Posted on 10/09/2008 4:17:21 PM PDT by DGHoodini
Crude Oil down to $84.66 @ 7:10 PM EDT.
Gas at $3.19 here. That's a dime less in 2 days.
l00kin good!
$2.59 in Baytown, TX today; down $.30 in the last three days.
S.W.Missouri is now down to $2.74 and falling daily. (We have two major pipelines through our area).
You are aware of what $60 a barrel oil will do to biomass, solar and other alternative energy companies?
Oh, I don't know -- how about tobacco and booze?
Any industry that the Congress-critters are using their beating-stick du jour on will try to curry favor by "public service" announcements to use their product safely and sparingly. It's called survival and shouldn't be interpreted as an admission of guilt.
If we go back to needing soup kitchens, in a lot of countries who love to hate us, they’ll be shooting each other for for a loaf of bread.
“
Remember when gas was going up how every local TV talking head was filmed standing in front of a gas station? Do you see any coverage on your local news now? Hummmmm.”
You don’t see the house that isn’t on fire on TV.
Judging from the number of replies on this thread, the fall in oil prices is news and is of interest to people.
However, so far the MSM hasn’t figured out a way to hurt Bush with this good news. Once they do, I am sure they will report on it.
The problem is the reason that it fell.
Residents have been asking why we are .50 to .75 cents more per gallon then the Salem/Eugene/Portland area.
Bend gets its gas trucked in from Portland which is about 140 miles. Quite a mark-up for a 10,000 gallon tanker.
yes.
The U.S. economy is not plummeting. That is just what the media says.
You really hate capitalism and free markets don’t you? If you and the government planners like Pelosi had your way you would have stopped speculation at $140 and that’s where oil would be now because it is the free market/speculators who have brought down the price to now $77 per barrel . wooo hooo!.
I suggest you read Milton Friedman’s book “Free to Choose” which will show why government never can work and the free market is the only way to go.
LOL.......it’s not me that hates capitalism. Taxpayers bailing out free enterprises is not a free market. What I want is an honest economy based on real supply and demand and the real value of goods and services, not one based on the govt protecting those that took huge risks and played with the money. So many of the variables of the stock market are no longer about the real value of companies, but are based on these huge bubbles caused by speculation.
Capitalism is also based on the spirit of competition and there is little competition in many industries now. There is nothing to prevent executives from making bad decisions because they know there is no real penalties to themselves for running their company into the ground. They pick their own incompetent boards that are supposed to oversee them. That is not capitalism, it is a corruption of the true spirit of capitalism and you know it.
“The U.S. economy is not plummeting”
The stock market is and that is why the price of gas is falling. If you don’t understand even that, then any further discussion on this is a total waste of my time.
You have no idea how the economy works and in fact no single individual or government agency can understand how the market works enough to run the economy.
You seem to be blaming the free market with your attacks here which seem eerily familiar to the attacks made by the liberal/Marxist mainstream media against the free market:
" Capitalism is also based on the spirit of competition and there is little competition in many industries now. There is nothing to prevent executives from making bad decisions because they know there is no real penalties to themselves for running their company into the ground. They pick their own incompetent boards that are supposed to oversee them. That is not capitalism, it is a corruption of the true spirit of capitalism and you know it."
you don't know how wrong you are and you seem to be calling for more government regulation which is what caused any "problems" in the economy. You nor a government agency has no right to tell a private business or business owner how to run their business. Any corrupt or incompetent business will fail in pure free market capitalism. because they have to keep making real profits by producing quality services or products that people want. Government agencies can be corrupt and fail but they still get even more funding and more power. Read Milton Friedman’s book “Free to Choose” and you will see how wrong you are if you ever think government can EVER work. The more government interference in the free market then the more "problems" are created for the "market" which is no longer free. the media is blaming on capitalism what government interference has caused. And many including "conservatives" are falling for those media lies.
Friedman argued that the market works because large numbers of people cooperate VOLUNATARILY to create millions of products. A government idiot could never force these people to create these products. Hayek said A government idiot could never have all the local knowlegde that every individual person has in which he makes his local area of the market/economy work. How can a government idiot know all the details that every small businees owner or consumer knows about his area of the economy? Also the price mechanism communicates some of this information between a buyer and seller. But in government there is no private ownership so no individual buying with prices etc. Government just gives orders and they are central planners. How can they make a plan so detailed and change it every second like the free market changes and is so detailed with trillions of local peices of information that no one individual can ever know much less an unnacountable, incompetent, unqualified, corrup, evil, government imbecile.
Government and Government planning can never work because that is socialism. If any of you believe government works then read Milton Friedman's statement on my page (and Hayek's statement).
Essentially, Hayek argued that no one individual, or even group of well-informed individuals, could ever have enough knowledge to plan a market. Hayek said that knowledge was localized, meaning every individual has the best knowledge about their specific place, condition, needs and resources, but no one had enough knowledge about anyone else’s to make decisions for them.
small excerpt from Milton Friedman's statement:
But that command method (of the government) can be the exclusive or even principal method of organization only in a very small group.(how can a government,an individual, run an economy, an industry? he can't). Not even the most autocratic head of a family can control every act of other family members entirely by order. No sizable army can really be run entirely by command. The general cannot conceivably have the information necessary to direct every movement of the lowliest private. At every step in the chain of command, the soldier, whether officer or private, must have discretion to take into account information about specific circumstances that his commanding officer could not have. Commands must be supplemented by voluntary cooperation—a less obvious and more subtle, but far more fundamental, technique of coordinating the activities of large numbers of people. Russia is the standard example of a large economy that is supposed to be organized by command—a centrally planned economy.
I say: It's details, details. An evil,corrupt, incompetent, unaccountable government bureaucrat or politician could never have all the knowledge that all the individual bankers have , all the very detailed knowledge that each banker has for his/her section of the market. Learn that socialism/government ownership and planning CAN NEVER work, never, never! These are just 2 reasons. READ the works and books of Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek to LEARN about how the economy works.
Free markets/Capitalism work. Socialism/Government doesn't but as government grows it just drives the productive private sector down and takes that money ($4 trillion per year) that could be productive in the private sector and wastes most of it. There is your problem in the economy , that the federal government sucks 3.2 trillion per year and that state and local governments even more from the productive private sector. That and the huge debts , unfunded liabilities and deficits the GOVERNMENT has run up and up and up. How big is the federal government's debt? 9.7 TRILLIION IS the PUBLIC government federal debt. and you think that our economic trouble is the fault of private bankers. NO the cause of the U.S.'s economic woes is the government, the 9.7 trillion in debt the government has run up along with the 3.2 trillion $ budget,53 trillion $ in unfunded liabilites, the deficit, and government interference in the free market.
Did you know that the US government has accumulated $53 trillion of direct and indirect debt? : well here is the proof: www.financialsense.com/editorials/turk/2008/0109.html
And all of you the public, even many freepers, keep calling for more government "reining" in of private bankers, and more government regulation, and jailing bankers etc., more government. When will you , the public and the liberal media and the Democrats get it that the government/Socialism is a cancer on the economy that never works. If the fact that the government has run up a 53 trillion dollar debt doesn't give you a clue then I can see why the economy is in trouble, because none of you have a clue as to how the economy works and that government must be kept out of the economy.
The government must be cut down to size so that only the military, border control , courts and police are the only government agencies , period. So let it be written, So let it be done.
Good grief....I have never suggested that a more powerful central govt run our entire economy. When asking the question, Do we have too little or too much govt regulation in America today when it comes to regulating business, I would say that the answer is industry dependent. In some industries, there is too much govt intervention. In others there is too little. Obviously, on wall street, there has been too little in some areas and the wrong kind in others.
We need to have an honest economy and a balance of power. Excesses and abuses do occur when there is an unbridled free market. Just look at the standard of living and environmental conditions in countries where companies can do whatever they want with no regulations enforced at all. Or look how it was in America prior to the American labor movement. Sorry, we’re not going back to living in tenement houses and living in squalor so a small minority of unscrupulous people can live like kings. We don’t do that here in America which is why we have the strongest middle class in the history of the world. We won’t be exploited the way third worlders will and the fact that they allow themselves to be, is why they have the standard of living that they do.
Furthermore, tax payers bailing out free enterprises is not a free market. You seem to want it both ways for some reason and assign an extremist position to me so you can argue that rather than my true position. I understand that is probably what you need to do to feel you have won the argument though.
You say that I assigned an extremist position to you. Ok well then I’ll take the extremist position which is my belief anyway. My extremist position is that there should be NO government regulation, management or running or interfering with private businesses or the free market (capitalism). The only time government should get involved in the economy is when there is a dispute between 2 private businesses or individuals and that should be done in a court of law. The due process of law based on objectively defined laws that are there to protect private property rights as in contracts, private property, intellectual property, fraud etc. must be used to settle disputes, lawsuits etc. but that’s it.
We don’t have too little regualation in some industries but too much government regulation in all industries (EPA,FDA, FEC,FCC, FEDeral Reserve, FDIC, Fanni mae etc) and too many government agencies(thousands of them) and too many government laws, thoasands of uneeded laws that cripple the free market and that unjustly criminalize inocent American citizens. Government is too big with an over $4 trillion annual budget. Anyone that thinks government should not be shrunken dramatically is either uninformed, doesn’t know anything about economics or is a democrat/Marxist.
For example how would you or a government burocrat who is much less intelligent, more corrupt, and less accountable than you regulate or manage the pencil building industry?
“I, Pencil” is written in the first person from the point of view of an Eberhard Faber pencil. The pencil details the complexity of its own creation, listing its components (cedar, lacquer, graphite, ferrule, factice, pumice, wax, glue) and the numerous people involved, down to the sweeper in the factory and the lighthouse keeper guiding the shipment into port.
There is a fact still more astounding: the absence of a master mind, of anyone dictating or forcibly directing these countless actions which bring me into being. No trace of such a person can be found. Instead, we find the Invisible Hand at work.
Since only God can make a tree, I insist that only God could make me. Man can no more direct these millions of know-hows to bring me into being than he can put molecules together to create a tree.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Pencil
No one person or government agency can create a plan or run such a complex process. Only the free market can do that . And that is just one product , a simple low tech pencil. Now the free market produces millions of such products and services without any government idiots planning that production or having anything to do with it. The only thing a government idiot can do is interfere with those countless actions of thousands of people that are producing that pencil because a government idiot cannot understand even one action of one expert in that process much less how all these thousands of people cooperate voluntarily to create a pencil. A government can only dictate force people to act with threat of guns and impisonment and government can never get all those thousands of people to cooperate as effficiently as the free market (capitalism) can or even at all because government / socialism doesn’t work.
Everyone including many conservatives should read Milton “Friedman’s Free to Choose”. In that book he does show that the countries with the smallest government did better economically and technologically, the U.S. in the 19th century, Britain around the same time, and Hong Kong in the 20 th century.
Government is too big. It’s excessive laws and regultions and agencies are crippling private industry. It’s huge buggets are taking away investment capital from productive private industries and are sqeezing out the private sector. Ronald Reagan and Sarah Palin are right big government is not the solution to our problems , big government is the problem.
The only functions of the government should be the courts, police , military, immigration control, border control, and that’s it. and you know then taxes would be about 5% instead of the 60% they are now and we would be a free people instead of on our way to loosing our freedom and our prosperity as the government grows.
The unfettered growth of government is the most pressing problem we have. All efforts by should be taken to reduce the size of government, it’s agecies and laws and regulations and increase these regulations as you and liberals and even other freepers suggest.
Why wasn’t this huge government needed in the 1800’s when America went from a small farming country to the number one world economic power that the world had ever seen from 1800-1900?
You say that I assigned an extremist position to you. Ok well then I’ll take the extremist position which is my belief anyway. My extremist position is that there should be NO government regulation, management or running or interfering with private businesses or the free market (capitalism). The only time government should get involved in the economy is when there is a dispute between 2 private businesses or individuals and that should be done in a court of law. The due process of law based on objectively defined laws that are there to protect private property rights as in contracts, private property, intellectual property, fraud etc. must be used to settle disputes, lawsuits etc. but that’s it.
We don’t have too little regualation in some industries but too much government regulation in all industries (EPA,FDA, FEC,FCC, FEDeral Reserve, FDIC, Fanni mae etc) and too many government agencies(thousands of them) and too many government laws, thoasands of uneeded laws that cripple the free market and that unjustly criminalize inocent American citizens. Government is too big with an over $4 trillion annual budget. Anyone that thinks government should not be shrunken dramatically is either uninformed, doesn’t know anything about economics or is a democrat/Marxist.
For example how would you or a government burocrat who is much less intelligent, more corrupt, and less accountable than you regulate or manage the pencil building industry?
“I, Pencil” is written in the first person from the point of view of an Eberhard Faber pencil. The pencil details the complexity of its own creation, listing its components (cedar, lacquer, graphite, ferrule, factice, pumice, wax, glue) and the numerous people involved, down to the sweeper in the factory and the lighthouse keeper guiding the shipment into port.
There is a fact still more astounding: the absence of a master mind, of anyone dictating or forcibly directing these countless actions which bring me into being. No trace of such a person can be found. Instead, we find the Invisible Hand at work.
Since only God can make a tree, I insist that only God could make me. Man can no more direct these millions of know-hows to bring me into being than he can put molecules together to create a tree.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Pencil
No one person or government agency can create a plan or run such a complex process. Only the free market can do that . And that is just one product , a simple low tech pencil. Now the free market produces millions of such products and services without any government idiots planning that production or having anything to do with it. The only thing a government idiot can do is interfere with those countless actions of thousands of people that are producing that pencil because a government idiot cannot understand even one action of one expert in that process much less how all these thousands of people cooperate voluntarily to create a pencil. A government can only dictate force people to act with threat of guns and impisonment and government can never get all those thousands of people to cooperate as effficiently as the free market (capitalism) can or even at all because government / socialism doesn’t work.
Everyone including many conservatives should read Milton “Friedman’s Free to Choose”. In that book he does show that the countries with the smallest government did better economically and technologically, the U.S. in the 19th century, Britain around the same time, and Hong Kong in the 20 th century.
Government is too big. It’s excessive laws and regultions and agencies are crippling private industry. It’s huge buggets are taking away investment capital from productive private industries and are sqeezing out the private sector. Ronald Reagan and Sarah Palin are right big government is not the solution to our problems , big government is the problem.
The only functions of the government should be the courts, police , military, immigration control, border control, and that’s it. And you know then taxes would be about 5% instead of the 60% they are now and we Americans would be a free people instead of on our way to loosing our freedom and our prosperity as the government grows.
The unfettered growth of government is the most pressing problem we have in America. All efforts should be taken to reduce the size of government, it’s agecies and laws and regulations but NOT increase these regulations as you, liberals and even other freepers suggest.
Why wasn’t this huge government needed in the 1800’s when America went from a small farming country to the number one world economic power that the world had ever seen from 1800-1900?
And no I am not for any tax-payer or government bailout of any industry, or private company or government entity like Fannie Mae etc. That’s choosing winners and that is communism.
I am for the free market with NO government inerference at all except to settle disputes between private individuals in a court of law. That might be an extremist position to some especially to democRATs.
The best known statement of the principles of a free market, the kind of free market that operates in Hong Kong, was written on the other side of the world. Two hundred years ago in Scotland, Adam Smith taught at the University of Glasgow. His brilliant book, The Wealth Of Nations, was based on the lectures he gave here.
The basic principles underlying the free market, as Adam Smith taught them to his students in this University, are really very simple. Look at this lead pencil, there is not a single person in the world who could make this pencil. Remarkable statement? Not at all. The wood from which it’s made, for all I know, comes from a tree that was cut down in the State of Washington. To cut down that tree, it took a saw. To make the saw, it took steel. To make the steel, it took iron ore. This black center, we call it lead but it’s really compressed graphite, I am not sure where it comes from but I think it comes from some mines in South America. This red top up here, the eraser, a bit of rubber, probably comes from Malaya, where the rubber tree isn’t even native. It was imported from South America by some businessman with the help of the British government. This brass feral __ I haven’t the slightest idea where it came from or the yellow paint or the paint that made the black lines __ or the glue that holds it together. Literally thousands of people cooperated to make this pencil. People who don’t speak the same language; who practice different religions; who might hate one another if they ever met. When you go down to the store and buy this pencil, you are, in effect, trading a few minutes of your time for a few seconds of the time of all of those thousands of people. What brought them together and induced them to cooperate to make this pencil? There was no Commissar sending out orders from some central office. It was the magic of the price system __ the impersonal operation of prices that brought them together and got them to cooperate to make this pencil so that you could have it for a trifling sum.
That is why the operation of the free market is so essential. Not only to promote productive efficiency, but even more, to foster harmony and peace among the peoples of the world.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1667407/posts
For its sheer power to display in just a few pages the astounding fact that free markets successfully coordinate the actions of literally millions of people from around the world into a productive whole, nothing else written in economics compares to Leonard Read’s celebrated essay, “I, Pencil.” This essay’s power derives from Read’s drawing from such a prosaic item an undeniable, profound, and spectacular conclusion: it takes the knowledge of countless people to produce a single pencil. No newcomer to economics who reads “I, Pencil” can fail to have a simplistic belief in the superiority of central planning or regulation deeply shaken. If I could choose one essay or book that everyone in the world would read, I would unhesitatingly choose “I, Pencil.” Among these readers, simplistic notions about the economy would be permanently transformed into a new and vastly more subtle—and correct—understanding.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl2.html
Human freedom, wealth creation, and prosperity requires private property, free competition, and severely limited government. That most people including liberals/marxists and many who hold even other conservative positions don’t undertand this is why the government keeps growing and why the U.S. is on the road to tyrrany, oppression and the extreme poverty that socialism brings.
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