patrick.net

Is BAP responsible for Glenn Beck's possible raping & killing those poor young girls?

discuss.

"progressive/liberal/leftist anti-American"

Even aside from this classic Bap phrase, you're harder to comprehend than TOT ever was, at least on this one. Nobody is going to comprehend what you're saying here, or asking here. (drunk I presume ?)

But the guy in the article is an idiot. Two data points, one when Bush started and another when he left office (or 2007 rather), does not tell the story.

When President Bush took office on January 20, 2001, the national average gas price was $1.46 per gallon. Six and a half years later, on August 27, 2007, the national average gas price had jumped to $2.76, roughly 89% higher.

http://www.randomuseless.info/gasprice/gasprice.html

I don't think Presidents have nearly as much impact on oil prices as perception of "peak oil" which can easily be investigated, if you don't know about it. But Haliburtons profits from the Iraq war ? That's another story, and very much related to the President's decisions.

Look at the chart I linked. The bottom of the down spike up to the next top is what Michelle Bachman likes to try to pin on Obama. OF course she is appealing to the stupidest of the stupid. If anything maybe the down spike that led to that overly low price (for a moment) was due to optimism about Obama ending policies (even if they didn't exist) that supported oil prices.

Note: We all know there are a lot of supports and subsidies for big oil, but it's hard to argue that those cause prices to be higher than they otherwise would be.

This is a retarded question so I'm not going to the link but the overall economics of oil is an important thing to understand.

Here's a chart:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=3jV

comparing total wages (blue) to gas prices (red) since 1970.

The period of 1985 - 1999 was nice for us, we had rising wages without rising gasoline prices.

This was the period of our strong dollar (though it was weakened against the yen), rising fleet MPG, general conservation efforts paying off, plus a massive oil glut thanks to Alaska and the North Sea oil supplies peaking.

http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFPAK2&f=A

shows the Alaskan supply curve, peaking in 1988 and tailing off by 2000.

Alaska's main buyer of oil was California, so that's why oil was so cheap here:

is a still from Die Hard, which was filmed in early 1988 I believe.

Nationally, you can see domestic oil supply falling here:

http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFPUS2&f=A

from 9Mbpd in ~1985 to 6Mbpd in 2000.

North Sea and Mexico ramped up nicely, too, 1970-2000:

but they are declining now.

Globally, oil production has been flat since 2004:

yet money supply is up a lot since then:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=3jW

If we want to be more competitive in manufacturing (and not just tariff the shit out of everyone), we need to lower the strength of the dollar against the yuan, yen, euro, and peso, since these are our major trade deficits.

Yet doing so will make oil much more expensive to us, since oil producers adjust their prices based on what their USDs they receive can buy from other countries.

The bottom line is we're going to have to share the world's oil with China, we've give them $3T+ of our money now and that can buy a helluva lot of oil.

Hell, just a trillion of that could buy the top 10 oil companies lock, stock, and barrel -- and if the Chinese could they would.

http://www.chron.com/business/article/China-invests-billions-in-oil-sands-2176114.php

As for Bush, he didn't do shit to put America on a stronger footing wrt our energy picture.

Neither did Clinton, but his excuse at least is that he lost his majority in Congress in 1994 (and for the reasons above oil was still pretty cheap in the 1990s).

"In 2007 DOE announced that it will invest nearly $20 million in plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) research."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreedomCAR_and_Vehicle_Technologies

$2T blown in the mideast, and $20 million for hybrids.

Fuck me.