| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"hannicullen" |
| Date: |
14 Apr 2006 05:58:45 PM |
| Object: |
Sticking It To Us at the Gas Pump Because of Bush and Iran |
The price of oil is destroying the economy for the working folks of
America. They have us good now. It would take a social, political,
international upheaval to get the price of a gallon of gas to go below
$2 again. They've been floating the prospect of $4 a gallon. They say
prices may hit 80 or 90 dollars a barrel.
The U.S. supply is up. On Wednesday, the U.S. Energy Information
Administration reported that commercial inventories in U.S. of stored
crude rose by 3.2 million barrels to 346 million, the highest level in
nearly eight years, since 1998.
Compare the $70 something we're being charged now for a barrel to the
$15 a barrel in '98, and we're left with nothing but the Bush wars to
blame for the price of gas today.
Can anyone really show that demand has increased at such a rate to
justify the price increase from 2005 when oil was about $28 a barrel?
Do we really believe that the price of gasoline jumped so high from
glut levels of 2005 due to 'demand'? Even with all of the profit
taking?
I don't. That's the 'demand' lie, in my opinion. I understand refinery
pressures, and I understand the problems with production in Nigeria and
elsewhere that would affect the supply.
What I don't understand is $70 a barrel. All of the factors like demand
should have been sustained by $50 a barrel oil. How did it get to $70?
Doesn't profit-taking play a large role here? Isn't the market using
'unrest' as an excuse?
How could the oligarchy not be enthralled with knowing that their
profits can be enhanced by stirring up trouble with Iran? It would be
silly to think they didn't plan this all along. Virtually nothing gets
done in America that doesn't enhance their wealth. If war wasn't good
for their profits they wouldn't go there.
In 1998 we had a worldwide oil glut. OPEC didn't seem to want to do a
thing about it. Prices fell to amazingly low levels, rising a bit in
2005. Then OPEC scrambled to slow production to keep the price from
falling again. There was the view that if OPEC produced all they could
the glut would continue and worsen, driving prices down further. OPEC
was quoted at the time saying that, even if they wanted to produce more
oil, they would have trouble finding buyers.
In the markets that was a bad thing. To the consumer, it rocked. Now we
have demand in the U.S. increased by about 2% from the 2005 level,
according to the International Energy Agency. Would a 2% increase in
demand support a $40+ rise in a barrel of oil?
I don't believe that oil is running out so fast that we can see the
tail of the dragon, even though it is obviously a finite supply. What I
do believe is that oil producers have figured out how to manipulate
production levels to make it appear that they can't keep up with
demand. I don't think that we can blame the gas price on 'Peak Oil" at
this point.
What happened between the period of relatively low prices and now? 9-11
and Bush's militarism happened. 9-11 and Bush's mismanagement of the
economy pushed us into a recession. Gas prices started to rise. There
was almost no effort made to halt the rise except for some token moves
by OPEC around election time in the U.S. to increase production.
Now we have the news that the U.S. crude supply is high, with refined
supplies too low for it to make much of a difference today. But, there
will be an after-winter drop in demand and refinery issues should be
resolved in the next quarter. So, there will be a downward trend in
prices.
There will be an effort to keep those prices high. Not for the
environment. Not for the sake of some sanity on the part of oil
executives who have seen the light about our wasteful ways. The price
is kept high to feed the record profits that they have enjoyed
throughout our struggle with expensive gas.
I agree that we waste too much oil. But, there millions of Americans
whose gasoline bills are stretched by normal, necessary driving. The
effect of high oil includes other uses like heating, and also hits the
industries who rely on a low gas bill to survive. There's a point where
technology hasn't caught up with the ideology of conservation and
alternatives to oil that makes all of the finger-wagging about
consumption seem misguided. We still need oil and gas to survive.
We could likely sustain high prices for a determinate time if the goal
was truly a shift to alternatives. But, until there is some true path
to all of that, a high price of gas will only shrink demand as far as
folks actual needs allow. There's little point in forcing responsible
users to pay for some punitive, corrective notion of conservation when
the overall industry takes the profits off of the top. They're not
going to make any substantive investments that would undermine their
own oligarchy of greed.
I remember the cockiness from the conservatives before the war as they
gloated over the prospect of the U.S. taking over Iraqi oil. I know
they're not all wealthy. These prices have to be putting the squeeze on
so many Bushites, in so many ways.
Bush didn't say it outright, but he wanted to get his hands on Iraq's
oil. I won't say that he quite knew what HE was going to do with it,
but Cheney did. Right from the start he brought in the oil executives
and they literally mapped out their plunder of Iraq's oil fields.
But, it's been a disaster for oil prices. And the silence that went on
for so long was from the same bunch of Americans who voted for this
regime, and expected that all of the macho talk about rolling over the
evil Iraq was real.
Their fantasy came true. Liberals were pushed aside, moderates got to
practice their conservatism in the open, and Bush Fonzerelli sent his
boys (and girls) to rumble. Their target crumbled right away. Saddam
retreated to a hidey-hole. That's the history. So are those amazing
photos of him submitting himself to the de-lousing like a lost child.
Iraqis, though, would not willingly submit themselves to our invasion,
and we were never welcomed to stay.
How stupid are the average Bushites? Stupid enough to believe that
multi-national corporations, oilgarchies, Exxon, Mobil, Shell, BP . . .
would actually take what they gained by the sacrifice of our soldier's
lives and the lives of those they were tasked to kill, and use it to
lower our gas bills.
Are they really that stupid? Yup. Are they wising up? I would hope so.
Mission Iran. Oil prices going back up through the roof. Neonuts blame
the rise on 'Middle East' unrest, tension, violence, uncertainty. Those
Bushites, though, have got to be looking at the next round of military
action and saying to themselves, this can't be good for my wallet.
I saw a lot of expressions of nationalism from Americans for years
after 9-11. There's still a hardcore percentage of them who have
convinced themselves that Iran is coming to kill their God, and I know
it won't take anything for them to get behind another crusade against
evil. But they've got to wonder just how this president let things
slide so far that we're talking nuclear war again.
It's not like we've been toiling within the isolation of a cold war for
decades like before. Anyone with a memory can recall the salad days of
the Clinton era of peace and prosperity. Sure, the Clinton bunch wagged
around our nation's defenses like typical imperialists when it suited
them, but their most prominent doctrine was one of reserve and
diplomacy. It was no accident that a great deal of the world seemed to
be working together then.
President Clinton spoke to the British Houses of Parliament, London,
U.K., November 29, 1995:
"For the first time in half a century now, we can put our children to
bed at night knowing that the nuclear weapons of the former Soviet
Union are no longer pointed at (our) children."
Americans knew and felt the difference. The attacks on 9-11 scared some
Americans into going along with chasing 'terrorists' to Afghanistan,
knocking a dictator out of power while we were at it . . . and there's
where they were left hanging. Bush has done nothing to bring our nation
back to the security of the Clinton era which preceded his ascendance
to office. He's hell-bent on muscling around, itching for a fight while
most Americans who backed him up are waiting for the payoff.
No bin-Laden. The Iran thing is completely removed from that.
No 'democracy' in Iraq. How the hell are we going to rustle the
Iranians into seeing things our way?
A billion dollars a week spent for the occupations in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Bombings all over Iraq, soldiers still dying almost daily,
and they say that all of this war-making hasn't intimidated anyone who
would do our nation and our citizens harm. We've inflamed violence with
our military meddling and muckraking. This can only get worse.
I'll bet there are more than a few bushites who wish their glorious
leader would just shut up and stand down from all of the
world-crusading he's doing with our soldiers and our money. I'm hoping
that, at long last, this sneering frat-boy is wearing thin on folks who
didn't think Bush could do any wrong, and cheered him on as innocents
overseas found themselves at the destructive point of his politics.
I'm hoping they've finished playing cowboy. I hope they realize they've
paid everything they have for their war games with their hard-earned
contributions to the government going right into the oligarchy's
pockets, and because they've come to realize that Bush sucks at every
single thing he does.
.
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| User: "ray" |
|
| Title: Re: Sticking It To Us at the Gas Pump Because of Bush and Iran |
15 Apr 2006 08:10:59 AM |
|
|
In article <1145055525.035185.320260@z34g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
"hannicullen" <hannicullen@gmail.com> wrote:
The price of oil is destroying the economy for the working folks of
America. They have us good now. It would take a social, political,
international upheaval to get the price of a gallon of gas to go below
$2 again. They've been floating the prospect of $4 a gallon. They say
prices may hit 80 or 90 dollars a barrel.
The U.S. supply is up. On Wednesday, the U.S. Energy Information
Administration reported that commercial inventories in U.S. of stored
crude rose by 3.2 million barrels to 346 million, the highest level in
nearly eight years, since 1998.
Compare the $70 something we're being charged now for a barrel to the
$15 a barrel in '98, and we're left with nothing but the Bush wars to
blame for the price of gas today.
Can anyone really show that demand has increased at such a rate to
justify the price increase from 2005 when oil was about $28 a barrel?
Do we really believe that the price of gasoline jumped so high from
glut levels of 2005 due to 'demand'? Even with all of the profit
taking?
I don't. That's the 'demand' lie, in my opinion. I understand refinery
pressures, and I understand the problems with production in Nigeria and
elsewhere that would affect the supply.
What I don't understand is $70 a barrel. All of the factors like demand
should have been sustained by $50 a barrel oil. How did it get to $70?
Doesn't profit-taking play a large role here? Isn't the market using
'unrest' as an excuse?
Let me explain to you how this works. These oil companies are in the
business to produce and sell oil. They really don't set the price--the
market does. What they do is produce (or purchase from OPEC) oil and
sell that oil in the Commodities Market. There, average everyday people
purchase this oil through Contracts.
So for instance, let's say you wanted to invest in the market and
decided to place your money in Crude Oil. You can purchase a
contract(s) for oil to go up in price (long Contract) or to go down in
price (short Contract). No matter which way you think the price of oil
will go, as long as it goes your way, you make $1,000 profit for every
dollar oil goes up or down.
If you are a smart investor, you will probably try to gather all the
information possible before choosing which contract you want to
purchase. And when you do, you hear of SUV's still going strong, China
(which has about 1.3 billion people) is consuming resources in record
numbers, the insurgents are blowing up oil wells in Iraq etc,etc. This
is what happened just before the first major increase in Gasoline just a
few years ago.
When tens of thousands investors purchase long contracts, the price of
oil goes up far beyond what it's worth; this is called a overbought
market. It is overbought due to the hysteria of oil investors.
In comparison, let's say you bought and sold baseball cards. And on the
average, you purchase these cards for $10.00 and try to sell them at a
profit. But setting a price and selling baseball cards is cumbersome
since you deal with thousands of cards every month. So what you do is
place your baseball cards in bulk on E-Bay and allow the bidders of
these cards to set the price and purchase these cards. Some months, you
can only get $11.00 per card while during other months, you sell these
cards for $15.00.
One day you go to your computer and the bidders are offering you $18.00,
$23.00 $30.00 per card because of some news that these cards are (for
whatever reason) becoming rare. This is somewhat of what happened with
oil companies just recently.
Much like your baseball cards, oil companies simply provide the product
and allow others to set the price. They put the product out on the
market and the highest bidders purchase the oil. It sounds crazy (and
actually is) but I read a story several months ago when Exxon Mobile
purchased oil for $35.00 per barrel and sold it in the market for
$70.00. When it came time to make gasoline, they had to purchase oil
from the market at $70.00 per barrel because that was the going price of
oil at the time. I hope this explanation helps you understand what's
going on here.
--
--Conservatives deal with facts, liberals deal with emotion--
.
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