Energy News

Federal Government Tells Traders They Are Being Investigated

May 30, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Oil prices are falling because the Federal government told the big traders they are being investigated for conspiring to artificially drive up prices by cornering the futures markets. This is very much like the Hunt brothers cornering the silver markets. The Senate is going after these pirates, too. I hope they also investigate how the Fed Reserve enabled all of this by dropping interest rates well below inflation. Also, investigators learn that the opponents of wind farms are being supported by the Oxbow corporation which represents oil, coal and gas energy producers.

Probe of Crude Oil Trading Disclosed

During continued volatility in oil prices, federal regulators said yesterday that they had been investigating crude oil trading, storage and transportation for the past six months with a focus on possible "futures market manipulation."

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which normally keeps investigations confidential, said in a statement that it was "taking the extraordinary step of disclosing this investigation because of today's unprecedented market conditions."

I was wondering why oil prices suddenly turned downwards. I thought either there was a conspiracy from the top officials to persuade the biggest investment houses to knock it off or else. It turns out the good old threat of being arrested did the trick. As usual. I keep pointing this out: the best way to stop criminals or careless people who think they can get away with murder is to arrest them. But Bush and Cheney, our oil soaked presidential duo have not been arrested. Lord knows, they can be picked up for obvious Nüremberg violations.

Now I wonder, did someone leak this investigation to the Big Guys? Because the price of oil peaked and then began to drop alongside gold before this press conference announcing the investigation. Whenever we see bubbles form we know we are seeing some form of market manipulation or enabling that should be illegal or should be made illegal. The job of governments is to regulate things so bubbles do not pop up all the time. Not enable this.

This takes me to another topic: many people have fallen for the siren song that any regulations are evil and the market works best unregulated. An army of Randists cling to this bizarre and stupid idea. Economic chaos, economic free-for-alls are extremely dangerous! The Wild West was dangerous. The idea that civility and public collective well being are bad is a stupid idea. No civilization lasts very long based on chaos and frenzy feeding.

I notice in the comments section on this news site I run, there are people who think a system that is run on a no-interest, no controls system will be paradise. I assure everyone, that will be hell. The problems with our entire system today is due to lack of controls, lack of a gate keeper who prevents things from going crazy with everyone grabbing at money no matter how. The destruction of the gold gate keeper opened the door to making excessive money via speculation on nearly everything on earth including very much, the weather. This casino attitude has replaced the sober banker ethic.

Back to energy: it is the fundamental basis to modern civilization. When it is used for speculative bubbles, it causes very serious damage to the entire economic system. I was personally very worried when the price of oil collapsed in the 1990s. I figured taxes on gas should rise to prevent a bubble in the auto industry. We had the bubble, of course. It was a sudden surge in gas guzzling behemoths that ballooned literally in size.

The US had made headway in auto efficiency via the luxury tax which was tacked onto big gas guzzling cars. But trucks and SUVs were outside this regulation control. So buyers shifted to that market so they could guzzle gas. The government should have imposed regulations on the new market. But instead, for political reasons, the government was unable to do this. Many Americans lobbied Congress to protect the unregulated gas guzzling vehicles. And so our importation of oil shot up as the price dropped. This increase became invisible vis a vis our trade deficit numbers.

But now it has exploded in our face. Most of the US public are now utterly at the mercy of economic forces they, themselves, created. Unable to see their own complicity in this, they are now yelling for regulations to save them. So the government is now belatedly stepping into the energy markets to do this. The broken system is not easy to repair. Auto dealers are now refusing to take in ANY SUVs on trade ins, for example. Detroit fought hard to keep SUVs and those stupid pick up trucks, outside of regulations. Now they want some sort of regulation of energy markets so they can keep on trucking. Only even they are shutting down rapidly. Yesterday, one quarter of GM hourly workers took the company buy-out offer and are leaving. The Auto Workers Union is dead.

About pick up trucks: I have used them for work much of my life. I was very unhappy about everyone and their brother buying these work vehicles and using them as cars. Trucks traditionally were very cheap. Once the mania came in the door, out the door went cheap trucks. They now had to have all the fittings, trimmings and goofy things cars have. So the price soared and trucks became very expensive. This still annoys me greatly. I never minded driving uncomfortable trucks. It was MACHO. Now, they are sissy cars and are not nearly as durable as the older trucks. Hey, I can't rebuild my old diesel truck forever! I hope this mania dies for good and trucks go back to their work horse status.

Oil's tense trading scene may sway a move to Dubai

The Dubai Gold & Commodities Exchange will launch trading of crude-oil futures on Tuesday, a timely move given the astronomical prices for oil and talk of U.S. regulation of speculators in the commodity markets.

Prices for crude peaked above $135 a barrel Thursday in electronic trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Globex platform. See Futures Movers. Record prices over the past several months have raised questions over manipulation of the market.

A U.S. Senate panel listened to testimony on May 20 that said financial speculation by institutional investors and hedge funds in the commodity markets are contributing to energy and food inflation.

The US regulations will, of course, drive commodity traders overseas. The US must deal with the global oil problem the right way: cutting consumption.

From Sudden Debt:

Data: BP, Nationmaster

We see from this graph, per capita consumption in the US is gigantic. And Canada is #2 but they are a net oil exporter. Canada may consume as much oil as they wish. But not the US! We also have the world's biggest trade deficit. The anarchy theorists all overlook the need for taking care of the common good. When our own government refused to use taxes to control oil consumption and auto making, when they allowed the balloon in SUVs and pick up trucks to run riot, they endangered ALL of us. The common good requires stopping exactly this sort of 'free choice'. The market place is the last place on earth to settle affairs via a free for all! It just never works in the long run. Basically, the auto markets were misled as to future conditions by the availability of oil as we approached the peak for pumping oil. As smart Hubble Peak analysts predicted. The government, looking into the future, had to break the back of the SUV markets before this market drove us off a cliff.

Dr. Benn Steil is a Senior Fellow and Director of International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

In this particular graph, I plot the price of oil over the course of this decade. The top line is the price of oil measured in U.S. dollars. The middle line is the price of oil priced in euros. And the bottom line? What you see is very flat. That’s the price of oil and gold. And it's very - you see it's very, very flat.
*snip*
Now, let's step back for a second, and ask what if the dollar became just another currency. What do I mean by ‘just another currency’? I mean a currency that behaves like all the others, with a positive relationship between depreciation and inflation, and most importantly, between depreciation and interest rates.

In other words, if a currency depreciates, interest rates in the market go up. That's not science fiction. We're experiencing this right now. The Fed is pushing down very, very hard with short-term rates, the federal fund rates. But if you look at medium- and longer-term interest rates in the market, they are headed up.

Oil and gold never go up exactly in tandem but tend to balance each other eventually. Gold is prized by many oil pumping nations so this concert isn't surprising. They have more money from oil, they bid up the price of gold. This is probably why the debate about gold and its place in the economic/monetary system is being revived at long last. This Resource Investor article is a good read. The writer notes that the Fed is PUSHING DOWN on interest rates rather than raising them when oil and gold are shooting upwards. Interest rates should be going up. The Fed knew this because they rapidly raised rates in 2005-2007. The present drop is pure panic.

And is a problem in oil markets. If the Fed slams the door shut in the face of all the pension funds, they HAVE to find a place to go. And in this case, the only place is commodities. They will now flow into Wall Street but that will be a fake bubble, not one based on future optimism.

Documents link wind farm foes to energy firm

A new lobbying firm for the group opposing a wind farm off Cape Cod filed a federal document last month reporting that its work for the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound is partially funded and shaped by an international energy conglomerate.

The disclosure represents the first documented financial connection between the group opposing the wind farm and Oxbow Corp., which mines and markets energy and commodities, including coal, natural gas, and petroleum.

The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound immediately decried the filing as a mistake, and the lobbying firm later amended it in the US Senate Office of Public Records to eliminate the reference to Oxbow.

The environmental movement is mostly 'Not In My Backyard' elitism. I once said on TV, 'This really means someone else's back yard becomes the junk yard.' The US moved its industries to China and then chastises China for pollution problems. China has responded by threatening to shut down factories that are connected with US corporations. The excuse that things like windmills are ugly is being used by people who accept a thousand ugly things that surround them on a daily basis. We 'edit out' things we don't admire. And the sudden shock of seeing windmills means the people looking at these will focus on them and be horrified.

In Japan, these same things are viewed by many animators as beautiful objects! For example, a favorite screen shot for Japanese animators is the lowly electrical pole with transformer boxes:

As my photo shows, it can be viewed as an art object! I framed my shot to be like many Japanese drawings of this sort of thing. Lately, the Japanese artists have latched onto the concept of wind mills and use them to punctuate scenes with shots of the wind mills turning majestically and slowly in the breeze. They obviously think these are beautiful. The US whiners who complain about this are content to drive around paved roads or build their houses smack in the middle of nature and think this is perfectly lovely. But when radical environmentalists burn down these mansions, the people who want nice views blow up and scream and call the more radical people 'terrorists'. Heh. Either we have renewable energy or we die. Eat that with your view of the ocean!

Row erupts over new fuel poverty action plan

Plans to help two million elderly and vulnerable people cope with the soaring cost of gas and electricity bills have been dismissed as inadequate by consumer groups and charities.

Ministers are planning to introduce new legislation to force energy companies to share data with regulators, so customers can be directed to the best value deals.

As usual, the elderly and infirm will be asked to die. It is simple: the government can tax energy overall and then give subsidies to the poor and elderly. This is socialism. And a good thing, too. Unless people are totally heartless and figure, it is OK to have people starve or freeze to death all around us. I assure everyone, third world countries are terrible to live in unless you insulate yourself from the masses. Which means, live like the elitists on Cod Island.

Silverjet collapse hits almost 10,000 travellers

Thousands of Silverjet customers have been stranded or have lost money after the business class-only airline this morning admitted it no longer had the cash to continue flying and suspended operations.

The airline, which has only been in operation since last year, is the latest to fall victim to soaring jet fuel prices.

And yet another airline crashes and burns. The fallout from high oil prices will prune back the weeds that have overgrown air travel. People hop skip and jump all over the place. As a train lover, I hate this. And think it is very environmentally destructive. Not to mention noisy and interferes with the weather by creating clouds as the turbulence from a jet disturbs the natural rate of cloud formation.

Europe fuel protests spread wider

Union leaders said Portugal's entire coastal fleet stayed in port on Friday, while in Spain, 7,000 fishermen held protests at the agriculture ministry.

French fishermen have been protesting for weeks, with Belgian and Italian colleagues also involved.
UK and Dutch lorry drivers held similar protests earlier this week.

The strike reflects anger at the rising cost of fuel, with oil prices above $130 (83.40 euros; £65.80) a barrel.
Trade unions say the cost of diesel has become prohibitively high, after rising 300% over the past five years.

A note to all Americans: Europe has had half the oil inflation we have. Yet they are reacting with great vigor. In many countries, this happens. But in the US we have this hysteria over Hillary being a woman candidate who is using race to bait her black opponent and the followers of both are focused on hating each other while our economic condition deteriorates. And then there is McCain, the bomber maniac who wants more wars in the Middle East which will bring us more high energy prices. And no one is in the streets protesting.

The recent trucker protest in DC was mild and swiftly ended. I see no shut downs of highways or ports like we see all over Europe. Instead, everyone is focused on 'What goodies will my politician give me this time around?' So there is no pressure to change things. And of course, no analysis thanks to our media. People are happily blaming speculators but these same speculators own our politicians! So nothing will be fixed unless we get very, very loud about this.

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America Runs In Circles Over High Oil Prices

Click on cartoon to enlarge

May 22, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Frantic finger pointing continues with Congress and the President, two major causes for high global energy prices, and our bankers, the other half of the feeding frenzy, pretending to be clueless. Even the most ill-informed American dimly realizes the weak dollar regime is causing oil prices to go up. But the idea that the US is the primary mover on every level is not talked about. Articles talking about oil consumption love to mention China. But not the US who is the #1 oil consumer on earth by a tremendous amount. This business is all connected and the black hole here is the US and our imperial policies. The 'fixes' for various financial problems all end up costing us more for energy.

Oil Rises Above $135 on Concern OPEC Is Powerless to Halt Rally

Crude oil rose to a record above $135 a barrel as OPEC ministers said they could do nothing to stop a rally that may be heading to $200 a barrel.

Oil has risen 19 percent this month as analysts increased their price forecasts because of supply constraints and demand growth. OPEC has ``no magic solution'' to the surge, Qatar's oil minister said. Prices are ``out of the hands'' of the organization, according to Libya's top oil official.

``Everyone's jumped on the bandwagon,'' said Anthony Nunan, assistant general manager for risk management at Mitsubishi Corp., Japan's biggest trading company, in Tokyo. ``There's agreement that $200 is possible and that's getting more people into the market. We have very little supply cushion going forward and that's playing into the minds of investors.''

Congress has the cheek to sit there and grill their donors. This is a charade brought to TV by Congress and the oil executives who funded Bush's take over as well as owning all good politicians seeking campaign contributions. The corrupt Congress people talk tough on TV, the oily executives all pretend to cringe and whimper. OPEC is going around the planet telling everyone, 'We have nothing to do with this.' Which happens to be the truth.

And so what? Let's look again at this interesting graph:

Yesterday Pelosi, the Democrat multimillionaire who runs the House, was in Israel saluting the Star of David and demanding, yes, demanding the US embargo all of Iran and prevent any Iranian oil from being shipped out! Hell's bells! Anyone wants to know why oil futures are going through the roof? But not one American newspaper is carrying this obvious story or making this obvious connection. Pelosi and her gang of Zionists all imagine their wonderful cloaking device will hide their hands that are working tirelessly to insure that the world's #3 oil reserve nation can't sell oil.

The oil executives know this. The other members of OPEC laugh behind their hands because they know this. And Congress definitely knows this connection between their own actions and the price of oil futures! The one thing all these parties have to do is fool the American people. The American people have this huge temptation: we think we can nuke our way to easy oil. The Saudis worry about the possibility the US will attack them. This is why they are triangulating with China and Russia more and more intensely. This is why any moves by the US in the Gulf can trigger WWIII. Remember: WWI, when it broke out, revealed a huge substrata of secret understandings and treaties! Often in conflict with stated public policies. The media had to egg on everyone to take definite sides and this quickly escalated the rhetoric of the leaders and thus, the war preparations.

The world is on much more a hair-trigger situation. Instead of moving troops around via trains, we silently move nuclear subs into position. We can annihilate Iran or any nation in a flash. But this is equally true for the other nuclear superpowers! Do we want to find out their counter-strategy the hard way? Do we want to destroy 50 to 100 million Americans just so we can nuke Iran? This is not a sane trade off.

'Squawk Box' Guest Warns of $12-15-a-Gallon Gas

It may be the mother of all doom and gloom gas price predictions: $12 for a gallon of gas is “inevitable.”

Robert Hirsch, Management Information Services Senior Energy Advisor, gave a dire warning about the potential future of gas prices on CNBC’s May 20 “Squawk Box”. He told host Becky Quick there was no single thing that would solve the problem, due to the enormity of the problem.

“[T]he prices that we’re paying at the pump today are, I think, going to be ‘the good old days,’ because others who watch this very closely forecast that we’re going to be hitting $12 and $15 per gallon,” Hirsch said. “And then, after that, when oil – world oil production goes into decline, we’re going to talk about rationing. In other words, not only are we going to be paying high prices and have considerable economic problems, but in addition to that, we’re not going to be able to get the fuel when we want it.”

What we are seeing is price rationing. People with little cash will begin to die. During the other oil shocks, people froze to death. The elderly were pitched into the streets. I saw this during the seventies. It broke my heart. It was hard, going around, dealing with this horror. I used to carry extra money when shopping so when an elderly person was seen shoplifting, I would take them by the hand and say, 'I'll pay for this. Don't worry. Here is my card. We can help you.' It was so tragic. The elderly in Japan are now shoplifting food, for example. The stresses on the systems in the G7 will rise as oil shoots up in price. Japan has clung to a cheap yen despite this 175% hike in oil costs. The US vacillates between a strong and a weak dollar, pursuing a fractured foreign trade policy that cannot reconcile with itself its own contradictions.

For a weak dollar=>high energy costs=>higher trade deficits=>more inflation. But it also increases exports of manufactured goods! Which the US wants. The idea that we can have rationing at home, tariffs on imported energy and imported manufactured goods and then sell to the world. This is not even considered! The rest of the world might put up trade barriers. But so what? They ALL depend on the US markets! We don't depend on any of their markets. Since we have a deficit with nearly every nation on earth.

One thing economists, Congress and the media refuse to talk about is this harsh fact of life: when we have rising energy costs, we ALWAYS go into inflation of necessities and deflation of consumer buying of other goods. After a short spurt due to everyone frantically buying more efficient energy systems and transportation, things come to a grinding halt. So this time is no different! Bernanke thinks all we need is more loans and voila! Things will boom again.

But they cannot! They NEVER did this in the past! They won't do this in the future. History is adamant about this. Just like all post-war periods mean deflation or frantic government induced inflation, often both at once. For winners and losers both!

Blame Wall Street for $135 Oil on Wrong-Way Betting

Oil's rally to a record above $135 a barrel came as traders bought crude to cover wrong-way bets that prices would decline, according to data from the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The number of outstanding futures contracts, known as open interest, fell 8.1 percent in a week to 1.36 million at the same time that prices rose 2.6 percent, the data show. Falling open interest and rising prices are signs that traders are buying to exit so-called short positions that would profit if oil fell, and lose money as they rose.

``In a market like today, which is trending higher while open interest is falling, it's a sign that money is moving out of the market,'' said Stephen Schork, president of Schork Group Inc. in Villanova, Pennsylvania. Open interest in Nymex crude futures peaked this year at 1.5 million on March 13.

Did traders think oil would drop back then? Curiously enough, they thought thanks to the late-February boggle in global stock markets, they accurately assumed the bubbles were going to pop and oil would drop in price as world consumption fell. But this is all about timing: great fortunes can be made if one can see into the future accurately. This is why rulers since the dawn of time have sought out wizards and seers to tell them what is going to happen next. I would be a great person if this were true, actually. But it is not true nor ever was. For the last thing rulers want is the truth. Ask Cassandra. Or any seers. 'Beware the Ides of March, Caesar!' always falls on deaf ears. Traders want desperately to see the future but cannot bear being left out of any stampede. I warned investors back in March that, yes, the banking collapse would happen. But no, one can't be a bear so easily because the central bankers of the G7 nations will first move heaven and earth to cover up this collapse. So there would be a time lag in all this. The banking collapse coincided with the collapse of the Japanese carry trade business. But in late February, 2007, the Japanese carry trade hit a glitch due to the relative value of the yen versus the falling dollar. This was the warning shot in the coming economic chaos.

From my own news service back on 3/11/2008:

As the price of raw materials, food, oil and gold rise relentlessly in tandem, it is time yet again to revisit the history of such events. We start, as usual, with today and move backwards in time to see how nothing happening today is new at all but actually part of a very ancient pattern going back to the beginning of civilization. Knowing this, we can look forwards. In this case, it is increasingly obvious that commodity markets will hit their peak the same hour that the rulers of the top empires cease playing with their currencies and restore currency values via either instituting the gold standard again or raising interest rates to the roof. Also, we note a common balance point here: the longer the rulers wait to raise rates or restore the gold standard, the more painful it is. If rates are dropped to 1% below the rate or commodity inflation during commodity inflationary periods, then they have to raise it an extra 3% or more above the rate to fix this. If they delay for years, doing this, it takes a greater rate hike. Up to 20% or they could even wait until the total destruction of the currency reaches infinity while rates are low like in Germany in 1924. In other words, we must look into the befuddled brains of our rulers to guess which choice they will make [in our own case in America, it will be the worst choices].

This might be true today but OPEC knows perfectly well what is really driving this: the US threats on Iran. for History is very clear about this matter: wars in, around or by oil pumping nations=>rise in risk in oil markets=>higher premiums on future oil deliveries=>restrictions in future contracts=>inflation as the oil consumers in the West try to cheat the oil producers by buying oil with Funny Money™ cranked out by the central bankers.

Click here to read my 3/13/2008 article about the Derivatives Beast eating wealth faster than the Fed can create it:

Then the Day of Doom arrives: loans have to be made easier and easier in order to be passed on. 0% loans on hyper-expensive cars are offered. Real estate dealers offer 'teaser rates' and 'free gifts.' The more we see 'free gifts' the more likely we are about to see the inevitable reversal of easy money. Now, relentless inflation appears. No longer to the 'fun' things go up in value, they begin to collapse in value. The 'hard' things such as food, fuel and taxes, all begin to climb. If a country refuses to pay taxes in the teeth of this inflation, they go bankrupt within a few years. If a country allows food and fuel to continue their relentless inflationary climb, we see riots, insurrections and revolutions. Eventually, inflation will outstrip incomes and starvation sets in. This is a big motivator towards revolution.

So we just passed through about 7 years of the Fatted Cow's reign and are now entering the Thin Cow's realm. This is why gold hasn't shot up. People NEED fuel. So oil continues it climb. But gold is optional. The more food and fuel eat into discretionary income, the less money there will be for all other things. This is the relentless logic of all inflationary systems. The dead last thing to stop inflating is always food. This is when either brutal starvation enters and culls 1/3 of the population or there is a violent revolution. Any government that refuses to track the pain of food and fuel escalation while pretending there is no inflation, FALLS. To revolutionaries or a coup. The US is insisting on following a bizarre and I would suggest, CRIMINAL concept that food and fuel do not signal inflation. So they refuse to take this into account.

If traders are bidding up the price of oil to cover their earlier trades, they are doing this because someone gave them money to do this. And who, pray tell, was this personage? Why, the Federal Reserve itself! The frantic commodity traders who tried to short the markets would go bankrupt as they richly deserve but they have a sugar daddy who is bailing them all out. The banks are sitting on lots and lots of IOUs from the central bankers who are funding the government which is hitting record budget deficits this year. The bankers need to move these Treasuries into 'money making' regimes. They are so frantic to do this, they are dropping the down payment on house buys to just 3%. So of course, they are lending huge sums to trading houses which are then using this to play the oil commodities futures. They can cover losses by bidding up the oil forever if the money flows to them forever without a hitch. But this is again, the dread Ouroboros snake eating its own tail.

There is a huge pit that opens up: oil profits soar for any oil pumping nation selling its oil on the futures markets. This flood of money is flowing more and more towards the energy producing nations who, in turn, are seeing rapid inflation. The dynamics of this system are growing greater as more and more money flows into it. The frantic attempts at keeping this business rolling is causing a complete collapse of the world's #1 consuming economy, the US. For we can sense the cold bitter winds blowing across the nation. Naked fear is replacing simple irritation. What are we going to do when the frantic speculators bid up the price of future oil to above $200 a barrel? It is rapidly heading there and I see no way it will stop at this point. Will the G7 band together to attack OPEC? Russia? And what about the G8 member, China? China has more and more ties to Russia. And is increasingly angry with the US.

Crude for delivery in December 2016 ended yesterday at $142.09 a barrel, signaling investors anticipate prices will gain for years. Some traders speculate oil will reach $200 this year. The price of a December 2008 option contract that allows the holder to buy 1,000 barrels of crude at $200 each jumped 67 percent in three days to $1.72 a barrel yesterday on the Nymex.

U.S. oil executives told Congress yesterday that prices should be between $35 and $90 a barrel. John Hofmeister, president of Shell Oil Co., the Houston-based subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell Plc, pegged the proper range ``somewhere between $35 and $65 a barrel.''

If the dollar was strong, the price of oil would be lower. But the dollar can't be strong because the US economy is weak. Nations that import most of their energy and goods get weaker and weaker as profits drain out and as the money sent abroad comes back in the form of buying up all that nation's resources, infrastructure and banking systems. Which is exactly what is happening to the US. The dollar fiat regime that enriched us for the first 30 years has morphed into pure poison which has destroyed us the following 30 years just as the fiat pound did to England. England, like the US, fought all its wars starting in 1860's Crimean war, using this fiat money. This, in turn, allowed England to spend all the time beyond her means on war making. After the spectacular failure of WWI, England rushed into more fiat spending because the pound was now artificially floating thanks to the US propping it up. The exact same way China is propping up the dollar today.

Oil will be $90 a barrel only if we pay for it in yuan. This reality has yet to dawn on anyone. Or perhaps it will be $65 a barrel. But only if we buy it with euros. The US has, in its entire foreign currency reserves, only $30 billion in yen and $35 in euros. This is pure madness. Japan and China both have more than a trillion dollars in FOREX holdings. They will probably use these reserves in the end to buy up the remaining US facilities across the planet. While the US has to strengthen the yen and yuan the proper way: by buying and holding their currencies. Which we then use to buy energy. This changes the nature of our entire society. The free ride of the fiat currency of the world will end. We may as well face this inevitability and take strong measures to protect our society from the obvious drop in energy consumption we will all experience.

Skyrocketing Oil Prices Stump Experts

Executives from the giant oil companies say it's partly the fault of "speculators" or financial players. Key financial players say it's really a question of limited supply and expanding global demand. Some members of Congress accuse the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries for bottling up some of its production capacity. And OPEC blames speculators, wasteful U.S. consumers and feckless U.S. policy.

Almost everyone points at China's growing appetite for fuel.
*snip*
"People don't get it," said Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) at a Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday at which senior oil company executives were grilled about prices. Kohl said: "Demand is not crazy. Why are prices going crazy?"

While the share of blame for soaring oil prices may be blurry, the impact of those rising prices is painfully clear. They are damaging the profits of oil-intensive industries, tearing holes in the pockets of American consumers, offsetting the stimulant effect of tax breaks, sapping more than $1.5 billion a day out of the U.S. economy for oil imports and diverting ever-bigger gushers of dollars to oil-producing countries such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran and Venezuela.

And that, in a nutshell, is the crazy American response: blame China. And OPEC is 100% correct here. Not that we will listen to them. China has a RIGHT to buy more oil. They earned this the old fashioned way: through trade and capitalist profit accumulations. China can reap the benefits of labor-value-added business. The US opts for the more debts, more consumption model. We know the end of this sad tale. The ant lives, the grasshopper dies. The turtle beats the hare. The little piggie in the brick fortress lives while the piggie in the straw hut is eaten by the Derivatives Beast.

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Oil Good As Gold

May 20, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

With little fanfare, gold jumps another $15 today. It has risen from nearly $800 to over $900 in less than a month. This is probably partially due to wheat and rice falling drastically. But oil shoots ever upwards! What a shock. The US talks about bomb, bomb, bomb Iran and lo and behold, oil shoots up in price. When will we learn? Never! Diesel goes up too and we marvel about this. And Congress has decided to park Xerxes' throne on the edge of the sea and commands OPEC to produce more oil and drop prices or else! OPEC says, 'Stop feeding those speculators cheap loans and free Funny Money™.' And the US pops the King of Saudi Arabia in the eye and he runs off to Putin who loves OPEC. Putin absolutely adores OPEC and hopes they keep the price of oil high as possible.

Oil Rises to a Record After Pickens Says Prices May Reach $150

Crude oil rose above $129 a barrel in New York for the first time after billionaire hedge-fund manager Boone Pickens said oil will reach $150 a barrel this year because supply isn't keeping up with demand.

Producers are ``running out of oil,'' Pickens, the founder and chairman of Dallas-based BP Capital LLC, said on CNBC today, reiterating comments he made to Bloomberg News on April 29. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Deutsche Bank AG also said in the past month that prices would rise.

``It's not just Boone Pickens; just about every big global bank has raised its price forecast in recent weeks,'' said John Kilduff, vice president of risk management at MF Global Ltd. in New York. ``When prices last fell below $20 in 2001 there was a surplus. That's no longer the case. There's now a deficit.''

The US stock market, last week shot up on the 'good' news that oil was going up because they thought the Federal Reserve would drop interest rates to Japanese levels. But this week, all that happiness is melting away under the basilisk glare of harsh reality: inflation is surging world wide and it is very much fueled by high oil prices. I have lived on this planet a long time. Not as long as some, but long enough to deal with several oil price spikes. All of the previous ones were very much attached to wars. And indeed, so is this one, quite frankly.

The US public refuses to understand that wars in the oil pumping nations of the Near East=high oil prices in America. Simple, isn't it? All my life, I have seen 'experts' try to talk us into believing that there is no connection between wars and oil or high prices of oil due to wars and raging inflation here in America. But this round of high oil prices/wars/raging inflation should finally put that stupid propaganda game in the grave. Since even a fool can now see that oil wars=>high oil costs=>high inflation=>bad global recessions, we can deal with this problem. I am a realist. If wars in or around oil pumping nations=>high oil costs, it is laughably simple how to fix this.

We don't launch wars of choice in the middle of oil fields! DUH. Afghanistan has no oil, it has opium. US wars of aggression=>economic chaos=>high illegal drug production=>cheap illegal drugs in the US. So if we want to stop illegal drugs from flooding into our cities, again, we stop the wars that launch this. The war on terrorists was not waged where it mattered the most because the US didn't want to fight Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Israel. We had to displace our ire elsewhere. Killing Afghani peasants or Iraqi urban dwellers was more pleasing than wrangling with the Saudi Royals.

This is because irritating the Saudi Royals=>oil supply to world strangled=>global financial collapse. Just three days ago, our supposed leader crept into the Saudi Royal palace to beg for more oil. This was a fool's errand. The problem isn't the amount being produced, it is the probable future hazard of moving oil. For the markets we see in the news are not for oil today.

The record price is for FUTURE oil. Since the US persists in talking about war, war war with the very clever and ill tempered Iran Kitty, is it a surprise to see oil futures shoot to the moon? Of course not!

The oil being bought will be delivered IN THE FUTURE at only $130 a barrel. And if this future features the US and Israel bombing Iran, this is a bargain. For future oil may be going for $300 a barrel by then. The buyers of the futures at $130 a barrel will make a killing if the price of oil shoots up that high. This is what they are betting. Isn't it ironic?

So when will our media talk frankly about this? Will Americans want to vote for Bomb, Bomb, Bomb McCain? Or Obliterate Them All Clinton? Even poor Obama has been forced to snarl and snap at Iran so he can get Jewish support in the election cycle. If the US public wants cheap oil, we should repudiate anyone talking about bombing ANY Iranians for ANY reasons. Period. Vote for Ron Paul, eh? Or Nader for crying out loud. But Americans can't come weeping to the world about future high oil prices if we are threatening war. Period.

House action targets OPEC

The House voted Tuesday to let the Justice Department pursue energy antitrust and price fixing cases against members of the OPEC oil cartel, although critics said such attempts would likely be fruitless and could prompt a backlash from oil producers.

The bill, approved 324-84, also would create a special Justice Department task force to investigate energy markets to root out manipulation and unwarranted speculation.

Similar measures are part of a package of Democratic energy proposals being considered in the Senate.
The House passed a similar bill targeting OPEC last year and the Senate embraced it, only to see the provision subsequently taken out of a broader energy bill. The legislation passed Tuesday would remove the current prohibition against pursuing antitrust actions against a sovereign country.

Many energy experts and legal scholars doubt that such an enforcement action would be successful.

So, instead of condemning all war talk, instead of negotiating with Iran as equals, the US Congress voted this winter to declare Iran's guards as enemy combatants. And Congress screams bloody AIPAC murder at Iran at every possible turn. Now, we want OPEC which includes Venezuela as well as Iran, to join with us and make oil cheaper.

HAHAHAHA. Iran prays every day for the US to go bankrupt. Bin Laden unrolls he rug in a cave and bows to Makkar [Mecca] for the US to be defeated and bankrupt. It is, in fact, a popular point of view. Billions of humans hope the US goes bankrupt. This is the fruits of our nuclear armed empire. Russia, for example, loves it when the US Congress or our demented Presidents and candidates for President all yell for war with Iran. This war is rapidly rebuilding the Russian military might.

An important aspect of war making: if your actions strengthen your foes, you got to stop and do something different. Obviously, strengthening foes is stupid. But the US is doing exactly that. The more we try to harm Iran, the stronger Russia becomes. And this strong Russia is making strong ties with the Saudi Royals. Eventually, they will displace us as the protectors of the Saudi Royals. After all, both belong to the same League: the oil exporting nations of the world. I.e.: they have common cause. This is why the Saudis shoved Bush aside as if he were a dog. They no longer need him to protect the Throne. They have Putin. Not to mention the Chinese. Half of all oil from SA goes to Asia. And half of Iran's oil goes to Asia. The US gets only 3%.

According to the Department of Energy, the percentage of cost for diesel for refining in 2002 was only 5.1% and the cost of raw oil was 46%. In 2008, the refining costs shot upwards to 20% [WOW] and the raw oil cost to 61%.

US Department of Energy:

Between January and October 2006, Saudi Arabia exported an average of 1.41 million bbl/d of crude oil to the United States, accounting for 14 percent of U.S. crude oil imports. For this time period, Saudi Arabia ranked third (after Canada, Mexico,) as a source of oil imports to the U.S. In 2005, Saudi surpassed Venezuela as the third largest U.S. supplier of petroleum products. The Saudi Share of imports during this time period was 13.9 percent

Note that OPEC has twice the oil sales as all the rest of the world put together. They have such a large share, they can unilaterally control world oil prices if there is a lack of oil. We no longer have an oil glut like back in the mid-1990's. We are seeing tight markets and there is nothing we can do to change this. But the sudden hike in oil prices is due to the extra dangers caused by US loud talk about war with Iran.

Despite the hot talk aimed at Iran, Chavez of Venezuela plays pussy, too. Iran has periodically sent out feelers. Now, Chavez is joining. Not from fear but because he senses the US might give up trying to dominate the world via brute force or naked fear of nuclear war.

Venezuela's President Chavez says he will reach out to new U.S. president

Whoever is elected, Chavez wants to start immediate exchanges. "It is through talking that we can then come closer and share and compare our views and then reach an agreement."

Chavez said he had been able to talk with President Clinton about many topics, "but after that everything broke to pieces."

The Venezuelan president said he first met President Bush in Canada and told him, in English, "I want to be your friend." But his efforts were rebuffed even when other heads of state served as intermediaries, including then-president of Mexico, Vicente Fox. "Even good friends could not get Bush to sit down and talk," he said.

Bush and his baby cowboy diplomacy did a lot of very real damage to our Ship of State. Instead, we became a Ship of Fools. And now are becalmed at sea due to the high cost of energy from OPEC nations. We can't threaten them to give us oil. We can't even beg for it. We must do something nice for them if we want oil. And this means we have to stop supporting Israeli aggression. And this is the problem: we can't do this at all. This is why, when 65% of the US public wants no more wars and 90% of the US public wants cheaper oil, we have only warmongering lunatics running for office. We have literally no choice in this matter. All three mainstream candidates talk about bringing home our troops around 2013. WHAT? HAHAHA. We might end up like the Russians in Europe: the only way home is if the other countries pay the bills? By 2013, the US will be broken. Already, we can hear the cracking of the bones. We can see the red ink blood spilling from oven veins. We are obviously dying as a global power.

So it irritates me to see Congress wasting time, talking about suing OPEC. Talk about pouring gasoline on a very volatile fire.

U.S. refiners turn attention to diesel amid boom

After focusing heavily on gasoline for decades, U.S. oil refiners are starting to redirect their attention to hiking diesel production capacity to cash in on a global boom in demand for the fuel.

The work may be slow to come online, however, as U.S. refiners finish up a slew of current crude processing capacity projects they've already committed to and gauge competition from robust refinery expansion plans overseas.

"The trend that is important behind the story of the future expansions is the downtrend in gasoline," said Joanne Shore, analyst for the U.S. Energy Information Administration. "Any investment decisions, I would assume, would be focused on how we are going to boost the distillate yield, relative to the gasoline," she said.

Diesel prices are insane. I use diesel and back three years ago, they said the price hikes were due to the costs of starting up refineries that took out the sulfur. Now, the price is nearly a dollar higher. Diesel has risen at a much faster rate than regular gasoline as we see in the charts above from the Department of Energy. This, in turn, is hammering US business like a blacksmith working red hot iron. Shipping companies are going bankrupt pretty fast now. They clung on for the last three years but this year, the price rising by over 150%, they are falling off the cliff. This is striking at the heart of our infrastructure. Businesses depend on truckers bringing the goods in. Truckers are demanding much more money for deliveries. The fun years where we had trucks roaming the nation bringing us cheap goods from Asia is fading fast.

At one lumber yard I was visiting the other day, the boss was complaining about the cost of shipping. He was telling customers, the pre-built sheds were being discontinued due to high shipping costs and small profit margins! This is being played across the land. And it will gather like a storm and come howling back to haunt us all. I see the system freezing up. And today's news makes this worse. Congress is playing games while the fundamental reasons for this mess continue to worsen.

Protesting French fishermen block oil port

French fishermen angry at high fuel costs on Monday blocked a Mediterranean oil port and stepped up protests at other Atlantic and Channel ports to press demands for government compensation.
The action came as Agriculture and Fisheries Minister Michel Barnier was in Brussels meeting his European Union counterparts, seeking EU approval for an emergency assistance package anchored in a two percent fuel tax applied to fish wholesalers.
In Marseille, fishing crews strung a drift net across the entrance to the Lavera oil terminal, at Port-de-Bouc, preventing boats from entering and leaving the harbour, the port authority said.

From last March when oil was at $104 a barrel:
Congress Turns on Speculators in Oil Bubble

It’s not OPEC pulling oil prices to ever greater-heights—it’s speculators. That’s the theory behind the Consumer-First Energy Act, a bill sponsored by Senate Democrats aimed at clamping down on runaway oil futures trading. As stocks fall, investors are fleeing to commodities, especially oil. But even the US government might not have the power to rein in the market, BusinessWeek reports.

“We regulate the trading of onions much more closely than the trading of oil,” argues one consumer advocate. “Regulation will bring some discipline to this raw speculation.” Speculators could simply jump to less-regulated exchanges—if they're the problem at all, some note. “We do not think the energy crisis will be solved by finding and punishing the big, bad speculator,” wrote one Goldman Sachs analyst.

Unlike Americans, even though oil inflation has been half of what we are experiencing, the global shortage of diesel is causing tremendous problems and the irritable French won't sit at home and whine or talk wildly about voting for Presidential candidates who will bomb Iran and make this terminal. No, the French go aux armes. To the barricades! Unlike in the US, the people of Europe can directly assault their leader's hideouts. Washington, DC, is isolated. And the trucker demonstration there didn't feature molotov cocktails, barricades, battles with the cops and attempts at storming up the steps of Congress.

US-Led Capitalist System Headed for Collapse?
Syed Rashid Husain, Arab News

Oil prices continue to rise and rise, with no end in sight. Virtually all other commodities seem to be following to be the same suit. Some now say a new economic system is emerging from the ashes of the old and now crumbling financial structure. Failing to meet even the basic needs of the common man, the current economic system is facing its worst crisis and appears in doldrums. It has miserably failed the underprivileged of this world.

Markets appear divorced from the fundamentals. F. William Engdahl strongly says in a recent write up that the oil markets (and other markets too) today are controlled by an elaborate financial market system as well as by the four major Anglo-American oil companies. As much as 60 percent of today’s crude oil price is pure speculation driven by large trader banks and hedge funds. It has nothing to do with the convenient myths of Peak Oil. It has to do with control of oil and its price.

And the end-result is growing deprivation to a large number of people across geographical boundaries!

In the 90’s, with the war in Afghanistan taking its toll, the Soviet empire virtually melted before our eyes under its own weight. The number of deprived, form Moscow to Siberia and Grozny started to grow and grow rapidly. And as the number of have-nots in then USSR rose, the system could not cope with the pressures, and failed to provide even the basic needs to the common man in the streets. And within years the mighty and the powerful USSR was assigned into the annals of history.

Congress recently condemned 'speculators' for the high price of oil. Well, who is giving these damn 'speculators' all the cash to do this? Why, Helicopter Bernanke! And Congress is talking openly about war with Iran so between Bernanke and Bush we have...high oil prices. The speculators merely take advantage of a golden opportunity.

Which reminds us: gold is now shooting up faster than oil! Wow. The five month pause and decline which was due to Indian and China hesitating in buying gold is now business as usual. As the dollar pitches itself off a cliff, gold rises like a Firebird.

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Bush Begs For Saudi Oil While Punishing Iranian Oil

May 16, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Today has been a really funny day in the news. Bush ran off to Saudi Arabia to kiss ass and got kicked in the ass. Then, as soon as he crawled off in humiliation, the despotic king of Saudi Arabia granted him a boon but was it a boon or was it a popped balloon? Today, to understand the real news, we must crunch lots of numbers concerning oil statistics. Embedded deep inside are some shocking revelations. I have always maintained that Iran is the KEY player in this game. Our entire oil price shock problem is 100% due to the US working like a devil to cut Iran out of world energy markets! And now I have some statistical proof of this. The US CANNOT BE BAILED OUT BY SAUDI ARABIA. Nope. We have to make peace with Iran kitty or go bankrupt. Time for bin Laden to dial home yet another warning.

Oil Rises to Record Above $127 on Goldman Report, China Demand

Crude oil rose above $127 a barrel for the first time, leading commodities higher, after Goldman Sachs Group Inc. raised its forecast and on speculation Chinese diesel purchases will strain supplies.

Goldman boosted its price estimate for the second half of this year to $141 a barrel, from $107, citing supply constraints. China may increase fuel imports to generate power after the most powerful earthquake in 58 years killed more than 22,000 and damaged hydroelectric plants. Oil and commodities, including gold and platinum, also advanced on the falling dollar.

``We can blame Goldman again,'' said Nauman Barakat, senior vice president of global energy futures at Macquarie Futures USA Inc. in New York. ``In March 2005 they predicted that prices would rise dramatically, and they did. Prices jumped to the $125 level after another Goldman report less than two weeks ago. At this point nobody wants to bet against Goldman.''

As Goldman Sachs plays the energy markets and drives up prices there, they predict prices will rise due to you know who driving up the prices! It is like a guy saying, 'I predict you will be run over by my car,' as he guns the engine right when you enter a crosswalk. Whatever Goldman Sachs says will happen will happen and they will insure it happens!

GS runs our government on many levels. Our government has worked tirelessly to lock Iran out of world energy markets. This is causing markets to tighten and all it takes is for a some screwy people to turn the screws on a key energy producing nation and voila! Markets shoot upwards due to shortages! What a shock! Knock me over with a feather!

So the GS people who run our Treasury and many parts of our government and who has zillions of dollars to bribe our Congress critters has engineered things so that Iran can't boost energy production and sell it on the open markets. And in turn, the GS people are hauling in lots of loot to make up for the losses of last year. Note that the sudden surge in prices coincides totally with the sudden losses elsewhere in the GS universe! This is not coincidence. It is deliberate.

Oil was selling in the US at $21 a barrel in 2002. It is now $125 a barrel after hitting $127 a barrel before the Saudis changed their minds...sort of. Home heating oil has jumped from 49¢ a gallon in 1978 to $3.20 a gallon this last winter. As we all know, 'inflation has been very low!' Especially when we see that in 1999, home heating oil was only 88¢ a gallon. No inflation there, eh? It has more than tripled in less than 9 years.
Gasoline has gone from 38¢ a gallon in 1973 [I remember buying it for 21¢ a gallon in 1969!] to $3.80 today, a ten fold increase.

So, thanks to US policies, oil has gone up 6X in price in just 6 years! WOW. Coincidentally, US attacks on Iraq and now Iran has gone up 6X too. Will Americans put 6+6 together and get a dozen traitors? HAHAHA. Of course NOT! This little fact is never, ever mentioned in the news. I suspect some Americans are dimly aware that our war talk and wars have caused oil prices to soar rapidly. But I don't think there are many. Bush can't talk about all this, of course. Nor can his sponsors. And the Zionists who desperately want to bankrupt Iran. But are bankrupting the US instead. Duh. Can't talk about that, can we? So here we are getting rapid see-saws in the news:

Bush's Oil Diplomacy

President Bush pays another visit to Saudi Arabia this week, but the visit isn’t likely to produce new flows of oil from the world’s biggest exporting nation. That's not just a matter of Bush's own diplomatic shortcomings - it's also linked to changes in the U.S.-Saudi relationship and changes in the kingdom’s view of its self-interest.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman told me before I visited Riyadh last fall that years ago, the U.S.-Saudi relationship was based on a perceived exchange of U.S.-provided security for Saudi-exported oil. Nowadays, Saudi Arabia questions whether the U.S. invasion of Iraq enhanced the kingdom’s security and the region’s stability. And the Saudi royals also wonder whether the giant U.S. military can really protect the kingdom’s oil infrastructure from terrorist attacks. On the U.S. side, many analysts believe that Saudi Arabia, by cutting its oil output on several occasions over the past nine years, helped drive prices up to their current peak.

One sign of the breakdown of the oil-for-security exchange is the effort by a group of Democratic senators, led by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), to block arms sales to Saudi Arabia until that country increases its oil production. The kingdom could pump an additional 1.5 million to 2 million barrels a day, though most of that excess capacity is comprised of heavier crude oils that many refineries are unable to process. The move in Congress isn’t likely to have much more impact than Bush’s visit. The Saudi oil policy seems surprisingly settled.

Saudi Arabia's generous gift to Hu and Wen of China combined with the rough rebuff to Bush was a warning. The box to US ears was to alert us to who is the real boss here. Schumer is, of course, a total Zionist. He doesn't care if we pay $5.00 a gallon for gas if this means Israel is stronger and stronger. He is oblivious to all this since it benefits Israel. And this is our entire problem: what works for Israeli Jews is destroying the US. This can't continue for year after year. If the media misdirects people about why we are seeing high prices, people will vote for politicians who only support Israel just like we see today with the media trying hard to shove Obama into Israel's corner. But the proof is in the pudding: if our goofy foreign policies today don't fix this problem, it will grow worse and eventually people will look over at Israel and consider it an albatross around America's neck. Then boom. All hell breaks loose. I say this as a warning since I was Mrs. Levy for 25 years. Please, stop it! Stop this crazy attempt at stopping Iran's oil!

Saudis rebuff Bush's request to pump more oil

The Saudis said they would increase production if customers demanded it, Steven Hadley, Bush's national security adviser, said.

Bush is spending much of the day in closed-door meetings with King Abdullah, the Saudi ruler.

Friday's visit was Bush's second trip to the kingdom this year, coming as oil prices reached a new record high Friday of more than $127 a barrel. When he traveled to Riyadh in January, his request for the Saudis to pump more oil was also rejected.

Oil prices were just below $100 a barrel in January, and Americans were paying an average of $3.06 for a gallon of gasoline. They were paying $3.78 on Friday, following more than week of record highs every day.

"Clearly, the price of gas is too high for Americans, and it's causing a hardship for many families of low income. But it also is not allowing our economy to grow as strong as it could," spokeswoman Dana Perino said en route to Saudi Arabia.

Boohoohoo...I include this story to see how the Saudis got the ruler of America and his feminine mouthpiece to whimper and beg. Gah! I wish I was at that closed door meeting with Bush and his master. Watching Bush crouch on the carpet, crying. HAHAHA. He wasn't! He was laughing! He LOVES high oil prices! He and his buddies make lots of loot this way! Texas is rolling in dough as the rest of America falls off the cliff. Why do Americans tolerate our ruler hobnobbing with the Saudis in private, anyway? ISN'T THIS TREASON???? I would think so, personally. Here is a later news story:

Saudi Arabia Says It Will Boost Oil Output in June

Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, will increase crude oil production next month in response to customer requests.

The country will raise output by 300,000 barrels a day to 9.45 million barrels a day in June, Saudi Oil Minister Ali al- Naimi said in Riyadh today, following a meeting between U.S. President George W. Bush and Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah. Earlier today, U.S. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said the Saudi policy was to supply extra oil only if customers needed it.

``On May 10 we increased our response to our customers by 300,000 barrels because they asked for it,'' al-Naimi said. ``So our production for June will be 9.45 million barrels per day. This is the request of about 50 customers worldwide.''
*snip*
``It's just a token increase but it shows that the Saudis realize just how important it is for the president to not come back empty handed,'' said Peter Beutel, president of Cameron Hanover Inc. in New Canaan, Connecticut. ``This is about a lot more than oil, the special relationship between the countries is at stake.''

What did Bush offer the Saudis? I am rather curious. And did he conspire with them to pretend to be whiplashed or did he really get slapped around? These are key questions we can never answer. We do know that the agony the US consumers are going through are due entirely to our war policies. And we are weaker and weaker the more we need foreign oil to fuel our culture. Today, I went through the raw statistics for oil production to see what is really going on:

Official Department of Energy statistics for energy production:

In 2006, we imported over 63% of our oil. This year, due to recession, it has dropped to 58%. Japan imports much more fuel than the US as a percentage of use. But they also export much more than we, and often to the US. So they are not a net negative. We are, on the other hand, deep in the red in trade. We cannot afford to import ANY oil at all. It is a total loss to our economy since its sole use is to be burned as energy. It is not final production of trade goods. It is CONSUMED. This net loss grows every year both in quantity and cost and is at the root of our problems. We always see high inflation when we see high energy prices.

If we look at the Department of energy's charts, we see that in 1980, the US produced 14,000,000+ barrels per day of all forms of liquid and natural gas products per day. All the following numbers are per day statistics. In 2007, it was still 14,000,000 barrels per day. Saudi Arabia produced 10,000,000 in 1980 and has brought it up to 11,000,000 last year. This is an increase in energy production of only 1 million barrels a day over the course of 25 years! We see in the news that oil is only at 9 million barrels a day. Adding an extra 300,000 barrels is PURELY PSYCHOLOGICAL. It is literally a drop in the bucket when we examine world oil production.

Now, for comparison, Central and South America have produced 3,700,000 barrels in 1980 and have nearly doubled this to 7,200,000 barrels by 2007! This is a huge increase compared to the flat US production and the barely above 27 years earlier production from Saudi Arabia.

Eurasian production has been about as flat as the US while Middle East production has risen from 19 million barrels to over 25 million barrels a day.

Iran has raised production tremendously from 1.6 million to 4.2 million while Iraq was at 2.5 million in 1980 but only 1.8 million today. It is still over 500,000 barrels under the pre-war production levels of 2002. I think we can see clearly where the shortages are and how Iran is the key player in whether global energy markets go up or down.

Africa and Asia have raised oil production together by over 2 million barrels from 1980 to 2007 but if we compare that to the rise in production by Iran, it is clear who has the capacity to rock world markets. For Iran has raised production by 2.6 million barrels over this same time frame. That is, the increase via Iran is much more than the increase from half of the planet!

Even worse, the entire Middle East has increased production by 6.5 million barrels during this time frame. But if we subtract Iran's rise it comes to only 2.3 million barrels which happens to be HALF of the rise from Iran...alone!!!!

WOW. So, over a mere 5 years, Iran and only Iran has been able to increase oil production and thus, feed world markets. While consumption has risen across the board for years now, Saudi Arabia and the US both have barely increased production at all! Iran has. Since the rate of increase from Iran has dwarfed the rate of increase of any other oil producing nation, this means IRAN IS THE FULCRUM. Iran is the one that swings prices! Iran is the ONLY one that can fill the gap between use and production. Not Saudi Arabia. And everyone knows this ESPECIALLY BUSH AND HIS BUDDIES.

This is why the news from Saudi Arabia has been choreographed to pretend that this will change world energy markets. But if I have any readers at all, perhaps the truth will out. Since the US insists on preventing Iran from selling energy, we will see higher energy prices. PERIOD. And Saudi Arabia LIKES THIS. They WANT THIS. They SUPPORT THIS. As does Bush, our media and our rulers here at home.

Obama, Clinton `Green' Workforce Pledges May Fall Short on Jobs

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both pledge to spend $150 billion to clean up the environment, lower energy use, help build subways -- and in the process create 5 million so-called green-collar jobs.

This ``mission'' will `` excite the young people like the space race did in another generation,'' Clinton said at an April 24 rally in Asheville, North Carolina. Obama says the new jobs he envisions will ``pay well and can't be outsourced.''

Many experts say those promises are inflated, and the employment projections overstated, because jobs will be lost as companies convert to renewable energy and reduce carbon emissions.

``We're going to create a job-training bureaucracy to teach people to use a caulking gun,'' said David Kreutzer, an energy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based research group that favors reduced government involvement in the economy.

To the moon with caulking guns! Whoohoo! With home heating costing so much, we are far past the caulking stage. Actually, the housing boom was mostly in places that need lots of energy to commute to work. As well as much, much bigger houses to heat and cool. Houses have doubled in size per capita in the last 25 years. How crazy is this? And are we going to be building subways to suburbia? And can we dare build these in California at all? The BART always worried me. A 7.9 quake along any of the major fault lines in the Bay Area can and will lead to catastrophe in that system.

Building America is a good idea. But building what and where is the entire problem. We still think we can live in Vacationland. Not really work. This is why everyone has rushed to the fun climates in the south and west or along the oceans. Forget Mother Nature and her often ill tempered assaults. Also, during the housing boom, about 50% or more of the jobs building things went to illegal aliens. For a reason. They are very cheap.

Turn off the heat - how Japan made energy saving an art form

When the Japanese government issued a national battle cry against soaring global energy prices this winter, no one heeded the call more than Kamiita, a farming town in the misty mountains of western Japan.

To save energy, officials shut off the heating system in the town hall, leaving themselves and 100 workers no respite from near-freezing temperatures. On a recent frosty morning, rows of desks were full of employees bundled in coats and blankets, nursing flasks of hot tea. To cut petrol use, officials say, most of the town's 13,000 citizens are strictly obeying a nationwide call to turn off car engines while idling, particularly at traffic lights.

This old story from last year shows how to really deal with high energy costs: cut back on use. Period. The US still thinks, despite our attempts at strangling world energy markets with the goofy boycott game with Iran, that we can 'save' on energy and not simply go hot or cold. We want to be comfy. Well, we can't be that AND punish Iran! Period.

Q1: SUNRGI claims that by using its proprietary technology it is possible to produce large amounts of electricity from solar energy at a wholesale cost of 5-cents / kWh. How can SUNRGI do this when multi-billion dollar energy companies have not been able to achieve the same success?
A: The simple answer to that question is that we don’t know why the big companies have not approached this problem the way SUNRGI has approached it. What we do know is that our technology enables the production of electricity at a wholesale cost of 5-cents per kWh because of our: (1) Extreme Photovoltaics Concentration; (2) Proprietary Heat Removal System; (3) Design for low cost mass production and field installation.

Q2: In lay-person terms, how does the product work?
A: Virtually everyone remembers using a lens to magnify sunlight to produce a very bright, powerful, focused spot of light. SUNRGI systems efficiently harness this principal to turn that powerful spot of concentrated sunlight directly into electricity, which can power anything that runs on electricity.

Q3: What is Extreme Concentrated Photovoltaics and how does it differ from Solar Thermal power?
A: Solar thermal systems use the heat from sunlight to heat a fluid, such as oil, which in turn is used to make steam, that then runs the same type of turbine generator used in conventional fossil fuel plants. These plants take a long time to build, are labor-intensive to run and maintain, and require large amounts of water to operate. XCPV systems convert sunlight directly to electricity, without any intermediate step. As such, they are not labor intensive to run or maintain, and do not require any additional resources other than sunlight to operate.

I hope systems like this come along fast. I plan to eventually invest in increasing my solar energy systems. This is a very good thing. Many nations are working on this, especially China. Indeed, since my dad went to King Faisal and convinced him to do this, Saudi Arabia has been supporting solar and wind energy since 1974. About time for the laggards in the US to follow suit.

Petrobras Hires 80% of Deepwater Rigs, Inflates Rents

Petroleo Brasileiro SA, Brazil's state-controlled oil company, leased about 80 percent of the world's deepest-drilling offshore rigs to explore prospects including the Western Hemisphere's biggest discovery in decades.

Petrobras, as the Rio de Janeiro-based company is known, is hiring rigs that can drill in at least 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) of water, Chief Executive Officer Jose Sergio Gabrielli said in an interview last week. The world has 21 such vessels, according to Rigzone.com, which tracks the offshore drilling industry.

Oil production can't rise suddenly on whim to replace the missing Iranian oil. It takes time. Now we can see that oil searches elsewhere in the world will have to take a back seat while Brazil pokes around. Eventually, Brazil will join Canada and Venezuela in world energy markets as a big player. Maybe even surpass Iran.

But not for quite a few more years!

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Abu Dhabi Building New Renewable Energy City

May 10, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

A reader kindly sent me a story about the latest MIT/Abu Dhabi project to build an entire city that runs on only renewable resources. My parents went to the Arabian countries during the late 1960's and until the late '70's to help start up SOLARAS, the Solar Energy Research center there. This was because they persuaded the kings of Saudi Arabia to prepare for the future and to beware of the Hubbert Oil Peak. So now this sort of work is rapidly expanding with the foundation of this new, research city. The US should be doing this at home except there is still too little interest. We will also visit a Greenpeace model community in England.

From a 1981 Aramco newsletter:

The utilization of solar energy in Saudi Arabia began in 1 960 when a French company installed a Photovoltaic powered beacon at a small airport. The research activities commenced with small scale university projects during 1969. The first large solar project was the construction of the world's largest solar heating system for a school in the late seventies. The systematized work in solar energy research and development was not genuinely inaugurated until King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) was established in 1977.
*snip*
One program, that is called SOLERAS (Solar Energy Research-American/Saudi), addressed solar energy technological and economical related issues. SOLERAS was established in 1975 and concluded in 1997. A second program started as of 1 989 with DOE (Department of Energy in the United States), addresses in addition to solar energy R&D, the other technologies of renewable energy.

My parents got involved in persuading the Arab rulers who were sitting on the biggest oil reserves on earth, to go into renewable energy research. This, when the Arabs were first seeing the benefits of higher oil prices and greater oil production. The various programs that were launched have had a checkered history due to lack of genuine fear on the part of the oil kingdoms concerning their future. But now that they a finally seeing their own Hubbert Oil Peak right before their own eyes, the interest in setting up a better system is growing more urgent by the day. When my parents came to Saudi Arabia, most of the people there lived in rather primitive conditions. For example, once there was a big rain storm and millions of bugs came pouring into the apartments where my mother was staying, covering all the walls with creepy-crawlies.

Today, the cities in Arabia are some of the most sophisticated on earth. But as King Faisal said about living in tents in the desert, moving into cities and eventually returning to the camels and the tents, the bounty from the oil profits can be fleeting. As with the high oil prices in the seventies and eighties, all this nearly vanished in the 1990's and Saudi Arabia nearly went bankrupt. Overspending on silly things while making zero preparations for the loss of oil profits, the entire enterprise nearly went under. This is why there is a lot of nervousness over there today. They know the profits can vanish along with the savings and investments. The US has tried to spook Saudi Arabia into supporting extravagant oil consumption over here in order to save their investments in our businesses and properties. But they are obviously going to just cut their losses.

The urgency to develop a sustainable energy community is growing rapidly in the Middle East. Incidentally, another country that made it very clear they were interested in developing sustainable energy systems back in the seventies was China. My parents went there to work on similar projects which are still very much ongoing today. Only here, in America, was their message about the Hubbert Oil Peak and sustainable energy rejected by the government and incidentally, with the election of Reagan, the US voters.

Even today, I see very little movement towards programs that will retrofit our nation for a sustainable energy future! McCain and Clinton both want to make gasoline, the poison that is killing us, cheaper! By cutting taxes that keep our infrastructure from collapsing. And Obama has said little about any of this. All, very sad. Today, I think we should visit the Masdar Initiative project being launched by Abu Dhabi as well as some other, similar energy projects in Europe and Israel.

Building the Zero-Emissions City
A city being built in Abu Dhabi will serve as a large-scale test for renewable energy.

Last week, in the harsh desert climate of Abu Dhabi, construction started on a city that will house 50,000 people and 1,500 businesses but use extremely little energy, and what it does use will come from renewable sources. The initial building is a new research institute that the founders hope will be the seed for the equivalent of a Silicon Valley of the Middle East, only one centered not on information technology but on renewable energy.

The city, which is expected to cost $22 billion, will implement an array of technologies, including thin-film solar panels that serve as the facades and roofing materials for buildings, ubiquitous sensors for monitoring energy use, and driverless vehicles powered by batteries that make cars unnecessary. Indeed, the city's founders hope that it will serve as a test bed for a myriad of new technologies being proposed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

The new zero-emissions city, which is being built near the city of Abu Dhabi in the center of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is part of the Masdar Initiative, a $15 billion government-funded investment program designed in part to ensure that the UAE's prosperity won't be linked exclusively to its oil. Its leaders say that the project will give the country a leadership position in renewable energy. If it's successful, says Sultan al Jaber, Masdar's CEO, "we'll be sitting on top of the world."

Here are two pictures of what this 'city' will look like:

This proposal has some very nice things only from what I see, they are not going far enough! The project very strongly reminds me of the L-5 Society plans I worked on so many decades ago!

I was involved in many of the debates about the structure of the early L5 proposals. The illustration above was what I called 'suburban space colonies' in that it looked an awful lot like Phoenix, Arizona or Houston, Texas. Surprise, surprise. It was, of course, financially impossible because it was a poor use of materials versus habitat use. Some of us argued that 90% of the habitat space would have to be used for food production facilities. Namely, farming. I even joked that the best space colonists would be Amish farmers! Then we had to figure out how to get them out to a space colony and decided to pretend they were being kidnapped by aliens. Heh.

But seriously, the proposals for the model city here leaves me cold due to a lack of greenery. The oxygen/humidity/psychological benefits should be obvious. Plants filter pollution and these places have indoor pollution up the yin yang. Also, the Garden of Eden aspect should not be ignored. I keep two small trees and a number of bushes and potted plants indoors in winter here for these reasons. Who wants to live in what looks like a mall with a food court? The other thing that bothers me in general about Abu Dhabi is the mania for tower building. Towers are not energy efficient buildings. They are grandiose expressions of human hubris. The energy consumption of elevator use not to mention the maitenance problems of big towers is not sufficiently appreciated. True, the Empire State Building has endured a long, long time. Even being hit by a plane. But it is much smaller in floor space than post-WWII towers and has a much, much higher ratio of solid masonry material per square foot.

But the systems being set up in Abu Dhabi's experimental city is very similar to the L-5 Space Colony proposals. For human waste, water use, cooling and heating systems are all going to be bio and energy sustainable. And this is a good concept which all cities should have. Indeed, I proposed long ago, we should move all our manufacturing and cities to space and turn the planet earth back into the Garden of Eden for evolution and living things to recolonize it and continue their amazing evolutionary history! It would also remove us from the grave dangers of weather, earthquake and volcanic hazards. Not to mention bigger events like ice ages, for example. Then the earth could be a vacation spot to feel the force of gravity and enjoy viewing the wonders of nature, etc. Sigh.

The Masdar Institute

is a non-profit, independent entity established with the assistance of the world- renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), under a cooperative agreement signed in December 2006. MIT is assisting the Masdar Institute to emulate its own standards of excellence in Abu Dhabi, and to become a regional engine for technology-driven growth by combining local cutting-edge research with high-caliber graduate education.

The Masdar Institute offers Masters and PhD programs in Science and Engineering disciplines designed to attract top-level talent from local and international universities. Masdar Institute students and researchers will experience uniquely-rewarding opportunities in the region's emerging sustainable energy and technology industries, through continual interaction with top academics and campus-based industry experts. Combined with solid scientific training, such experience will ensure that Masdar Institute graduates are in high demand, both regionally and internationally.

MIT is very near where I live, about 1 1/2 hours away. I hope some time to visit their offices and learn more. We should be grateful that the Arabs have chosen this joint venture and perhaps we will gain something from all this. The belief that the present set up we enjoy in America will be our future lifestyle is impossible. So we should start thinking hard, what will we replace it with? I suggested years ago that most suburbs without train service will be turned into scavenger zones and habitat for bears and wild birds in 50 years or less. When we travel about the Midwest, we can see abandoned Victorian farm houses left over from the days when it took an army of people to farm. As modern equipment took over human and horse labor, the percentage of farm labor in the population collapsed from over 60% to under 6%. So it is with our suburbs: they will be just as abandoned.

I once owned a very lovely Victorian mansion. It was very expensive to maintain and to run. The energy use, in particular, was great. So it is with our cultural system of suburban housing. I like the idea, in the Abu Dhabi city, of electric cars, hopefully able to run on a maglev system, picking up people. Instead of the constant headache of owning a car, one can travel in comfort while not worrying about dealing with break downs, insurance, etc. I know many humans love cars as extensions of their egos but that is childish and would be rather silly in the future, I would hope.

There are other, better ways to 'strut your stuff.'

A blueprint for no carbon footprint

MIT will maintain a close association with the Masdar Institute, whose faculty will spend a year here before beginning their teaching there. But the involvement with the creation of the new city and campus is more limited.

Some of the initial ideas for the zero-energy plan came from the MIT collaboration, says Leon Glicksman, professor of building technology and mechanical engineering and director of MIT's Building Technology Program. "We did work with them when they were evaluating proposals for the architecture," he says, but now "they're on a really fast track for construction," so the British architectural firm, Foster + Partners, which did the principal design work, is taking the lead.

Once the project is built, MIT will have an ongoing role in monitoring the actual energy performance of the city, Glicksman says. And that could provide an extraordinary opportunity for students to learn about the potential for such large-scale integrated approaches to innovative energy production and use.

Years and years ago, in the Ice Ages, when MIT was being built [heh] I went to an L-5 meeting there. The new building we met in was in the cement Architecture Brutality style monstrosity which was supposed to be 'modernism' at that time. Moving beyond the Bauhaus Box style, these things looked like cement pill boxes from WWII. I decided to liven it up and drew a unicorn on the wall with a pen. It still didn't fix the psychological depressed state of the building. So I hope the people advising the Abu Dhabi project are not detached from the historic ideal for a place where humans should live: the Hanging Gardens of Babylonia. One of the Seven Wonders of the World according to the ancient Greeks.

Here is an old article from back when the US and others were very worried about energy, from the Jimmy Carter era:

A Solar Pond

A "solar pond" is an attempt to solve one of the more difficult problems associated with solar energy: how to collect it. Though sunshine falls on the peninsula in massive quantities, no one has yet perfected a way of conserving it efficiently, and the Research Institute hopes that what they call a "salt gradient" solar pond, may provide a solution.

Essentially, a solar pond is, in the words of the solar program's acting director Bruce Nimmo, "just water, salt, a hole and a liner." The hole is scooped out of "sabkhas," the salt flats which abound the eastern coastal region of Saudi Arabia, then lined with plastic and filled with salt water, found, usually just below the surface.

What happens then, however, isn't at all as simple. Based on certain principles concerning the loss of heat from liquids and gasses, the water in a solar pond gets hotter and hotter and can be stored without loss of the heat.

Normally, in ponds, lakes or seas, the water, when it is heated by the sun, loses the heat at the surface through convection - roughly defined as movement in the water caused by temperature, density and gravity factors. But if the water is heavily salted, the movement of the heated water at the bottom of the pond or lake is restricted by the high density caused by the high salinity. As a result, the convection principle - i.e. the loss of heat at the surface caused by movement - no longer operates effectively; to the contrary, the water in the bottom half of the pond gets hotter and hotter; in the solar pond temperatures can go as high as 212 degrees F, enough to boil an egg or, more practically, provide hot water for dishwashers, showers, and washing machines in homes.
*snip*
So far, the institute's modest experiments - with a prototype pond built at the institute's solar lab last fall - have been successful; a meter and a half deep (five feet) and saturated with salt in its bottom half, the pond, built above ground, registered a temperature of 129 degrees F in its "lower convecting zone" or salt-saturated region just two weeks after start-up. In sufficient volume, water at that temperature could be pumped out of the pond's lower half and piped to homes and buildings for heat, or to factories, for such industrial purposes as washing bottles in a bottling plant.

The Research Institute, however, has more ambitious goals. Its scientists want to use solar ponds to generate electricity - by heating water to about 200 degrees F in the pond - pumping it out and transferring the heat in the water to a fluid with a lower boiling temperature (a Freon, for example) which, as it vaporizes, could drive a turbine.

From a 1980 publication: ISRAEL'S 150-KW SOLAR POND

One of the most impressive sights of the entire excursion was a small power-generating station located at the southern end of the Dead Sea. . . where a considerable amount of electricity is being produced, using solar energy. You might well assume that the plant operates on photo-voltaic's, but—if that's what you're thinking—you'll have to guess again. The new power-generating facilities are solar ponds. . . inexpensive, often naturally occurring phenomena that may just hold the secret to a safe and reliable, middle-technology form of energy production!

Needless to say, MOTHER is very interested in any power system that delivers a lot for a little. So—in addition to reporting on what we saw in Israel—we fully intend to research, first hand, the possibility of scaling down both the size and technology of the operation . . . in order to put it on the "little guy's" level, and maybe open up a whole new world of energy independence for us all!

The Israelis were, from the very beginning, interested in developing alternative energy systems. But unlike the Abu Dhabi or Saudis, they couldn't simply fund it themselves. Hand out time, as usual. But the system of using very salty water which they had in a great quantity via the Dead Sea, as an energy boosting system is smart. Certainly, this can be set up in much of the equatorial countries not to mention Australia. The hopes of this system seem to not have been as great as we wanted back then. But the technology continues to evolve.

Solar ponds today:

The energy obtained is in the form of low grade heat of 70 to 80 °C compared to a 20 °C ambient temperature, which has an upper Carnot-cycle extractable efficiency of 1-(273.15+20)/(273.15+80)=15%. By comparison a solar concentrator system with molten salt delivering high grade heat at 800 °C would be able to convert 73% of absorbed solar heat into useful work, and be forced to divest only 27% as waste heat to the cold temperature reservoir (ambient air).

Further research is aimed at addressing the problems, such as the development of membrane ponds. These use a thin permeable membrane to separate the layers without allowing salt to pass through.

Usually, these sorts of systems don't take off unless there is tremendous urgency. I recall the seventies: the reason the alternative energy proposals as well as the L-5 Society took off back then was due to stark fear. It wasn't the inflation or the high prices, it was the RATIONING of energy that got people hopping. Since 1980, there has ben zero rationing. Even as people get increasingly hysterical about pricing, there are still no lines unless a gas station wants publicity and drops prices a few pennies. Then, people rush over and stand in line for an hour for a $2 savings. Pathetic, isn't it? Even in the ration years, I didn't bother to stand in any gas lines. I considered it a waste of precious time.

Right now, I see people wanting things to simply be cheaper. I see now realization that this is yet another shot across our prow and we better get working on changing all our systems! Mr. Kunstler does go about the nation, lecturing on all this. But this preaching to the choir. It has not penetrated much further. We can only pray that the US public wakes up before it is too late.

Here is a Greenpeace-sponsored energy efficient community in England:

Bedzed is a 100 home eco-village in South London which uses state of the art energy efficiency techniques to create a 'zero emission' community.

In the end, it is all about comfort. Before I was born, nearly no one lived with air conditioning. And central heating was a city thing and certainly not universal. In Pasadena, my god mother and my grandfather both used these gas heaters that were very ancient that heated up only the room they were in. I loved watching the blue/yellow flames warm up the ceramic grille until it would glow a bright red! But it was very simple. My own Victorian house in Tucson was heated the same way in the sixties. The addiction to 'comfort' is tremendous and totally modern. Just 2 generations ago, it barely existed even for kings and queens. The drafty palaces of the royals are still very drafty today!

And here are some other energy systems that are interesting:

Schmack BioEnergy (SBE) is an anaerobic digestion company located in Cleveland, OH. SBE is partnered with Schmack Biogas, the leading German anaerobic digestion technology with over 250 plants in operation. Schmack BioEnergy's first plant in the United States is in Akron, OH processing 5,000 dry tons/year of municpal biosolids

If we wish to cling to the comforts and joys of modern life as it has developed in only the last 50 years and for only the top 20% of humanity, we have to make some sacrifices today. Are we willing to do this? History shakes her snake-like locks and smiles.

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Embargo On Iran Rapidly Killing US Economy

Congress has declared today, 'Train Day'. Wish they would spend some money rebuilding our crummy rail systems!

May 10, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

As the cruel US embargo on Iran tightens more and more the entire planet is seeing the price of oil shoot upwards faster and faster. Too stupid to figure out the obvious, the leaders of the G7 nations run about in circle screaming about how all this is the fault of speculators. Then the central banks hand out a trillion in lending to these same speculators! On top of this, Iran is now refusing to accept dollars for oil at all anymore. The dollar's bizarre problems are very much attached to the business of the Iran embargo the US is imposing on behalf of Israel. As chaos broils out of Lebanon, the US is tightening these same screws yet some more, blaming Iran for all this. And in the end, it is a race to see who will destroy the global economy first: Iran or the US. I am betting Iran will win this race with us, we will hit bottom before them.

Paulson, Trichet Signal Welcome at Dollar's Recovery Since G-7

U.S. and European officials signaled satisfaction that the dollar is stabilizing after Group of Seven policy makers expressed concern a month ago about its decline.

The dollar has advanced 3.4 percent from its record low of $1.6019 per euro on April 22, and is up 2.1 percent since the G-7 central bankers and finance ministers met in Washington April 11.

European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said May 8 he ``would be happy'' if traders take account of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's admonitions that the U.S. wants a ``strong'' dollar. A Treasury official said on condition of anonymity yesterday that the G-7's statement was aimed at getting investors to look past short-term U.S. financial-market turmoil.

``They've got to be quite happy as things are moving in their favor now,'' said David Gilmore, a partner at Foreign Exchange Analytics in Essex, Connecticut. ``There's a sense the market is finally getting the message of the G-7.''

While the dollar's drop helps spur U.S. exports, it has also fueled a record commodity-price surge that is hammering consumers. The G-7 last month warned against ``sharp fluctuations in major currencies'' that could have ``implications for economic and financial stability.''

As if global traders listen to anyone! Or rather, we must understand that they ARE the G7 itself. Namely, the rulers of the rulers are these same people. The people who own the politicians are these people! Or are directly the politicians like Mitt Romney, for example. Goldman Sachs openly runs the US, just for example. So when various members of the US imperial alliance chatted with each other, they collectively decided to artificially up the value of the dollar in spite of a huge trade and even much bigger budget deficit in the US as well as rapid deterioration in the US economy, this is a CONSPIRACY. And boy, are they proud of it!

Of course, this makes hash of the entire concept of 'Let's drop the value of the dollar to fix our trade deficit', doesn't it? But as I have pointed out many years ago, a weak dollar=higher energy prices. This is the inescapable trap, the dread Horns of Dilemma I refer to frequently. When one is destroying a system, the sign that it is entering its final stages of destruction is, all choices are evil, all alternatives are destructive. There is no escape.

It is hysterically funny that the same day the G7 goof balls are boasting about this scheme, the world price of oil rises to a new record. No longer are they saying, 'Compared to last time we didn't buy Iran's oil, if you include the rate of inflation, oil is still cheaper than in 1982'. Now it is not cheaper at all. And note that just like back then, the price of oil is high due to Iran being unable to sell oil to the G7 consortium! Duh! Since this happened in the past and we saw what it did to the US economy, why are we doing this a second time?

The cost of all this is horrific for the US consumers and industries. The delivery service industry, for example, is plummeting towards bankruptcy. Truck drivers are being driven out of business. Airlines are going bankrupt and crashing to the earth! The entire US 'tax rebate' that was supposed to induce consumer spending will be sucked down this black hole. One would imagine our media and our politicians would say, 'We are seeing tremendous oil inflation EXACTLY LIKE DURING THE IRAN/IRAQ WAR in the 1980's because we are repeating what happened back then!' The solution is obvious.

And totally invisible. The problem last time was fixed by higher interest rates in the US and the Iran/Iraq war ending! Duh! Yet here we are, at war in Iraq, Iran being attacked and the stupid embargo designed to beggar and weaken Iran means there is a huge reduction in oil suppliers and the remaining suppliers get to hike prices! What a shock. Just like before. And since I love history and look to see repeats, here it is! We want war with Iran, we get monumental price hikes in oil.

FUEL PRICES: WORSE TO COME

The Victorian Transport Association (VTA) has spoken out about the rising fuel prices and the impact this is having on transport companies.

VTA CEO, Philip Lovel said: “The transport industry is carrying the burden of these fuel prices and we need to ensure that transport operators are sharing this burden with their customers, or they will not survive.”

World oil reached a new record price above 120 US dollars a barrel on Tuesday as concerns over the United States economy continue. Oil prices on both sides of the Atlantic have nearly doubled in a year and have continued to soar since the benchmark New York contract broke through the 100 US dollar mark at the start of the year.

Philip Lovel said that the only positive is that the Australian Dollar is at record levels, and if it ever drops below 90 cents to US dollar we are all in trouble!

Supply jitters in Nigeria and geopolitical tension over Iran have added to the price surge. Nigeria has lost about half its oil output amid a strike and rebel attacks. A group of Nigerian militants attacked an oil ship off the coast of West Africa.

Problems continue in Iran, which said on Monday it would reject any offer that violates its right to the full nuclear fuel cycle after world powers said they had prepared a new package to end a long-running standoff over its nuclear programme. Oil players fear the ongoing tension could result in Iran using oil as a bargaining chip. Iran is the second-largest producer in the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cartel.

Our Aussie friends are so lucky. Their own media will actually explain why prices are so high! We, in the benighted US, nearly NEVER hear a peep about the fact that Iran is OPEC's #2 oil producer and sits on one of the world's biggest untapped reserves. We are absolutely certain the US military, the G7 creeps who are boasting about raising the value of the dollar and our rulers are hyper-aware of this information. They just don't want to share it with the poor US peasantry who are deliberately being driven to madcap wars with the promise of cheap Iranian and Iraqi oil once we smash the peasants over there. The war drum beating continues and rises. While the finger pointing in this business is just as loud and misleading as well as cruel.

Refusing to explain all this is very important. They cannot have the US public realize we are paying a WAR TAX via oil and that this tax is now over 15% of our incomes and rising and NONE of this is flowing to our government, it is all flowing to private individuals, kings, dictators and overlords of the ruling elites! And our military costs are borne by ourselves, on top of all this craziness. The kings, despots and ruling elites demanded a stronger dollar last week and got it. But this won't help us since they also raised the price of oil even as the dollar supposedly grew stronger.

And this is due to this war for Iran's oil. Iran knows that if they drag out this struggle, the US will go bankrupt. So they play along. Note how, every time it looks like the embargo is relaxing, Iran's leaders say something about Israel and it is renewed. I believe this is a strategic policy which the government of Iran is deliberately using. It is a brilliant strategic tool and will be studied by future historians as a prime example as to how a very small, militarily weak nation can destroy a huge empire and all of its allies! Wow.

Oil Costs To Offset Stimulus Package---Fuel Costs Dash FedEx Forecast By $100 Million

On the eve of President Bush's visit to Saudi Arabia, crude oil prices set a record for the fifth day in a row yesterday, eating into tax rebates being mailed to U.S. households and prompting FedEx to slash its quarterly earnings forecast by $100 million because of rising fuel costs.

Since Congress and Bush unveiled an economic stimulus package Jan. 24, the price of the OPEC basket of crude oil has jumped by $32.51 a barrel, raising the cost of U.S. oil imports enough to offset the entire stimulus package over the course of the year.

When this stupid stimulus package was announced, some of the bears online mocked it and said this would happen. I am proud that I was one of these bears. People who can predict the future and make accurate forecasts should be in the news a lot. We have the internet now and can look backwards through people's writings to see who is the most accurate. I am one of the most accurate of all when it comes to forward-predictions. But few mainstream media want accuracy or foreknowledge. They want fantasy and then hope reality conforms to their desires.

$33 a barrel rise since January is huge. And is continuing since Iran said something about Israel last week. I bet they have a chart at their headquarters that tracks how long it takes for the US to react to these pokes in the eye. One week? Two? Then the Iranians track the rise in oil prices and then plot forwards, when to say something again. This is why there is no escalation of rhetoric, just occasional pronouncements. Today, poor Obama had to trot before the cameras to denounce Iran and state that we will have a knee-jerk response if Iran says anything about Israel. This is cart blanche for more fun for Iran. Poke-poke-poke. There is no escape for us. The media wants us to do this reflexively because it is a Zionist entity. And Iran knows this and uses it to their advantage.

Most people who don't see this think Iran is desperate to stop this business. Why, they should want to work with the US and let us run things over there like we do in Iraq! Heh. What an example. Lebanon is blowing up again as the US and Israel tried yet another coup against Hezbollah. Hezbollah retaliated and war is raging again there. The Palestinians are still refusing to roll up and die for the Jews in the Holy Land and Saudi Arabia is growing fat and happy on the oil business thanks to Iran so they alternate between sneaky embracing of Iran and then egging the US into attacking Iran's oil industries. And they are abandoning their investments in the US this week. This is why Citibank announced they will drop half a trillion in assets and sell them all in a saturated market where they will lose a lot of value but so what? The Arabs who have the biggest stake in Citibank are jumping out of a sinking US ship!

Up until this spring, they were as anxious as the Japanese to keep the US economy afloat. They even pumped more oil to keep prices down. But the dynamics have changed since then. I suspect the Arab oil kings will shift to China for investment opportunities. This is a double plus. China is not pro-Zionist expansions. And the Arabs have no desire to chop China into small pieces. So a prediction: the oil nations in the Middle East will cease supporting the US economy bit by bit as they exit our banking system. This will make the banking collapse here worse. And if we keep this stupid embargo on Iran going, we will go bankrupt in less than 10 years.

Suspend deliveries to U.S. oil reserve, lawmakers say

With fuel costs becoming a crucial election-year issue, members of both parties -- separately -- pitched their ideas Wednesday for bringing down prices.

Democrats called for a windfall profits tax on oil companies, rolling back tax breaks for the industry and new protections against price-gouging, while Republicans urged increased exploration for new domestic oil sources. About the only proposal their plans had in common was to stop the delivery of 70,000 barrels of oil a day for the emergency stockpile.

President Bush has resisted suspending deliveries, contending it would weaken the nation's defenses against an interruption in the flow of foreign oil. The reserve, set up after the 1973 Arab oil embargo, holds about 700 million barrels in salt caverns along the Gulf Coast.

Bush also has asserted that halting deliveries would do little to bring oil prices down. After all, 70,000 barrels represents a small fraction of the 20 million the nation uses every day.

HAHAHA. During all this price hike business, the US government has been buying oil in other nations and pumping it right back into the ground again so we have some oil for WWIII or if we go bankrupt! And Congress knows this. But they see the writing on the wall: if oil prices go up and up this summer and neither the pro-Zionist Republicans or the pro-super-Zionist Democrats do absolutely nothing, the public will rightfully blow up! Peasants storming the palaces while carrying flaming torches is the nightmare of all rulers. Since we live in a land saturated with misinformation and crazy conspiracy believers, the explosion will install someone totally nuts like Hitler. This is why I hate misinformation.

It is important to understand that we cannot prevent the Iranians, a country invaded repeatedly in the last 100 years, from using nukes to defend themselves. We must understand that our diplomacy is directly responsible for high oil prices and the only way to reduce prices is for us to reduce tensions vis a vis Iran. This means surrendering to Iran. But the alternative is suicide. The US rulers will say to the screaming mob, 'It is the FAULT of the Iranians, let's nuke them!' And off run the crazed mob to do that terrible thing and we have WWIII. I make predictions. And the one thing that ties all things together here is the future world war which will be inevitable if we follow the present path. The only way to evade this war is to not support ethnic cleansing anywhere on earth [we can't stop it but we shouldn't pay for it or protect people doing it] and for us to retool America to use much, much less oil. A war won't fix that.

This is why the reserve is being filled. So our rulers can have WWIII. This is why I want it STOPPED. These reserves are a provocation and a danger to us all. If we don't have them, we won't be tempted to do this war with Iran that will launch WWIII. WWII, after all, did not start with the German invasion of Poland! It began in 1930.

US Energy Department:

Iran is a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and ranks amongst the world’s top three holders of proven oil and natural gas reserves. Iran is OPEC’s second-largest exporter after Saudi Arabia, and is the fourth-largest exporter of crude oil globally after Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Norway. Natural gas accounts for half of Iran’s total domestic energy consumption, while the remaining half is predominately oil consumption. The continued exploration and production of the offshore South Pars natural gas field in the Persian Gulf is a key part of in Iran’s energy sector development plan.

Iran is OPEC’s second-largest producer after Saudi Arabia. In 2006, Iran produced an estimated 4.2 million barrels per day (bbl/d) of total liquids, of which 3.8 million bbl/d was crude oil, equal to 5 percent of global production.

I am including this government analysis to show clearly that our brainiacs in DC know perfectly well, what Iran means to global oil markets. If we had political leaders who gave two pisses for the voters, we would see them talk about the futility of our embargo and how it is directly responsible for high prices. But then, the Cone of Silence would slam down on any politician doing this and we would hear nothing. Do we see Ron Paul in the news? No? Gore managed to break through the Cone of Silence but he did this by not talking about these things. It is OK to talk about Global Warming but NOT about Iran and how we are responsible for high global oil prices thanks to our desire to destroy Iran.

The US government:

Iran produced 6 million bbl/d of crude oil in 1974, but has been unable to produce at that level since the 1979 revolution due to a combination of war, limited investment, sanctions, and a high rate of natural decline in Iran’s mature oil fields. Iran’s oil fields need structural upgrades including enhanced oil recovery (EOR) efforts such as natural gas injection. Iran’s fields have a natural annual decline rate estimated at 8 percent onshore and 10 percent offshore, while current Iranian recovery rates are 24-27 percent, 10 percent less than the world average. It is estimated that 400,000-500,000 bbl/d of crude production is lost annually due to reservoir damage and decreases in existing oil deposits.

The government report makes it clear that Iran's oil is being boycotted. This week, Saudi Arabia said they can't increase production since the extra oil per day is oil hard to refine anyway. Also, note the Hubbert Oil Peak information in the above paragraph. Yes, there is still oil in the ground. But it will always be somewhat less than present oil being pumped. As new wells are exploited, old ones slowly die. Remember, the Hubbert Oil Peak is when there is maximum production and half of the oil has been already pumped out of the ground! Pretty simple. 100% of the oil hasn't been pumped. 50% has. And Iran can have a huge effect on global markets. A 5% decrease in world oil markets due to the US/Israel embargo on Iran means prices can DOUBLE. It doesn't take much, in a tight market, to make prices double and triple. Slight shortages can equal huge price hikes as people bid for the restricted commodities.

This is one reason why all housing bubbles burst no matter what. Eventually, builders surpass supply. All they need to do is build 5% more housing than there are potential buyers and the bubble pops. Nothing ever runs up to infinity forever.

From 2003: Americans stymie Japan-Iran oil deal

Japan and Iran have missed a deadline to sign off on an important US$2 billion oil deal after two years of negotiations, apparently in the face of American pressure over Iran's nuclear ambitions. Given the importance of the American market for Japan's troubled economy and its reliance on Washington for security, Tokyo may condition its signing the contract on Tehran's satisfying the American demand on its joining the additional protocol to the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968 or a similar agreement.

Japan appears willing ultimately to sign the contract for the development of part of Iran's largest oilfield, Azadegan, located in its oil-rich Khuzestan Province. Tokyo sees it as a vital source of long-term energy supplies for its economy, which is heavily dependent on imported oil. Accessing the oilfield is especially important for the Japanese, who about two years ago lost their rights to extract oil from Saudi Arabia's Kafji zone. According to available estimates, the Azadegan oilfield contains 6 billion barrels of crude.

I am including this 5 year old article to show how the US has worked very hard to cause the present market meltdown. The US used all its diplomatic and economic powers to force Japan to boycott Iran. Japan buys oil from Iran despite US efforts but they did restrict this. To their rising fury. Japan's trade with the US has not been growing the last 10 years. It has stayed even while China, Canada and Mexico's trade has surged far past Japan's trade with the US. But the profits of this trade are still huge for Japan so they yield to us for now. But if we stop buying Toyotas, it will vanish. Already, they are forging much stronger diplomatic ties with Russia and China!

Fukuda, Hu promote 'strategic' interests

During a joint news conference after the signing ceremony, the two leaders indicated that major progress had been made on the sensitive issue of joint development of gas fields in the East China Sea.

"We were in agreement that an early agreement should be reached after hammering out the details," Fukuda said.

Hu added, "The total picture for resolution of the issue has come into view. We agreed to accelerate the discussions in order to reach an agreement as soon as possible."

I predicted last year that China and Japan would resolve this issue between themselves without either of them using the US as intermediary just like the US flubbed the negotiations with North Korea and handed them off to the Chinese who were delighted to take over the negotiations and bring them to a successful conclusion. I expect Hu to sign a treaty with Japan that will insure both nation's energy futures. And this is yet another step down the diplomatic ladder for the US which is focused solely on protecting Jewish ethnic cleansing.

Asahi Shimbun:

Hu touched upon the recent start of discussions between Beijing and representatives of the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism.

"A major door will be kept open through dialogue," Hu said. "We are opposed to activities that lead to the breakup of our country as well as any action to destroy or interfere with the Beijing Olympics. We will continue the dialogue."

Fukuda asked that discussions continue, saying, "It is a fact that voices of concern are spreading in the international community."

I am including this to illustrate how China is very pissed off about the lunge at Chinese sovereignty and how this is a prime motivating factor in all negotiations. Note how Fukuda is backing China on this while not being loud about it. Triangulation time!

Japan set to open up defense use of space

Japan cleared the way for a law allowing non-aggressive military use of space on Friday, overturning a decades-old policy of limiting space development to peaceful uses.

The move comes during a visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao aimed at warming long-fraught bilateral ties.

A lower house committee approved the bill, which is to be submitted to a full session of parliament in the next few weeks, a ruling Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker's secretary said.

China alarmed the world in January 2007 by using a missile to shoot down one of its own disused satellites, demonstrating its burgeoning prowess in space and military hardware.

Pacifist Japan's space scientists complain that separation of space development from the military under a policy maintained since 1969 is one reason why its own technological progress has been slower.

And yet another step away from the US and towards Japan being on its own. Just as the Arabs are now triangulating with Russia and China, so is Japan. And like the Arabs, they know that they need to have some traction here in the form of their own military systems. Eventually, all our 'allies' will move away from us, all except for Israel who will clutch at us with increasing ferocity. The time for this is not yet at hand. But the trigger will be the US going bankrupt.

When that happens, the planetary map of power will change utterly and very swiftly. Our Pentagon brainiacs and our rulers know this. Instead of avoiding it, they seem driven to make it WORSE as fast as possible. I suspect it is due to a hope that we can fight WWIII quickly and win. And this is total delusion. There is no hope of this happening. It is already too late. But they won't admit this. They can't.

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Oil Continues To Bedevil US Mass Guzzlers

Typical high-speed accident this year on Long Island where many people love to drive their cars
May 8, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The price of a barrel of oil has shot up to $124 a barrel. Just last year, everyone was fretting and hoping it would drop to under $50 a barrel. That was pure wishful thinking by American oil addicts. Are we still demanding a war with Iran? Yes! Are we fighting more and more in Iraq and Afghanistan? Yes! Is the dollar still being inflated by overproduction via the Federal Reserve's new lending window that doles out $50 billion at a pop? Yes! And is the rest of the planet slowing down oil purchases? Nope. So the price of oil goes up and up and up and Americans are raging at the gas pumps and McCain talks about war, war, war and Hillary wants cheap oil one way or another and will Santa Claus save us and dump oil all over us? The huge sinkhole in Texas due to pumping oil out of the earth is instructive, too. Heh.

Oil Trades Above $124 After Touching Record on Supply Concerns

Crude oil traded above $124 a barrel in New York after touching a record yesterday amid forecasts of stronger demand for distillate fuels, which included heating oil and diesel.

``There's huge diesel demand growth in Asia, which is going to keep pressure on supplies,'' said James Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch & Associates, in Galena, Illinois. ``Whenever there's a big rise in one energy market there's an impact on the psychology of the other markets. Also, demand for crude oil will rise as refiners boost distillate output.''

If the central banks of the G7 nations and their trade partners keep on flooding the world with 'liquidity' we will see oil prices go higher and higher. This connection is hard for most people to see since the media never talks about this. The price of gold which collapsed by 10% this spring, is once again rising, too as this flood of Funny Money™ continues or even accelerates. Everyone has seen the amazing videos of the giant sink hole where lots of oil has been pumped out of deep caverns covered with salt domes. I often joke about how people imagine the Earth is but a ball of oil and all we have to do is pump it infinitely. And I point out, the entire planet would collapse into itself if this were true. We can't pump oil forever at bigger and bigger amounts. This is physically impossible.

The desire to have oil fields fulfill our desires and if we just print more dollars and hand it to anyone who can find this Black Gold, it will flow like crazy. Alas for this fantasy! The oil costs are direct forces of inflation! For all our systems from transportation, heating and producing energy of various types, making of plastic, fertilizer production, manufacturing plastics, etc, etc: it is the fundamental basis of modern industrial society!

So oil is usually the engine used to eat up inflation. Since our bankers refuse to raise interest rates, all of this will flow into energy systems where it will be burned off one way or another. So long as we keep trying to evade responsibility for our wayward spending by simply having the central bankers make more money, energy prices will fuel overall inflation across the entire planet.

Note yet again how the 'experts' talk about 'psychology'. HAHAHA. No one can create inflation by wanting inflation! They are always trying to CATCH UP WITH OBVIOUS INFLATION. If one fails in this enterprise, one gets very poor very fast. Ask the elderly on fixed incomes! I am on a fixed income and it killing me. I can't just demand Social Security mail me more money. They don't and won't. So my psychology be damned.

More and more Americans have the answer to skyrocketing gas prices: Just steal it.

According to the Petroleum Marketers Association of America, gasoline theft is becoming a huge issue across the country. Motorists drive up, pump their gas, then speed away without paying.

It’s gotten so bad in some areas that gas stations may revert back to the old “pay-before-you-pump” rules of the 1970s.

Last year, for example, gasoline theft cost the gas industry $134 million. (Experts say it would have been a lot more, but many stations went to pay-before-you-pump rules after the post-Katrina gas-price spike.

Before you stick it to the man and rip off your gas station, know this: It’s not their fault. In fact, motorists in New York were asked how much profit they thought their gas stations were making off them filling up their tanks. One person guessed $1.25 a gallon. Another guessed $.65. The reality? Less than a dime. [CNN]

Here’s the breakdown: For every gallon of gas, 72% goes to the big gas companies (like Exxon and ConocoPhillips), 13% goes to taxes, 8% goes to refiners, and 8% is split between marketing, distribution and the gas stations.

I remember when the government allowed the big oil companies that were split apart by the government 100 years ago to reassemble themselves. All of the present oil companies in America were all Rockefeller's oil monopoly. Exxon/Mobil obviously should never have been allowed to reassemble itself as a monster entity. But then, old Ma Bell is growing, too, bit by bit. And our media is turning into a monopoly owned by only 5 men who happen to also be Zionists.

Rapid inflation turns law abiding people into criminals. Just like rapid inflation in housing turns reasonable people into scam artists and con men as they misrepresent their finances in order to get virtually free loans. All of these goofy schemes breed crime. I remember the seventies. People rioted at gas stations. Just the other day, someone in a big, fat gas guzzler got infuriated as we filled our own small gas miser and drove right up on our bumper, trapping us at the pump and began blowing his horn. I was going to summon the police but the car in front of us took off to get away from the stupid brute and we followed. This sort of ill tempered infant behavior is alas, not uncommon.

The people who got all puffed up with pride when they first bought their Big Trucks are the same characters who are livid with rage that their beloved Big Trucks are destroying their finances and even their entire lives. I have little sympathy for these people. I drove Big Trucks all my life...as farm or work equipment. Hauling building materials, farm products, equipment, etc. I never drove these to and from desk jobs or to the grocery store. The Big Truck fad morphed into the Soccer Mom fad. I have stood by a soccer field to count the number of Soccer Mom Big SUVs carrying more than two children.

The number was ZERO. None showed up for the soccer games. All had two or fewer children in them. This was an unscientific study but I bet if we did this across the nation, it would barely be above 5%. I was reading a Mad Magazine story about the gas hysteria in the mid-1970's. The cartoons talked about cars getting more than 30 mpg. Today, except for a handful of foreign cars, we get barely 30 mpg on the gas miser cars! My Geo Metros got over 55 mpg but they were unpopular because they couldn't go zoom zoom. I drove my two Geos for more than 300,000 miles between the two cars. The US is not even slightly serious about the oil problems we face.

For example, the average house in 1970 was only 1,500 sq feet. Today, it is over 2,500 square feet! Many are McMansions that are over 5,000 sq ft. The average commute has doubled in the last 20 years. In other words, we spent the last 30 years since the first warnings about the Hubbert Oil Peak and the uncertainty of oil since we can't produce enough oil domestically to keep on going, we spent these 30 years goofing off and making things literally TWICE as bad! The average SUV of the larger classes gets only 9 mpg. This is ludicrous. My big work truck I use only for hauling, a big one ton brute, gets 19 mpg. This is because the engine was built for hauling, not driving 100 mph on a highway.

Hillary Clinton visits Indianapolis Speedway

Sunday, she earned the endorsement of Sarah Fisher, the first woman to earn a pole position at an IndyCar Series event, and who is now preparing for the fabled race.

And today, Fisher, an Indianapolis native, showed Clinton -- and a trailing pack of reporters -- around her garage at the speedway as cars roared around the track at more than 200 mph.

Clinton admired Fisher's high-tech race car, -- "That is so neat," Clinton said -- before posing for photos with Fisher and her team, the first owned by a female driver.

"Making history is what it's all about," Clinton quipped.

Like McCain and Bush, Clinton wants the NASCAR voters. And the NASCAR voters want to drive gas guzzlers. And this is simply irresponsible and utterly disgusting. The US is going bankrupt due to importing much of our energy we use to zoom zoom around and live in huge, hulking houses. Most civilized nations cured this problem via taxes: energy is taxed severely so people are not tempted to up the ante and guzzle. In this election, candidates are tempting voters with the idea of ZERO TAXES! And to sweeten the deal, ZERO INTEREST LOANS! And why stop at that? Why not ZERO DOWN! Like we see in ads on TV. The fine print is interesting. Buy now and pay later at 100% compound interest in the form of slavery and economic destitution. What a charming choice.

Clinton: 'White people support me'

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview published Thursday. She cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.

I just had to include this quote. Before, the racism in this election was kept in the closet with the bed sheets. Now it is in the open. It is interesting the McCain and Clinton are both courting the same gang. 'No education? Hate them n.....ers? Vote for me!' is charming, isn't it? There is a huge number of people who desperately want to cling to this 'American lifestyle' which features gas guzzling coupled with reckless spending. These people vote. They can see inflation raging around them and they hope, due I fear to lack of information, inability to see through the lies of the 5 owners of our media and due to political pandering, they can't figure out that their lifestyle is DEAD. And is being sucked into the earth like that collapsing oil reserve that got pumped dry. And the collapse of this culture will be as swift and terrible if we don't change our ways, fast.

According to Attorney General Mike Mukasey, international organized crime has decided it wants a “taste” of all that money generated by high oil prices.

Mukasey said a new Justice Department investigation found the global mafia groups “control significant positions in the global energy and strategic materials markets.”

Mukasey: “They are expanding their holdings in these sectors, which corrupts the normal functioning of these markets and may have a destabilizing effect on U.S. geopolitical interests.”

HAHAHA. High oil prices are due to what international Mafia? ARREST BUSH! ARREST CHENEY! ARREST ALL OF THEIR TEXAS OIL BUDDIES! And bomb, bomb, bomb Saudi Arabia, while you are at it, guys. And start WWIII. Might as well. When America voted---sort of---twice for a pair of oil soaked snakes to run this nation, I was horrified. People around me said, 'They will make oil cheap because they control oil!'

Talk about naive. Then, when these oily Mafia guys used 9/11 as an excuse to attack Iraq, people up here were happy. 'Now we will have cheap oil!' they yelled.

I said, 'Fat chance. All wars make oil expensive and cheap loans at 1% interest makes inflation so oil will inflate no matter who we conquer.' And so it was. Note the latest propaganda! It isn't global central banks creating inflation! It isn't irresponsible oil use by the US who has to import much of our oil and palm off increasingly worthless dollars that is causing the price of oil to shoot up. No. It is this unnamed 'Mafia.' I bet they will say, these Mafia types are Russians and Chinese. HAHAHA. Or perhaps it is the drug dealing Mafia selling heroin from Afghanistan! And then dumping the profits into oil speculation! Yes! Oops. We are protecting the poppy crops of Afghanistan! Oh dear.

Well, I suppose if the media owners join with select politicians to yell nonstop to NASCAR dads and soccer moms with only one or two children in their behemoths, 'It is the fault of international drug dealing Mafia types who have slanty eyes or drink volka', the less educated might fall for it. After all, Clinton fell for the goofy garbage about Saddam having WMD. And millions of Americans still think Saddam and not Bush has a lot to do with the success of 9/11.

Can Rockefeller Heirs Turn Exxon Greener?

It turns out that some of John D.’s descendants would like to see changes at the oil giant and are publicly challenging the company’s current boss, Rex W. Tillerson. Specifically, they are behind proxy resolutions demanding that the roles of chairman and chief executive be split and that Exxon invest more in alternative energy.

“They are fighting the last war and they’re not seeing they’re facing a new war,” said Peter O’Neill, a great-great-grandson of the company’s founder. Another family member, Neva Rockefeller Goodwin, an economist, said, “we feel so passionately about them becoming the best company that they can.”

Exxon didn’t seem too shaken by the threat from the Rockefeller name. It points out that these family members represent only 0.006 percent of Exxon’s stock.

The Rockefeller family wants to keep control of energy systems. But the others running the reborn energy monopoly don't want to change course right now. Money is pouring in like crazy! And don't they all sound like a Mafia meeting? I love 'The Godfather.' It is a great movie. Well, there are ruling elites and they argue with each other as to how to chop apart the world and control it. But I don't think the Mukasey AG is talking about arresting any of these Mafioso.

When gas prices go up, gas station workers brace for the worst

Prices aren't the only things rising at gas pumps around our area.

So are tempers.

Workers at gas stations in Rockland again are bearing the brunt of driver anger at prices that are hovering around $4 a gallon.

"They are getting crazy," said Ash Muhammad, who works at the SuperValue in Stony Point.

As usual, the poor guys with little education at the bottom of life's ladder has to deal with Clinton and McCain's enraged mob of hard-working, white working, poorly educated voters demanding cheap oil. Educating people to make wise choices is supposed to be the role of our leaders and our 'betters'. People with PhDs must be helping people who can barely read. The owners of the media have an obligation to tell the truth as best they can, not lie about everything. And politicians should not pander but this is what works so they do it. And the US will fall into a sink hole we call 'bankruptcy' and no one will stop this. Too many people make too much loot right now to stop this.

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Mexico Cuts Oil Exports To US

May 6, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

BREAKING NEWS: MEXICO TO CUT OIL EXPORTS TO US. This is big news. It hasn't hit Bloomberg yet but already oil traders are shouting up the price of oil due to this news. It will shoot well over $120 a barrel. And it is time to talk about the other energy news. Americans wonder if we should retrofit to solar energy and thus, make jobs. Only China figured this out...long ago. They asked my dad to start off their solar energy industry back during the Jimmy Carter Presidency years! They are way ahead of us in this matter. And the IMF is furious that Russia won't listen to Rato and his fellow flunky wizards who want to loot Russia. HAHAHA. Well, off the cliff we continue to go!

Mexico will lower exports of crude to the U.S.

The Department of Energy United States received notification of PMI International Trade in the sense that Mexico cut its crude oil exports to the U.S. market at 184 thousand barrels per day on average during 2008, a situation which could be extended for two more years .

The subsidiary Pemex responsible for the marketing of oil abroad informed the U.S. government and its customers in that country due to the fall in crude oil production was necessary to adjust downward the export platform committed during the year and to persist that the problem of production could be adjusted to maintain the volume of foreign sales of crude oil until 2010.

The original program of 2008 exports of crude oil planned to put on the international market one million 678 thousand barrels per day on average throughout the year, but at end of first quarter sales volume reached one million 499 thousand barrels, ie 179 thousand barrels less than originally envisaged, which also affects the U.S. market.

The original article is in Spanish so I will post that, too:

México bajará exportación de crudo a Estados Unidos

El Departamento de Energía de Estados Unidos recibió notificación de PMI Comercio Internacional en el sentido de que México recortará sus exportaciones de petróleo crudo hacia el mercado estadounidense en 184 mil barriles diarios en promedio a lo largo de 2008, situación que podría extenderse por dos años más.

La filial de Pemex encargada de la comercialización de hidrocarburos en el exterior hizo saber al gobierno estadounidense y a sus clientes en ese país que debido a la caída en la producción de petróleo crudo fue necesario ajustar a la baja la plataforma de exportación comprometida durante el año y que de persistir el problema de la producción se podría mantener ajustado el volumen de ventas externas de petróleo crudo hasta 2010.

El programa original de exportaciones de petróleo crudo 2008 tenía previsto colocar en el mercado internacional un millón 678 mil barriles diarios en promedio durante todo el año, pero al cierre del primer trimestre el volumen de ventas alcanzó un millón 499 mil barriles, es decir, 179 mil barriles menos de lo previsto inicialmente, lo que afecto también al mercado estadounidense.

Mexico is at its own Hubbert's Oil Peak. The right wing rulers of Mexico used hook, crook and murder to install one of their own in the last 'election.' The US rulers were immensely pleased there was no countervailing revolution down there. Thanks to commodity speculators, there just may be a revolution in the not too distant future there. I am looking at Bloomberg news as I type. The stock market just fell 65 points in a few minutes. Anyone who thinks there is even a ray of good news in the news stream today is either nuts or works for Bush and Bernanke.

Of course, the OPEC nations will be grimly pleased. Certainly, Iran Kitty is laughing its feline head off today. The US has continued to menace the Persian Cat. And the price of oil won't go down, of course. So we have a confluence of forces here: the Hubbert Oil Peak, the end of infinite lending at low rates and the US spending on wars going off a cliff and into the abyss where Chtulhu dwells.

Here is my February, 2005 story about Mexico's oil:

Mexico's Biggest Oil Field Hits Hubbert Oil Peak, Europe Demands Russia Give Them Control Of Russian Oil And Gas

Already, danger signs from Mexico as their greatest oil field, Cantarell, signal the possiblity that it is not only past peak but in danger of a sudden drop off in production. Nearly all the oil there is sold to the USA which continues to guzzle gargantuan amounts of oil. In Europe, at the G8 meetings hosted by Russia, the Europeans and Americans demand Putin let them run Russia's oil and gas fields for ourselves. Putin smiles and and says 'Don't call me, I'll call you."

When the Great Permian Extinction happened, and it was, like all following extinctions, very rapid, the earth was covered by a tremendous amount of rotting biomass both in the oceans and on land. Instead of merely slowly filtering down, slowly piling up, nature usually is very thrifty and various organisms eat or dissolve whatever organic matter dies leaving relatively speaking, not much behind. And it tends to be used again by plants, for example, which grow using the fallen debrie of previous plants after worms and bacterium digest them all.

In the great catastrophe of the Permian Extinction, 90% of all living things died very quickly, the earth became very hostile and tons of mud and sand and very briny seas covered over the sad remains of a once teeming earth. This pile of dirt/salt/sand has been, over the last several hundred million years, been compressed into oil and gas and we seek them out and squeeze it all out again, leaving empty gaps which we pump water into so the salt domes won't collapse and to pressurize the oil so it comes out to the last drop.

I just got a call from a friend who tells me his TV set pundits are all saying we are going to see a world oil glut! Whoo hoo. I roll my eyes. This is the sort of lies one expects from our rulers who need to deceive everyone so we won't change now and save our skins. The plan, I assure you, is to enslave the vast majority of humans and put them to work as serfs and slaves. They know all about what is going on and pray we don't figure it out.

Here is my story from March, 2007, talking about the Mexican oil industry:

Both Ghawar And Cantrell Oil Fields Are Past Peak

We Hubbert Oil Peak watchers have been expecting this. Seven years ago, many of us thought this would happen by 2010. But the Saudis beat us to it by recklessly pumping oil for political reasons, mostly to keep Bush in power and gas prices in America briefly down. Recently, they claimed they were increasing their pumping to punish Iran and drop world oil prices only this didn't happen at all: if prices went down a few pennies, it was only because oil futures buyers anticipate a global recession or even depression.

Way back in the early 1970's, Americans were much more alarmed about the Hubbert Oil Peak: we reached it back then. Even with the subsequent Alaskan discoveries, the decline has continued. The Gulf has produced a good amount of oil but not enough to make up the shortfall and hurricanes have crippled more than one pumping facility there.

The second-largest producing oil complex in the world is Mexico's giant Cantarell oil field, in the Gulf of Mexico off the Yucatan. The field was discovered in 1976, supposedly after a fisherman named Cantarell reported an oil seep in the Campeche Bay.

Exploration yielded surprising results. It turned out that Mexico's richest oil field complex was created 65 million years ago, when the huge Chicxulub meteor impacted the Earth at the end of the Mesozoic Era. Some 10 years earlier, Luis and Walter Alverex had suggested in their independent studies that an impact meteor was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. Scientists now believe that the Chicxulub meteor impact was the culprit that killed the dinosaurs, as well as the cause for creating the Cantrell oil field.

Mexico has been obviously heading towards its own Hubbert Oil Peak for some time. The Cantrell Fields are very old just like the ones in Saudi Arabia are reaching their end. The need to pressurize oil up into the wells via pumping in sea water is reaching its economic limits since all this water needs to be removed after pumping and when the oil to water ratios drop too far, it becomes uneconomical to do this much longer.

By the way, up in Canada where the sand oil processing plants are, they have to use a lot of water to get the oil and this polluted water is stored in these huge ponds that are pure poison and they didn't stop the migrating birds from landing on this lake of pure poison and hundreds of birds died. The downside to our frenzy to produce oil no matter what has a severe ecological impact. I will note here that the US and the other G7 nations love to attack China over environmental issues even as we befoul our own parts of this lovely planet.

Mexico, along with Canada, imports a huge proportion of our oil we use. Along with Venezuela. And Venezuela is cutting back on oil exports to the US, too, at the same time. This is another reason our oil prices have been relentlessly moving upwards. The US government's response has been to offer gas tax holidays via McCain and his side-kick, Hillary Clinton. But that won't stop the relentless rise in prices. And our wars which are directly responsible for all this, will be hampered by Europe and Asia rushing off to Iran Kitty to get deals signed whereby they buy oil for euros and yen, not dollars. The US can stop this by bombing Iran but this might start WWIII. A serious mistake if we think THAT is a good idea.

Our masters in Saudi Arabia will be pleased by this news. They have us over a barrel. They usually kept OPEC prices down for us in exchange, we were to do things for them like kill Saddam. But we fouled up that game and released tremendous Shi'a energy and this displeases the Sunni Saudis. Who are being kicked in the teeth by the Israelis on a daily basis. So we will see some queer things broil out of that mess. One thing is certain: Saudi Arabia won't give us cheap energy. I suspect, they can't increase production, anyway.

Medvedev Boxed In by Oil as Putin Bequeaths Economic `Dead End'

When Vladimir Putin hands Dmitry Medvedev the keys to the Kremlin on May 7, he may be locking his presidential successor into an economic box.

Russia is riding so high on rising oil and gas prices that it has little incentive to diversify beyond commodities. The energy industry produced more than two-thirds of the nation's export earnings and more than a third of the state's 2007 revenues, which totaled $315 billion.

The government has ignored advice from the World Bank and other organizations to invest in other industries, start-up companies and infrastructure. Instead, the central bank has amassed $530 billion in gold and foreign-currency reserves; Putin has put $130 billion of that in a sovereign-wealth fund that would provide no more than a two-year cushion if energy prices fall.

HAHAHA. Oh, the humanity! Russia is in trouble because they won't listen to the IMF! HAHAHA. One thing is certain: Russia's masters aren't stupid. Only stupid people listen to Rato and his ilk. Since Rato and his buddies are all liars and con men and con women, listening to them is fatal. I suggest no nation listen to them. Besides, who is being de-industrialized, anyway?

AMERICA! Russia had to retreat on this, too, but unlike America, they have energy to sell so unlike America, they are NOT in debt and have a huge FOREX reserve, the third largest on earth! We have nothing! Nothing! Russia's energy is 2/3rds their export earnings. No shock. And as the value of energy rises, they will see greater and greater profits. DUH. Is this evil?

Of course not. Russia is licking its wounds from a past century of wars, destruction and communist leaders gone insane. Now they are led by sane people and this drives the US and the other G7 nations insane. We all want a weak Russia! The fact that it is growing stronger via energy sales infuriates the West no end. Note also, Russia has a two year cushion. What is America's cushion?

A cactus plant! We don't have any cushion at all! So who are we to yell about Russia's damn cushion? They are sitting pretty while we are falling off a cliff into a pile of very painful cacti.

Here are some NYT letters to the editor concerning our energy plight and our trade deficits:

To the Editor:

David Brooks is right: the global economy is driven by technological change. One should add that the third industrial revolution will start when we accept that technology can solve the energy crisis.

Whichever nation decides to cover its roofs with solar shingles and use inexhaustible and free solar energy to convert sea water into hydrogen fuel for its cars will not only provide a permanent solution, but will also initiate the economic boom of the century.

Political leaders should not use the gasoline cost for pandering or preparing for energy wars. No, our political leaders should return the United States to its natural role of leading the technological transformation of the planet.

Béla Lipták
Stamford, Conn., May 2, 2008

OK: Jimmy Carter! My dad was the head of the Alternative Energy Commission. Everything my dad said was WIPED OUT DURING THE REAGAN YEARS. Reagan told him to jump in a lake. And told me to take a hike. During the 1970's and 1980's, the Communist Chinese took a very deep interest in my dad. He spend half of his time in China from then until 1989 when I infuriated the Chinese leadership and they ceased talking to us. HAHAHA. My one talent, infuriating rulers.

Anyway, back in the 1970's, the Chinese asked my dad to start their solar energy programs. Which have continued since then! As the US deindustrialized, China built its industries. And one of them is their solar energy production industries. The US chose to go for cheap oil and cheap interest rates, gas guzzlers and big houses while refusing to do anything concerning alternative energy systems at all. To my great fury! Anyone supporting alternative energy, from 1982-2007, were curtly told to 'Shut the hell up.' And we were denied any visual support in the news. Like Volcker, we have spent a long, long time in the wilderness.

Solar Energy Booming in China
by Zijun Li on September 23, 2005

The city of Beijing, China’s second-largest energy consumer, has announced plans to build a “solar street” where buildings, streetlights, and other features will run entirely on energy from the sun. A second pilot project in the city’s Xuanwu Park will introduce solar power for lighting, heating, and refrigeration. Both projects reflect a larger government commitment to dramatically increase China’s use of renewable energy in the coming decades.

In a move to cut domestic reliance on coal and oil, the Chinese parliament passed a historic law in February pledging to use renewable energy resources for 10 percent of China’s energy consumption by 2020. The new law includes details on the purchase and use of solar photovoltaics (PV), solar water heating, and renewable energy fuels. In particular, the government will promote the use of solar PV in buildings as a way to push China’s solar energy industry, said an official at the International New Energy and Renewable Energy Forum on September 19.

China has several advantages in solar energy development. According to Xinhua Net, two-thirds of China’s land area receives more than 2,000 hours of sunlight annually, more than many other regions of similar latitude, including Europe and Japan. This gives China a potential solar energy reserve equivalent to 1,700 billion tons of coal. And China has become a world leader in PV cell production: Shangde Solar Energy Power Company, the country’s largest crystal silicon solar cell producer, recently expanded its operations and expects to boost China’s total production capacity of the technology from 200 to 320 megawatts by the end of this year.

China is also a world leader in solar thermal production and use, accounting for 55 percent of global solar heating capacity (excluding pool systems)—or 52 million square meters of collectors—by the end of 2003, reports Worldwatch Institute senior researcher Janet Sawin in Vital Signs 2005. China aims to boost its production capacity of one specific type of collector, solar heat panels, to 51 million square meters by the end of 2005, which would make it the world leader in solar heat panel production, according to an official from the National Engineering Research Center for Renewable Energy.

That news was from 2005. China's rulers have a 50 year plan. I watched them hatch it. Arguing about these things, them watching me rage about these things back then, they came up with a plan for the Hubbert Oil Peak. And we are seeing it being fulfilled right on schedule. They knew the Peak would begin to show itself by 2000. I told them this, my dad told them this. We were right. The 'there is no peak' people are being shown to be utterly wrong.

My dad and I both know that if Greenland and Antarctica's glaciers melt, there will be new oil, of course. And wars will be fought over this oil. My dad even went to Greenland once to scout this out himself. Russia is staking its claim in the Arctic and so is Norway and others like Canada. The US is floundering about hoping to get something, too. China can't do this, they are using the other road, the industrialization road that we should have taken. They will win in the end.

DuPont plans China facilities for solar energy

U.S. chemical maker DuPont Co said on Tuesday it plans to open a research and development center and a manufacturing facility in China, which will cater to the growing demands of the solar energy industry.
The research and development facility will be based in Hong Kong, while the plant will be in Shenzhen.
The company expects growth in the photovoltaic market to exceed 30 percent each year, over the next several years. DuPont has made significant investments in product development and capacity expansions to help keep pace with this demand. (Reporting by Euan Rocha, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

OK: are lots and lots of solar energy plants being built in the US? Or China? And this is the whole problem. The present system is set so we go bankrupt and China becomes the top industrial power on earth and everyone has to deal with the problems of the Hubbert Oil Peak.

MORE BREAKING NEWS:

Clinton: OPEC 'can no longer be a cartel'

"We’re going to go right at OPEC," she said. "They can no longer be a cartel, a monopoly that get together once every couple of months in some conference room in some plush place in the world, they decide how much oil they’re going to produce and what price they’re going to put it at," she told a crowd at a firehouse in Merrillville, IN.

"That’s not a market. That’s a monopoly," she said, saying she'd use anti-trust law and the World Trade Organization to take on OPEC.

Clinton has cast herself as a warrior for working people against the oil industry and malicious "speculators," and made that -- along with her push for a gas tax holiday -- central to her closing message in Indiana.

And how is this bomb, bomb, bomb Iran for 1,000 years lunatic going to 'break OPEC'? This wild talk but craven political operatives, talk about using violence to get free oil, this is how WWIII will happen. This is why the IMF is demanding Russia not build up reserves or charge high prices for energy. The US imagines we can talk violently about energy and no one notices this. And egging on Americans to violence against our suppliers is evil, pure unadulterated evil!

The US consumes more energy per capita than any nation on earth, by far and away. We are the biggest energy gluttons on earth. We are directly responsible for the Hubbert Oil Peak happening rapidly to ourselves. We knew back in 1972, the Hubbert Peak had hit us and we deliberately ignored this. During the intervening years, we pretended there was no peak and we had to do nothing to prepare. Now that the price for ignoring this is rising rapidly and as we flood the planet with increasingly worthless dollars as we BORROW MONEY to pay for this OIL we want, we complain? And the fix is to what?

Kill Saudi Arabia? Kill Iran Kitty? Kill Mexicans? Kill Venezuelans? Talk about suicidal. Do we imagine China will let us? Russia will let us? Saudi Arabia is already making moves to draw closer to Russia and China for fear that the US will betray SA. It is only a matter of time. The US people don't have the slightest idea, what is going on thanks to the media and our politicians. And no one wants to listen to Jimmy Carter or Volcker or me, either. Our message has been 'Take your medicine and stop drinking booze.' Not what our party-mad drunks want to hear.

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