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posted by The Old Hippie @ 7:41 PM
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Here's One Example Of How Bush And Cheney Manipulate The Theft
Thomas Palley runs the Economics for Democratic and Open Societies Project. He is the author of Plenty of Nothing: The Downsizing of the American Dream and the Case for Structural Keynesianism. His weekly economic policy blog is at www.thomaspalley.com.
2006 was the year that oil prices came close to breaching $80 per barrel. This was despite the fact that there were no significant supply interruptions and oil demand actually fell in industrialized countries. That raises the question of what caused the spike.
It turns out there is good reason to believe that record oil prices may be due to our own strategic oil reserve, which the Bush administration may have been manipulating to drive up prices for the benefit of its clients. This is something Congress must investigate, and here is some preliminary evidence.
Any finding of manipulation would go far beyond corruption and be close to economic treason, because when oil prices increase America must pay more for its imported oil. That, in turn, increases the trade deficit and our foreign debt. Alternatively, one can think of price manipulation as the equivalent of a tax increase on American families that is paid to foreign governments, including Iran. While some small energy scandals are under investigation by Congress, the big enchilada is the strategic oil reserve, which may have been “strategically” manipulated to drive up oil prices. The key to understanding this manipulation is demand and supply and oil storage capacity.
The last three years have seen rapidly rising oil prices, and a tight oil market has meant that even small increases in demand have had large price impacts. During this period the Bush administration purposely expanded inventories of the strategic oil reserve, which rose from 600 million barrels in May 2003 to 700 million barrels in August 2005. The administration therefore increased demand by 125,000 barrels per day, and oil prices rose from 30 dollars per barrel to 70 dollars.
As oil prices rose, Wall Street became increasingly engaged in commodity speculation (the destructive effects of which is a story for another day), and this is where storage matters. As speculators entered the market the spot price of crude oil rose above the futures price. However, buying spot oil means taking delivery, which requires storage capacity. By adding to the strategic reserve, the administration not only increased oil demand but also increased storage capacity because the oil it bought was stored in the strategic reserve’s caverns. That helped speculators by adding storage capacity vital for cornering the market.
That brings us to today. Over the last month spot oil prices have been tumbling. The reason is that the market has finally run out of storage capacity, which means that all oil produced must now be immediately sold—and that has driven oil prices down. This suggests there has never been a supply shortage warranting seventy-five dollar oil, and absent the administration’s dealings, oil prices might not have risen as they did.
The story does not end here. With private sector oil storage capacity exhausted, the administration has now announced its intention to double the size of the strategic oil reserve from 700 million barrels to 1.5 billion barrels, and it plans to start purchasing 100,000 barrels of oil per day.
The result has been predictable, with the price of oil jumping from $50 to $55 per barrel over the last week (01/19- 01/24). Not only will these purchases increase oil demand, they will also provide new storage capacity needed to re-corner the market.
One last piece of evidence concerns Hurricane Katrina and the oil loan program. Following Katrina, gulf oil production was interrupted causing shortages of crude for refineries. The administration’s response was to loan crude to refiners who were to pay it back in kind. That was a huge gift to refiners who got the oil they wanted and then made a killing on the processed gasoline that was in short supply after Katrina. The proper way to handle the situation would have been to auction the oil, in which case taxpayers would have got the windfall disaster rent (excess profit) resulting from Katrina. This is because refiners would have been willing to pay a high price knowing that gas prices were high.
But there’s yet more damage. If government had auctioned the oil, it could have chosen when to buy it back. Instead, companies paid it back in kind in late 2005 and early 2006, and these payments tightened the market demand and also freed up private storage capacity facilitating further market cornering.
The oil market is full of smoke that provides perfect cover for corruption. Every price blip calls forth explanations in terms of Chinese demand, more violence in Nigeria’s delta region, cold weather, threats from Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez or heightened tensions over Iran’s nuclear program. The strategic reserve is the perfect vehicle for corruption since transactions can be cloaked in the veil of national defense. But the situation is clear. A motive exists, the bad character of the administration is known and the circumstantial evidence is strong.
Congress must investigate the strategic oil reserve, how it has been managed and what its purpose is. The recently announced expansion serves no real national security function (though that will be the justification) and will only drive up oil prices and add to the budget deficit and national debt.
One last factoid. A recent IMF study documented that oil prices in the U.S. appear to be politically manipulated, falling prior to elections—as they did in 2002, 2004 and 2006. If you are an economist you ask how that is done. The answer is the strategic oil reserve.
posted by The Old Hippie @ 1:11 AM
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Why Do Americans Not Get It?
This administration has successfully, competently, efficiently - completed the largest theft of a nation's wealth, including also the greatest transference of governmental powers, (to themselves, corporatists,) in the entire history of this planet. In fact, they are still being allowed their theft and transference of this nation's wealth, and governmental powers... to this very hour... as they are still allowed to be in power - unstopped - unpunished.
- The no-bid contracts to their corporations are still being allowed.
- The rewriting of regulatory laws, to protect them from us, the masses, are still being allowed.
- The wars are still being allowed to be extended and broadened to allow their war-profits to
continue to pour in.
Everything, and anything, else is just “misdirection and fogging” of their continued success, competency, and efficiency of the theft.
Why don't my fellow American citizens just stop them? Is it a lack of will, or maybe a lack of ability, or simple disbelief that this administration is a set of sneering, competent, efficient thieves?
posted by The Old Hippie @ 10:52 AM
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I Really Wish We Had Been Wrong About What Was Going To Happen.
No fancy formatting, or videos, or cute biting cartoons. . . just an unapologetic rant. . .
Long before my birth, and all the way up to, and including the election/selection debacle of 2000, the reality-based-sane never stopped trying to warn of the vulnerability to our democracy by the insane corruption of, and possible destruction by, corporatists, and their purposeful greed through their military-industrial-extractive-energy-pharmaceutical-agchem corporations' take-over of our government. These warnings intensified during the presidential campaign of 1998-2000.
We, (who refer to ourselves as the reality-based-sane,) naively believed in November of 2000, that sanity prevailed in that election, but we hadn't taken into account the real possibility that the (Federal level) United States Supreme Court would be allowed to flagrantly break our nation's laws, and over-rule (a state level) Florida Supreme Court's election ruling, to “select” the un-elected candidate. But they did.
The selected administration immediately cleaned out our treasury's surplus, began replacing all of our federal regulatory agencies upper and middle management personnel with their corporate ex-CEOs and lobbyists, (that had for decades been fighting our regulatory agencies for their corporations,) and re-writing the regulatory laws to benefit and protect them, and their profits, from all the rest of us. At first they found it difficult to push their agenda, that is until the convenient crimes of 9/11/2001 - Which provided them cover, and “legitimate” misdirection of what they were really doing - The historically unprecedented theft and shift of our nation's wealth into their very few hands, and the restructuring our government's laws and regulations to protect them from being stopped by us.
This past mid-term election gives hope - But - They are still in power, unstopped. The theft and wealth-shift continues to this day. The environmental destruction wrought from their abuses has, in many areas, progressed beyond the hope of repair. Much of that can only be mitigated now. The political destabilization caused by their purposeful corruption and greed, is also gone beyond the tipping point in much of the mid-east, and Muslim peoples. But, unlike the physical environment, political damages can be repaired - But - The political damage they have caused, (are still causing,) might explode in our collective faces before those repairs can be made.
It's a simple reality people - Until they are stopped - it will get worse.
posted by The Old Hippie @ 1:27 AM
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“World opinion is against it. The American people are against it. The Democratic Party is against it. The Congress of the United States is against it. The Iraq Study Group is against it. The Iraqi people are against it. The Iraqi government is against it. Many Republican lawmakers are against it. The top brass are against it. But George W. Bush is going to do it: send 21,500 more troops into Iraq. Can a single man force a nation to fight a war it does not want to fight, expand a war it does not want to expand--possibly to other countries? If he can, is that nation any longer a democracy in any meaningful sense? Is its government any longer a constitutional republic? If not, how can democratic rule and the republican form of government be restored? These are the unwelcome questions that President Bush's decision has forced on the country.”
 {-The Way Many Picture Me-} | Here is the direct link to the original. Please go read it. Then maybe even re-read it. This man, George W. Bush, his family, their friends, and the corporations they profit from, have successfully pulled off the greatest theft of a nation's wealth, and the transfer of a nation's wealth, ever allowed in the written history of this planet. They also need to keep the war(s?) going, as long as possible, for no other noble reason than to keep the profits flowing into their familiess' coffers, as long as possible. As long as, we the citizens of this nation, continue to allow them to strip our wealth into their private pockets, our collective lives, freedoms, liberties, and even our environment will continue to decrease, and degrade. Is there really any other way to look at what they have done, and are in fact still being allowed to do? Is this our nation, or theirs? |
Add in the corporatists' opportunistic use of, and their political manipulation of, the insane Rapturists, and the radical Dominionists, which has quite possibly brought about the destruction of America's cherished Separation of Church and State, and you have the reality of the classic definition of a fascist state, except in these modern times it has been enhanced into something that, maybe, has grown beyond the control of even the corrupt corporatist profiteers themselves. But what I fear most. . . is the fact that nothing “real” has been done, or is being done, so far, to stop this sneeringly open, and criminal, theft and insanity. The human deaths continue to mount, the environmental destruction continues to worsen, the security of freedoms and liberties continue to deteriorate, not only here in America, also worldwide. . . And yet - Nothing “real” has been, or is currently being done to stop the “allowing.”
There are a few bright spots of hope, where the peoples of some of the South and Central American nations, e.g. Brazil, Venezuela, et al, are actually forcing their nations to “just say no” to the corporatists, but since the corporatists are vehemently against them, therefore “America” is against them, their battle is not yet won, and may ultimately fail.
posted by The Old Hippie @ 7:05 AM
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| - “A Parable For Our Times” - Bill Moyers - Preparing to Move the Doomsday Clock Forward - Reuters - “A Storm of Denial” - Paul Rogat Loeb - “Temperatures Rising” - The Register-Guard (Eugene, Or) - The 5th Anniversary of Guantanamo - McClatchy Newspapers - “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” - Greg Palast |  |
| Direct Link To Mark Fiore's Animation Gallery |
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posted by The Old Hippie @ 8:20 AM
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posted by The Old Hippie @ 3:18 AM
1 comments
posted by The Old Hippie @ 5:17 AM
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posted by The Old Hippie @ 2:17 PM
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AlterNet Has Good Info On The “Christian” Influence In Government
posted by The Old Hippie @ 11:39 AM
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They're Still Stealing, And It Seems That America Can't Stop Them.
It wasn't the Oil, even though it was a major part of it. It wasn't the punishment, as Iraq had nothing to do with the crimes of our “911.” It wasn't a son's opportunistic revenge for his father, even though it did play a small part in it. It wasn't politics-as-usual, even though they successfully used the politicalization of every possible wedge issue to hide, and/or fog, the real reason behind their crime of a war of aggression against, and illegal occupation of, a sovereign nation, that had not attacked, nor was any threat to us. The real reason was a simple theft. The largest theft of a nation's wealth, by the robber barons of today. It was all about the money, and it's power. Still is.
{-The Way Many Picture Me-} | All the way back to the Founders, our best leaders warned that “allowing” corporations too much power and control of our Constitutional Democracy would lead, (and has led,) to the possibility of a criminal administration, like we now face. |
Add in the corporatists' opportunistic use of, and their political manipulation of, the insane Rapturists, and the radical Dominionists, which has quite possibly brought about the destruction of America's cherished Separation of Church and State, and you have the reality of the classic definition of a fascist state, except in these modern times it has been enhanced into something that, maybe, has grown beyond the control of even the corrupt corporatist profiteers themselves.
But what I fear most. . . is the fact that nothing “real” has been done, or is being done, so far, to stop this sneeringly open, and criminal, theft and insanity. The human deaths continue to mount, the environmental destruction continues to worsen, the security of freedoms and liberties continue to deteriorate, not only here in America, also worldwide. . . And yet - Nothing “real” has been, or is currently being done to stop the “allowing.”
There are a few bright spots of hope, where the peoples of some of the South and Central American nations, e.g. Brazil, Venezuela, et al, are actually forcing their nations to “just say no” to the corporatists, but since the corporatists are vehemently against them, therefore “America” is against them, their battle is not yet won, and may ultimately fail.
posted by The Old Hippie @ 7:45 AM
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