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Terror Networks
The Soaring Price of Oil and Terrorism
2008-04-24
Posted by:3dc

#6  Petroleum producers will have only themselves to blame.

Huh, how about the legion of NIMBY'ists out there who've blocked the access to and exploitation of reserves and the political hacks who pander to them? How about the Envirowinnies who use the Californista standards for pollution control for entire swaths of the country that don't have the mix of population concentration, topography, and weather that bedevils the beautiful people? Imagine we could get a 20 percent instant savings on energy consumption just in dropping the pollution controls.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2008-04-24 15:55  

#5  Get a grip. The price of oil is not being set by OPEC, it is being set by the US, Europe, India and China. OPEC determines how much to produce and we determine how much to pay for it. There's no evidence OPEC is intentionally producing less. Perhaps the price of oil has more to do with the US$1.5 trillion the Chinese are sitting on and their use of it to influence our economy and election. Wait till December.
Posted by: Nimble Spemble   2008-04-24 15:13  

#4  What these goat-r*ping primitives do not understand is the only thing between them and occupation and enslavement by China is the United States Navy.
Posted by: Excalibur   2008-04-24 14:31  

#3  OPEC is shooting itself in the foot. Fear of shortages has led to a mad scramble to buy every last drop of oil at any price. It's a bubble that's bound to burst. Already US gasoline consumption has dropped year over year, and infrastructure changes making oil an ever smaller part of the economy will accelerate so even after the price comes down there will be less demand than would otherwise have been the case. The more ridiculously high the price goes the greater the incentive to develop alternatives, and developing them we are. There are opportunities aplenty, and whether the next big thing comes from algae or biomass or cellulose, petroleum will no longer be the only game in town. Petroleum producers will have only themselves to blame. They made the research and development not just possible, but inevitable.

There was a time when much of the world's wealth was tied up in whale oil; without it cities would have gone dark. We get by fine without it since we found subsitutes. Just as New England whalers had to find other other things to do, the petrol merchants will have to discover other lines of work. Maybe they can go back to pearl diving and camel trading. Everyone likes pearls. And camels. Who doesn't like a nice camel?
Posted by: Baba Tutu   2008-04-24 13:40  

#2  High inflation + low interest rates gets us close to a Japan like situation with negative real money rates.

Yet the stock market seems to be holding its own and rising. We have not experienced negative economic growth and it takes two consecutive quarters to be an official recession. However, famous investors have stated that we are already in a recession.

Hard to get a good reading on where we're headed.
Posted by: DK70 the Scantily Clad7177   2008-04-24 12:34  

#1  Well, every time they jack up the price of our oil, their food gets more expensive. If they want reasonably priced food, they can sell us reasonably priced oil.
Posted by: crosspatch   2008-04-24 11:00  

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