Posted on 05/26/2008 3:46:46 PM PDT by decimon
Oil rose above $133 a barrel Monday on persistent worries about global petroleum supplies and the outlook for the U.S. economy and the dollar.
Reports of an attack by militants on an oil pipeline in Nigeria, one of Africa's largest oil exporters, also helped boost prices.
Light, sweet crude for July delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange was up 88 cents at $133.07 a barrel in electronic trading by late afternoon in Europe. The contract rose $1.38 to settle at $132.19 a barrel on Friday.
Nymex floor trading was closed Monday for Memorial Day and it also was a holiday in Britain, resulting in lower trading volume than usual.
The dollar has weakened over the last week after a modest recovery, and investors will be watching economic data out of the United States to be released over the next few days for further clues about the health of the world's biggest economy.
"The dollar's been swinging down again," said Mark Pervan, senior commodity strategist at Australia & New Zealand Bank in Melbourne, and that's "going to sway sentiment."
Oil and other hard commodities are seen as hedges against a weakening dollar and inflation. Also, a weak dollar, the currency of international oil trade, makes petroleum products less expensive to Asian and European buyers.
This week, investors will be watching for what implications U.S. consumer confidence, new home sales, gross domestic product and other economic data might have for the dollar and oil prices, he said.
"It's a pretty price sensitive week for economic data," Pervan said. "The data we're seeing out of the U.S. at the moment looks pretty weak. You'd expect that trend to continue, pushing further down on the dollar."
The dollar, one of the factors that has fed oil's rally from about $65 a year ago, was lower against the yen, but up a bit against the euro in currency trading during the afternoon in Europe after losing ground Friday in New York.
The euro slipped to $1.5764 compared with $1.5775 on Friday, while the dollar fell to 103.41 Japanese yen from 104.17 yen Friday.
Prices also were supported when militants in Nigeria, a major supplier to the U.S. market, claimed they destroyed an oil pipeline and killed 11 soldiers in a gunbattle.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta says it attacked the pipeline operated by a Royal Dutch Shell PLC joint venture early Monday. Shell officials were not immediately available for comment, and a military spokesman had no immediate confirmation of any overnight incidents.
Last week, a series of supply warnings shook markets, and Thursday, a report that the International Energy Agency — the energy watchdog for the most industrialized nations — is in the process of lowering its forecast for long-term global oil supply, sent crude futures rocketing to an all-time high of $135.09 a barrel.
Investors are also worried about a growing squeeze on global diesel supplies as demand in China surges has sparked a massive run up in heating oil prices.
Over the weekend, China's top economic planning agency again urged oil and power companies to make sure there are enough supplies for earthquake-hit areas and for the Beijing Olympic Games in August.
"They certainly want to have a buffer of supply ... so there's pressure on the upside from demand in Asia," Pervan said.
The U.S. driving season officially kicked-off with the long Memorial Day weekend there, and even if demand for gasoline and diesel is lower than it was a year ago, it will still be stronger than it was in the preceding months, he said.
In other electronic trading, heating oil futures rose 7.89 cents to $3.9445 a gallon while gasoline prices rose 2.95 cents to $3.4255 a gallon. Natural gas futures rose 18.2 cents to $12.039 per 1,000 cubic feet.
___
AP Business Writer Thomas Hogue in Bangkok, Thailand, contributed to this report.
Read this and I think you will agree the oil industry has already been Nationalized in the US;
It was common in those days, as it is in ours, to identify the Communists as leftist and the Nazis as rightists, as if they stood on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. But Mises knew differently. They both sported the same ideological pedigree of socialism. “The German and Russian systems of socialism have in common the fact that the government has full control of the means of production. It decides what shall be produced and how. It allots to each individual a share of consumer’s goods for his consumption.”
The difference between the systems, wrote Mises, is that the German pattern “maintains private ownership of the means of production and keeps the appearance of ordinary prices, wages, and markets.” But in fact the government directs production decisions, curbs entrepreneurship and the labor market, and determines wages and interest rates by central authority. “Market exchange,” says Mises, “is only a sham.”
Mises’s account is confirmed by a remarkable book that appeared in 1939, published by Vanguard Press in New York City (and unfortunately out of print today). It is The Vampire Economy: Doing Business Under Fascism by Guenter Reimann, then a 35-year old German writer. Through contacts with German business owners, Reimann documented how the “monster machine” of the Nazis crushed the autonomy of the private sector through onerous regulations, harsh inspections, and the threat of confiscatory fines for petty offenses.
“Industrialists were visited by state auditors who had strict orders to examine the balance sheets and all bookkeeping entries of the company or individual businessman for the preceding two, three or more years until some error or false entry was found,” explains Reimann. “The slightest formal mistake was punished with tremendous penalties. A fine of millions of marks was imposed for a single bookkeeping error.”
Reimann quotes from a businessman’s letter: “You have no idea how far state control goes and how much power the Nazi representatives have over our work. The worst of it is that they are so ignorant. These Nazi radicals think of nothing except ‘distributing the wealth.’ Some businessmen have even started studying Marxist theories, so that they will have a better understanding of the present economic system.
“While state representatives are busily engaged in investigating and interfering, our agents and salesmen are handicapped because they never know whether or not a sale at a higher price will mean denunciation as a ‘profiteer’ or ‘saboteur,’ followed by a prison sentence. You cannot imagine how taxation has increased. Yet everyone is afraid to complain. Everywhere there is a growing undercurrent of bitterness. Everyone has his doubts about the system, unless he is very young, very stupid, or is bound to it by the privileges he enjoys.
“There are terrible times coming. If only I had succeeded in smuggling out $10,000 or even $5,000, I would leave Germany with my family. Business friends of mine are convinced that it will be the turn of the ‘white Jews’ (which means us, Aryan businessmen) after the Jews have been expropriated. The difference between this and the Russian system is much less than you think, despite the fact that we are still independent businessmen.”
As Mises says, “independent” only in a decorous sense. Under fascism, explains this businessman, the capitalist “must be servile to the representatives of the state” and “must not insist on rights, and must not behave as if his private property rights were still sacred.” It’s the businessman, characteristically independent, who is “most likely to get into trouble with the Gestapo for having grumbled incautiously.”
“Of all businessmen, the small shopkeeper is the one most under control and most at the mercy of the party,” recounts Reimann. “The party man, whose good will he must have, does not live in faraway Berlin; he lives right next door or right around the corner. This local Hitler gets a report every day on what is discussed in Herr Schultz’s bakery and Herr Schmidt’s butcher shop. He would regard these men as ‘enemies of the state’ if they complained too much. That would mean, at the very least, the cutting of their quota of scarce and hence highly desirable goods, and it might mean the loss of their business licenses. Small shopkeepers and artisans are not to grumble.”
“Officials, trained only to obey orders, have neither the desire, the equipment, nor the vision to modify rules to suit individual situations,” Reimann explains. “The state bureaucrats, therefore, apply these laws rigidly and mechanically, without regard for the vital interests of essential parts of the national economy. Their only incentive to modify the letter of the law is in bribes from businessmen, who for their part use bribery as their only means of obtaining relief from a rigidity which they find crippling.”
Says another businessman: “Each business move has become very complicated and is full of legal traps which the average businessman cannot determine because there are so many new decrees. All of us in business are constantly in fear of being penalized for the violation of some decree or law.”
Business owners, explains another entrepreneur, cannot exist without a “collaborator,” i.e., a “lawyer” with good contacts in the Nazi bureaucracy, one who “knows exactly how far you can circumvent the law.” Nazi officials, explains Reimann, “obtain money for themselves by merely taking it from capitalists who have funds available with which to purchase influence and protection,” paying for their protection “as did the helpless peasants of feudal days.”
“It has gotten to the point where I cannot talk even in my own factory,” laments a factory owner. “Accidentally, one of the workers overheard me grumbling about some new bureaucratic regulation and he immediately denounced me to the party and the Labor Front office.”
Reports another factory owner: “The greater part of the week I don’t see my factory at all. All this time I spend in visiting dozens of government commissions and offices in order to get raw materials I need. Then there are various tax problems to settle and I must have continual conferences and negotiations with the Price Commission. It sometimes seems as if I do nothing but that, and everywhere I go there are more leaders, party secretaries, and commissars to see.”
In this totalitarian paradigm, a businessman, declares a Nazi decree, “practices his functions primarily as a representative of the State, only secondarily for his own sake.” Complain, warns a Nazi directive, and “we shall take away the freedom still left you.”
In 1933, six years before Reimann’s book, Victor Klemperer, a Jewish academic in Dresden, made the following entry in his diary on February 21: “It is a disgrace that gets worse with every day that passes. And there’s not a sound from anyone. Everyone’s keeping his head down.”
It is impossible to escape the parallels between Guenter Reimann’s account of doing business under the Nazis and the “compassionate,” “responsible,” and regulated “capitalism” of today’s U.S. economy today. At least the German government was frank enough to give the right name to its system of economic control.
Here is the link for this article:
O-U-C-H...
$200/barrel by the end of summer isn’t looking too far-fetched....
Nigeria has enough crude oil in storage...lifting and shipments will not be effected. This is just more hysteria from the traders and the media.
I’m not an expert on Mexican history, but weren’t their wells initially drilled by American and English oil companies? And didn’t Mexico then steal— I mean, nationalize them in the 1930s? Doesn’t this suggest that they never were and never will be willing to undergo the effort and risk to find new oil? That they just sit around, let someone else do the work, then take it?
Just the tip of the iceberg. Let's take a look and then project a scenario based on historical and current events.
On March 18, 1938, citing the 27th article of the 1917 constitution, President Lázaro Cárdenas embarked on the state-expropriation of all resources and facilities, nationalizing the U.S. and Anglo-Dutch operating companies, creating PEMEX. In retaliation, many foreign governments closed their markets to Mexican oil. In spite of the boycott, PEMEX developed into one of the largest oil companies in the world and helped Mexico become the fifth largest oil exporter in the world.
Ok, we knew that, so what does that mean? Let's look at a couple of other factors...
Oh yea, it's real. This is the current situation in California and it is rapidly approaching that in South Texas and San Antonio. Dallas as well, to a lesser degree, but it is getting there. It is spreading across the entire United states. It is invading not just our cities towns neighborhoods, it is locked into our universities and even public High Schools!
Take a look...
LA RAZA UNIDA (THE UNIFIED RACE)
They are an "Open Borders" group that contends that the mythical land of "Atzlan" was stolen from Mexico by the United States "We see no human being as 'illegal.' Those who have arrived to the U.S. with heritage indigenous to the Americas, and specifically those crossing the southern border, are migrants on their "own continent"."
La Raza Unida ("the Unified Race"), also known as the La Raza Unida Party, is an association of groups formed in the late 1960s and early 1970s with chapters throughout the American Southwest, most prominently in California, Colorado and Texas. As the organization explains, "La Raza Unida [in Texas] organized around electing Chicanos to Boards of Education and City Councils. ... The spirit and force of La Raza Unida was truly embodied in Texas under the leadership of Jose Angel Gutierrez, a student and [the] President of the Mexican American Youth Organization." Gutierrez, an open borders advocate who founded La Raza Unida, has stated, "We have an aging white America ... They are dying. ... They are sh---ing in their pants with fear! I love it! ... We have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to the worst, we have got to kill him."
La Raza Unida supports an open borders policy of unrestricted immigration; the effective dissolution of American borders; and amnesty, civil liberties protections, and expanded rights for illegals already residing in the United States. The organization articulates its immigration philosophy as follows: "We see no human being as 'illegal.' Those who have arrived to the U.S. with heritage indigenous to the Americas, and specifically those crossing the southern border, are migrants on their own continent."
Mexica Movement
The group considers the Aztlan ideology to be too limited in scope, and treats it as an outdated sentiment of the 1970's.
Instead, the Mexica Movement insists that the entire North American continent -- Anahuac, in the Nahuatl language -- belongs collectively to indigenous people.
They believe that North America was unjustly "stolen" from its rightful owners by white Europeans. It rejects the legitimacy of any North or Central American nation named or established by Europeans. It advocates open borders and calls for the expulsion of all whites from North America. The group views White people as "Europeans" who squat on Indigenous lands.
The Mexica Movement takes pains to distinguish itself from what it terms "the Spain-centric and error-filled 'Aztlan' … agenda," which calls for Mexico's "re-conquest" of the American Southwest. MM's aims go much farther, seeking "the total liberation of our Anahuac continent ('North America') not just to where the European Spaniards drew their colonial borders on our continent." According to MM, this includes every portion of what are currently called Canada, the United States, Mexico, and Central America.
MM advocates a form of socialism / communism as an economic ideal, but rejects "European people's Eurocentric Marxist … social agendas [that] ignore or minimize … the ongoing racist crimes of the Europeans." Claiming that Karl Marx himself derived his "best solutions" from "research[ing] … our Nican Tlaca societies," MM says, "we don't need the European Karl Marx interpreting the success of our ancestors' collective societies to us. With proper study, we can interpret ourselves to ourselves a lot better than Mr. Karl Marx."
"But worse than the Marxist approach for our people," says MM, "is the suicidal embrace of individualism, materialism, capitalism (and) 'Christianity'
MEChA
The acronym MEChA stands for "Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan." or "Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan."
MEChA is an Hispanic separatist organization that encourages anti-American activities and civil disobedience. The radical members of MEChA who refer to themselves as "Mechistas," romanticize Mexican claims to the "lost Territories" of the Southwestern United States -- a Chicano country called Aztlan. In its national constitution, MEChA calls for self-determination by its members to liberate Aztlan. MEChA's national constitution starts out: "Chicano and Chicana students of Aztlán must take upon themselves the responsibilities to promote Chicanismo within the community, politicizing our Raza with an emphasis on indigenous consciousness to continue the struggle for the self-determination of the Chicano people for the purpose of liberating Aztlán."
The official national symbol of MEChA is an eagle holding a machete-like weapon and a stick of dynamite. It is to this day still on the home page of their website.
MEChA espouses what it calls an ideology of “Chicanismo,” wherein Chicano purity is held up as a supreme virtue while assimilation is denounced as a betrayal of ethnic heritage. Those Latinos who fail to adhere to MEChA’s ideological platform are condemned as “race traitors.”
MEChA has today established itself as a potent force on campuses nationwide: the organization boasts upward of 300 chapters in universities across the U.S., some 100 them of in California alone. Chicano Studies programs and departments have proliferated in recent years, many being administered by faculty who were themselves former MEChA activists and who remain sympathetic to the organization’s politics. Despite its radical agenda, MEChA has been able to generate revenue through mandatory student activity fees. MEChA has also focused recruitment on public high schools, establishing high-school chapters and encouraging its young supporters to participate in protests and marches.
Also controversial is the phrase "Por La Raza todo, Fuera de La Raza nada", which translates "For the Race, everything, outside the Race, nothing". Many critics of MEChA see this statement as ethnocentric and racist.
Nation of Atzlan. Communist, racists, anti-semitic, anti-American's that aid and abbet illegal alien criminal border and immigration law violators.
The Nation of Aztlán is a Chicano nationalist organization that has been described as antisemitic by the Anti-Defamation League, which says that "[t]he group's nationalist message is blurred by frequent appeals to anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, homophobia and other expressions of hatred."[1] The group has made numerous vitriolic statements about Israel and Israel's relationship with the USA. The group is also vocal about the USA's relationship with Mexico, being particularly critical about the Anglo "gringo"'s attempts of nativist immigration exclusionism of people who enter the USA from Mexico, whether legally or illegally. They have claimed that non-Brown people are the true illegal aliens, maintaining that they are the only natives with a credible complaint about illegal immigration. They, along with the Mexica Movement hoisted signs saying "PILGRIM GO HOME!", during the 2006 United States immigration reform protests and Great American Boycott. They have been direly opposed to the Minuteman Projects, which says its mission is to prevent one of Aztlan's objectives, that of unrestricted immigration, or the seasonal migration of Mexican workers.
There is a video on their website that "explains" their claim they have suffered genocide for five hundred years and the United States "belongs" to them.
http://w ww.aztlan.net/solve_illegal_immigration.htm
It is about fifteen minutes long but watch the whole thing please as there are significant points near and at the end.
One of their top representatives is Professor Armando Navarro which you can hear his speech here There is information explaining the video here. Give it a bit of time to load the page. There is also a pic of the cover for one of Armando Navarro’s "Chicano Studies" textbooks towards the bottom that speaks volumes about the crap in our high schools and universities these days.
WOW. No other way to describe it. We are not only encountering an invasion of disastrous proportion from thirty million illegal aliens, they and their anchor baby offspring are being brainwashed when they get here!
So, what might one think is going to happen when those mexican oil fields REALLY start to sputter and the 40% of the entire mexican government's revenue evaporates?
Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America
"The stated goals of the SPP are cooperation and information sharing, improving productivity, reducing the costs of trade, enhancing the joint stewardship of the environment, facilitating agricultural trade while creating a safer and more reliable food supply, and protecting people from disease."
Ok, does anyone really believe that load of crap? Since when are the mexicans "stewards of the environment?" How about "creating a safer and more reliable food supply" when they are shipping produce infected with diseases and “fertilized” with human feces? Is that "protecting people from disease?" And what about it's spin-off, The North American Competitiveness Council (NACC)
The North American Competitiveness Council (NACC)is an official tri-national working group of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP). It was created at the second summit of the SPP in Cancún, Quintana Roo, Mexico, in March 2006. Composed of 30 corporate representatives from some of North America's largest companies, the North American Competitiveness Council has been mandated to set priorities for the SPP and to act as a stable driver of the integration process through changes in government in all three countries.
Mandates that will execute changes in government? That is representative government? NO. It is ADMINISTRATIVE government.
North American Union.
"Most mainstream interest in a North American Union has focused on the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) which finds its origins in proposals for increasing integration in the NAFTA trade bloc during President Bush's first term. Such ideas were commonly called proposals for a NAFTA plus.[7] Former President Vicente Fox of Mexico proposed such an agreement including a NAFTA energy policy, a security NAFTA policy, an advance in financial institutions interchanged,[8] and according to other reports a common market, development fund, migration agreement and new institutions.[9] Fox said such an agreement would take the U.S. and Mexico to a "further integration" and eventually seeking a "convergence" of their economies allowing them to "erase that border".
Erase the border? WTF? But that is not supposed to be real, their is no such thing as the NAU, right? Just a bunch of kooks, right???
Take a glance at just what Presidential candidate is getting shoved up our collective azzes... why that would be our little "maverick conservative" Juan MxCain! Mr. AMNESTY himself! The magic comeback candidate, right? Broke one month, twenty five million in the bank the next. Getting about 1% in the polls in the fall, top dog in the spring. Damn near magic, huh?
So putting it all together...
For thirty years the "environmentalists" are allowed to pizz and moan about "habitats and eco-systems" and the energy infrastructure of the United States ages into inadequacy to prevent the now disastrous situation that has occurred from Investment Funds moving from internet (ISP's) (burst bubble) to Telecom (burst bubble) to Housing/home mortgage (burst bubble) and now Petro energy (fixing to burst bubble). And the American taxpayer took the hit each time. But this one is going to be a nation killer. Our Nation.
The first indications that PEMEX is going to fold start showing up around 2004 and prod uction numbers began dropping in 2005. Lets see, when did those proposals for the wondrous economic utopias of a combined Canada, United States and Mexico appear?
It was launched in October 2004 and published two documents: Trinational Call for a North American Economic and Security Community by 2010 (March 2005) and its final report Building a North American Community[1] (May 2005).
Golly, what a coincidence! How about that little trial balloon "meeting" in Waco? The Partnership was founded in Waco, Texas on March 23, 2005 by Paul Martin, Prime Minister of Canada, Vicente Fox, President of Mexico, and George W. Bush, President of the United States.
The precursor to all this was NAFTA back in 1994 and it managed to survive by NOT getting repealed despite it's failure to do what was claimed. But it started opening doors to mexico.
The population of mexico is being allowed and beginning to be encouraged to invade the US. By around 2000 there are mexican government agencies that are actively aiding the illegal aliens get across. Mexico is helping them cross and the US gives only lip service to securing the border, despite 9-11. So, after NAFTA illegal immigration explodes.
The La Raza Unida, Mexica Movement and MEChA rocket into the forefront and are actually allowed into our universities and even High Schools despite their common racist theme of the "Nation of Atzlan."
Despite MASSIVE public opinion in opposition, major political movers and shakers are constantly pounding Congress for an amnesty that would, according to very credible sources, put over 30 million illegal aliens on the voter rolls through Amnesty.
It fails despite repeated attempts directly in the face of the American Voter. The primary instigator of this insanity is Arizona Senator JOHN MCCAIN. Less than one year later that very same Senator, despite poll numbers that were below 1% is now the nominee for the "conservative" Republican Party candidate for President of The United States.
And he is still to this day OPENLY advocating his original failed Amnesty Bill!
Juan MxCain wins the presidency.
Because they are supposedly following the lead of the "Republican" President his pet amnesty bill gets through.
The mexican oilfield production continues to decline by 10 - 15% per year.
There is a massive and immediate flood of illegals from mexico into the US because the US Government has failed to actually secure 90% of the border.
A new forgery industry explodes into existence both in mexico and the US providing made to order "documentation" of previous residence in the US in the form of made to order fake utility bills, school report cards, etc, which there is no system to verify yet will be accepted as "proof" that an illegal alien is eligible for the amnesty.
Operating this "backwards compatible" amnesty proves to be nearly imposable and the deadlines for applying are dropped indefinitely. More and more are showing up with all the proper "proof" that they are eligible for the amnesty.
The mexican oilfield production continues to decline by 10 - 15% per year.
The 2010 NAU, SSP, and Independent Task Force on North America protocols are put into place in the US Government.
Due to the faltering economy in mexico even more are taking what little money they have and buying the forged documentation that allows them to apply for Juan MxCain's amnesty and join the flood of illegals coming across the STILL unsecured border.
The La Raza Unida, Mexica Movement and MEChA are meeting the illegals and spreading the propaganda that the major invasion of the US by the mexicans is "proof" that they are right and the US belongs to the invaders.
The mexican oilfield production continues to decline by 10 - 15% per year.
The communist democrats, aiding by President MxCain long standing tradition of siding with the democrats pass a resolution to stop the application process and make the amnesty a blanket policy. All the illegal must do is register via a postcard like form. "It's kind of like the draft" will be the reason / excuse.
The racist political policies in existence in California in the form of it’s very own elected officials the have today will have spread across the US and some of the mexican politicians are remembering the path to power and extreme wealth in the model of Mexico.
The mexican oilfield production continues to decline by 10 - 15% per year.
The price of crude is nearing $200 brl and gas is at $6 a gallon, yet the government is still bowing to the "environmentalists" and no real energy solutions have been implemented. Not a single new nuke plate is complete, no offshore drilling has been allowed.
There are now enough mexican Senators and Congressmen to pass the "The National Emergency Energy Policy" which is not a policy at all. It is the same nationalization of the energy companies in mexico in 1938 but because of the "emergency" the ignorant amnestied voters fall for the rally cry of Big Oil, Big Oil, Big Oil, Big Oil...
The result however will be quite predicable. Without the assistance of other forms of domestic energy production (nuke power) and the loss of trillions in assists the major production companies in the US fold up disrupting the entire economy of the US.
As the US grind to a halt, "civil disruption" breaks out. Much violence begins to occur between the real American Citizens and the amnestied-Americans, who have swallowed the propaganda of La Raza Unida, Mexica Movement and MEChA, which expands into full blown insurrection by the former illegals.
American citizens that attempt to defend themselves are labeled "terrorists" under the provisions of the "PATRIOT" Act because once again, the government of the US has fallen under control of a mexican/hispanic politicians that follow the racists precepts of La Raza Unida, Mexica Movement and MEChA that promote the false hope of a "Nation of Atzlan."
Instead, they fall in with what is left of the American Citizens and become exactly what the amnesty-Americans were, peasants in mexico. But just a little further north.
“You cannot imagine how taxation has increased. Yet everyone is afraid to complain. Everywhere there is a growing undercurrent of bitterness. Everyone has his doubts about the system, unless he is very young, very stupid, or is bound to it by the privileges he enjoys.”
This very quote from the article is striking.
We are taxed to the limits. Business is taxed to the point it is barely profitable. People who do earn a good living, have a house in the burbs and two cars have too much to lose if they complain about taxes or government regulations or even their elected reps.
The government has too much leverage on individual rights. We have been granted, regardless of class, just enough property and freedom that we dare not create an uprising. The government takes away everything they have granted us, deems us criminals, terrorists, and the message is lost when the messinger is imprisoned. Certainly nobody is credible in opinion if they cross the government.
Thus a new class of criminal has been created.
I wish this book was back in print. The parallels comparing then to present are astounding.
There comes a point when the price gets so high it will spook OPEC. They understand that 200 dollar a barrel oil is not good for them in the long run, but would LOVE to lock in it around 125 to 150. I think that will be the problem, the cartel will move to freeze and lock prices in as somehow they are doing the world a favor. The market could go above 150 but my guess is the speculators entering the market at that price are taking on too much risk and could really get their lunch handed to them. Markets can be scary things for a lot of parties, but there is a lot of speculation and dollar weakness priced into the current price of oil. That dollar weakness is strictly a political problem. Jorge keeps repeating that this administration has a strong dollar policy and supports a strong dollar. Those repeated utterances appear to make the administration completely inept or impotent.
When this oil future bubble bursts who will be left holding the bag? I will not feel a bit sorry for them.
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