Lynne Kiesling
With all of the blather about how an economic downturn will reduce the demand for oil, and with oil prices hovering around $80 right now, this WSJ Environmental Capital post is a welcome reminder that market processes are about the intersection of supply and demand. An economic downturn will also reduce the resources available to fund exploration and drilling, so there’s likely to be a supply-side effect as well. On balance, the oil price path will depend on the relative magnitudes of those supply and demand effects.
without resorting to the stilted and obscure language of would be economists without portfolio, the drop in oil prices is a disasteron the scale of the last tsunami and HurricaneKsthryna combined: Americans have not yet learned to buy cars designed to get them to their destination instead of themansions on wheels that have made us dependents on our enemies for the suply of the huge quantities of fuel we must buy from them. in the words of former oil tycoon T Boone Pickett; this ws the largest transfer of wealth from the USa\A to the sheiks, Imams, Ayatholahs an other dictators f the Muslim world, I add also the bastion of terroris against us and the whole of the western world in the name of an ignoble religion that advocates slavery , subjugation and piracy(remember our war on the Barbary coast pirates?!)
speaking of mansions let us place a goodlyportion of the blame relative to the housing crisis and the ‘sub prime mortgges on the morons who erning less than $50.000 a year need a house with more bedrooms than family members and more bathrooms than bedrooms as well. Brainwashed by the runaway consumerism advocates( rember GW Bush exhortation to our citizenship on the heels of the 9/11 attavck: ‘ Go shopping’ said the unconscienable bastard in the white house…but here does brainwashing end and greedy stupidity begin?
I’ve come to the conclusion tht within our 300 million Us population wee count 50 million STUPID/ stupidly greedy cretins and now they want us to be sorry for them and put the rest of us in jeopardy to rescue the, bail them out too. Yes , I believe that for political reasons and financial necessities, we will bail out the cretins but feel sorry for them? Hell NO1 they deserve to loose their overinflated mansions on ageneric beer bydget.I’ve seen these families and their homes with garages full of six cars and a couple or thre.5 to 2 cars per family membere dditional cars and pickup trucks in their drivewaysdriveway:Andteenagers driving to school in thir shiny guzzling monster ‘Navigators and Escalades.All thewhilewearing two hundred dollar ssneakers, carat size diamond earings, etc.amazing how these families with a single wage earner decided to ‘overlive’ their income the way presidents Reagan(thecreator of ‘voodoo -economics and GW Bush unbridled pssion for throwing money away and printing more. should we pass a law and give each family described above a printing press and an unlimited supply of paper and inks?well maybe we should:manufacturing these printing presses and supplies would ceate a huge number of well paid jobs(Why not, we can always print some more: the Denver mint is only working at 80% capacity….Frankly, I’m sick and ired of hering people say they mdea mistake hen theunvgarnished truth is they perpetrated crimes. I ctually find much humor in the promises of our presidential candidates.Let’s stsrt with the know how McLain:He’ll keep and expand tax nreaks to the ultra wealthy like his present wife and to corporate CEO, hehass good dvice: divorce your financial liability wife and marry your wealthy mistress. He is all knowing: worked for him did it not?Butnot as well as the CEO of the Blsckstone group, the flamboyant biggest spender of them all: Stephen Shwartzman who in 2007 raked in 5.1 Billion dollars(yes US Dollars, not Monopoly script!
Probably not feeling quite as flush as Blackstone’s CEO are its shareholders. The company announced its quarterly profit sank 89% amid “a severe financial crisis” and its stock has lost more than half its value since its initial public offering.Maybe it is time, after all to pass yet another law, this one about the scope of compensation of corporate excecutives having to berelated to positive performance, not compensation for failing a company nd ruining its investors(the big investors are often retirement plans of cities and states whose employees often work fo lower pay than private sector workers but are counting on generous retirement plans and other benefits such as job security(which is quikly vanshing as well!)