Crude oil hit another record high at $129 for a barrel. How can this be happening? Who is really responsible? We’ve all heard the oil industry’s tired, mostly nonsensical reasons: Hurricane Katrina’s damage to Gulf Coast refineries (after the storm passed most observers were amazed how little damage there actually was); China and India’s demand is way up (sure, one night all their cars had babies, twins and triplets, and prices surged accordingly); half the earth’s crude is gone, so it’s all downhill from here (yeah, like Exxon-Mobil has a 3,000-mile long dipstick that extends to the middle of the earth, and they just checked it).
The lame excuses go on and on, yet, peculiarly, there is no shortage of gas at the pumps. The true reasons are all greed-related. There’s Big Oil (three years of record corporate profits) and super-wealthy speculators who drive prices higher every minute the NYME is open.
But I want to discuss the man in the White House and his Cabinet, all of whom have oil in their blood, and blood dripping from their grabby hands.
They exacerbated rising oil prices by devaluing our dollar and attempting to imperialize Afghanistan and Iraq which obliterated any decent relations we had with the entire oil-producing Mideast. This administration thought it could pre-emptively knock off Afghanistan and Iraq in months (mission never accomplished!) then Syria, Iran and beyond. It wouldn’t matter what the cost – dollar or human – because oil rules the world and those grabby hands in Washington want it all.
I just heard on TV – oil’s now up to $133.
Tom Winton
Carmel
Comments
comments for this post are closed