Here is my response to a guy saying that Speculators and futures trading was NOT the cause of high oil prices and that it was President Obama's fault we have high gas prices. It’s pretty sarcastic but I really hate lame spoon fed Republican nonsense talking points.
Your Shawn Hannity talking points aside I’d say that your argument is exactly what I’m talking about. Oil isn’t an economics 101 problem and can’t be solved with those basic principles. Geology 101 would show you things I suspect you already know but are being either coy or completely naive about. Any Earth Science grade school teacher will tell you that US production peaked before we were receiving free AOL discs in the mail and anything North America has in reserves are locked up in oil sands, shales and intermixed with methane pockets (Which are none-too-good for the grunts working on the platforms). It’s silly to make arguments on some fantasy notion that if given the okay from Obama, we could just walk outside and shoot at a rabbit with our squirrel rifle, and pure crude would come bubbling up. (que the confetti party!)
Secondly, in Economics 101 they had to mention “Incentive” didn’t they? Tell me why multinational corporations whom are posting double digit profits quarter over quarter needs to just pump extra gas into the world out of the goodness of their hearts? Get real man. Even the ones that found Jesus, like so many claim to have, aren’t that charitable. And even if we poked another 1000 holes in our continent tomorrow, that fuel wouldn’t reach the consumer market for years, we simple couldn’t handle refining it all fast enough. It takes a lot more time, money, and tonnage of garbage to get the oil from the ground into your SUV. Even releasing our nation’s strategic reserves is arguable at best for effecting prices in time for the family trip to Florida or whatever our collective plans are for this summer.
This isn’t a political issue, it’s a business problem. (which is why I commented in the first place, I hate misplaced blame born of ignorance or sheepish following of blatant propaganda). Look man, my team is guilty of blaming the Boss in Chief too, but you have to admit, it was a little easier to swallow considering Bush was an oil man, was funded largely by other oil men, and who’s right hand man worked for Halliburton. If we could stop acting like the President has his thumb on some magical fountain of ‘Freedom Juice’ and is blocking us all from our God given right to drive our Hummers to the NASCAR Smash-um-ups we so love, we could employ Real Science to solve our problems. It worked for Polio.
My point on the trading of futures was simply this: Aside from Fox News, every other rational human can understand the principle of GREED. Your bible even spoke of it a few times I think. I saw it in that movie Se7en. When you give the keys to the kids for the weekend, they always do the same thing. Joyride… get drunk and crash. Unregulated free market capitalism creates gross imbalance, gross imbalance is the root of our oil problems. You want to see it? Come to Chicago. A guy driving his Lotus can hardly get her up from 0 to 60 in .38 seconds like the commercial says when he’s having to swerve around all the homeless people and pot holes. This sillyness about tying the hands of our jobmakers is a snowjob. When the ultra rich get breaks they don’t build factories and hire Joe Sixpack, they farm the work out to China, and buy golden toilets for all 27 of their bathrooms.
I’m not saying I have all the answers here, don’t take my sarcasm for pomp. We’re all fuked, we colonized to big a backyard I guess. We hate public transportation (I sure do, I take it every day and it smells like cabbage on there), our cars are part of our culture, like Apple Pie and steroid infused baseball players. But the fundamental teachings of rational science (not nonsense Fox News bullshit, I mean real science) is that change happens. Remember when the sun use to revolve around the Earth? Paradigms shift, and we can either be on the front of that crest, or flailing in the shitsludge wake. More oil to a nation sick with withdraw is the same as more heroin to an addict who sold his last wristwatch… It only sounds like the answer in your head.
The power is in the hands of businessmen who don’t give a fuk what you pay at the pump. They sleep soundly at night knowing that you will pay it either way. And they love the subversion of blaming the black guy for it all.
(As for OPEC, I don’t have much to say about them, suffice to say they know they have us by the balls and NOTHING we do is keeping them up at night worrying. They’ll sell to China or some other budding 3rd world start up. They are the masters of their domain and until such time we are desperate enough to take if from them by force, they’ll sit by and watch us choke. Let’s just hope we don’t sell our entire bomber fleet to them before its go time).
(Note: despite my incessant sarcasm, I’m not attacking you personally like I feel you were doing to me with the “high school econ 101” comments, I don’t even know you, but I do love a rational conversation so no harm done, you’ll never change my mind and I won’t yours… so be it).
