If you haven’t been stringent about boycotting Citgo, now would be the time to begin. You can make it your Lenten resolution if you like:
President Hugo Chavez on Sunday threatened to cut off oil sales to the United States if Exxon Mobil Corp. wins court judgments to seize billions of dollars in Venezuelan assets.”If you end up freezing (Venezuelan assets) and it harms us, we’re going to harm you,” Chavez said. “Do you know how? We aren’t going to send oil to the United States. Take note, Mr. Bush, Mr. Danger.”Exxon Mobil has gone after the assets of state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA in U.S., British and Dutch courts as it challenges the nationalization of a multibillion dollar oil project by Chavez’s government.”I speak to the U.S. empire, because that’s the master: continue and you will see that we won’t sent one drop of oil to the empire of the United States,” Chavez said during his weekly radio and television program, “Hello, President.””The outlaws of Exxon Mobil will never again rob us,” Chavez said, accusing the Irving, Texas-based oil company of acting in concert with Washington. ÂÂ
Sorry about that, Citgo people. Still, if it means .20 extra per gallon will help rid us of Hugo, that’s money I don’t mind spending.
AQ in Iraq: “We’re fucked“ÂÂ
AQ in Pakistan: “We’re becoming fucked“ÂÂ
On the one hand, yeah, screw Citgo. On the other hand, memo to Hugo: time for you to look up “fungible”.
Yeah, all that this will do is cause the shutdown of Citgo stations. As long as Citgo still sells his oil (it doesn’t matter who buys) the world oil price will remain the same and there will be zero impact on US oil prices.
No, J . . . there’s a difference. Citgo station owners pay him franchise fees.
It will cause a panic in Venezuela if they start going under. And as I say, it’s a shame for the franchisees, but . . . well, I’m fucking sorry.
Of course those franchisees can rebrand, which really needs to happen at some point. Perhaps we should just hand the Citgo refinery over to Exxon Mobil until the whole thing is settled.
It will hurt Hugo far more than us. (This is from last year but still applies today.)
And Hugo has a few more refineries, in Texas, Jersey and Illinois. Seeing as how he likes the idea of grabbing private property in the national interest, I’m sure he won’t mind if we appropriate Citgo’s assets.
Illinois
I know states can’t secede from the Union, but can they get kicked out?
Sorry, I already gave up my relatives for Lent.
Look at the funny man.
Refinery capacity is one issue, but transport another, the world oil market does not have enough excess tanker capacity to suddenly shift shipment routes from Venezuelan ports that currently ship across the Gulf to shipping across the Pacific. Chavez can disrupt our oil market temporarily but not for more than a few weeks.
Let them eat oil!
So far, Chavez doesn’t have the ability to abruptly suspend sales to the U.S. without damaging his own economy.
So far, Chavez has shown a remarkable ability to damage his own economy. So far, in fact, it seems to be the only thing he is capable of.
The boy ain’t very bright, is all I am saying.
You know he’s making that little jaunt to seize the oil fields in Maracaibo and other locations much more likely. I think we spare a company of the 101st AB or two for this operation
I hope we can spare an architect or two for the operation as well.
Just curious if anyone saw the insty link on this
http://louminatti.blogspot.com/2008/02/hugo-chavez-soon-to-be-ex-petrothug.html
The “mr. danger” quip is funny.
The boy ain’t very bright, is all I am saying.
It’s apparent his body has absorbed his neck. Maybe it took pieces of the brain stem and cerebellum with it.
Mr. Reynolds has this story.
Cause it worked so well in Zimbabwe I guess.
Let them eat oil!
I smell sulfur!
I’m sure “1-800-Call-Joe” will call upon their cousins in our senate to pass emergency relief for Hugo, in the event he actually stops sending free oil up to us poor people in the USA.
Cause it worked so well in Zimbabwe…
Doesn’t really matter, even if it works the probably can’t get the food to market:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002754665_venez22.html
Chavez’s problem is he’s just too generous and caring.
(From B Moe’s link.)
So it turns out it is counter-productive to spend all your money on unproductive things? Well I’ll be gobsmacked, who would have ever thought?
B Moe, you need to watch out. That’s how the guy got where he is in the first place.
Venezuela, like most South American countries, has a large, wealthy oligarchy that ends up shortstopping most things of value before they get spread out to the populace in general. It was (fairly justified) frustration at that situation that got Chavez the political support that made him President. Spending oil money on social services for the folks at the bottom of that particular ladder makes all kinds of sense. It doesn’t work, mind you, but given even the least whisper of socialist thought it’s perfectly sensible.
Exxon-Mobil would have been perfectly happy to keep sending them money for oil, and if Chavez and his cronies had satisfied themselves with redistribution of the profits away from the oligarchs and toward the farmers and low-grade workers he might even have done some good. It’s the stupidly counterproductive interference — the price controls, jailing producers, embracing FARC, etc. — that’s doing the damage, and each time a step doesn’t work they don’t have any real choice but to take the next one. That particular tiger savages its riders pretty thoroughly when they try to get off.
But as long as we keep making noises the Left can interpret as support for the oligarchs — who are, in fact, a fairly greedy and grasping bunch — the situation will continue. We really need to find some way other than box-stock Marxism to attack that sort of thing. It’s the fundamental reason behind illegal Mexican immigration, for instance — and the reason a lot of people you’d expect to be on the other side are supporting “amnesty” arrangements. We do not need a Chavez-squared sitting in Los Piños, and if Mexico didn’t have the northern border as a safety valve it would have happened a year and a half ago at the latest.
Regards,
Ric
Oil, as has been frequently demonstrated over many years, is fungible.
Good luck with that plan, Oogo…
Ain’t it a beautiful thing when a ginormous jagoff shoots himself in the foot?
I like the way the story ignores what prompted Exxon to attempt to seize billions of dollars in Venezuelan assets. I mean, I guess it’s just ’cause Exxon is evil, right?:
in late June, the Venezuelan government expropriated Exxon’s 41.67% interest in the Cerro Negro project, the oil giant said in the SEC filing. Exxon also said that the net impact of the dispute on its consolidated financial results can’t be reasonably estimated, but the company doesn’t expect the resolution to have a “material effect” on its operations or financial condition.
At the time the assets were expropriated, Exxon’s remaining net book investment in Cerro Negro producing assets was about $750 million, the company said. The estimated market value of the project exceeded $2 billion, according to the Eurasia Group.
Exxon Mobil’s market capitalization stood at $486 billion at the close of trade on Wednesday.
But as long as we keep making noises the Left can interpret as support for the oligarchs…
I consider Oligarchs counter-productive, also, but point taken.
We really need to find some way other than box-stock Marxism to attack that sort of thing. It’s the fundamental reason behind illegal Mexican immigration, for instance…
That is the sticky wicket, isn’t it? How do you peacefully impose a Constitution and free market on a country? One of the reasons I strongly favor a guest worker program is I think exposure to our system is a very positive force on the Mexican system. Former peons showing up back home with an idea of how things can be and some newfound economic power in their pockets should start pushing things in the right direction. It won’t be quick, but it might finally be relatively peaceful.
No, unfortunately. What actually happens is that the oligarchs utilize the Marxist mythos to depict our system as bad, bad, bad, and encourage the poor folk to support them in order to make sure that can’t happen here. Pobre México, tan lento del Senor, tan cerca de los Estados Unitos. The folks who come home with a little money are easily marginalized by the same set of tactics used to chop other nonconformists off at the knees: “Look, he’s got money. That means he’s evil, and it’s OK to rob evil people.”
It’s important to remember that, in the real world, there is no Marxist program. Lenin & Co. recast the whole thing as Fabianism using Marxist rhetoric; the objective is to depose the existing oligarchy and establish a new one made of the Right People (or, rather, the Left ones — the Vanguard of the Proletariat). What actually happens, of course, is that the new oligarchy either co-opts or is co-opted by the previous one; in either case the two merge, to produce something with a different founding mythos but functionally identical. Mexico is probably the best visible example of that; that’s what the PRI is, after all.
Regards,
Ric
One of Mexio’s major problems is a major distrust of Banks. If they want to start a business, they use their own capital to do so. This leads to less opportunity for job creation, which leads to less job availability, which results in a far more real class based system than what we would be used to in the States. A lack of even the possibility of upward mobility, combined with a deeply corrupt government, police and judicial system sets the stage for the Marxist rhetoric to take hold.
Where there’s no trust, talk is cheap, and money is very dear.
Haven’t bought at Citgo in years. Precisely because of Hugo Chavez.
The situation illustrates one of my maxims: Markets happen anyway.
If you suppress the money-based market, what you get is another market — this one in the attention and favor of the bureaucrats and officials who administer the system. The real problem is that the new market is illiquid because it doesn’t have a useful currency to operate in, and is therefore extremely prone to distortion and market failure.
As for banks, anyone who genuinely trusts a Mexican bank is insane, although things have become much better in what might be called “retail” banking in the last fifteen or twenty years. It’s not that the banks themselves are especially untrustworthy; it’s that the Mexican Government has traditionally regarded banks as handy concentrations of money, to be seized and put to use whenever convenient. It’s not just the Socialists either — the system goes back to Maximilian or before.
Regards,
Ric
True. There’s a major difference between Porfirio Diaz & Salinas, in that the former actually sank the money into public works and “infrastructure”.
Hugo Chavez is kind of like a dorky Simon Phoenix (Demolition Man).
“Look, I told them, nobody comes down here! The investors figured it out, the tourists figured it out, but the God-damn oil companies just… wouldn’t… listen!”
I guess that puts Exxon in the role of John Spartan.
I can’t wait for Exxon to freeze Hugo solid and smash his head into a million pieces.
Someone said to me the other day that “there’s something about Latin America that causes crappy little dictators and wasteful socialist claptrap to keep taking hold…”
So I said, “as opposed to Asia, or Africa, or Europe…”
And he said, “Well, put it that way…”
Comment by Ric Locke on 2/11 @ 9:50 am #
The situation illustrates one of my maxims: Markets happen anyway.
Hugo ,like all leftist, think that economics is something they control.
In the Northeast Citgo is very popular. Just filled up there today. Mobil has much cleaner and efficient stations…all blue and white but are on average 5 cents more per gallon. Citgo stations have a line out the street and Mobil’s are almost empty unless there aren’t any Citgo’s nearby.
I boycott Mobil and love Citgo. Mobil has dominated the political debate in the USA since the 70s with huge donations to mostly Republicans. It financed rabid anti-Enviromentalists, Heritage Foundation, etc. and only recently has finally admitted that Climate Change might just be real (nearly 99 percent of scientists in that field agree..while the ever decreasing handful of scientists of the anticlimate change theory have declined faster than John Tierney’s reputation at NYTimes.
Meanwhile, we’ve been receiving the largess of Venezuelan’s prosperity so Citgo is very popular in NY and NE. The fact that Venezuela’s company is now sharing it profits with the people of Venz..instead of for a few that regularly sent their well-off offspring to ski resorts in the USA during the 70s and 80s…when oil was then almost as profitable as it is now. We can do without those arrogant assholes from the oligarchies of Venezuela at the skiresorts who like Saudi son’s were asking where the whores are as soon as they got off the plane…really happened in Utah in the 70s…looking at those Mormon girls thinking they could buy them. They were sooo aroogant and ‘our friends’.
And recent huge profits at Mobil Exxon at the expense of America have heighten concerns about the traitorous habits of the MobilTexxon stripe of businessman.
you rightwingnut hivemindists can just keep listening to the Fox Network beating the drums of war against Venezuela. But Latin America seems to be listening to Chavez a bit…and they know that Generalissimo Bush isn’t going to be around too much longer.
President McCain (?) however, might get Chavez’s attention.
So American companies making money is bad. Actual fucking oppressive dictators making money is good. Thanks, dd, for so clearly laying out which team you are on.
Jd,,,,haha….check out Wiki’s comparison of the two companies: and Mobil pollutes and lies and compare. ExxonMobil is a consortium of the worst people in America. All that wingnut noise about ‘scientists’ saying global warming is not man-made..ah ha, all funded by ExxonMobil. Say what you want about Wikipedia…but you can go on there and prove their lying…if you can and edit it…but it can’t be done as ExxonMobil Sucks the bigone for being a Texas based bunch of crooks and liars. Hey, I am not a bigot… i like those texas girls…but the loud mouthed b.s men…..are from another planet.
dude, this is real life, not Team America. The good guys help you out like Citgo…and the bad guys steal your wallet like ExxonMobil.
it’s called “Globalization” and the “Market”. Remember Classical Liberalism isn’t about sordid patriotism. It’s Individualism.
Jd,,,,haha….check out Wiki’s comparison of the two companies: Citgo gives back to the community and Mobil pollutes and lies and compare. ExxonMobil is a consortium of the worst people in America. All that wingnut noise about ‘scientists’ saying global warming is not man-made..ah ha, all funded by ExxonMobil. Say what you want about Wikipedia…but you can go on there and prove their lying…if you can and edit it…but it can’t be done as ExxonMobil Sucks the bigone for being a Texas based bunch of crooks and liars. Hey, I am not a bigot… i like those texas girls…but the loud mouthed b.s men…..are from another planet.
dude, this is real life, not Team America. The good guys help you out like Citgo…and the bad guys steal your wallet like ExxonMobil.
it’s called “Globalization” and the “Market”. Remember Classical Liberalism isn’t about sordid patriotism. It’s Individualism.
hope you get some skiing in JD….it’s been fun lately.
If Chavez and Citgo are “good”, then I will gladly take advantage of my individualism, and economic choice, and contribute to companies that create American jobs, that do not prop up despotic oppressive regimes, and in short, have no ties to Chavez or any of his ilk. Nice teammates you have there, fucker.
Citgo – good. Exxon – bad. From the party of nuance, you sure do not seem to grasp the subtle nuances between the two.
Your views on global warming are trite, hackneyed, and have been refuted at length. That you choose to not listen, and not learn, tells us a great deal about you.
Citgo has never helped me out, dd. Nor do I expect them to. Nor had Mobil. All that is expected of them is to provide a product to the marketplace, and make a profit for their shareholders. Unlike Exxon, Chavez seems to think the best way of doing that is using the power of the state to sieze the assets of the competition. If the only way to win is to cheat …
Got 3 days of glorious back-country powder skiing in. Thanks, fucker.
Your views on global warming are trite, hackneyed, and have been refuted at length. That you choose to not listen, and not learn, tells us a great deal about you.
bullshit…you are quoting from the same failed academics that Mobil Oil and CATO institute keeps putting up..except they keep getting fewer and fewer.
yeah, only 3 days? in the BC? u’re always here?…where do you treadle your human powered keyboard from….the Unibomber’s cabin?
I am not in love w/ Hugo…btw. He could use a little PR. Since the USA won’t let a Chinese company buy an American Oil company….we’re hypocrites.
“who killed the electric car?” (that’s the future btw.)
“ When goods cannot cross borders, armies will. â€Â
â€â€Frederic Bastiat[35]
Yup, only 3 days. I was in Park City, UT. Have you ever heard of mobile broadband, datamoron? There are some remarkable new technologies available to people. You should really venture out more often. Remember those old cell phones that were the size of a briefcase? You can get rid of yours now. The people, they are laughing at you.
I quoted from nothing, douchedave. I simply pointed out that your cries of CONSENSUS are not backed up by actual fact-y like things.
I would say that the electric car will be the future when the market says so, and not a day sooner. I suspect that point in time will not come around until they can make an electric car with enough horsepower to stay up with some good old gas burning American muscle cars. And, when they can figure out how to make a battery that does not have a worse enivonmental impact than the combustion engine. Minor points, granted.
After reading that stuff about markets solving problems, grasshopper JD, I am worried about you. Maybe you fell in a spruce hole with ur snowboard and didn’t come up for air ’til it was almost too late….somebody found you just in time but you’ve been asphyxiated and lost major brain matter. Now, you’re truly a knuckle dragger. Yupp, sorry to hear that….but I think you’re on your hippy stix now….BlackDiamond..(I have a few pair of skis…recently some Atomic Tm:10s used w/ no scratches and lots of camber for BC travel…
(on the serious side, my ‘boss’ lost a friend’s son out in Colorado end of January due to the guy skiing and then sinking in a hole of powder and he wasn’t found in time…sad, funerals aren’t fun.)
And my boots? crappy ol’ t3s..need some t1s or t2s…and I am back to leather. got any to sell? size 10 US..? and I hate to tell u this….been on AT gear mostly for the steeper stuff…of late but gotta admit haven’t been up in the real mtns at all this year…that driving and getting on lifts is getting old which is why I like my miniture bc experience .. a 200 ft. cliff in th woods only eighth mile from me and 1000+ acres of forest trails and fields and lots of gullys and hills of state and land trust land all around me.)
Great snow year…except for a few rough spots, here in the East. I hear Utah is amazing this year…like too much snow. A friend was up at Solitude for a week with his family and they had to find only the steepest slopes as they couldn’t get down on their snowbds as the powder was too deep to move on a lesser slope. Park City? eh, now I know you’ve got bucks. Not sure, I’d call that backcountry. Try Alta next time? Go up Lone Pk…eh, that’s danger country.
yeah, there’s some real problems with electric cars…like my dual citizenship in two states, and can I make my two weekly trips thru the ADKs every month…250 mi each way. And in the trades? There is some doubt that electrics will pull the weight of a heavier load…. a point made by this guy in China: http://www.321energy.com/editorials/dubyne/dubyne090407.html very interesting points vs. electric mobility…but for most people it’d be a good thing.
Woke up early thinking about this Classical Liberalism thing and it’s differences with “Modern Liberalism”. Like one way to cure a Libertarian is to lay him off in the high tech sector and watch him scramble for the mortgage and then see the relief check from the state make him think again about the value of ‘communitarian values’ and so forth. And going back to Upton Sinclair and his inspiration for social security and the average worker’s life span of only 40 years before Social Security came around and how FDR was a conservative of the elite capitalistic class system and on and on and on…thinking Americans are really a bunch of locusts, eh? grasshoppers? Politically right or left…we don’t know that much.
Market dictating choice of cars? Eh…they have to Plan it like 5 years before they come to market (GM and Ford) or 2 years for Toyota….they have to build and anticipate demand…in fact: Create Demand. The ever haughty late James Kenneth Galbraith.. (reviled by both Libertarians, Classical Liberals, and eh…Paul Krugman??? see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kenneth_Galbraith )…did write a book called The New Industrial State about how major corporations have to dictate demand or die due to the need for planning far in advance of the consumers even knowing what they’ll want. That book was like das Kapital….a few pointedly well thought-out ideas dressed up in way too much verbiage. But a point none the less that modern ‘conservative’ libertarian types don’t seem to grasp. Like they are thinking of business cycles of from when they were in 8th grade and now they are going to college…like they haven’t been in the ‘real world’ yet.. and most of them haven’t….since they have parents that paid most of their way.)
broadband?…yeah….still very spotty in ADKs and VT and Central NY. mostly just DSL. like I almost wrote to PW from Speculator, NY midway on my trip from a gas station’s satellite hookup. pretty fast but….not wireless. Verizon, I can tell you has wide reception but is the ExxonMobil of wireless providers. I can’t tell you how many little flip phones I’ve been through. I don’t have a choice of providers at the moment. And I don’t have a laptop either..so shoot me!
consensus? some other thread I think…
thx. Sean… “ginormous jagoff” Yeah! creative verbiage like ol WFBuckley jagoff..eh jr. http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7300935
that link’s interesting. If Exxon limits Citgo’s supply of gasoline..that ‘ll make supply even more precious, thus prices and profits ever higher for the traitors from Texxas. And China will get ever more petro from Venz. that they want anyway. Not good for the American economy..but the Jagoffs of TexxonMobil could care less that lower consumer demand could lead to a recession…No wonder that GWBush is kissing Saudi butt.
Dave. Just stop. It’s not funny anymore. You’ve become/are an embarrassment to your education.Or appalling lack thereof.
rusty, go away. Don’t bore me.
datamoron – Alta on Friday. Even the groomer runs were covered in powder at Deer Valley. You had to keep going steeper and steeper just to be able to slide down the hills. Great stuff.
I like Winter Park in Colorado, although it’s a few hours by Gaia-slaying jet to get me within driving distance.
Naturally, I limit myself to one trip a week, to keep Gaia from dying a horrible death.