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2008-11-12 Home Front Economy

We Can Solve the Financial Crisis by Destroying OPEC

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Posted by tipper 2008-11-12 07:49|| || Front Page|| [11134 views ] Top

#1 Robert Zubrin has a good point. The financial markets of the last few months have been and are continuing to be absolutely insane. I can't make any sense of it at all. Zubrin is right. Forget about risky mortgage loans, greedy Wall Street moguls, and all the rest of the bogey men being paraded out as the reason for our woes. More than doubling the price of oil in a short time was enough to bring our prosperity crashing down. His flex fuel mandate is the panacea we all crave, except for one thing. Noone in government or business is pushing for it. Why, I ask, aren't we seeing this and some other simple solutions to a part of the problem being pushed by someone who could actually get something done? At times, it almost seems like a conspiracy between the radical left and the big money right. But then I shake off my natural fur cloak of paranoia and ask myself who is benefiting from this rolling crises? And just as important, who is getting creamed? Besides the poor, that is, they always get hit the hardest. Agressive countries fueled by oil such as Russia, Iran, and Venezuela are hurting much worse than we are. As the revenues drop below costs in OPEC countries, those with the most agressive outreach programs and least functional governments are most in danger of collapse. Then, could this, in part, be advancing a major new front in the War on Terror? But who would be the big winner? Like Warren Buffet, the US is rich in irreducible resources that retain value even when currency fails. The history books in 2100 A.D. will be filled with the answers and they will seem so simple and straight forward that only an idiot could have missed it. Well, this idiot missed it completely. Can anyone explain it to me?

Posted by Richard of Oregon 2008-11-12 11:15|| 2008-11-12 11:15|| Front Page Top

#2 It's too bad the author took a good article & argument to close with supporting ethanol-based fuel technologies...

Posted by logi_cal 2008-11-12 11:26|| 2008-11-12 11:26|| Front Page Top

#3 RofO:
I think you're mistaken. Government is pushing ethanol BIG TIME. Forcing the automakers into flex fuel will make all of us shareholders (if we aren't already by next week).

We cannot survive a transition from oil to corn-based fuels without a significant trade-off that, I believe, no one is willing to make (and everyone is already grumbling about the initial effects, while at the same time arguing about what caused them. Reminder: If food cost inflation was due to transportation costs, the cost of food should come down at the same rate as transportation costs (oil/gasoline). Otherwise, 'ethanol inflation' is absolutely correct. It's only been 2 weeks...the jury's still out, though factoring in the effect of the domino failure of ethanol-producing firms and the consequent adjustment to corn futures & inventories will be a complicating factor)

Posted by logi_cal 2008-11-12 11:34|| 2008-11-12 11:34|| Front Page Top

#4 The current problemn is not due to energy. It's due to excessive borrowing and spending by governments, organizations and individuals worldwide.

The price of energy reflects this. As the spending bubble grew, prices rose. As the spending bubble contracts, prices are falling. In boom times ethanol was a feel good luxury. Now its a white elephant.

Posted by DoDo 2008-11-12 11:45|| 2008-11-12 11:45|| Front Page Top

#5 Using food for fuel when we have so many alternatives is just nuts. There are other ways to kill OPEC (nuclear, nat gas, thermal, solar, wind, etc.). Ethanol is a sop to ADM and Cargill.

Posted by remoteman 2008-11-12 12:58|| 2008-11-12 12:58|| Front Page Top

#6 Flexifuel provides options. It doesn't force us into ethonal, methonal or gas but lets the market decide. I like letting the market decide that sort of thing.

Ethanol can be made from non-foodstuffs but we'll never reall know until we dump farm subsidies for corn and other crops and before we make non-oil options a serious possibility.

Posted by rjschwarz 2008-11-12 14:10|| 2008-11-12 14:10|| Front Page Top

#7 We have a rendering plant in my county that makes biodiesel from animal whatnot. It sells locally, but has to be mixed with a little diesel to work well, say 70/30.

Posted by bigjim-ky 2008-11-12 15:12|| 2008-11-12 15:12|| Front Page Top

#8 Mixing with diesel is required in low temperature places as well as the other types of oil tend to freeze up more than petrolium products. Still a little diesel is better than all oil and no solution is 100% perfect.

Posted by rjschwarz 2008-11-12 16:26|| 2008-11-12 16:26|| Front Page Top

#9 Where I work we make ethanol from coal.

Posted by Deacon Blues">Deacon Blues 2008-11-12 17:23|| 2008-11-12 17:23|| Front Page Top

#10 Anyone knows what is ethanol? Alcohol from The kind there is in wine, whisky, beer. I could think of other uses for ethano that burning it in car engines.

Posted by JFM">JFM 2008-11-12 17:30|| 2008-11-12 17:30|| Front Page Top

#11 Henry Kissinger did much to promote OPEC parasitism. As advisor to President Nixon, he told the Shah of Iran to raise oil prices, as means for purchasing advanced US weapons systems. And he did that during an recession. After the failed Arab attack on Israel, Arab members of OPEC placed an oil embargo. Kissinger called a favor from the Shah and he helped undermine the Arab subversion. After that incident, the Nixon regime indulged Shah greed. Then Iranians took notice of same and accepted the most depraved regime on earth.

Reminder: the Soviet factor - they had allies in the Middle East - enabled Arab belligerence in the seventies and eighties. Currently, there is absolutely NOTHING to stop an American regime from imposing its will on those headless chickens, who have long posed as human. That is NOTHING except the lack of will to tell pro-Saud lobbyists to go to hell, and dictate terms to Middle East savages. Anyone who defends the set up of America's finest soldiers for sniper attacks and IED massacres, is a wild animal. If that shoe fits, you wear it in disgust.

Hmmm...will this post induce specious, myopic, deferential (to oil patch parasites), and infantile reply? Spew the vomit, starting...now!

Posted by Elmineng Borgia9081 2008-11-12 17:44|| 2008-11-12 17:44|| Front Page Top

#12 ehhhh...nah

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2008-11-12 18:13|| 2008-11-12 18:13|| Front Page Top

#13 JFM, I think I'll take my drinking ethanol from grapes and barley and such, and leave Deancon's coal ethanol for less flavorful applications.

Posted by Glenmore">Glenmore 2008-11-12 19:24|| 2008-11-12 19:24|| Front Page Top

#14 Well, the statement "oil patch parasites" tells me all I need to know about you. You know, we used to be able to produce our own OIL, like the 80's, where we produced 60% of what we used, instead of 40%. Those of us in the actual industry aren't the ones who decided it was more important to shut down offshore oil drilling anywhere besides Texas and Louisiana; it's about time the rest of you stopped blaming US for the consequences of y'all's decision to export more or less the entire industry to the middle east.

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2008-11-12 19:37|| 2008-11-12 19:37|| Front Page Top

#15 While I'm at it... you know Brazil? Usually touted as the leader in biological substitutes for oil? The example for the rest of us to follow?

They currently own or have on lease some 70% of the WORLD'S deep water drilling rigs. In spite of having the Amazon River Basin available for deforestation.

Maybe it's because Petrobras is state-owned and they don't see any point in demonizing themselves.

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2008-11-12 19:44|| 2008-11-12 19:44|| Front Page Top

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