Massive financial bailout fails in the House, page 28
Pages: <<  25    26    27    28  >>
ATS Members have flagged this thread 52 times


reply posted on 1-10-2008 @ 10:03 AM by Flash_dancer
This is a really interesting article I found at the LA Times on-line. I commend it for your reading. Flash_dancer

LA Times

DUST-UP
How bad is our economy?
Robert Kuttner says the failed bailout bill would have helped the wrong people. J.D. Foster says the U.S. faces a fiscal crisis far greater than Wall Street's current malaise.
September 29, 2008


Today's question: How bad is the current fiscal crisis, and why can't we just let the markets correct themselves? All week, Robert Kuttner and J.D. Foster debate election-year economics and Washington's response to the financial crisis.


Come back with a better bill
Point: Robert Kuttner

Now that Congress blocked the compromise bailout worked out by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, it's time for it to get things right. Taxpayers are right to be outraged over bailing out Wall Street investors, but the right-wing Republican "private market" alternative is a joke. If it takes government insurance and government tax credits to unload bad bonds, what we have is hardly a private market.

What should Congress do now?


First, rescue the money markets and the toxic securities by refinancing the underlying mortgages -- rather than bailing out the banks. In the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt's Home Owners Loan Corp., a branch of the government, refinanced one out of every five mortgages. Roosevelt's administration saved about 1 million Americans from foreclosure. No middlemen got rich.

If we can stop the wave of foreclosures, we brake the collapse in housing prices. The bondholders would get bought out at so many cents on the dollar, just as they would have in the Paulson plan. But with the Kuttner plan, homeowners are the primary beneficiaries. Under Paulson's approach, the bondholders get bailed out but many homeowners still lose their home or keep paying Mafia mortgage rates. It's just what you'd expect from a guy who still operates as if he were the chief executive of Goldman Sachs -- which Paulson once was.

Second difference: The government should take over failing banks directly and get rid of toxic executives as well as the toxic investments they made. That's what the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. does when it takes over a failed bank. It's a much better and cleaner approach. Then, when the FDIC has cleaned up the place and replenished its capital, it sells off the bank to honest and competent managers in the private sector.

Paulson has implicitly extended that federal safety net to the entire financial sector -- when it's better to do it explicitly. He should make the entire financial system FDIC insured and subject it to tough FDIC rules, such as limits on speculative investments, regular examinations of assets and direct takeover when the institution fails.

There is still a lot more bad stuff in the pipeline, including about $60 trillion (right, trillion) worth of insurance contracts written by companies like AIG against the risk of exotic derivative bonds going bad -- and there are a lot more exotic products still to go bad.



reply posted on 1-10-2008 @ 11:31 AM by jam321
reply to post by Mdv2


Fear from voters is correct if your talking about politicians losing their reelection bid. But if your talking about politicians fearing voters cause voters are angry about the bailout then I would say no. Congress really don't care whether the voters want this or not. They are going to push this through. If it had been a non election year this would have already passed even though voters don't like it. And they will keep telling you that it is for main street but main street will still continue to struggle.


reply posted on 1-10-2008 @ 12:32 PM by Mdv2
Originally posted by jam321
reply to post by Mdv2


Fear from voters is correct if your talking about politicians losing their reelection bid.


That's what I meant.


reply posted on 6-10-2008 @ 04:57 AM by StellarX
Originally posted by grimreaper797
So you are ok with the loss of your job as a result, as well as a lack of a place to live?


People have been losing their jobs for a long time and as for a place to live there is always family to shack up with if pride doesn't prevent you from asking. If more Americans lived within their means and didn't give the bankers so much control over their lives this would obviously not have happened but again these bad loans to home owners constitute only a small percentage ( less than 5% as i understand) of the total home loan market.

If this market goes under, say good bye to your life. You aren't rich, you cannot up and move your assets to a foreign market. You will suffer more than any business owner.


You would be surprised what you can survive if the crap really hits the fan and frankly you would be surprised at how many Americans were surviving before this recent crisis.

You propose that we cut into the profits to teach those responsible a lesson, disregarding the fact it will destroy million upon millions of american lives in the process.


It wont destroy lives that were not already heavily compromised by bad decisions and vain glorious arrogance. The whole point of extending this credit is to keep otherwise very unhappy people slightly more content by keeping them tied into this system. The best thing that can happen for reform possibilities is if these people finally realise that this system never cared about them in the first place and merely pretended to accomodate them to keep them from attacking it.

The taxpayer WILL pay, whether it be by a bill or a bullet. A collapse would be a bullet to the chest.


People survive bullet wounds to the chest all the time and frankly those who invited the gun owner over to their home and fed him for years and years will occasionally suffer the consequences of putting their faith in the wrong place. Tens of thousands of young Americans have already paid a very high price in Iraq to prop up this failing economic system and maybe it's time a larger section of the American public starts feeling how it feels for most of the rest of the world who lives under corporate capitalist systems.

Stellar


reply posted on 6-10-2008 @ 06:03 AM by StellarX
Originally posted by grimreaper797
Do you not remember history? Do you not remember what comes out of the ashes of desperation and depressions?


That doesn't come out the ashes of desperation and depression. Neither Hitler nor Mussolini were elected by their various people's so if anything we can learn by this that the majority of the people do not lose their senses when economic troubles arises and that minorities with corporate and foreign backing can take power despite the common sentiments of the time. Either way Bush already stole two elections so lets stop pretending that you need much more of a economic crisis than the one reigning in the year 2000.

Hitler, Mussolini, even our own HUGE growth in centralized government, ALL happened during depressions that created desperation among the people.


Strong centralized governments that respects the wishes of the people who voted them into power democratically is not and has never been the problem with the world. The real reason people resist centralization of power is not because they are desperately afraid of what it might do but because it rarely represents the interest of the common man.

You say let the system fall so that we may rebuild. Human nature and history show that what will be rebuilt will be a monster.


Nonsense.

There is nothing here that shows me that this will be any different. Our people are more complacent than ever before.


Complacent? You mean 100% of them vote knowing that it will affect their lives? Complacency is voting for a system that doesn't work and since less than half of all Americans vote you can call them many things but not complacent. If anything American citizens have long ago realised that change is not brought about by voting for the two major parties.

They are more dependent and likely to look for government to save them.


Which is once again why they are all voting and lining up to receive benefits and free health care? Where do you get this from? Do you realise that American citizens work the longest hours in the industrialized west? Is THAT complacency or waiting for a handout?

If this system goes down in flames, you can bet every penny that people will look to government to save them, rather than save themselves.


Which once again isn't supported by the voting record. Americans do NOT believe that the central government will 'save' them as they do not consider it to be representative of their wishes.

At that point, the constitution won't matter nearly as much to people as survival.


Which is logical and hardly something unique to American citizens.

HISTORY shows us that letting the system collapse, is always a bad decision.


The system can't and wont collapse as there are too many dependents and too many ways to keep cheating. The American government will start many more wars if it felt seriously threatened by economic collapse. You didn't think they were building all those weapons merely to intimidate did you?

What are we buying time for? To easy this market into a recession. To let the correction occur so we can bring balance and order back into the system.


Entirely fanciful. Nothing will change if the same old crooks are allowed some measure of faith that the American people will bail them out when they speculate with no capitol in hand. We have to get these vultures off our backs if we are to make any progress economically or socially.

YEARS of poor government policy got us to this point, and it will take some time, painful time, to pull ourselves out of these mistakes properly.


There is nothing 'poor' about these government policies. They are this way by design as everyone with half a wit realises that this system can't go on forever with some minor players just deciding to cash out earlier than others. This game isn't up just yet and they will continue to create the illusion of relatively prosperity and being 'in control'. The sooner we can force them to admit that they are are not in fact trying to correct the course of this doomed ship the sooner we can get enough citizens involved to provide them with the impetus to do so. After all they are already waiting at the life rafts ( with all their treasures long ago sent to their private islands) so they are not too concerned about the ultimate fate of host considering how many hosts are left in other places.

To do years of damage, then call for it to be paid in full in the matter of a couple weeks, is a death sentence.


Well you can pick the volume of your poison but ultimately your just extending your own suffering by not facing the fact that you are already dying and have no recourse other than cutting off the affected limb. All inaction and bandages is doing is allowing it to spread until there comes a time when even desperate action is wasted on a lost cause.

What many people refuse to acknowledge or admit is that this crisis did not start during Clinton's time or Bush's time but were in fact initiated in the mid 70's and that what has followed have all been predicted by those who created the system in the first place. This is the ultimate cost of corporate empire building and now that the host have been largely exhausted they will continue to exploit their power to extract the massive reserves of wealth that remains; the hard work has been done and the ultimate payoff is fast approaching.

Stellar


reply posted on 6-10-2008 @ 04:36 PM by StellarX
Originally posted by mecheng
That's crap. Just because a bank says you QUALIFY for a $275k loan does not mean you can AFFORD a $275k loan.


Well if they think so and their putting up the money why not take them up on the offer presuming that they will put their own interests first? I mean since when are banks presumed to be so incompetent as to not charge you enough to cover their own asses?

I simply do not believe that most of these people were so stupid as to not know what their monthly payment would be when they signed for that $275k loan... the banks tell them that!


Well the payment isn't the same as it was 5 or eight years ago when they signed those contracts as most of these things are based on adjustable interest rates to take 'advantage' of the 'expanding' economy and 'favorable' markets. I mean what the hell should people think when Bush and others keep telling them that things will be OK and that the economy is doing fine? Why presume that people are so distrustful of people who are presumed to know how much money they need from you?

People who signed for sub-prime mortgages were hoping their house would appreciate, and when their equity (from the appreciation) was enough to get a standard loan, they could still have the house they couldn't originally afford.


No, they wanted the American dream of a big house and were willing to work the extra hours as demanded by taking on those bigger payments. Since when have the oft touted American dream been about conservatism?

So in your view you would rather see these defaulters as financial genius type speculators who were betting their relative meager incomes on the markets? Hell if they were so smart why didn't they just put all the 'capitol' in their investment portfolios.?

There were no guarantees. IMO they gambled and lost... just as much as the banks. They all were simply looking for the quick buck, screwed up, and now want someone else to bail them out.


IMO they thought they could work hard enough to make it work and just didn't expect energy and food costs to escalate so sharply. Basically they had the right idea and couldn't have known that energy prices would be manipulated so terribly and that their food would be going to make bio fuels. As for looking for a quick buck investing in property have always been the way that people worked themselves into the middle class so faulting these people for market forces completely outside their control is just being harsh.

I drive around in complete and utter amazement at how many beautiful million dollar homes there are... each with new luxury cars, boats, etc. in the driveway...


Because the top five odd percent of Americans have gotten absolutely fabulously wealthy in the last two decades. If you life in or near such neighbourhoods there isn't any reason why you would think that the American middle class isn't under pressure.

and wonder where the hell everyone is getting their money from to pay for all of this. My wife and I both are smart, college educated, hard working, but still have to live paycheck to paycheck.


Well if you have to do that your obviously one of those many tens of millions who are living beyond their means. If you have to ask how most of those are managing this maybe you are not aware of the 'American dream 'where you work your ass off to afford what you want?

Now, I think I get it. This is the typical American way... make as much $$$ as you can, doing as little work as possible, and when that doesn't work, claim you were treated unfairly... Screw that!


Actually the American way is more akin to make as much money as you can without compromising your beliefs too badly in all those hours your working more than the Japanese, Taiwanese and South Koreans. Obviously we don't have the mention the French and or Germans... As for the claims of having been treated unfairly did you even realise that American worked Unions are far weaker than those in Europe and most of the rest of the industrialized worlds? If a worked in the industrialized is going to be treated unfairly odds are his American...

I don't mind helping out the average, hard working Joe Lunchbox, who lost his house because of a layoff, or unforeseen circumstances. But I'm DONE bailing out the rich... the lazy... and the incompetent!


Yes, please don't hold back and or show your fellow American citizens some empathy. I mean that's just not capitalism now is it? I mean your not talking about the rich who has a big house and a few sports cars as a good fraction of those guys are about two paychecks from losing at least the two cars and their health plans! If you are referring to the bankers who buy islands and private jets then yes, i hope they run out of a fuel and or their islands sinks.

They've had their fun for the last decade on my dime.


Talk about whining; are you about done. They really took from everyone and more so from those who over committed themselves in real estate who are now losing pretty much everything the worked for for many years.

Its always the hard working that get screwed in the end.


Not always no but hard work is absolutely no guarantee of riches, security or even being paid a living wage as you might know if you knew much about the living conditions in most of the developing ( or shall we rather say over-exploited by various empires) part of the world? As for the wall street bankers they think a great deal but they have very highly lowly paid PA's and aids that do all the real work that doesn't include assurances over conference table's and general conspiratorial glances and winks about how it would 'all work out' if no one jumped ship.

Now it's time for these people pay their dues.


They have paid more than their due's and they can not be blamed for the economy going the way it did. Maybe if American popular culture encourage conservative thinking and frugal behaviour we could point fingers but it doesn't and people are very much products of their environment.

All of these people are con-artists. Its their nature, and they are trying for the biggest con in history. Well I say tough $hit! Crash and burn baby... CRASH & BURN!


Well i am not much in favor of anything crashing and burning and especially not so when these people are best experts at dragging entire countries and continents down with them. Either way i sincerely hope they deserve what they wrathfully worked towards but since lynch mobs doesn't work so well any more i suppose we will be stuck with having to watch some of the stupider one's having to fire their PA'a and selling a private jet and one of their houses. If only the world were a fair place we could expect more justice....

Stellar


reply posted on 6-10-2008 @ 07:17 PM by poet1b
reply to post by StellarX


I think this is a pretty solid observation.

What many people refuse to acknowledge or admit is that this crisis did not start during Clinton's time or Bush's time but were in fact initiated in the mid 70's and that what has followed have all been predicted by those who created the system in the first place. This is the ultimate cost of corporate empire building and now that the host have been largely exhausted they will continue to exploit their power to extract the massive reserves of wealth that remains; the hard work has been done and the ultimate payoff is fast approaching.


There are a number of factors that have been driving world economic swings since the seventies. Oil is probably the biggest. The U.S. Public's love affair with the automobile has been one of our biggest problems, combined with the highly profitablity of the oil industry, and therefore their interest in keeping us completely dependent upon autos for transportation. The recent rise of oil prices is probably the biggest factor in this crisis. By most evidence, peak oil arrived in 2005, and the easy to get high quality crude is running out, and so future production is going to get far more expensive. This means our energy industries are going to have to re-tool, and most likely our transportation systems as well.

The other big factor is the global work force. U.S. workers have lost a great deal of influence in the labor and ideas markets due to the rise of third world labor markets. The big problem here is that these third world workers aren't being paid enough to consume the goods they produce, which means that demand has to be artificially increased by debt. Thus we have been lead to our current circumstances.

These are two of the main factors, and there are numerous others, like productivity not leading to everyone getting more, but a group at the top reaping most of the benefits. We are all more productive, we all should be sharing in the gains, but this isn't happening. Corporations have gained too much control, and have become too good at the game of manipulating public opinion and controlling government. Populations have exploded in third world nations, beyond what is reasonable. The looming global oil crisis is going to make the problems with these massive population growth areas very, very bad in the not too distant future. I could go on and on.


reply posted on 6-10-2008 @ 07:23 PM by poet1b
Here is an article on a big issue, and a big problem with the way our corporations are being ran.

english.aljazeera.net...

Politicians accused Fuld of earning more than $500 million in bonuses and wages while working at the bank, including $106 million in 2006 alone, while failing to properly address Lehman's difficulties.

"While Mr Fuld and other Lehman executives were getting rich, they were steering Lehman Brothers and our economy toward a precipice," Henry Waxman, the chairman of the committee, said on Monday during Fuld's testimony.

He denied earning $500 million during his time at the bank, saying it was closer to $250 million, although he acknowledged it was "still a large number".

He said it was unclear why the US government did not rescue the 158-year-old Wall Street firm but stepped in to save others, and said US financial regulators knew the full scale of the bank's problems far before it folded.

But Waxman said the US could not continue "to have a system where Wall Street executives privatise the gains and then socialise the losses".

"Accountability needs to be a two-way street," he said.


I think this last statement is the real summary.


reply posted on 7-10-2008 @ 05:24 AM by StellarX
Originally posted by poet1b
I think this is a pretty solid observation.


And i will exploit the rare pleasure of being in almost complete agreement with you to focus on the one issue additional issues that might help further the understanding of how energy aspect of this current crisis was in fact engineered.

There are a number of factors that have been driving world economic swings since the seventies. Oil is probably the biggest.


I think oil is far too easy a culprit to get the blame and i would once again point out that it is in fact corporate ( or you can call them the NWO/TPTB etc ) backed and sponsored western imperialism that allows for self determination to be destroyed and economic crisis to result.

The U.S. Public's love affair with the automobile has been one of our biggest problems, combined with the highly profitablity of the oil industry, and therefore their interest in keeping us completely dependent upon autos for transportation.


Again this is a love affair with 'independence' not with internal combustion engines; if our research institutions and governments/corporations where not cooperating to suppress alternative means of electricity tapping 'auto's would be a minor issue. As it stands the manipulation of oil prices is the issue as the supply is and always has been plentiful which best explains why the oil companies were under no small amount of pressure during the 80's/90's with oil prices falling trough the bottom due to a overabundance of supply. This condition still fundamentally exists hence the invasion and sanctions against Iraq ( which could have easily supplied the world markets with 5 million barrels for most of the 90's and beyond) and could with some international investment have been supplying the world with 10 million barrels a day at this point with a thirty billion dollars investment in the mid 80's sans the three wars they have been subjected to.

www.time.com...

The recent rise of oil prices is probably the biggest factor in this crisis. By most evidence, peak oil arrived in 2005, and the easy to get high quality crude is running out, and so future production is going to get far more expensive.


Peak oil , like global warming/climate change are engineered problems that does not fundamentally exist. World oil supplies are still fast growing and demand have been met since it first become a commodity worth exploiting.

This is merely a recent summary of the mythical nature of the peak oil ( might happen but not within fifty years at earliest) but i have made hundreds of posts on the issue and can make the argument against a current peak oil condition from about ten differing perspectives/angles.

www.counterpunch.org...

This means our energy industries are going to have to re-tool, and most likely our transportation systems as well.


In fact they never had to be tooled up for oil as we had electric cars before we had internal combustion engines using gasoline... Our energy infrastructure wont change soon because there is simply too much profit and control, by the same old forces, to be derived from fossil fuel use.

The looming global oil crisis is going to make the problems with these massive population growth areas very, very bad in the not too distant future. I could go on and on.


There is no looming fundamental crisis in world energy markets but the deliberate attempts to manipulate it and create artificially shortages in the short or medium term might be as successful as they have been so far. I hope that it does not come to that but i must admit that the peak oil mythology is in fact very seductive being as it is based on the logic that oil has to run out sometime. Since most people are hopelessly ignorant or terribly misinformed odds are the manipulators are going to have their way helping to destroy the American and European middle classes by means of raising the basic costs of living in these profitable ways.

In conclusion peak oil/population doomers ( you can't change their minds; we are after all all going to die eventually, etc) are unreasonable people that no positive and intelligent person should associate himself with. If one can not manage hope i suggest one does the manly thing ( oh wait, yes) and put a end to your own misery or at least refrain from injecting your negativity into the lives of others.

And no Mister Poet this isn't aimed at you as i don't know if your a doomer or just one of the the majority that have been fooled into believing that oil production will be declining shortly for reasons other than demand slowing down to the economic devastation resulting from predatory lending practices.

Stellar


reply posted on 7-10-2008 @ 06:08 AM by poet1b
While I will have to disagree with your belief that peak oil has not arrived, I will point out that my claim is not that we are running out of oil, that is not the situation. The problem is that we are running out of the high quality, easy to get at oil. The good stuff will be far more expensive to extract than is the current situation.

Our current best hope to keep the cheap oil floating is the Arctic ocean, being that as the ice melts, and the glaciers are in fact melting, we are not able to get at the vast reserves of oil that are in the Arctic Ocean, but it will still be more expensive than drilling in the warmer regions of the planet. All the oil located in deep water will be very expensive to tap, and most of hte discoveries of big oil deposits are in deep water. The cost of drilling in deep water goes up exponentially as the depth increases. The remaining easy to access oil sources are not nearly as rich, and will take considerable more cost to refine.

Here is a decent link on the subject. I could find some of the better links on the subject that give a good discussion of the issue.

www.peak-oil-crisis.com...

Sour crude is becoming a bigger and bigger source of the oil available, and that is because the sweet crude is declining in output. Those deep water finds are not going to become available soon. The engineering challenges of getting at them are immense.

The reality is that with current demand for energy sources, alternative energy sources are going to have to be developed, and with the rising cost of oil, they should now have a chance to compete.


reply posted on 7-10-2008 @ 12:01 PM by StellarX
Originally posted by guyopitz
I'm surprised we have yet to see an army of the homeless wielding Molotov cocktails marching on city hall. People are probably too broke to give handouts so they can afford the vodka rags and lighters. Sad really.


You have my sympathy ( however exceedingly little that sort of thing is worth) with your situation and all i can offer is that you don't have molotov wielding mobs because unlike most third world nations where people work ten hours a day the majority of American citizens still believe that they can 'beat' the system if they do this, that or whatever to 'get ahead'. Unless the system is very obviously skewed so that no one has much and no one believes they are getting ahead people are not going to risk what they have accumulated so far.

Either way American unions have been under renewed siege since the 70's and frankly one can wonder if they are in any state to organize such mobs even if they believed that they could survive the onslaugh of the evolution of the state organized para-military police forces. It's not a pretty picture but i suspect things will have to get a whole damn lot worse before sufficient numbers of people become willing to resist in more destructive ways.

Either way i have found that there is always more fat to cut away so maybe so since your both educated people i'm sure you can and will come up with a way to build capitol reserve.

I reckon September wasn't the worse of what's to come ( 160 000 Americans lost their jobs) and the best time to prepare for disaster is long before it happens....

Stellar


reply posted on 7-10-2008 @ 12:42 PM by StellarX
Originally posted by poet1b
While I will have to disagree with your belief that peak oil has not arrived,


It's not my belief but in fact quite a simple fact easily validated by those who bother to do so.

I will point out that my claim is not that we are running out of oil, that is not the situation.


Because that claim have become untenable for thinking people everywhere...

The problem is that we are running out of the high quality, easy to get at oil. The good stuff will be far more expensive to extract than is the current situation.


As the source indicated Iraq can pump upwards ( or could have) of 10 million barrels a day and it doesn't get cheaper anywhere else in the world. The Saudis can also still massively ramp up production if they could be guaranteed that oil prices would stay this high; no one wants to sit with expensive spare capacity when oil slumps back to 20 -30 USD per barrel.

Our current best hope to keep the cheap oil floating is the Arctic ocean, being that as the ice melts, and the glaciers are in fact melting, we are not able to get at the vast reserves of oil that are in the Arctic Ocean, but it will still be more expensive than drilling in the warmer regions of the planet.


In fact there is still more than 1.5 billion in acknowledged recoverable ( at current technology and price ranges of around 20-50 USD per barrel) oil so again offshore drilling simply isn't required yet. I would really appreciate it if you read the sources i provide.

All the oil located in deep water will be very expensive to tap, and most of hte discoveries of big oil deposits are in deep water.


North sea oil were recoverable at prices exceeding thirty dollars per barrel and the North Sea is not a calm place for such activities.

The cost of drilling in deep water goes up exponentially as the depth increases. The remaining easy to access oil sources are not nearly as rich, and will take considerable more cost to refine.


Not true but these are the sort of blanket claims that the peak oil proponents keep on making as their various time lines slips away.

Here is a decent link on the subject. I could find some of the better links on the subject that give a good discussion of the issue.

www.peak-oil-crisis.com...


It's a typical run of the mill peak oil nonsense web site the likes of which i have grown very tired of over the years. What you should really do is not to investigate as many have done it for you. If you want to believe in peak oil studying the issue will just make it hard to do so it's best to just 'have faith'; i mean it is after all a typical religion.

Sour crude is becoming a bigger and bigger source of the oil available, and that is because the sweet crude is declining in output.


Sour crude is becoming a bigger source because those are the countries that are not being subjected to American economic terrorism and wars as Iraq, Afghanistan and the entire middle east have been for half a century. Is it any surprise that the cheapest oil in the world are kept below ground by virtue of endless wars and tension?

Those deep water finds are not going to become available soon. The engineering challenges of getting at them are immense.


Not really, no. The engineering challenges have long since been solved and they are most certainly very profitable at the current oil prices.

The reality is that with current demand for energy sources, alternative energy sources are going to have to be developed, and with the rising cost of oil, they should now have a chance to compete.


The alternative sources have been available for a century ( vacuum energy extraction/cold fusion more recently) and by just looking at the low levels of governmental support of solar, wind and hydro electrical power one can see that this game is not about making energy cheap but about making corporate pockets full. If the 50 billion dollars that the US spends annually on the ME ( massive bribes and plenty of basis and fleets) were instead invested in developing very conventional solar, hydro and wind power in the US the US people could have sworn off the middle east somewhere in the early 90's at latest.

As for rising oil costs oil prices were still relatively modest until the US staged a intervention in Iraq which caused sufficient disruption and tension in the region to result in the current 100 dollar prices. If the US had not staged that intervention oil prices could and may still have been around the fifty US dollar range despite massive speculative attacks.

In fact there is no reason why the oil price can not slump back to it's 1998 price of just eight USD per barrel ( adjusted for inflation and weakening dollar that's around twenty- thirty USD today) if the US completely withdrew from Iraq and Afghanistan and allowed the various oil pipeline projects to be completed.

Peak oil is a good scam and while it does seem reasonable when one knows only the basics around the issues as provided by the MSM and their 'doomer of the day' peak oil proponent it's not so hard to dispel the lies when you do some digging on your own.

Maybe you might read some of the following to start dispelling some of the misinformation you have been fed.

The Myth of "Peak Oil"

peakoildebunked.blogspot.com...

www.freeenergynews.com...

Peak Oil Introduction: A Lesson In Unlearning

www.the7thfire.com...

The Myth Of Peak Oil

www.drydipstick.com...

The mystery of eugene island 330

Stellar


reply posted on 7-10-2008 @ 04:02 PM by poet1b
All bravado aside, your sources make many bold claims, but fail to provide the evidence to back up those claims. You even link to a site proclaiming Abiotic Oil, which is nothing but pure mythology. If Ambiotic oil exists, why aren't our old oil wells re-filling themselves?

Sweet crude has been in decline since 2005, and to make up for the decline of sweet crude, sour crude becomes an ever larger portion of the market. This has been going on for years, and that is what is driving prices up.

If deep water drilling isn't so expensive, why aren't the oil companies tapping those numerous deep water finds that are being reported? Do you know how much pressure the ocean exerts at 2,000 feet? Here is good article on deep water oil drilling that clearly puts the issue into perspective. By the way, the North sea is a shallow sea, not deep water.

news.nationalgeographic.com...

High oil prices, however, may make developing expensive, unconventional oil sources—and the technology needed to exploit them—more feasible than in the past.


Here is another nice link about deep water oil drilling, and it is definately pro-oil.

www.technologyreview.com...

If you read the article it is obvious that big oil doesn't want to see alternative energy sources developed, because that will be the end of their domination of the worlds energy markets. Alternative fuels and energy sources means competition, and big oil doesn't want competition. The people who talk down the rising costs of oil are all being encouraged by big oil to pretend that this rise in the cost of oil is only temporaty. Big oil needs the myth that we are not running out of the cheap, easy to get sweet crude, and that we are only a few discoveries away from finding the sources to continue to supply the worlds demand for oil. They fear the development of alternative energy sources, because they know their prices are going to continually rise, and they don't want the competition. There is a reason Iraq isn't ramping up production as was predicted, they don't have the reserves. It is twighlight in the desert.
Pages: <<  25    26    27    28  >>    ^^TOP^^