I'm guessing the price of oil will be down to $75 within 2 weeks.

Say what you will about the abysmal mess Bush has made of the economy but you can not blame the fall in the european and asian markets on him, or his war. No, what we and they have in common with out current financial and economic woes is the cost of oil. The Golden Goose has been killed, or dam nearly killed. You've got to believe that right this moment all around the globe there are oil Ministers who are wondering in their thoughts how in hell they let the speculators in Dubai do this? There has been no interruption in supply, demand has not outpaced the ability to bring the precious juice to market, nothing but continued unregulated trading on the world's spot markets drove this price up. I expect you will see a very fast and powerful effort put in place to drive down this market and add a whole lot more stability to it than we have seen in the past few years. Those folks are not about to let the golden goose die and you can bet they have seen the light in these last two days.

one oil company. Calling for a general boycott won't work. People have to purchase gasoline. But, they DON'T have to purchase it from, say, Exxon-Mobil.

Boycott that one oil company until the price is $1.50 a gallon. That will pressure them to do something about prices.

http://map.exxonstations.com/locator.asp

:evilgrin:

out-of-control debt come in first?

(Or maybe it was the $800.00 idea. ;o)o

My friend...You lost me right there.....

on the markets too....

It would be interesting if we see more countries pulling away from the Dollar...

A dollar worth only half what it was ten years ago would probably only buy half the amount of oil it did then. Doesn't Bush's trade policy (or lack of it) have a lot to do with the weak dollar?

very intriguing.

The big stick for negotiating in oil markets must be a serious capability to implement sweeping alternative energy plans. Without that, we are crack addicts and everybody knows it. I say we should have this big stick, and we should use it.

of advanced weaponry. That is, selling advanced weaponry to the most backward, corrupt, bigoted, ruthless, religiously fanatic, unstable, terrorist-supporting, war-mongering dictatorship on the planet.

However, it really didn't amount to a sale, as such, since the $30 billion is just a few weeks profit from the oil they sold us. So the huge excess profits we gave them for oil are being used to buy advanced weaponry from our military/industrial complex. So we have, in effect, paid for the weapons that they are buying. Now they can drop the price back to the usual unconscionable high levels, since their oil profit from the price boost has paid for the purchase.

It would have been simpler to just use our tax dollars to buy the weapons and ship them to the Saudis. But, that wouldn't look so good, so they used this roundabout way of jacking up the oil prices. A second benefit to the Saudis is that it makes their puppet Bush look like he "made" a sale.

Bush didn't screw the economy by himself. He had considerable help from our oil companies, insurance companies, banks, mortgage companies, every company that off-shored jobs, etc., etc., etc. (Plug in the multinational company of your choice.)

As for the oil ministers wondering about the oil speculation, they don't have to wonder about it. I am sure they all profited handsomely by it. The speculators had as much control over oil prices as Chalabi had for instigating the war in Iraq. The oil markets are tightly controlled by OPEC which, in turn, is controlled mainly by Saudi Arabia.

The European and Asian markets are in trouble because they loaned the U.S. trillions of dollars to finance the trade deficit and the federal deficit. With the value of the dollar dropping and the real estate markets collapsing, it looks like either the debt will be repaid with a worthless dollar or the U.S. will just default. Either way, U.S. creditors are poised to lose a LOT of money.

US and Europe.

Its the perfect round kick.

:dunce:

won't Halli-Dick just bomb Iran to get it back up?

The price of oil is in the midst of a retrace and the support levels are at $78, $72, and $68.




              Edwards '08 tees!

to us (petro dollars). crazy but true.

3 factors are at play

1. European fuel prices have been much higher for many many years due to higher taxes on it. So a jump in the price of oil does not reflect a huge jump in price at the pump.

2. European automobiles are much more efficient than American and many use diesel. It is rare to find 14 MPG SUVs there and diesel Jeep Libertys over there can get over 30 mpg. Many cars get over 50 mpg. Also Europe has more efficient uses of power and are way ahead of us with regards to wind and solar.

3. Europe has a far superior public transport system and they do not have the suburban sprawl that we have. Therefore while their cars are much more efficient than ours, they drive their cars less than we do as well.

recession reduces current demand and future projected demand. price drops.

Simple story, but it would be interesting to see past the recession a few years...if recession and demand destruction hits the US harder than the rest of the world, then our "slice of the pie" shrinks. Keep in mind that oil consumption is the driver of GDP, which is the measure of quite a bit.

Being squeezed out of the market for the finite and irreplaceable catalyst for growth should be the big concern of any healthy imperialist.

The demand for oil is beginning to out pace the supply. Post WWII to Mid 90's the U.S. did not have any real international competition for crude oil. Europe had the north sea fields, and the middle east was still producing more then enough to satisfy our demands.

Now China's industrial complex is both big enough, and wealthy enough to compete with the U.S. for the remaining crude production. Add India to the mix and that spells demand increasing and supply stagnant to shrinking. It is easy to blame traders, but it's the fundamental crude market conditions. There is no fucking way in hell that we will see a $25 drop in crude without a collapse of the worlds economies, and with it a drop in demand for the fuel of the worlds economies, crude.

Hmm, a $25 drop in crude pricing would bring a $25,000 dollar return on a futures "at the money put", and about a $12,500 profit on a "at the money" crude put option. If I was still a speculator, and there was any chance in hell that a drop like this would occur I would make that trade in a heartbeat.

...

Millions of people in India, China, and Eastern Europe who could never afford cars now can.

A guy in Poland who had no hope of owning a car under Soviet rule gets a good paying job and a car is one of the first things he buys. In fact, as old cars are replaced in Poland these days, the clunkers are ending up in places like Russia, further increasing private vehicle ownership throughout the continent.

For the EEA-30 the growth of the vehicle fleet looks like this:



/view

These days when the U.S. economy sneezes the rest of the world simply gets irritated that we came to work sick.

Unlike our glory days as a "superpower," most of the world can pretty much tell us to go fuck ourselves when we get all whiny and belligerent, and George W. Bush has done nothing to discourage this attitude. Our foreign policy is that of a spoiled teenaged brat, and everyone knows it.