From FOXNews:
House Democrats responded to President’s Bush’s call for Congress to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling. This was at an on-camera press conference fed back live.
Among other things, the Democrats called for the government to own refineries so it could better control the flow of the oil supply.
Not only that, but then — according to an Obama supporter who represents the non-profit group Oil Change International — the government can set prices! After all, what’s the use of going Communist if you aren’t willing to take it all the way to the hoop, right?
Granted, Maurice Hinchey, who joins Maxine Waters in the call to nationalize the oil industry, is, like Waters, something of a crank — but make no mistake: this being an election year, the very fact that two leftwing Dems in the House are even daring to voice such an idea is enough to make me shiver, and enough, certainly, to get Hugo Chavez’ little tyrant stick all hard.
The question then, is this: have the American people, either through progressive bromides or an educational system that has been battling to turn government into a secular godhead, become so dumbed down that they will fail to recognize explicit calls for communism when they see them? I honestly don’t know. But I will say that the fact that they’ve managed to pit Obama against McCain — two nannystatists with progressive tendencies — in the presidential election, makes me fear the worst.
(Link: sevenload.com; h/t STACLU)
Now, now … words are important. Maxine Waters wanted to socialize the oil industry.
heh.
Enemy.
Not opposition.
Words mean things.
They are getting pretty excited, aren’t they?
Are the Democrats experiencing “premature ejaculation”?
With the dollar so low – thank you GWB – the Arabs and Commies are already snapping up ports, pipelines, railroads, tall buildings and everything else, so what they hell, let the Commies, ours or theirs, have our refineries and let’s all wail in unison that it’s O!‘s fault.
Somebody clasp my hand; I’m feeling a group O! shout down welling up inside me.
These gawdammed oil companies are just trying to raise their stock price for their shareholders? That’s her drive off the first tee? O.B. – hitting 3.
Hey Neil, ask her if everyone was paying $1.50 a gallon, the oil companies tripled their profits and all those shareholders were rolling in retirement security, would she care? Moron.
Um, thor,
The refineries aren’t yours (nor the looney conspiracy theory monger Hinchey’s, nor the worst-wig-in-government-wearing scunt Waters’) to give away. Did that one elude you? Did your mom really, really, put a lot of emphasis on “sharing” when you were growing up? Have you slapped your high school history teacher yet?
Q: How can things get any worse?
A: Let the government run it!
Let’s Nationalize Goreland!
Right wing politics is destined to lose. The day a politician figured out that you can take money away from 49% of the population to buy the votes of 51% of the population was the deathknell of their relevance.
ProgHero – and thus goes our country.
ProgHero
Nice paraphrase of de Touqueville.
So now the market system itself is right wing?
Bitchin’. Porsches for EVERYONE, my progressive brothers!
Especially when the person distributing the monies of the 49% knows so much more then them about how to spend it properly for the good of everyone. Human greed is a disease that only government can cure.
thor:
I think Greenspan has more to do with the cheap dollar than Bush.
I am speechless. I…wow.
I bet more than a few people in the energy service business are shivering in fear. Like ball shriveling, shit-yer-pants fear.
I am against nationalization. Unless I am appointed national director of said nationalized industry – then I would totally support it.
I’m fine with the government having its own refineries for the military and strategic reserves, but no more. It makes sense to have a protected, strategic way of controlling oil supply for critical areas of government but not to have all oil controlled by the central government.
I dunno. Most of the people I know don’t trust the government to do the things it is supposed to, much less the confiscation of major industries. A friend of mine told me they would be as good at running refineries as they are at running Amtrak.
Fuck you progs. “Give me Death or Give LIBERTY”!
The only downside of nationalizing the oil industry is that one day America will elect a Republican like George Bush again.
If I’m getting a free Turbo Carrera I might have to rethink this whole Barry thing
The only downside of nationalizing the oil industry is that one day America will elect a Republican like George Bush again who will then find a way to fuck it up.
Change you can believe in – Communism
How do you think that nationalizing refiners will bring down energy prices? What possible crack-induced fantasy would make you think that this would do the trick?
Somewhere, a Saudi Prince is laughing so hard he accidentally pinches off a loaf in his pants.
Like ball shriveling, shit-yer-pants fear.
I guessing you don’t know this Lisa, and it’s no poor reflection on you, but any man worth his salt will flex his scrotum and snug his balls up close to his body just before pouncing and killing someone with his bare hands. Cuts down on the rattling. FYI.
‘m
The only downside of nationalizing the oil industry is that one day America will elect a
Republican like George BushPelosi, Reid, or Gore again who will then find a way to fuck it up.#25: Fascinating. I have to look more closely at the scene in “Eastern Promises” where Viggo Mortenson kills a bunch of Russians while gloriously naked. I wonder if he scro-tucked.
I will not be a NIGGER on the Democrat Plantation.
Dre you need to stop getting all your information from Faux News and Limburger.
Lisa,
You are in rare form tonight! I am laughing so hard I am having trouble typing
Great movie – Viggo’s balls notwithstanding. Get your pause button ready.
thor asks, I deliver:
…..and by “pause button” I, of course, mean the pause button on your remote, not your, well, you know….
See, Karl? My fears are not really so much paranoia, are they?
Some of the folks here act like complacent Jews in 30s Germany, waving off the silly idea that someone is thinking about maybe baking them into bagel chips.
This is happening, people. Wake up.
So, ProggHero, do you think nationalizing oil refineries is a positive government policy?
I am genuinely interested to see how this story plays out.
If it’s on the slab tomorrow moring, well hell I can just turn off my computer and vote McCain in November regardless of how lib he moves.
He can’t catch up with bolshevism.
Can he?
Now… if the airwaves are filled with pundits waving torches and bugeyed Dem apartchiks explaining how “nationalized” REALLY means left the fuck alone to manage the expansion of US energy production onto the continental shelves and the plan to build thirty new nuke plants and ten new refineries….
I’ll know that acid does come back on you, even after decades.
Where’s Corporal Hicks when you need him?
Um, rick, I don’t have to do nothing all day because of oil prices and capital markets.
I know too much to care to conversationally talk about things financial. There’s a reason I know what all the buttons on a TI 84 and BAII are for. Leave it at that.
The dark deeds of the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot, the Duke of Alva and his Council of Blood, the combined forces of Antichrist commanded by the Pope, the emperor, the Turks and The Duke are consuming my attention at the moment. Did you know the great whore of Babylon had the word “Mysterium” written on her forehead? And the same word is inscribed on the papal tiara! I’m reading a book describing apocalyptic concerns in the 1600’s.
Jeff,
I don’t think I’ve ever accused you of being paranoid. I will say that for as crappy as the GOP is, you don’t have major officeholdres calling for taking over the means of production, whereas the Dems have a history going back at least as far as Truman.
JeffG,
You are not paranoid. It is real and this presser is very illustrative. I have faith in the public that they will wake up. It is very early in the cycle. You can almost hear the chatter in BO’s HQ. “Crap, didn’t this guy get the memo? We don’t talk about this until January!”
I work with someone in his 40s, with two kids, a house, boats, motorcycles, SUVs etc, who doesn’t understand the concept of inflation at all.
BOHICA.
two leftwing Dems in the House are even daring to voice such an idea is enough to make me shiver, and enough, certainly, to get Hugo Chavez’ little tyrant stick all hard.
It’s enough to make me try and vote 3 times for McCain.
Karl,
“means of production, whereas the Dems have a history going back at least as far as Truman.”
Wilson railroads WWI
So you still owe your history teacher a slap then.
Your English teacher too.
Hysteria has set in. My cue to leave. Forgive me gents while I go and wage a private war against my own sobriety. I’ll ogle over a few college-aged chicks in skimpy outfits just for you boys stuck at your keyboards.
O!
Try not to lose your heads, eh.
“Comment by Rev. Dr. E Buzz Miller on 6/18 @ 7:18 pm #
I work with someone in his 40s, with two kids, a house, boats, motorcycles, SUVs etc, who doesn’t understand the concept of inflation at all.”
Say Hi to W.PA steel workers 1979
The government controlling, ahem, flow of the oil supply. Since they won’t increase the supply of oil, I guess that can only mean further restricting the supply of oil.
The proper response is:
A) Good news comrades! Chocolate rations are being increased to twenty-five grams!
B) Can you say rationing? Sure, I knew you could.
C) He’p me Mr. Liberal, he’p me!
D) Kinda sucks to be one of the 49%s, doesn’t it?
E) Racist!
That war was lost long, long ago.
Jeff, Americans have been itching to nationalize the healthcare industry for decades in similar numbers. I don’t think this is increasing at all. I think it’s been pretty steady. The only variable in this particular equation that’s changed is the price of oil and gas. So, if prices get high enough the faction of the Democratic party – a substantial plurality – is unafraid of proposing nationalization. But thart doesn’t mean many more people will agree with these syupid policies.
The Democratic strategy of increasing regulation to drive costs so high that nationalization can be seriously proposed is effective, but I don’t see it being effectively persuasive. Of course, if any of the Republican contenders this year really were Zombie Reagan the strategy couldn’t be more plainly illustrated in two of the most important industries in American life. We need the next Reagan for VP on McCain’s ticket. This is an opportunity for some enterprising Republican to seize the Reagan Mantle and run with it.
And ProgHero, nationalizing for govt. use is dumb for the same reasons nationalizing for consumer use is dumb. It doesn’t work, it’s more expensive, and it ALWAYS fails to ANTICIPATE even the slightest change in conditions. Just say NO to centralized control. It fails for fascists, communists, socialists, progressives, or Keynesians. Whatever retard flag it flies under it just plain doesn’t work.
Sometimes I wonder if the Democrats really mean this kind of thing, or if it is sort of a threat designed to put the fear of God into the bad people.
Damn. Spelling errors abound. That’ll teach me to type in low light without spellchecking.
[…] Protein Wisdom: House Democrats call to nationalize U.S. oil […]
But Jeff, writing congressthieves takes too much effort. Voting the collectivists out even more so. What #49 said about itching Americans. More: http://www.ulib.iupui.edu/subjectareas/gov/docs_abbrev
Stop fear mongering Apologist. Change is coming if you like it or not.
How much you want to bet that if the media does not completely ignore this, they will spin it as a reasonable solution.
Sometimes I wonder if the Democrats really mean this kind of thing, or if it is sort of a threat designed to put the fear of God into the bad people.
I believe they are dead serious – nay – desperate to nationalize before drilling begins. They must be fairly certain that if they do not gain control of the price of gas, it will begin to drop and prove that they’ve been causing the suffering of the least of us.
Al Gore should take a lesson from Tim Russert.
Milia sez this is our oil. I’m rich.
Sometimes I wonder if the Democrats really mean this kind of thing, or if it is sort of a threat designed to put the fear of God into the bad people.
Separation of church and state…oh wait…it’s an election year! Shun the non-believers!
At some point, thor’s going to have to recognize that he’s becoming a hipster pollyanna apologist — and all his tongue-in-cheek, over the top O!-isms are going to start to take on that eerie patina of self-fulfilling prophecy.
– I think he means “get well oiled”, because even he can’t believe his brain fried party actually proposed this lunacy.
– Ok. Now its alright to call them Commies.
Is it just me, or does Al Gore look more and more like Java the Hut? Pizza the Hut?
What this country needs is a DICKtator. O!’08.
The Left/Dems are caught in between two losing positions, Iraq, and the oil mess. The pressure is starting to tell, and their true collectivist ideas are bubbling out through the bursting seems.
– We’re finding out, with no doubt possible, they’re neither Black or White, they’re Red. Apparently they were even lying about the Blue state thing.
#34: LMAO!!
(but for real, get both ready. As well as the button on my pocket rocket)
Nekkid Viggo. Sho nuff.
– Hmm. I was wondering what that buzz wuz.
I want the Dems to continue to feel comfortable enough to express these desires in pubic. In fact, we need to find a way to make sure as many people as possible hear their ideas.
This is gonna cost us. There hasn’t been a new refinery built in 30 years so just to keep up they are going to have to build more. So all you environmentalists out there .. beware you won’t have those “big oil” companies to take to court any more .. you will have the power of the US Congress undermining all your efforts from the get go.
Can you say immunity ? I knew that you could.
And here is expected them to call for the seizure of the records at the centers for ICE in Atlanta and Chicago (do I know somebody from there ? Hmmm).
Seeing as how we’re always being accused of “class warfare,” I say it’s time to really start one.
– You’d lose. Trust me on this. The “force multiplier” thing is a myth.
She reminds me of the sorta hot sorta asiany sexually uninhibited free-spirited arty girl on Bones. Same smoky voice thing going on. Except she’s a stupid commie.
Change is coming…
I can only hO!pe so. If the price of healthcare and transportation don’t come down in the next couple of years I’m gonna end up living on a government plantation growing federally owned crops using federally owned fuel in exchange for federal “coverage” for housing and “healthcare”. As a laborer earning just enough to get by on my own right now and having been diagnosed with MS in the last year this shit isn’t theoretical for me. If regulation isn’t reduced in the energy industry I won’t be able to afford my apartment or my car and if regulation isn’t reduced in healthcare federal doctors will be “putting me down for the common good” cause I’ll be too great a drain on “public resources”.
Healthcare can never achieve true economies of scale so long as divisions of labor fall on regulatory lines instead of the lines of greatest economic efficiency. Nor will innovation occur at the rates we’re capable of achieving under politically motivated regulatory burdens and a confiscatory, predatory tort system. I’ve a real chance at something resembling a decent life even with MS if I don’t have to carry the fucking burden of a bankrupt economic and political philosophy that’s never had a single success in creating “progress” since it’s inception. Fuck Obama. Give me liberty or I’m going to die.
I agree that it is not paranoid to be nervous about this. I am and I am a democrat. But I seriously doubt that this one will fly with the American people or even a majority of Democrats. We do have some people who have not taken full flight from reality. I hope.
I do wonder though, if there is a major terror attack or a really wildly devastating natural disaster (like some Katrina-ish thing but twenty times worse with thousands of casualties)….how easy it would be to convince us to allow nationalization of damn near any and everything? I mean, we have $4 gas and people feel comfy making this kind of proposal…
It does make you think.
“Whole town knows there is a fight coming”
A very well-spoken stupid commie really.
And she looks so clean.
Not like that nasty Pete Seger.
Oh. Seeger. I probably should get a better handle on the know your commies thing. Being it’s a new day and all.
I would vote “yes” on the nationalization of rounding up all the losers and putting them in one place for the purpose of pointing and laughing at them for a day or two.
Denver maybe? Late in the year?
Once it’s srarts it’s goin’ be messy
Comment by alppuccino on 6/18 @ 8:08 pm #
LOL. Awesome.
“They’ll be overly confident of their numbers”
Is it just me, or does Al Gore look more and more like Java the Hut? Pizza the Hut?
If you see him, don’t be afraid to offer him a nice lard sandwich with double ouzo and a Camel no-filter. He’s a person too y’know.
– You know people. If we let this happen Bin Laden wins. Chew on that for awhile before you insist on trying to force a collectivist formulation onto America. This isn’t a poli-sci theories class. If you go down that path there won’t be any “damn I’m sorry, I didn’t know” that will pull your chestnuts out of the fire. So think long and carefully.
“I’m reading a book describing apocalyptic concerns in the 1600’s.”
I’m more worried about the possibility of a reactionary leftist caused apocalypse in the 21st century.
and another thing, why in THE hell has Ron Popiel not yet invented the Ronco Pocket Refinery?
dre, I think you’re right. I just hope it remains in Congress, not out in the street. People wax poetic about the sixties, but I don’t.
‘Cause he’s working on the Ronco Pocket Rocket?
This idea is exactly like Pennsylvania’s state-ownership of wine and spirits shops: the state sets the prices, “earns” the profit, and then charges you the sales tax on top of that, just because. And, when a certain product becomes popular, it raises the prices on the popular products. Just because.
Think the feds would do it any differently with oil and gasoline if they controlled the means of production?
Big Bang Hunter – You have encapsulated the contest perfectly.
N,
They won’t cause it. They won’t prevent it. And they will blame the Right for it.
‘Cause he’s working on the Ronco Pocket Rocket?
According to the lovely-but-naughty Lisa, he’s already brought it to market and “if you order now, we’ll include 2 rolls of paper towels at no additional charge. That’s a twenty two dollar value!”
oh, dear, goverment controlled oil. Do you think that might have a tiny effect on the free market? Plus, I oppose plowing up what’s left of the wilderness so we can hang long enough to produce the next debtor-generation.
and another thing, why in THE hell has Ron Popiel not yet invented the Ronco Pocket Refinery™?
al, gotta trademark that shit!
Thanks Roboc. I just learned italics. Maybe it’s time I spread my wings a little.
I’ll try to learn it from The Google.
#91: Laughing uncontrollably.
!!!!!!
and another thing, why in THE hell has Ron Popiel not yet invented the Ronco Pocket Refinery?
cynn, they sell “Save the world, kill yourself” t-shirts at cafepress.com.
Speaking of collectivizing stuff, did you guys know the Democrats love
Big Corporationsbailouts?
and another thing, why in THE hell has Ron Popiel not yet invented the Ronco Pocket Refinery?cynn, they sell “Save the world, kill yourself†t-shirts at cafepress.com.
Between this and McCain’s call to build more nuclear power plants, I may almost be about to start thinking about considering the possibility of potentially being open to the idea of maybe voting for McCain.
But don’t quote me on that.
Senator Jim DeMint
The U.S. Senate
Washington D.C. 20510
Dear Jim,
Fuck you.
Sincerely,
Harry
Lisa: When in doubt, the PWhackers hop on the happy silly merry go round. It might be useful if it serves your purpose; otherwise it’s a funny distraction.
Now you’re just showing off Roboc.
#98: (sob) how can I ever defend my batshit nutty party after this? I need to drink (mabye do some crack) and think.
Sigh. I am going to bed. Thanks for the laughs. Everyone was in top form today. My complements to the PW Asylum.
‘night all!
No, I just fucked up!
– McGehee, you’re putting your hard earned Golden inner circle card in jeopardy with that kind of talk. Maybe you should consider a bit of remedial self Uber-denounciationâ„¢ as a show of self shunning. Just for the purification you understand.
Lisa: When in doubt, the PWhackers hop on the happy silly merry go round. It might be useful if it serves your purpose; otherwise it’s a funny distraction.
That man. He must have really hurt you cynn. Was he like a moth that burned out when he got too close to your zapper?
Wait! I’m sending that to Harlequin. Quick trademark that Roboc.
Wow Cynn, now there’s a well thought out argument.
al, just google “html codes”, you’ll be a master(if I can still use that word) in no time.
al, just google “html codesâ€Â,
Easy for you to say. I haven’t found the Google button on my Commodore 9000 yet.
cynn’s comments are like jazz, Big D. You have to go to them.
– Ok. I hereby denounce all merry go rounds. I’m not sure we covered that one so I’ll denounce it from orbit….
…Its the only way to be sure.
If a gubrment policy doesn’t fit on a bumpersticker or t-shirt, forget it! Oh yeah, and if it rhymes, time to ratify an Amendment.
…Its the only way to be sure.
Doubtful.
No, you didn’t fuck up or anything like it. I need your help with a question, and because, well we must be adversaries, I need your feed. So what if Obama backs off the summary troop withdrawal from Iraq. I myself could live with a sustaining force. Will this kill him; I searched the record and find nothing that is unilateral with him.
I’m totally hip, cynn.
Easy for you to say. I haven’t found the Google button on my Commodore 9000 yet.
Reminds me of the fax machine when I started my job. I told my boss that the Smithsonian called and asked it they could have it. My sarcasm was not appreciated.
– Hes unilaterally trapped in the stupid “no war for oil”, “bring the troops home”, “Bushes war” box the hard Left has locked him into cynn,
– The next question you might ask is, “But what would he actually do if he got elected?
– For all sorts of reasons he would probably do exactly what Kennedy did once he got in office. Namely realize very quickly he can;t reakky do all that much, not even as much as Kennedy was able to do, and would end up completely “double crossing” the Left in their eyes.
– He won’t be able to do anything really stupid without Conressional approval, and in any case its simply not possible to just pick up and leave. Besides that problem he would have to leave a fair amount of peace keeping troops in place.
– But all that being true, why would you even want to take a chance, when you know exactly what McOldguy will do?
cynn, you’re not an adversary, I’m helplessly sarcastic. And I think Obama will be jerked around by his own party regarding Iraq. Even if his intentions are good, the Democrats will turn him into a partisan. They have some old scores to settle, and I honestly think we’re in for some bad times as a country, whether it’s Obama or McCain.
This is Democrat suicide. Bush laid the bait today and they decided to shit on it and then eat it. Hillary ’12!
Seriously, you didn’t think that the Clintons didn’t have a plan in place, did you?
Hey, how’s about we nationalize Hollywood? Then all the movies will be pro lefty propaganda!!!
What’s that you say? Oh, well then. Nevermind.
Okay, someone needs to explain the merry-go-road PWhackers thing to me.
That’s right. I’ve lost my hip edge.
Didn’t this same government have to privatize its chain of eateries because it ran those into the ground?
Can someone please please please point to ONE government agency that is remotely efficient and productive? I knew you couldn’t.
how can I ever defend my batshit nutty party after this?
Why should you? We don’t defend ours. They’ve both gone ’round the twist. Time for the pitchforks and torches, people.
Mention Hollywood and right away dicentra is doing Shrek scenes again…
Roboc: you have it exactly right. We are so invested in our immutable tropes and our various outrages that we are as fractured as a funny asteroid belt, all trying to stay on orbit, but naturally crashing into each other. Nevertheless, I’ll stay here, thanks.
It’s great because it will make it easier to give gasoline away for free to hardworking Americans, and the wealthy can pay for it by contributing their fair share of taxes.
Human greed is a disease that only government a 12 gauge load of 00 to the face can cure.
Fixed that for you.
government was supposed to be struck through up there
I hate to say this, but the kooky babe in the video is right: Put the government in charge of oil and you’d see the price drop. I don’t doubt it a second. Areas now off-limits to drilling will suddenly open up, barriers to refineries will crumble and prices will dive. See, when you remove the scapegoats from the equation and put politicians directly in the line of fire, the impossible will suddenly become the inevitable.
Of course, fields will soon be raped and unusable, exploration will grind to a halt to cheapen the product, refinery maintenance will go to hell and taxes will rise to subsidize our gasoline and mask the true cost. Just like the fuckups in Mexico, Iran and Venezuela have done.
I hated Shrek. He smelled bad. No, really: my only impression from that movie is a putrid onion smell that was merely suggested by the dialog or summat. I can’t deal with seeing it or its sequels again.
Concentrate, people. Merry go round? PWhackers?
Help a brother out, would you?
Comment by cynn on 6/18 @ 8:47 pm
No, you didn’t fuck up or anything like it. I need your help with a question, and because, well we must be adversaries, I need your feed. So what if Obama backs off the summary troop withdrawal from Iraq. I myself could live with a sustaining force. Will this kill him; I searched the record and find nothing that is unilateral with him
So you’re okay with the “Occupation” as long as it’s Obama leading it? How quickly you abandon your principles. Anything to regain the White House right?
They can’t even run a fucking cafeteria in their own building complex. The House bank, Amtrak, The Post Office, Social Security…stop! It’s amazing they can make it to the Capital!!1!eleventy!11! Larry Craig couldn’t even get a blow job without getting caught. Couldn’t he just ask Barney Frank where the DC glory holes are?
cynn, please help Jeff out with the “merry-go-round PWhackers” terminology. I haven’t a clue, I’m just here for the snark!
– Jeff, I think that was a sort of fellow lefty *wink wink* *nudge nudge* from cynn to Lisa, because she gets a little untwined when some of us start mocking the silliness of the Lefts perpetual self-abuse, whitey guilt thing.
re: #71 The Apologist
If you need anyone to talk to about living with MS email me at the addy I put in above. My wife has had it since ’96.
Put the government in charge of oil and you’d see the price drop.
The first two weeks of the month at the Official Government Stations, you bet. After they run dry and you are trying to score a tank full from out behind Hook and Crook’s All-Night Towing Service, not so much.
A government horizontal monopoly of the main source of energy.
Sounds to me like a grab for a “water empire”.
Lemme drink 3 bottles of Chianti and get back to you.
Now you’re really creeping me out. Even Canada hasn’t birthed this affect.
Take our oil. Please!
– Actually it probably wouldn’t even be that good. Since our oil output would actually drop at first, and whatever production we had would hardly effect world wide markets, the price would immediately jump under the guise of “startup and changeover costs. The Congress would see the shift over as a gold mine opportunity to funnel jobs and money back into their districts, so over all the price could jump a lot. The promise would be that prices would come down as refineries got up to speed and flow increased, but like everything our inefficient to a fault government gets its hands on, the price drop would never come, because of “rising costs” ect.
– If they tried to suppress pricing artificially, then taxes will have to go up to offset that. When government plays price control, the difference always has to be made up from tax revenues.
– BTW, the Colorado shale deposits are far more cost effective than offshore drilling, 800 billion recoverable barrels, and much much cheaper than offshore recovery.
– Thats why the Dems are trying to keep the argument limited to offshore and ANWAR. They do not want to fix the problem.
Dammit.
I have to go to El Paso tomorrow, coming back Saturday.
What’s the over/under for $10/gallon gas before I get home, as the oil people do their damnedest to cash out?
Regards,
Ric
Since no one knows from one day to the next what this crazy Congress or the WH will do from one day to the next Ric, I’d go with a straddle. At least that way you won’t get hammered and you could still pick up a few bucks.
Make sure you top the tank off on the Mexican side of the bridge. Pemex gas is half the cost of the American distilled version.
Nationalized gasoline sure tastes sweet when free market prices are pulling down your shorts.
Well, at least the populace would learn the names of their putative representatives. “This gallon of gasoline brought to you by Senator Bloviator.”
Kind of like the disater relief that got ‘rebranded’ in Burma.
Self-shunning? For some reason I’m hearing a Divinyls song, slightly reworded.
I’ll be in my bunk, shunning myself until I go blind.
– We’re paying 2.35 in Tiauana, and thats higher by a lot than the interior prices. I understand that Mexico city and south is down around 1.65.
Nationalized gasoline sure tastes sweet when free market prices are pulling down your shorts.
Good point, we need to take a serious look at the Mexican economy, we could learn a lot from those folks.
Bonus legislation twofer: (for Happyfeet)
Once Maurice has reclaimed the refineries for the People Powered Community, perhaps he will overthrow the right wing domination of the media and make it fair and balanced, like NPR.
A study released last June by Democracy Radio, revealed that national and local conservative broadcasts totaled over 40,000 hours every week, while weekly liberal programming totaled just over 3,000 hours. “We need to return to a free and open discussion of the issues,” Hinchey says.
O?
– Moe. Fixed output. No cars. Lots of surplus. No demand. No magic.
[…] Jeff Goldstein: The question then, is this: have the American people, either through progressive bromides or an educational system that has been battling to turn government into a secular godhead, become so dumbed down that they will fail to recognize explicit calls for communism when they see them? I honestly don’t know. But I will say that the fact that they’ve managed to pit Obama against McCain  two nannystatists with progressive tendencies  in the presidential election, makes me fear the worst. […]
We’re talking about people who couldn’t run a profitable whorehouse.
Given the history of state-run endeavors, you’d have to conclude that leftism is a learning disability.
But in a way it’s encouraging, masks slipping and all that.
Go to it, boys. Counter-revolution’s a bitch.
– Actually Mexico has always been “Aztec-Facist-lite”. The government bouys gas prices artificially with the idea that the richer in the populace are the only ones that can afford cars generally. So the higher prices bring in tax revenue effectively. Redistribution of wealth anyone?
– Then you have the nationalized drug trade, but we won’t go there.
It’d be even less profitable than you might imagine.
Once the government were to engage in such theft I can easily imagine small bands of Partisans sabotaging refineries, wells, storage farms, and pipelines.
I remember the gas lines and odd/even rationing of the 70s. Nationalization would be a nightmare, I pray most of these clowns are smart enough to realize this and are just pandering to the clueless.
…Johnson?
He’s NOT insane!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/iowahawk_blog/836818099/in/set-72157600845700996/
– Be honest if the Dems persist with something this volatile that hits everyone working for a living right in the pocket, it may take a little while but sooner or latter they’re going to get run over like a Mac truck. Even their staunchest supporters will start edging toward the door, and the Senators that have to go back and face a hopping mad constituency are going to start jumping ship very shortly.
– It gives some idea of just how deeply the Dems have been hijacked by the hardLeft/EcoNutz that it takes a national disaster to break them free from such stupidity, and why they would be willing to face the wrath of the electorate over this wjole thing on the very eve of a Presidential election. Pure political suicide, and they already faced the specter of a stable Iraq they were going to have to deal with.
– If we had a national referendum on the five or six major issues right now, I think the Dems would just be trashed, and yet here we are having to listen to this insane debate. Amazing.
…Johnson?
– Carter….sound familiar.
It was a global problem then. We didn’t have the internets then. That’s why you thought it was only a problem in the US.
You know what else, it is a global problem now. And even without the internets I managed to find it out back then. The point I am making is higher prices force down demand to compensate for a limited supply. If the Feds don’t increase the supply and lower the price demand is going to outstrip supply and we are going to have shortages in this country. That isn’t an opinion, it is inevitable. It is the way shit works.
“We need to return to a free and open discussion of the issues,” Hinchey says.
That’s fair enough I think. As long as NPR gets to decide what the issues are. Performance enhancing drugs are apparently a huge one. I still don’t get that.
iowahawk go short down
You speekee engrish good! Masui!
I need to denounce myself for insulting Asian immigrants by comparing them to Masui. I am hereby denounced.
– Sure, a veritable landslide, just like the 69% that want us to go after our own oil, and that was yesterday, who knows what the percentage will be this time a week or two from now. Good point. Good base for abstinently standing in the way of a fix.
– You’re whistling past the cemetery at this point, and blowing smoke up everyones ass hoping you can hang on and find some magic way out of this mess your party has single handedly created.
– Get back to us, and let us know how that works out for you.
Oh. It’s just they yammer about the performance enhancing drugs all the time like they were an offense against God or something. They’re also really big on the gay marriage and also did you know gas prices are high? They had a story on the gas price highness this morning. Very interesting.
Polls don’t vote, people do – often for selfish and petty reasons. And they lie.
Hope it helps.
Most people who are asked to leave can take a hint. Then there’s pw’s trolls…
“masui”: you aren’t welcome here. Don’t post anymore. I don’t care what you have to say. At all. It doesn’t affect me one way or another. It just lowers the level of discourse.
Take. the. hint.
– In this case mojo, his beloved polls are letting him down. That is 69% of voters across the board. When you do it that way the 15% of the electorate that are total nutbags can’t get their way.
– Couple more weeks of this and they won’t be able to find anyone that doesn’t tell them to fuck off, even their own Dem Senators as soon as they see theres no way out. Right now they’re still squeezing their knees together and praying, but you can already see signs that the Lefturd hand on the throat of the country is starting to slip.
tattletale?
masui- I’m sure there are more important things in life for you.
– Another “big lie that the Dems are peddling is that none of the possible development plans of our resources would ahve any effect on oil prices for years into the future. That is total nonsense.
– The Colorado reserves tops out at around 7 Trillion barrels, yes thats a “T” folks, with some 800 billion as considered easily accessable. *00 billion barrels is 3 times the entire Saudi reserve.
– Open that up and watch what happens to the futures market, and supporting oil prices, the very day you make the announcement. The Dems are lying through their teeth.
Evidently not, MayBee.
I don’t have time to go around deleting all these posts, or blocking every IP this asshole posts from. So I’ll just have to track the fucker down.
Is all.
Latest IP: 4.231.148.177
If he knows Tim, or is Tim, Tim is using a randomizer these days.
The tattletale thing makes me think Michelle. But what do I know?
Oh, yeah. Forgot about that crazy lady with the pinched face and the drunken outbursts. Out of Houston, too. Taught ESL or some such.
Thanks, Maybee. Time I followed through and had a talk with her school. I’ll see if Sparkle remembers where she taught.
For the record, the new version of WP doesn’t have the same ban procedure as before. At least, I can’t find it.
So that has opened the door for some of those who have been banned previously. I’d hate to think they’ve been trying to get through this whole time…
Incidentally, it’s Kaz MaTsui, Michelle.
Houston.
Probably a dynamic IP on whatever local ISP gives discounts to the mentally handicapped.
If you can’t ban, just let us know who you really, really don’t want us to respond to.
I’m going to bed. Sweet dreams.
Heh.
– Jeff. I put a trace on her but shes not active right now. Frome the finger return I got, shes most likely running through a proxy with a dynamic address, which can be a real pain in the ass like the AOL setup. I’ll try to catch her when shes posting next time. If you get any other Addy’s for her just post them. Sooner or later I’ll nail her location. There are several ways to deal with it once you pin her down. Some are rather nasty.
My location trace on that IP did point at a school in Houston… it could easily be off enough to be a miss and I don’t want to be the cause of a bunch of nasty calls to some innocent across the street from the looney.
On the other hand, the chances of this being a deliberate obfuscation are almost zero.
Republicans oppose nationalizing the oil industry by a 66% to 16% margin.
This is because there are only 10,000 Republicans left. Of them, 6,600 work for oil companies, 1,600 have recently attended cult deprogramming sessions, and the other 1,800 are either in jail, the nuthouse, senile, or have died but have yet to be removed from the registered-voter lists.
If we let this happen Bin Laden wins. Chew on that for awhile before you insist on trying to force a collectivist formulation onto America. This isn’t a poli-sci theories class. If you go down that path there won’t be any “damn I’m sorry, I didn’t know†that will pull your chestnuts out of the fire. So think long and carefully.
I know times are hard, but brother can you spare a cliche? You seem to have more than enough for yourself.
4.231.105.240
4.131.121.16
Those are the others she’s used.
“From each according to his gullibility, too each according to his sloth”
– Hows that dimwit.
– Ok. I’ve got them all queued up so I’ll try next time shes on, or just ar random during similar times of day. Let you know if I come up with anything,
So, do we have any volunteers for the collective farms yet? C’mon, comrades, those Five Year Plans ain’t gonna complete themselves!
Bizarre. I turned on Morning Joe this morning, and there’s nothing about this. Instead, most of the discussion if about Michelle Obama’s makeover and some Muslims getting ushered aside at an Obama rally.
I’m starting to believe that Obama’s strategy is to create a lot of preoccupation with sympathetic distractions so that he can hide all his mistakes and Democratic party mistakes on policy.
There’s a banana shortage too, you know. I thought Commies went after the fruit companies first?
You think this guy learned everything he knows about refineries from Lou Dobbs and his well-worn “Urban Cowboy” Laserdisc?
Sam, I was JUSt complaining to my husband about this. Michigan just announced – get this – 8.5% unemployment. I swear, I’m thinking the whole muslim women/scarves story is a plant to distract.
– O will have to let his NAFTA trade guy know so he can tell Canada the shipments will be a little short the next few months.
Your mistake, Jeff, is that you’re expecting cynn to make sense, or make any sort of argument that isn’t dismissive, shut-your-mouth ad hominem-in-lieu-of. Not that such a thing never, ever happens, but if history is any guide, the odds are down below 0.1.
Level 3 Communications, Broomfield, Colorado. A large-ish IP, with an allocation of several million IP addresses.
Here‘s all the tools you need. Oh, also you’d want a IP geolocator, which is undoubtedly how Houston came up. Level 3 is nationwide, I suppose. 17 million IP addresses need room to stretch themselves out.
The truly frightening thing about nationalizing the oil industry?
AFSCME gas station attendants.
[…] Goldstein draws the frightening – and depressing – conclusion: […]
Five percent profit is going to look like peanuts after the government waste, fraud, abuse and general-stupid-bumfuckery-machine takes the wheel. The cost of everything will go up, and the incentive to exploit new deposits will go away.
Oh, sure, you say: we’re only taking away the refineries. Taking away? Does anyone even have a plan for what that’ll look like? Is the government going to buy the refineries? Who decides the price? Who decides how this forced-sale is going to take place?
Probably no one’s civil rights are going to get violated in the process. Certainly no Exxon/Mobil stockholders will be hurt.
Sorry, wild HTML. Shoot me.
Comment by alppuccino on 6/18 @ 8:11 pm #
Is it just me, or does Al Gore look more and more like Java the Hut? Pizza the Hut?
Weeeellll…
I think he looks like he just came from his third place win at the special olympics. Just remember, even if you win at the special olympics, you’re STILL retarded.
“Didn’t this same government have to privatize its chain of eateries because it ran those into the ground?”
dicentra,
If any of us needs a reminder of how good the government is at running businesses, we need look no further than the state OTB in New York.
How the fuck could ANYONE consistently lose money on a gambling parlor? If the G’ment takes over oil, count on $20 a gallon – if we’re lucky.
Costa Rica is looking better every day.
Can I Call Them Communists Now?…
We all know that deep down, inside each and every Democrat is a communist waiting to bloom. Normally, they repress their communist urges because they know it’s not usually acceptable within the US….
“Comment by Sean M. on 6/19 @ 3:52 am #
So, do we have any volunteers for the collective farms yet? C’mon, comrades, those Five Year Plans ain’t gonna complete themselves!”
Sorry. I only go there at the point of a gun.
I lived in a couple of communes back in the sixties, and quickly found out that most people there spend their days jerking off and saying: “Gimme!”
No thank you, Ms. Waters.
Comment by William Young on 6/18 @ 8:17 pm #
Regarding state owned liquor stores, try getting a specialty item from one, or something that just doesn’t normally sell well.
Say that to former steel workers in NE Ohio 2008
A pattern develops and it seems to run: ‘Be sure to live near the boundary of any relevant political area, such that you can take advantage of whatever policy driven pricing difference may occur.’
Examples: Gasoline (Tax), Cigarettes (Tax), Liquor (Quality, Availability, Tax),… other examples?
Sdferr – they can controll our behavior to prevent us from doing that:
Healthcare. How many Canadians cross over to the US to find competent or speedy care?
I grant you Carin. My dad used to go from Va (with an ABC system) into DC to buy liquor and wine and was worried he have the requisite number of heads in the car to balance the allowable per/capita limits on cross border purchases. Va agents were positioned at DC liquor stores to follow Va plated drivers across the line, stop, inspect and fine them should they be caught out of compliance. Do you think this stopped the trade? The number of agents necessary to do that would bankrupt the Va treasury.
Look at the stupidity of the law, on the other hand. Think about the wasted resources involved in enforcement and control. Think of the waste of time in stocking a car with passengers in order to meet an arbitrary legal standard, fulfilling the letter but clearly breaking the ‘spirit’. The wages of prudence…waste
The wages of government…inefficiency
Good on you, Crawford, that is exactly what the hypothesis would predict. On the quasi-benefit side, Canadian price controls on drugs exported to the US in cheaper purchases than otherwise possible. ‘Quasi-benefit’ since the buyers here don’t currently see the effects long term in disincentives to future R&D, thus denying them drugs in the future they might otherwise have had.
Man, I would have paid real money to see the look on the Big Oil company execs faces when this came out yesterday… I dont know if total nationalization is the answer but I do know there are things that we cant live without that shouldnt be left unregulated to sell at “whatever the market will bear” …when the consumer has no choice but to pay whatever is asked (like for gas for basic transportation) .. the market price can go high enough to break us.. Screw the oil companies.. Theyre no friend of the working man.. regulate them. Allow them a static gas profit margin tied directly to the cost of production.. like they did telecom LECs in the 60s & 70s.. and take oil/gas off the commodities market..
Ouroboros – from my understanding, the oil companies run on very low margins. They manage to make a lot of money because they are able to eek out all the excesses. What the market will bear doesn’t exactly tell the story. Driving is already down (tax revenues on gas as well.) That will cut into those profits, since their “windfall profits” are a result of the scale of the product.
Road to Serfdom much, Ouroboros?
[…] a hint Congress, just because something isn’t working well doesn’t mean you should help fix it. I think history has proven that the less you try to help the sooner the problem is […]
I don’t think it is always a bad idea for the government to run something. But most of the time, it is a bad idea.
In a case like this energy thing – the market is doing what a thousand years of lecturing about our gluttonous fuel guzzling ways could never do. The capitalist in me says that it is just not sensible to even attempt something as stupid as nationalization. And the greenie granola in me who wants to see us all holding hands and getting on the Peace Bus to work every day says “woot woot” at the high as hell gas prices.
Odd to see my inner Sowell/Kucinich agreeing on an issue.
“Road to Serfdom much, Ouroboros?”
My wages have been stagnant for 10 years… During that period the cost of housing and gas have doubled while most everything else has only gone up 50-75%.. Ten years ago my income was in the upper 50 percentile.. now it’s in the lower 40… And I doubt seriously that I’m alone..
Someone is making huge profits.. It’s just not the people actually doing the work or making the products..
Road to Serfdom much? You might say that.
Oh goody, newer and better socialism on the way! Delightful! Real answers this time, we promise!
Ouroboros:
History is just something that happened to other people, isn’t it?
Sdferr:
It would be almost amusing to watch someone else fall off that cliff, if in a sad way. I mean, apart from the horror, blood, and death, North Korea is hilarious. Apart from the strangling control over daily life, the execution vans, and the political prisons, China’ll make you laugh so hard you’ll crack a rib (so to speak).
The fact that otherwise reasonable (or at least comprehensible) people see neither the horror nor the comedy and look at Cuba and say “hey, maybe we should try that,” kind of boggles the mind a bit.
Does, doesn’t it? But without the otherwise reasonable (or at least comprehensible) people, how can we drive our movement?
Some of this stuff, like your NoKo example, is obvious. The theoretical underpinnings allowing for prediction of same, not so obvious. Or at least more esoteric. We have to work at them to get them and unfortunately, many of the otherwise good folks like John McC. are bored by the effort, so quit. They prefer to just make it up as they go along. And then, voila! End up in the same place, once again.
Why is it always black or white in these discussions ? Why does any attempt to rein in corporate America mean we’re becoming Socialists or Communists.. ? Our system is far from totally capitalist. A number of industries have been deregulated during my lifetime.. all accompanied by the same song and dance about greater competition resulting in more choices for consumers at better prices… yet in every case I can think of all that’s come of it has been greater profits for the corporations, obscene wages for executives, lower wages for the workers, export of good jobs to the third world and higher prices coupled with crappier service for the consumer… So remind me.. what is it about this free market that’s so admirable and endearing?
I’m not pointing at Big Oil as the sole culprit but they’re not 100% innocent either.. Their income isn’t being stretched in the same way as the individual that has to buy gas from them just to get to work. The speculators in the middle are the ones that produce nothing yet reap the profits from manipulating the market… They’re the optional component.
Ouro, wander over to Cafe Hayek, scroll down to the graph or better yet click this link http://tinyurl.com/6pdf98 and think it through.
‘Speculators’ provide liquidity to producers and consumers desirous of laying off future risk, bringing future profit forward today to the producers and consumers in the transaction.
Don’t let your ‘speculator’ bug-a-boo get you down, or them either. Try to figure out the connection between price and information about the world, instead.
Big oil makes huge profits because they have huge sales. If big oil had the same profit margin as Google, they’d have cleared over a hundred billion last year. If Microsoft had Exxon/Mobil’s sales, they’d have cleared a hundred billion last year. If the government skimmed big oil’s cut off the top of income tax revenues, it’d have over a hundred billion to play corruption games with.
Small percentage. Huge pool of money. Granted, things could be done differently, but most forms of “differently” lack incentives for companies to do business in the first place.
Sdferr: Ok, I took your link over to Cafe Hayek.. I see the graph about life expectancy.. What am I to take from it? Are you implying that unregulated corporate greed allowed to run amok is the fountain of youth and if we just embrace it we’ll eventually become immortal as gods?? Or did you just link the wrong page? (what’s the title of the piece you recommended?)
.. what is it about this free market that’s so admirable and endearing?
It is still better than any alternative. You need to always keep one thing in mind, dude: People give money to get things they want. In a free market, if you are making assloads of money it is because you are doing a great job of getting people want they want. If you aren’t making a lot of money, you need to give people more of want they want. If you have to have the government take money from the producers and give it to you to survive, you suck and have no right to complain about shit. When progressives talk about public service, it is usually bullshit, real people who provide real services to the public almost always make lots of money. Greed is thinking you have a right to that money or those services without earning your share.
Democrats: More Communist Every Day…
What in the hell is wrong with the Democratic party that it has not one but two members in good standing who are absolutely unafraid to go in front of television cameras and say that the Federal government should nationalize the oil industry?
Then agai…
The Great Indoctrination…
Yet another US congressman–Maurice Hinchey (D-NY)–calls for the nationalization of the oil industry and most people yawn. Further, a talking head from the non-profit Oil Change International endorses the idea that Congress should set the price of gas…
More thinking, less emoting. Or ease up on the emotional rhetoric, rather.
For instance: ‘unregulated corporate greed’…’allowed’…’run amok’…’fountain of youth’…’embrace it’…’immortal as gods’
An economist would say that when a necessary item reaches a point where the price is too high to even meet demand, it is market failure. Then people can start talking about solutions…(usually the market its self corrects a failure of that sort). But we are not there. Supply still meets demand. It is just fucking expensive. We can still afford it, but it sucks ass – that is not market failure – if you do that annoying little chart-thingie that they made everyone do in microeconomics, you would still see that supply and demand are still being met and 4 bucks a gallon/130 bucks for a barrell of oil is just the current equillibrium price. That is some basic microecon shit that Sweet Maxie ought to brush up on.
I may or may not be talking out of my ass since I barely passed micro.
Hoorahs, Lisa, but Sweet Maxie is a pol and as such uninterested in your oh so true but dry microecon shit. And nobody can make her be interested. They can refuse to vote for her again, if they choose.
Sdferr: That life expectancy graph WAS what you intended to link? Please explain or elaborate.
B Moe: “In a free market, if you are making assloads of money it is because you are doing a great job of getting people want they want.:
Or in some cases it means you have a corner on the market of a product that people really cant do without.. What’s the average person to do when facing $5/gal gas? Say ‘no..I’m not paying that’ ? No.. you suck it up and pay the $100 it takes to fill your car now and do without something else in your life that’s slightly less essential..
(My ‘say it’ button is disappearing again….this’ll be my last comment on the thread..)
Say ‘no..I’m not paying that’ ? No.. you suck it up and pay the $100 it takes to fill your car now and do without something else in your life that’s slightly less essential..
Or you get a vehicle that gets better gas mileage. Or you ride public transportation. Or you carpool. Or you be more efficient in your travel plans. Or you move closer to your job. Or you get a job closer to where you live. Or you do a combination of any of the above. What you don’t do is force someone else to subsidize your way of life. You always have choices and options, the fact you don’t like them don’t mean they aren’t there. Nuclear plants and electric commuter cars are the logical answer, save gas for stuff to big to be practical on anything else, so you need to be raising hell for the government to get out of the private sectors way, not to be putting up more roadblocks. Like someone else already said, do you really want people who can’t keep a whorehouse in business running the oil industry?
Life expectancy is one measurement useful in answering this question: “…So remind me.. what is it about this free market that’s so admirable and endearing?…”
Just one among many possible answers to that question. Or is it not?
Sdferr: (room for one more comment I guess).. I’m not saying capitalism is Satan.. just that capitalism without any regulation or oversight play right to men’s ugliest natural inclination: greed. To answer your question; has american capitalism contributed to one of the worlds highest standards of living and healthcare? Yes, to it’s credit. Is it better than alternatives? Yes. Are the abuses of recent years (like Enron, etc)in some contributing directly to a longer lifespan, a healthier populace or a better quality of life for us all? I cant see the connection..
Great conversation. Nothing to add as usual, except to let Ouroboros know that you can still comment when you lose the “say it” button by (at least on Windows) going to View/Encoding/Right-to-left Document. This works better AFTER you have typed your comment, other wise you’ll be attempting to type right to left, which is a bit awkward. But it gets you the whole “say it” button. Carry on with your great dialogue. I am a learnin’!
Maybe freedom to succeed (Genentech, Google) means freedom also to fail (Enron, PanAmerican Airlnes).
My concern is with who wants to control outcomes. Do they have the requisite knowledge? Hayek answers, convincingly to me at least, never.
Capitalism is regulated in this country, and in every other country. Moreso than it should be I would guess. Enron, AFAIK, was mostly abuses in recording available capital. As far as the big losses go among shareholders, anyone who puts all their eggs in one basket can get badly bitten. SO, I guess we need laws to protect idiots from themselves and not allow them to invest their retirement entirely in one stock. If that hasn’t happened already, it probably will soon.
However, seizing a company and having the government run it is not our way. Oil is not a monopoly. If there are anti-trust issues going on the Congress would be looking into it. They know there aren’t trust issues. They know why the price of oil is high. And more than half of them refuse to do anything about it, and who knows what the other half would do if they were in the majority? I sure don’t, but they didn’t do anything before.
Government control of any business drives the price up. That’s all it can do. Sure, they might hide the costs by covering their asses with tax dollars, but either way you pay more.
BTW, you either need to upgrade to IE 7 or start using firefox. They don’t have the issues you seem to be having with comments.
just that capitalism without any regulation or oversight play right to men’s ugliest natural inclination: greed.
I would say malicious envy is far uglier, and leads to true greed: wanting that which you have not earned.
#232
I think that covered it quite nicely. A market failure would be if there were plenty of oil, but you couldn’t get it at any price.See the former Soviet Union. You can still get all you want at $4.00 plus a barrel. $4.65 at Mobil in Newport Beach is the cheapest I’ve been able to find in Orange County, so far.
that should read $4.00 plus a gallon.Maroon.
#239, 240 & 241 … I agree.. and OI,thanks for the tip. It works great!
For an example of Hayek’s thought on these matters, see the link Russell Roberts left on Cafe Hayek today: http://tinyurl.com/4fx2sr
Actually, capitalism is the way greed is turned into cooperation.
Regulation tends to get abused as a way to restrict competition, which, perversely, breaks down the cooperation.
Lisa, your grasp of microeconomics isn’t to blame here, it’;s teh actual application of those principles to that market (or any commodity) these days.
Link to part 1 of a two part article.
Okay, RTO, if this guy is right (and he makes a darned good case that the supply issue is really not enough oil to buy for all the speculators, and not a shortage of actual supply) then is there a solution? Normally in my experience commodities pricing tends to even itself out in the long run. Are we waiting to see who the final losers are going to be? Besides us, I mean.
Yes. There is a solution.
1) Pressure the Commodities Exchanges to raise teh margins for investing in oil (and otehr comodities). Currently you can make a contract for 1000 bbls of oil for $2000. That’s $2/bbl.
2) Kick the Commodities Futures Trading Commission back in gear. They are supposed to prevent cases where investment is pushing values out of line.
3) Force Congress to repeal a goodly chunk of the taxes levied against the petroleum industry (they pay more in taxes than they pay for the oil they buy) with the understanding that “Big Oil” is expected to immediately offer that as relief to the consumer. This is much mroe productive and far deepe than cutting the consumption taxes at the pump.
Stolen from Rob B at File it Under 2.0:
(Updated with current values)
Here’s a neat inside tip of figuring out what the non-speculated cost of oil should be. The calorific equivalent of 1 barrel (bbl) of oil is about 6000 cubic feet of natural gas (6 MCF) So, testing our theory, if gas is currently at $13.63 a MCF the oil should be ($13.63 X 6) $81.78. That is the formula that we work with is doing rough calculations of value of oil and gas reserves. Now, if Friday’s Herny Hub gas price was $13.63 a mcf and Nymex oil closed at $133.99 a bbl then how can we explain oil costing $81.78? The answer is speculation on the commodities market.
Add to this that the Natural gas market is also being inflated by commodities speculation.
The CFTC says : “The CFTC’s mission is to protect market users and the public from fraud, manipulation, and abusive practices related to the sale of commodity and financial futures and options, and to foster open, competitive, and financially sound futures and option markets.”
This isn’t quite “…supposed to prevent cases where investment is pushing values out of line.”
Manipulation is strongly indicated where coast has outrun actual value. At the least an investigation is warranted.
*golf clap*
The CFTC is always investigating, take a look at their website and the prosecutions they levy.
‘Actual value’ is the turning phrase. You have this idea that you know what the price of crude should be. If the spot price doesn’t line up with your idea, then the spot price is wrong, not your idea. I think the delta is trying to tell us something. You think the delta is ill gotten gains.
“There’s a few hedge fund managers out there who are masters at knowing how to exploit the peak [oil] theories and hot buttons of supply and demand, and by making bold predictions of shocking price advancements to come, they only add more fuel to the bullish fire in a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.” (The Role of Market Speculation in Rising Oil and Gas Prices, U.S. Senate, June 27, 2006).
Yes, this line suggests that persons invested in the oil futures market are purposely driving even more money into oil to raise the prices even higher, even though the market’s actual supply and demand in no way justifies their claims. On a side note, Enron is named frequently in both investigations as exemplifying this type of energy market manipulation.
Consider this: You may not buy gasoline or even eat today, but by next Monday you’ll probably have to do both, no matter what it costs. Basically, besides enabling the Fed to bail out Wall Street and our banks again, every time you gas up or eat you may be paying investors to cover other financial losses. We know that investors can’t control their losses on mortgages, securities, or bad loans. But, demonstrably, if not restrained they can drive up the price of goods that we can’t get out of buying. Odds are, that’s what’s really been going on.
Thank you RTO Trainer….
Sdferr,
Yoiu think the current price of oil, diven it’s diosconnect with supply/demand and realted comodities, costs in proportion to value?
Of corse I can’t say precisely, or even accurately, what that cost/value alignment should be, but I can see that there are enough disconnects to beleive that something is badly wrong. Something I do know a lot about is preventive maintenacne and troubleshooting eletronic equipment. I may not beble to tell you what, exacly is wrong with a given piece of equipment, but I can tell you when it’s time to start trying to fix it.
RTO, I wrote in the Horserace thread that the strong signaling now going on, which has everyone so justly riled up, is the only hope the republicans in congress have of returning to office in Nov. in any numbers like what they currently have. http://tinyurl.com/6rahtj
As to knowledge of price, see the Hayek article in 245 above.
Sdferr,
Have we come back around to ‘whatever the market will bear’ definition of value? The idea that the ‘value’ of gas depends solely on the highest cost someone will pay for it?
If there were three motorists stranded in the desert having run out of gas and you showed up with a 10 gallon, $45 can of fuel has the basic value of that gas increased because you’re able to exploit the circumstances and start of bidding war between the three stranded motorists? If you can bid it up to $300 for the can is it right to do so? Is it moral? Ethical? Or is it ‘just business’ without any moral considerations at all ?
I remember Starbucks taking a lot of heat during 9/11 because one of their stores made a rescue worker actually pay regular price for a case of bottled water. The public sentiment of the time was that evil Starbucks should have been happy to help by providing the water free of charge.. Lucky Lehman Bros didnt own the coffeeshops or those $2 bottles of Aquafina would have been going for a cool fin a piece.
If there is anything that this horrible tragedy can teach us, it’s that a male model’s life is a precious, precious commodity. Just because we have chiseled abs and stunning features, it doesn’t mean that we too can’t not die in a freak gasoline fight accident.
There are pretty well defined theories of value, Ouro, which we ought perhaps to repair to in order to sort out our questions.
“…whatever the market will bear…” is already loaded for bear, as is the question of ‘gouging’, the answer to which may surprise both of us in respect of morality as well as economics (which, in a sense, is nothing but a branch of the study of ethics or morals).
The moral sentiment of the stranded motorists may be satisfied if I were to pile them in my car and transport them free of charge to the nearest gas station, no?
Male models get it while the getting is good. Later, not so much.
Good answer to the stranded motorist dilemma, Sdferr..
Ouro, I live in hurricane land (been bulls-eyed a couple of times and grazed four or five, but who’s counting?) so I’ve had a little experience with so called ‘price gouging’ and its cousins ‘rationing’ and ‘queuing’. None of these seem to me perfect filters for efficient, fair, and equitable scarce resource distribution. Of the three, though, gouging is pretty good at the so called ‘triage of need’ and better at incentivising risk-taking in potential helpers from outside the disaster zone. It is in no way a black and white deal, though. Moral sentiments of basic fairness will always play a role on both sides of any trade and particularly so in ‘gouging’ situations. Sellers will always (well, should always) weigh the future cost to reputation and business when deciding whether to jack the price or take a loss. Buyers should also look inward to see whether their supposed reasonable request is not actually an unwarranted demand they would not wish to have made of themselves were the roles reversed.
Too f**ing vague, I know. I need more l’arning on this stuff.
It isn’t communism, it’s ordinary corruption.
Waters and Hinchey have PEMEX envy.
#258
“A thing is worth what that thing will bring.” A. Smith.
The hypotheticals aside. In a truely free market there would be competition to provide cheaper gasolene and alternative fuels. The government and other interests have conspired to keep prices high by limiting access.
I have always found that it isn’t a good idea to rely on others altruism.
[…] Goldstein draws the frightening – and depressing – conclusion: The question then, is this: have the American people, either through progressive bromides or an educational system that has been battling to turn government into a secular godhead, become so dumbed down that they will fail to recognize explicit calls for communism when they see them? I honestly don’t know. But I will say that the fact that they’ve managed to pit Obama against McCain — two nannystatists with progressive tendencies — in the presidential election, makes me fear the worst. […]