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2008-05-11 Home Front Economy

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Posted by tipper 2008-05-11 12:22|| || Front Page|| [11127 views ] Top

#1 Dancing on the grave of that nasty US superpower.

Posted by tipover 2008-05-11 12:34|| 2008-05-11 12:34|| Front Page Top

#2 Time to short oil?

Posted by doc 2008-05-11 12:38|| 2008-05-11 12:38|| Front Page Top

#3 I hate articles from morons who don't understand economics.

Hey, how come nobody is demanding a "windfall profits tax" from gold miners? Gold (and pretty much every other internationally traded commodity) is up (way up) for pretty much the same reason as oil is. The dollar is down (way down).

Oil companies do not set the price of oil and neither does the US government. Allowing for inflation, oil is STILL cheaper.

And oil companies don't set oil prices any more than gold miners set the price of gold. Oh, and:

The median forecast of experts polled by the International Energy Workshop in January 1986 was for crude oil prices of $240 by 2005 (in todays dollars). Four years earlier, the median forecast for 2000 was $400.

Posted by crosspatch 2008-05-11 12:53|| 2008-05-11 12:53|| Front Page Top

#4 The guy's big idea is that Uncle Sam was a superpower earlier because it had cheap oil from domestic sources, and continued to be a superpower as domestic reserves ran down because it got access to cheap oil via compliant suppliers in the Gulf states. The problem with his big idea is that by that that measure, the Gulf States ought to be superpowers. It also does not account for the Gulf states' repeated attempts to hike prices to the moon, notably during the two oil crises of the seventies. (We are only now returning - on an inflation-adjusted basis - to those peak prices).

The amount of wishful thinking - mainly as it relates to their hopes for American decline - in the liberal intelligentsia (since liberalism started turning against America in the 1960's) is just incredible. How can anyone get a tenured position based such easily refutable ideas?

Posted by Zhang Fei">Zhang Fei 2008-05-11 13:10|| http://timurileng.blogspot.com]">[http://timurileng.blogspot.com] 2008-05-11 13:10|| Front Page Top

#5 If my math is correct Evian @ $2/l works out to right around $320/bbl. Clearly what we need is a windfall profits tax on bottled water.

Posted by AzCat 2008-05-11 13:12|| 2008-05-11 13:12|| Front Page Top

#6 AC: If my math is correct Evian @ $2/l works out to right around $320/bbl. Clearly what we need is a windfall profits tax on bottled water.

That's not necessarily a good example. If gasoline were sold like bottled water (with nice packaging, on retail store shelves, a quart at a time), it would be a lot more expensive. A cubic meter (just over six petroleum barrels) of water costs about $0.50 to extract using reverse osmosis methods. (This is the expensive stuff - water from rivers and reservoirs costs $1.50 for 23 petroleum barrels). Most oil costs anywhere between a few dollars and tens of dollars per barrel to extract. Not the same thing at all.

Posted by Zhang Fei">Zhang Fei 2008-05-11 13:38|| http://timurileng.blogspot.com]">[http://timurileng.blogspot.com] 2008-05-11 13:38|| Front Page Top

#7 Look at the price difference between motor oil by the quart and the 2.5 gal jug.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2008-05-11 13:49|| 2008-05-11 13:49|| Front Page Top

#8 hampshire college, the reed of the east.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2008-05-11 13:53|| 2008-05-11 13:53|| Front Page Top

#9 Allowing for inflation, oil is STILL cheaper.

Not so.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2008-05-11 14:04|| 2008-05-11 14:04|| Front Page Top

#10 Hampshire has some good attributes; it's the host of one of the best programs for high school math students. Reed is just weird.

Posted by Eric Jablow">Eric Jablow 2008-05-11 14:05|| 2008-05-11 14:05|| Front Page Top

#11 ZF: The problem with his big idea is that by that that measure, the Gulf States ought to be superpowers.

In fact, by that measure, the Soviet Union ought not have collapsed, since it had so much cheap oil that it was able to export the stuff before its collapse. And Iraq ought really have defeated the United States in battle, given that it exported millions of barrels of oil a year.

Posted by Zhang Fei">Zhang Fei 2008-05-11 14:26|| http://timurileng.blogspot.com]">[http://timurileng.blogspot.com] 2008-05-11 14:26|| Front Page Top

#12 HRC's plan to remove taxes on gasoline this summer will have the effect of increasing the demand for gasoline while the supply remains about the same--the price will be right back up before long. These short term fixes feel good for a short time. The thing that will bring the price of gasoline down will to be to increase the supply. The supply can be increased by relaxing some of the regulations we have about where we can drill and where we can't drill for oil. The other way that we can improve the situation is to come up with alternative energy sources for our transportation such as getting ethanol from switch grasses, hydrogen powered vehicles, affordable electric vehicles, etc.

Posted by JohnQC 2008-05-11 18:32|| 2008-05-11 18:32|| Front Page Top

#13 Zhang Fei #4 The guy's big idea is that Uncle Sam was a superpower earlier because it had cheap oil from domestic sources, and continued to be a superpower as domestic reserves ran down because it got access to cheap oil via compliant suppliers in the Gulf states. The problem with his big idea is that by that that measure, the Gulf States ought to be superpowers. It also does not account for the Gulf states' repeated attempts to hike prices to the moon, notably during the two oil crises of the seventies. (We are only now returning - on an inflation-adjusted basis - to those peak prices).

Thanks Zhang Fei, this author/article are so fucking lame that I passed it up earlier...

The amount of wishful thinking - mainly as it relates to their hopes for American decline - in the liberal intelligentsia (since liberalism started turning against America in the 1960's) is just incredible. How can anyone get a tenured position based such easily refutable ideas?

Besides, the WEST and our Eastern Allies will solve the so called "Energy Problem" and lower real prices for energy once again, WE still have tremendous oil reserves here in America.

But for political reasons we could begin tapping them tomorrow.
In the OFF SHORE Caliphornia, and the North Slope Alaska Reserves we have alot more OIL than is officially recorded from current estimates.

The reason I say this is because HISTORICALLY ALL ESTIMATES are by far way to conservative and they underestimate the eventual totals.

Posted by RD">RD 2008-05-11 19:27|| 2008-05-11 19:27|| Front Page Top

#14 Besides which, name ONE productive economy anywhere in the world that is not "oil-addicted" as defined by the space cadet author of this piece. Oil is the lifeblood of every major economy in the world and will continue to be so until such time as replacements for it in transportation, power generation, plastics and chemical production, and medical production can be found, put into place and mass produced.

Posted by Shieldwolf 2008-05-11 19:37|| 2008-05-11 19:37|| Front Page Top

#15 Maybe the "ex-superpower" refers to inability to just, you know, take?

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2008-05-11 19:54|| 2008-05-11 19:54|| Front Page Top

#16 g: Maybe the "ex-superpower" refers to inability to just, you know, take?

In the post-WWII era, Western powers do not just take (with the sole exception of Israel) - that is something reserved for non-Western powers. This isn't so much lack of capability as lack of will.

I think any significant power in the world can just take. Saddam could have just taken Kuwait, if it were not for US intervention. If Congress had voted down Bush's invasion plan back in 1990, Kuwait would today be Iraq's 19th province. The only power in the world that can stop any other country from just taking is the US. I think that's the primary measure of a superpower. If China invaded Vietnam tomorrow, we could throw them out. If Uncle Sam invaded Mexico tomorrow, no other power in the world could stop us.

This is the meaning of Pax Americana - militarily, we can do what we want, and we can prevent anyone from doing what we don't want.

Posted by Zhang Fei">Zhang Fei 2008-05-11 20:25|| http://timurileng.blogspot.com]">[http://timurileng.blogspot.com] 2008-05-11 20:25|| Front Page Top

#17 Also, there is a big difference between being a superpower and an imperial power : superpowers can throw their weight around and force countries to behave; imperial powers simply go into a country, slaughter all resistance, and then incorporate that territory into them - sort of like the Chicom imperialists did in Tibet, the border zone with India, the border zone with Vietnam, Macau, and Hong Kong.

Posted by Shieldwolf 2008-05-11 21:11|| 2008-05-11 21:11|| Front Page Top

#18 I think his major premise is the one beloved by leftists and a lot of foreign countries - that Uncle Sam has a large military because this military gets the US preferential pricing for raw materials. The assumption is that without this powerful military, the US dollar would be little more than toilet paper and Americans would be living in a Mad Max world embroiled a domestic war of all against all for material goods (since in that leftist world view a capitalist economy can only obtain goods via theft and extortion). Bottom line - the author believes that the US, uniquely among the Western countries, would be a basket case economy if it did not have a large military to strong-arm foreign countries to sell commodities to it at below-market prices.

Posted by Zhang Fei">Zhang Fei 2008-05-11 21:17|| http://timurileng.blogspot.com]">[http://timurileng.blogspot.com] 2008-05-11 21:17|| Front Page Top

23:54 trailing wife
23:52 twobyfour
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23:30 Frank G
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21:48 crosspatch
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