Bill McKee wrote:
China is an oil importer! They require oil to supply the factories that
produce all that made in China stuff. Is why they bid an extremely high
price for Unocal Oil. 1% if Unocal's oil reserves are US based, the other
99% are in Asia. Now tell me why oil is increasing because of Bush and not
the old supply and demand curve? We and China have fairly strong economies.
And add India to the mix.
wrote in message
oups.com...
*JimH* wrote:
wrote in message
egroups.com...
That's:
Bad for Bush
Bad for the US
Bad for boating. :-(
I agree.
And what exactly did Bush have to do with this?
Here you go Jim:
Don't Blame OPEC; Higher Gas Prices Are Almost Entirely Bush's Fault
Dave Lindorff, ILCA Associate Member
What is making oil so expensive is not energy policy or even SUV's,
dangerous as those are for the environment. It's Bush's massive
deficits and his willful destruction of the US dollar that has gas
selling at $2.30 a gallon and rising.
There's been a lot of hand-wringing going on among economists and
politicians, and a lot of fuming at the gas pump by consumers over the
soaring price of oil over the last two years.
Increasingly, concern is being expressed by treasury officials and
economists about the negative impact soaring oil prices and related gas
prices could have on the overall economy. Politicians--especially
Republicans--are also fretting, since the thousands of extra dollars
consumers are now spending on electricity, home heating and gasoline
have, for all but the wealthiest taxpayers, more than cancelled out any
minimal benefits they saw from the president's tax cuts.
What's wrong with this picture?
The focus of all this anger and angst is oil prices. As a result,
everyone is looking at culprits in the wrong place, blaming wasteful
energy use, OPEC production quotas, monopolistic oil companies and/or
conniving oil traders.
In fact the real culprit behind these higher oil prices is the Bush
Administration, which, thanks to its massive deficits and tax
give-aways to the rich and corporations, to its war spending, and to
its failure to combat unprecedented and ever-larger trade deficits, has
been causing the dollar to plunge in value.
Oil is a commodity and it is priced in dollars. If dollars decline in
value, then the price of oil will rise in inverse proportion.
One need only look at Europe to see what this means.
Over the period from February 1, 2003, just before the start of the
Iraq War, when oil prices began to rise in earnest, to Feb. 1, 2005,
the price of a barrel of oil in dollars rose about 30 percent, from
$30.13 a barrel to $42.91 a barrel. But over that same period of time,
the Euro, Europe's new combined currency, rose 21 percent against the
U.S. dollar, from .93 Euros to the dollar in February, 2003 to just .77
to the U.S. dollar in February, 2005.
For Europeans, then, the net rise in oil prices over the two years of
the Iraq War has been just 9 percent, or less than 5 percent per
year--hardly the kind of energy inflation that would cause economic
problems.
And this situation is likely to get only worse. Some Wall Street oil
industry analysts are now predicting that oil could, before too long,
hit $100 a barrel. What they are saying really is that the dollar is
likely to fall in value by 50 percent.
Should that happen, though, the OPEC states would likely at some point
along the way decide that it is ridiculous for them to continue pricing
oil in dollars, since the piles of dollars filling their bank vaults
will be losing value faster than their oil wells are being drained.
At some point, the oil producing states, including Russia and Norway,
will inevitably switch to pricing their oil in a basket of
currencies--a basket that would prominently feature the Euro and
probably the Japanese Yen.
At that point there would be little left to prop up the dollar, and it
could end up becoming little better than a Third World currency.
And that is Bush's fault?
The policy of spreading the wealth around means Americans must
accept a lower standard of living, a sustainable one, so others can
come closer to a level that would seem equitable. No one would dare
to suggest that some country's leaders can see the worldwide
inequities and concocted a strategy to equalise them, bringing
security and peace by forcing us to accept equality in lifestyle for
the masses, if not the few super rich.
It has only been a hundred years since most people lived on farms
with no running water, don't forget. The present situation is a
runaway future shock bubble of stupendous growth in every area,
amazing improvements for a small percentage of the totality on
earth, stupor and stagnation for many.
The rich will give to the poor, but perhaps not willingly. The rich
will be taxed and the poor will be subsidised. Manipulating the
price of oil might just be one link in a chain. I have believed for
years that the oil patch guys want the price higher, but could not
decide what their reason might really be. They don't care about the
money, they are not merely a little bit rich, don't forget. It
comes down to a man's legacy. What use is it to be the richest dead
guy in the cemetary?
If only it really goes that way, instead of some rich *******s
getting richer by screwing the poorest and weakest and most
defensless again.
I thought many years ago that we rich (in relative worldwide terms)
would learn to accept a little less if the poor might have a little
less stolen from them to subsidize us.
Is the only way to coerce altruism from the selfish rich majority in
a relatively rich country a de facto clandestine conspiracy to
fleece we who do not consider ourselves rich, so as to pull us down
and the poor up a little?
How would you try to accomplish this, if you had the levers of power?
---part two------
So now oil is headed for 100/bbl? Will oil sands investment finally
get to where it should be? The sands contain 1/3 of the world's oil
reserves, and there is plenty, but has been uneconomical, they said,
until it gets to er, excuse me, but this is the truth...35/bbl. Will
then one or two surprise new oil refineries cause the prices to
crash and all that investment dissapear? Where does money like that
disappear to? Impatience?
Is that price a spot price for the best crude on a specific witchey
date governed by puts and options and hedges and quarterly balance
sheets?
What does it really cost to pull a bbl of oil up the hole? 2 bucks?
One? Does it depend on how many guards you must pay to stand near
the pipeline?
Think, dammit!
Terry K
Publish!
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