mid- or end of 2008.

Edit: all we can hope for is a decline in use of oil in as near future as possible, or a fancy bombing of Iran, or a complete boycott of Iran.

 

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You are confused about "neural nets." (I prefer to call them "connection computers", but lost that battle years ago.) It is true, as you imply, that they are very good at rapidly processing (parallel processing) a very large number of variables, but they are totally useless in the application you are suggesting as there exists no "training set." Connection computers are not programmed, but learn from many examples of the typical problems and are given during this training period the "correct answer." Then after "trained" on this training set, they are capable of giving the "correct answer" to a new, never before seen, set of the imput variables.

It is difficult to imagine a problem that connection computers are LESS capable of solving than determing when peak oil (or hypewader's "high noon") or ANY ONE TIME EVENT. Not only is there no training set, but in this case, even the one event's "correct answer" not known.

 

I do not think Un. of Utah has very much standing in the controlled fusion problem. If memory serves me correctly their main contribution is the very discredited "cold fusion" idea. Did you advise them on this?

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I worked on the controlled fusion problem for more than 15 years back in the early days. The US navy started (funded) our small group at the Applied Physics Lab of JHU as the navy intitally expected to place an order for the first fusion powered aircraft carrier at about the end those 15 years. Everyone intitially thought that by 2000, producing electric power by coal would be nearly phased out. We had a lot to learn about instabilities in magnetically confined plasmas. Personnaly, I have come to the conclusion that fusion power will not be economically competive for at least 300 years.

I have no idea what your are talking about in "attack your avatar." Certainly that would be stupid. I do not even "attack people" as a general rule, but if they exhibit great lack of understanding in their posts that may mislead others(as in your comments about using neural networks* to investigate peak oil, "high noon," which are clearly one time events with no training set available - see my prior post for more details) then yes I attack the ideas that are stupid.

In one of your earlier posts you claimed: "to be advising the Chinese, had the solution to the controlled fusion problem ..." but you seemed to have deleted this obvious nonsense now as It no longer appears in this thread (except as quoted in your post 58). If you have a solution to the controled fusion problem, it is extreme selfness to not tell the world of it. - Millions of dollars are currently being waisted in the international effort to discover what you claim to already have. Is it little wonder that I think you are mainly "blowing smoke" and exhibiting your ignorance about several things, including most recently: neural networks*?
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* Clearly you have never made even a simple Hebbian neural network and do not have the slighest idea as to how they work or are used. I have made many different connection machines (all but one were of course simulated in a programmed or Von Neuman type computer.)

 

Their "asses" are not entirely exposed. They have been buying Euros - part of why the Euro is at all time high against the dollar. (Probably have buying gold also as it has had quite a run up recently.)

Saudi Arabia did not following the recent US rate reductions - first time that has ever happened - and that alone led to speculation that they might be planning to cut the link of their currency to the dollar. (I posted this development somewhere at the time.) Now it is becoming much more clear that this will very likely happen. I honestly do not know what this will cause. Read:

"...The dollar earlier fell after the Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar*, said yesterday members will discuss a proposal next month to change their fixed exchange rates to the dollar. The case for a revaluation will be presented to heads of state in a summit in Doha, Qatar, on Dec. 3-4, Secretary General Abdul Rahman al- Attiyah told reporters yesterday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. ..."

19 Nov from:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aSgc7qfzK.tI&refer=home

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*Six mid-east oil exporting nations will discuss the cutting of their dollar links at this meeting as the first paragraph of the above link notes. Perhaps they are thinking "there is strength in numbers." - I.e. the US can not invade them all as it has in the past when one (Iraq) started selling oil for Euros.

 

Billy T: "I.e. the US can not invade them all as it has in the past when one (Iraq) started selling oil for Euros."

We can't effectively invade even one, because such naked imperialism has no traction anymore. Iraq may have been the last self-defeating gambit of American empire, precipitating a Mideast re-alignment away from the dangerous stigma of partnership with the USA.

 

Good observation. Hell the US ability to control world events has fallen so low under GWB that US cannot even control the Pakistani dictator the CIA set up (over throwing the elected government in the name of democracy of course) now!

 

You know so little about neural networks that you fail to even understand when I explained why neural networks are totally incapabable of dealing with ANY ONE TIME EVENT which is unique. (I.e. when there is no "training set" such as year of "peak oil" prediction or "high noon" as someone called it.)

Also you do not seem to know that neural networks can be better than humans in dealing with "psychological aspects." For example, one neural net was trained on many years of bank loan history, but not all of it. The characteristics of the potential borrower, including psychological questions such as: Do you think lying is always wrong?", etc. as well as the years at current job, salary, etc. were the inputs to the net. The frequency of delenquency and probability of default was what the neural net was to predict (and of course given in the training set sub cases). The part of the bank's history NOT used in the training was then the input to the neural net after it was trained up to high level of performance on the training set part of the actually history. Each of these loan decision is a "one time event" but there are thousands of quite similar ones - totally different for the prediction of peak oil's "high noon" - that is a unique event no neural net can be used to predict. If you still can not understand this difference, - I give up.

Surprize: the neural net was slightly more accurate in predicting the observed (historical) performance of the borrowers than the bank's human officers who had granted the loans had been. Despite this result, I think the bank continued to rely mainly on the humans to grant future loans. The neural net had the advantage that the looks, skin color, or hidden relationships of the borrower (a cousin or pretty single blond lady) had no influence up on its decision. (Race was not one of the inputs to the neural network, - that would have been illegal, but was a clear factor in the decisions as many studies* have shown when a human is making a loan application from another human seated on the other side of a table.)
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*These studies usually use black and white character actors who give exactly the same answers (usually in different randomly selected branchs of the same bank on the same day). They also exhibit the same "character" of the person they are pretending to be, (for example, a rough truck driver trying to finance the purchase of a new truck etc.) and the blacks are much less likely to get the loan.

 

That is interesting. What was the training set?

 

There goes OPEC's 2nd-largest producer.

It's happening- Iran has converted to Euros. Y'all ready for this, America?

 

Nothing on this has appeared at Bloomberg. Perhaps it is not true? But if it is, I bet in less than two weeks, Venezuela does the same.* I think US gets about 1/3 of it oil from Venezuela, but that is from memory and may be wrong or perhaps only refer to the imported oil the US uses.

I will be embarasing, to say the least, if GWB has to buy Euros to pay for the oil imports the US needs. The NIE report, stating Iran killed its primative nuclear weapon program in 2003, could not have come at a worse time for GWB and the neocons itching to start a new war in Iran.
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*Oil is "fungeable." Thus, even if currently US imports none from Iran (I suspect that is the case) the economic impact is almost the same as if it did.

 

"Nothing on this has appeared at Bloomberg."

Heads in the sand. Edit: (not really)

"The NIE report, stating Iran killed its primative nuclear weapon program in 2003, could not have come at a worse time for GWB and the neocons itching to start a new war in Iran."

Heads up: The NIC, cognizant of the dangers unfolding, have stood up to moderate a notoriously reckless White House.

 

Thanks for the correction and link, which was there yesterday and I did not have my computer when it appeared. I only looked for it on 7/12/07, after your post.

 

Gentlemen and Ladies, it's time we continued this conversation. For future reference, oil is now $120/bbl. Earlier in this thread, I was Chicken Little for insinuating that was only the beginning at less than half of that. How about it?

I ran.
I raq
Go back
U crack

Heads up
Something's falling-
Could it be an empire?

 

In Other Words,

I-FITE (Implications of Former Iraq Trading in Euros)

Eurofight with me, yuri sonovabitch.

:huh:

Just read William Clark, if you never got around to it- the factors remain, but are aggravated.