JOSHIE'S SOAP CRATE
Cause a box is just too small!
I should start a blog or something...
Let that soak in for a second.
Smell the bullshit?
Crude oil is a global commodity. Every industrialized nation on this earth does one of two things. They sell more oil than they buy, or they buy more oil than they sell. (Its actually a lot more complicated, because crude oil isn't in itself used for much, and the ability to refine crude is different than the ability to drill for crude, but for the purposes of this discussion, lets keep it simple). So countries like Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Columbia, Venezuela, etc etc etc, have an abundance of crude oil. So they can sell what they don't use. And do.
Other nations, like the United States, France, Canada, Britain, etc etc etc, do not have an abundance of crude oil, and so must purchase it. And do. To the tune of 20 million barrels of crude oil a DAY in the United States alone.
Its actually where the definition of "priceless" comes from. Something that is "priceless", say the Mona Lisa for a famous example, is an object that you cannot easily look at the global market, compare to similar items found there, and find a monetary value for.
Oil isn't priceless. In fact, you can quite easily look up how much Iran is selling its oil for, and how much Venezuela is selling its oil for. You can also take a look into the annuals of history and see how much oil was going for yesterday, and the day before, and on the day of your birth if you were so inclined.
I know what your thinking. What the hell does this have to do with the price of tea in China?
I'm glad you asked. Here's the point. Yes, ten years ago oil was trading at a much lower price than it is now. Has production slowed? Is there less oil today than there was ten years ago?
No. Oil exploration and drilling is at an all time high.
Your problem is demand. Ten years ago, China wasn't an emerging first world country with the biggest economy since a bunch of rebellious guys got together and decided to form a more perfect union, and the king be damned.
That's right. China's economy is rapidly expanding and is soon going to equal the consumer whore that is the United States of America. And it doesn't look like it will stop there.
What does that mean? It means that the United States is no longer one of the only big spenders when it comes to oil. So lets break it down. If oil production is up, why haven't prices gone down, instead of up?
Because of demand. Meaning for every extra barrel of crude that was pulled from the ground, more countries want to buy it. It means that the price goes up. Why? Because something is worth what someone else will pay for it. You don't want to spend a $120 a barrel on oil? That's okay. China will.
Let me phrase this in a more at home scenario. A Christmas not so long ago, the toy de jour was the X-Box 360. (Or the tickle-me-Elmo a few years before, or the whatever. Fill in the blank there with whatever toy was the hot item that every kid had to have, and you went from store to store to store to store trying to find one.) It was a new product. It was state of the art, top of the line, and every kid in America wasn't gonna love you on Christmas morning unless you had one under the tree. The suggested retail price was $399. Don't quote me on that. I'm going off of memory here. So you headed out to Wal Mart to pick one up. "I'm sorry sir. Were sold out."
Target, sold out. Game Stop? No luck.
And then, with Christmas only a week away, with you getting desperate, there's light at the end of the tunnel. EBay. Someone finally has the X-Box for you to buy. You load up the web page, scan the prices and gawk. Some of these are going for a thousand dollars. What? You mean to tell me that something that someone else bought at Wal Mart for $399, I have to pay $1000 for? Yep. That's how demand works. When something is in short supply, the price skyrockets.
Now to relate this back to oil. Remember when I said that China is buying a lot of oil? Guess what that means? Yep. Prices are up.
So.....do you think that the makers of the X-Box made a "record" profit off the Christmas rush?
Is Microsoft, the maker of the X-Box, to blame for the price of their product skyrocketing?
So in short, if you want prices to go down at the pump, one thing and only one thing has to happen first. The must be a back log of oil. For prices to come back down, oil consumption, and oil production have to meet (Meaning one barrel produced for every one barrel used), and then finally supply must exceed demand. More oil needs to be produced than the amount of oil being used.
So how does this all tie into the Democratic Parties 'solution' to rising gas prices?
Think on it for a moment. They are trying, in short, to make it more expensive for oil companies to create their product. So you tell me. Do you think that will raise, or lower the cost of gas?
Can you smell it now?
Clauie's Comment: I can! PEE-UUU!! Stinky!
PREFACE: Joshie's Soap Crate is the part of Clauie's blog dedicated to entries from Josh himself, because he occassionally wants to rant online, but doesn't want to run a blog himself. Feel free to leave him comments. He reads this blog and can and will comment back. Enjoy the rant!
I should start a blog or something... The Democratic Party has started coming out against "Big Oil" and is planning to repeal several tax cuts enjoyed by the oil industry, as well as imposing a "windfall" tax. The logic is, in a time of gas prices rapidly approaching $4.00 a gallon, and the price of gas hurting the economy as a whole, "Big Oil" is posting record profits. Those bastards. How dare they make money at a time like this. The people are suffering and need their cut of pie.
Take another look at that.
Let that soak in for a second.
Smell the bullshit?
Crude oil is a global commodity. Every industrialized nation on this earth does one of two things. They sell more oil than they buy, or they buy more oil than they sell. (Its actually a lot more complicated, because crude oil isn't in itself used for much, and the ability to refine crude is different than the ability to drill for crude, but for the purposes of this discussion, lets keep it simple). So countries like Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Columbia, Venezuela, etc etc etc, have an abundance of crude oil. So they can sell what they don't use. And do.
Other nations, like the United States, France, Canada, Britain, etc etc etc, do not have an abundance of crude oil, and so must purchase it. And do. To the tune of 20 million barrels of crude oil a DAY in the United States alone.
And thus you have the basis of a global market. If you need the basics of how a global market work, your beyond the simple help I can offer here. I don't suggest you try your hand at the stock market either. But let me try a simple break down.
Something is worth what someone else will pay for it.
Its actually where the definition of "priceless" comes from. Something that is "priceless", say the Mona Lisa for a famous example, is an object that you cannot easily look at the global market, compare to similar items found there, and find a monetary value for.
Oil isn't priceless. In fact, you can quite easily look up how much Iran is selling its oil for, and how much Venezuela is selling its oil for. You can also take a look into the annuals of history and see how much oil was going for yesterday, and the day before, and on the day of your birth if you were so inclined.
I know what your thinking. What the hell does this have to do with the price of tea in China?
I'm glad you asked. Here's the point. Yes, ten years ago oil was trading at a much lower price than it is now. Has production slowed? Is there less oil today than there was ten years ago?
No. Oil exploration and drilling is at an all time high.
Your problem is demand. Ten years ago, China wasn't an emerging first world country with the biggest economy since a bunch of rebellious guys got together and decided to form a more perfect union, and the king be damned.
That's right. China's economy is rapidly expanding and is soon going to equal the consumer whore that is the United States of America. And it doesn't look like it will stop there.
What does that mean? It means that the United States is no longer one of the only big spenders when it comes to oil. So lets break it down. If oil production is up, why haven't prices gone down, instead of up?
Because of demand. Meaning for every extra barrel of crude that was pulled from the ground, more countries want to buy it. It means that the price goes up. Why? Because something is worth what someone else will pay for it. You don't want to spend a $120 a barrel on oil? That's okay. China will.
Let me phrase this in a more at home scenario. A Christmas not so long ago, the toy de jour was the X-Box 360. (Or the tickle-me-Elmo a few years before, or the whatever. Fill in the blank there with whatever toy was the hot item that every kid had to have, and you went from store to store to store to store trying to find one.) It was a new product. It was state of the art, top of the line, and every kid in America wasn't gonna love you on Christmas morning unless you had one under the tree. The suggested retail price was $399. Don't quote me on that. I'm going off of memory here. So you headed out to Wal Mart to pick one up. "I'm sorry sir. Were sold out."
Target, sold out. Game Stop? No luck.
And then, with Christmas only a week away, with you getting desperate, there's light at the end of the tunnel. EBay. Someone finally has the X-Box for you to buy. You load up the web page, scan the prices and gawk. Some of these are going for a thousand dollars. What? You mean to tell me that something that someone else bought at Wal Mart for $399, I have to pay $1000 for? Yep. That's how demand works. When something is in short supply, the price skyrockets.
Now to relate this back to oil. Remember when I said that China is buying a lot of oil? Guess what that means? Yep. Prices are up.
So.....do you think that the makers of the X-Box made a "record" profit off the Christmas rush?
Is Microsoft, the maker of the X-Box, to blame for the price of their product skyrocketing?
So in short, if you want prices to go down at the pump, one thing and only one thing has to happen first. The must be a back log of oil. For prices to come back down, oil consumption, and oil production have to meet (Meaning one barrel produced for every one barrel used), and then finally supply must exceed demand. More oil needs to be produced than the amount of oil being used.
So how does this all tie into the Democratic Parties 'solution' to rising gas prices?
Think on it for a moment. They are trying, in short, to make it more expensive for oil companies to create their product. So you tell me. Do you think that will raise, or lower the cost of gas?
Can you smell it now?
Clauie's Comment: I can! PEE-UUU!! Stinky!
5 comments:
Josh, Josh, Josh... The premise of your rant seems to be that we should expect a political party to do something reasonable!
True. I should stop reading the news all the time. Probably drop my blood pressure a few points=P
Papabear
Ahh! Look what I just found. Thought you'd like it.
545 PEOPLE
By Charlie Reese
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.
You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.
You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.
You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy con vincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.
The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million can not replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.
If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.
If the Marines are in IRAQ , it's because they want them in IRAQ .
If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.
There are no insoluble government problems.
Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like 'the economy,' 'inflation,' or 'politics' that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.
They, and they alone, have the power.
They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.
Nice.
Papbear
You two rock. :)
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