I can’t stand Dubya and am often dumbfounded when I spend much time thinking just how much damage his administration has caused or allowed over these last eight years! The knee-jerk reaction for a lot of voters will be to vote for ANYTHING that is different from the current administration- in their simplistic, ill-informed naivety rejecting all things Republican will make it all better.

We have the most ‘moderate’ Republican candidate of my lifetime (33yrs) on the ballot and I’m ecstatic about the possiblities but also terrified that enough Americans could be foolish enough to squander our country’s greatest hope! He has the intelligence, common sense and most importantly- the BALLS to get us back on the road to recovery!

The sheer number of Obama-supporters who are “blind sheep” literally keeps me up at night terrified of how tragically wrong things could go in November. I have read/heard at least three different reports in the last few days citing that the majority of Hillary supporters are undecided now that she is out of the race. Their support didn’t automatically transfer to Obama as many expected.

Even though I expressed my disdain for bumper stickers in last week’s posting, I decided that some things are too important! My Mazda3 now has a McCain for President sticker on the hatchback window.

I am seriously thinking of picking up an 2004 ninja 250 if I find out it gets better gas mileage than my current bike. Should be fun and something easy to hand down to my brother who is currently working on his m/l class.

Hey Robstar- I just sold my best friend’s bike for him because he never gets to ride it. He lives on the road at least five days each week and drives a company-provided Ford Fusion (SEL V6, leather, not bad for a freebie) and they cover gas for it, too. So his bike never gets used except the occaisonal weekend ride and he asked me to find a buyer for it.

The funny thing is that the bike is a 2004 Kawasaki Ninja 250R! Pricing guides consider up to 6800 miles average for an ‘04 under-350cc, but his only had 2200 on it and was in as-new condition. Retail value on KBB shows $2230, so I priced it at $2000 and hoped it would sell…

I posted it on Craiglist at 8:30 on Wedsnewsday night and by 10:00 on Thursday morning I had almost 30 email inquiries and 12 voicemails! By 2pm, I had the $2k in hand and the bike had a new home. I was NOT prepared for that sort of response, but it’s clear that bikes an increasingly hot commodity much like econocars.

I should have asked a little more….but the buyer was an 18-yr old kid and this was his first bike, so at least I did a good deed by pricing it where I did…

I wonder if you build any good karma for accidental/unintentional acts of kindness? =)

If supply is static and demand is now falling

Demand in the US is falling. Demand worldwide is growing. And oil is a global product.

Which I guess is inevitable. These threads often deteriorate to the point where, like the HooBird, they fly in ever-decreasing circles until they fly up their own anuses and disappear…

“Could you be really brief and say exactly what Bush did that was bad for the economy?”
The thing is, it doesnt matter what policy I say, you will say that Bush is not the responsible party. Many will agree with you, many will agree with me. History will be the judge. It took me 5 seconds to find articles listing his failures. Heres one.
http://www.democrats.org/a/2006/10/cheney_brings_f_1.php
I had a harder time finding anything about his successes.

While I’m at it…

“war for stability in oil producing regions”
I’ll never say that, sorry.

“I believe the cuts have increased revenues”
Pure speculation. Proof? Im sure revenues in the Caymans increased.

“The vote was not disingenous”
Your statement that the vote was bipartisan is what I was calling disingenuous. My link showed how many Democrats did not support the war. There was nothing bipartisan about it. Maybe disingenuous is the wrong word. How about just wrong.

and how can you say you have not been talking trickle down?

and yes, I can blame 9/11 on Bush. It’s easy, you should try it. Start with the daily briefing and go from there.

thats it, I’m done. At least we agree there’s no room for the grammar police in blogs. I do hold the original articles and editorials to a higher standard. If I see one more pluralization with an apostrophe!!! Oy, if I only wrote this much in college.

We may agree on an inability to meet policy goals. My point is different. I am arguing military ability.

We can meet military goals. Nation building is not a military function, and neither is policing. Just because you ask the Army to do it, doesn’t make it a military mission. Soldiers change diapers, but that doesn’t make it a martial art.

The military can and will continue missions in Afghanistan and Iraq while deploying to yet another theater. Casualties and costs will increase. The soldiers will have to stay in theater for years rather than months, and the whiny doves in government will just have to STFU and sell war bonds.

I may be reacalled to duty, sacrifices will have to be made. However, WE CAN DO IT. Don’t doubt it.

The dollar will climb in value when the world realizes that once again, the USA will respond when our interests are threatened. If our allies can’t be bothered to help, then they will be marginalized along with their currencies. They may simply lose their sovereignty in a few more years when the wolf finishes his preparations and goes to knock on their doors. I for one won’t be bothered to once again defend our european allies who can’t even be bothered to defend themselves.

I said nothing about trickle down economics. Nothing at all.

The economic theories that you can spur a boom with taxes are out of favor with almost every economist at this point. You may reduce a recession, you may get less negative results than others like me might think, etc. However, you can’t tax your way to a boom. No way. The correlations of economic prosperity following higher tax periods are not causation at all. One important point to look at is the total taxes vs. GDP. Even if the income tax is nominally high, it often isn’t effectively increasing overall taxes because it is not the only tax, an it isn’t necessarily being paid. One really big bonus to the internet boom was that sales taxes were being avoided all over the place. The other thing going on was record low energy costs until near the end. These had nothing to do with US policy, and everything to do with lack of regulation by our and other governments. Clinton was giving leases away to the oil companies who otherwise would have ceased drilling off shore due to high cost, low reward prospects.

I will forget Bush if you stop bashing him. I will not forget “war for oil”. If you are willing to agree to say “war for stability in oil producing regions,” instead, then I will drop that as well.

Could you be really brief and say exactly what Bush did that was bad for the economy? Specifically? We covered invading Iraq, he didn’t go it alone. Do you remember the vote? I think only a few complete leftists and pacifists were in the no camp. There were a couple guys who said the were not dovish, but just didn’t think it would go well. There were some really, really cowardly guys who used afghanistan as an excuse (see next post to PCH), in order not to be seen as doves.

Bush didn’t yield a lot of power at all. He has been really weak. You see strenghth, I see reluctance to veto pork laden bills. Reagan had a good reason to go along with the pork, but Bush wasn’t winning the cold war, or the war on terror, so he should not have gone along.

I disagree on revenue vs. rates. I believe the cuts have increased revenues from the affected demographic. I KNOW capital gains and dividend decreases worked. I believe the only way to say revenues did not increase is to say that we would have gotten more because we would have taken more, but that is just ignoring that less income would have been produced and/or reported if the tax had not been reduced. Also, the numbers that include the AMT reductions are completely bogus because once they fail to exempt people just one year the party will end on that scam pronto. People WILL change behaviour to avoid any tax that is too high.

Congress started taking us back into debt before Bush got on board. Bush inherited a recession, and a bubbled market based on poor books that Clinton’s gang had let stand for a long time. The single biggest mistake that hit our economy that can be blamed on an administration was allowing Enron to have mark to market accounting. Congress helped, but the admin gets the blame there.

The vote was not disingenous. I don’t let leaders off that easy. You vote it, you own it. That is the prime responsibility of Congress. What is disingenous are all the excuses now being made by the left who immediately started undermining the war they authorized.

Once again, if you want to know what the economists think, many of them, in hindsight of course, believe that the fed allowed the internet bubble under Clinton with too much easy money. Bush inherited that, and the Fed had to go along to ease us out of crises that rippled from that and 9/11. You can’t blame 9/11 on Bush. Sorry.

The Fed has little real world ability to set interest rates, particularly long term rates. It can try, but it can’t lower rates to levels at which that they can’t sell Treasuries.

If investors think that US Treasuries pay too little, they won’t buy them. If they don’t buy them, then we can’t support either the budget or the trade deficits. So it is imperative to us to sell them at a price that will actually get them sold on the market.

The Fed can try to influence things, but the market is much larger than the Fed or any other government. At the end of the day, the market is like a large ocean, and the Fed can either try to swim in it or eventually drown.

I will admit to being in the tax and spend liberal camp. I can take the heat. I like having my social services (hello, I teach), my infrastucture (I think some people in Minnesota would have appreciated that too), and I think a good federal program CAN trump a private one, whose only motivation is profit (health care, Im lookin at you). But tax and spending cuts are often needed and can be helpful.

However, there are a variety of reasons why Bush’s tax cuts were bad policy. Not the least of which was their timing. There is no sense in going into al the other ways we are suffering, because this is about oil. Forget that the administration is made up of oilmen and women. Forget the sweetheart realtionship between the Bushes and Saudi Arabia. Forget that we are fighting (another Bush) war for oil. My singular point was about the low dollar. Some say (OMG I sound like FOX) that the weak dollar is the cause for the run up in oil prices. If that is accepted, then why is the dollar low? Who do we blame for the low dollar? The Fed has had to respond to this dismal economy by lowering intrerest rates and the US dollar has fallen in response. (It is this point that is the heart of my argument, but that I admit to having the least understanding of. Im not making the causal connection myself, other much smarter people have done so.)

These 8 years of disastrous economic policies (whoever you choose to blame for them) have resulted in unprecedented action by the Fed, leading to the low dollar, leading to high priced oil. If you dont think that Bush’s policies have created this mess, there is nothing I can say to change your mind. Blame Congress, blame lazy people, blame whoever you want, but history will judeg Bush’s economic policies as some of the worst decisions by any president, right up there with Hoover, no? History will remember his failures, not the the mostly Republican Congress that went along with them.

“President’s, on their own, get much more credit/blame for economic change than they are due.”
Dully noted, but it has been a long time since a president yielded this much power. He and his mostly Republican Congress agreed on every bill for 6 years.

“Both parties have done little but add to the debt for decades”
Except for the 90s. Had Bush continued some of those policies, we could have had several more years of surpluses. But he squandered those in the first year.

“when you lower a rate, and increase revenues, then the rate was too high”
Agreed, but this is the crux isnt it? Bush singlehandedly brought about the massive lowering of rates, especially for top income earners and wealth holders. But revenues did NOT increase. So it was a failed policy. Big Time.

“the vote backing the war was as bipartisan as they come”
that’s a little disingenuous and you know it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Resolution_to_Authorize_the_Use_of_United_States_Armed_Forces_Against_Iraq
Many, tho not enough Democrats stood out against this. The rest were playing along with the fear politics of the worst kind.

“As for low interest rates…if there is any consensus on the issue at all it takes the causes all the way back to Clinton and Greenspan. Once again, not W.”
Again, my point is that the Fed MUST respond to the economic crises at hand. I’m not saying that lowering interst rates is wrong, but that it was a necessary defence to the faltering economy, and for that I (as you have noticed) blame Bush.

“The stock market got inflated way back in the same period”
I wouldnt say inflated in the 90s, but a prolonged run-up due to a booming economy. This recent rise of the past couple years has been unprecedented because it has happened as the rest of the economy has faltered. (tho we have just entered a Bear Market, so this is changing.)

So thats all I got. Respond if you must, I know you disagree. And thats perfectly fine with me. As you said “for every economist who will disprove you, you can likely find one who will argue with him.”

No, what we lack are the abilities to achieve our present policy goals in Iraq and to resolve a new crisis were it to arise.

Sorry, but your view is highly Amerocentric and politicized. The markets are non-ideological — they survey the landscape, and look for results. The results of the Iraq war are a US budget deficit which has weakened its currency, an inability to create a friendly stable government that can function without considerable US investment and troop presence, and an unresolved internal conflict that the “surge” has not remedied.

These problems are all dialed into the value of the dollar and the horizons of the short-term speculators who drive current oil prices. The markets would reward us for leaving, just as they ultimately did with Vietnam. Had the US stayed in Vietnam, it would have followed the French into becoming a second-rate power.

Yes, the Treasury creates the debt, but it is the Federal Reserve that controls the flow of money.

And if you look at the money supply, you can see that it is basically unchanged.

There is a lot of confusion here about who does what. The Fed prints money, and they don’t print that much of it. The Congress and the President create the fiscal policies that determine our spending (the budget) and our deficits (tax policy.) The Treasury goes and sells the debt created by the fiscal policies and deficits of the Congress and the President.

In the scheme of things, the Fed isn’t doing much here to affect anything. They can attempt to set interest rates, but those are ultimately determined by the market. Of all of these players, they have the least to do with it.

It all goes back to the legislators and president who create the policies that cause the Treasury to borrow what it needs, while the Federal Reserve does what it can to control inflation.

My mistake, I may have lumped you in with some others and/or remembered stuff from some other threads. Still, blaming W? You didn’t just blame government, you went right after the target du jour – W.

First, for every economist who will disprove you, you can likely find one who will argue with him. You won’t solve anything that way.

Overwhelmingly, economists will agree that President’s, on their own, get much more credit/blame for economic change than they are due. Still, they love to argue over the margins. Then this discussion gets picked up in society as if it’s a big deal rather than a fine debate.

It really takes the Prez and Congress together to screw something up really well. (Before you throw out the obvious reply, note that conservative support for the republican congress after ‘98 started to wane.)

Both parties have done little but add to the debt for decades. It has been a wonderful conspiracy. Only that devil Gingrich and his crew really ever did anything about it, and they had the internet boom as a tail wind to help.

The tax cuts raised revenues in a number of ways. you can argue about fair share and social values, but when you lower a rate, and increase revenues, then the rate was too high from an economic point of view.

Since you are a teacher, maybe you can ask around and find out how many teachers go ahead and retire early because their spouses have pushed them into the top bracket and even though they may love to teach, going to work just isn’t worth it anymore. I know people like that, so I think maybe you do as well. That’s what happens when a rate is too high. Seriously, if someone gives up a calling, like education, because the taxes on their labor are too high, how much less activity is happening in regular business? I can tell you, a LOT. Raise that rate back, and lot’s of folks who create wealth will quit or slow down. We aren’t talking about the rich, we are talking about the high earning families. We don’t tax wealth with income taxes, we tax work. Wealth is taxed as capital gains.

I have several ideas for new businesses that are currently shelved due to regulation and taxes. The risks are not worth the effort when the state will steal so much of my time and money. I am on the job market to go back and work as a salesmen, even though I am capable of producing more for our society. Maybe I am being lazy, or maybe those who “work for a living” yet pay almost no taxes are the ones being lazy. I don’t care which, the facts are I am not creating as many jobs as I could be creating because of taxes and regulation.

The tax cuts had nothing to do with the oil crisis except maybe allow people to buy more gas and transported goods instead of pay income taxes.

The war may be adding to the instability of the Middle East, but you know, the vote backing the war was as bipartisan as they come. So once again, going after W, ain’t gonna cut it.

As for low interest rates, there is hardly any agreement over the wisdom of low rates for so long, but if there is any consensus on the issue at all it takes the causes all the way back to Clinton and Greenspan. Once again, not W.

The stock market got inflated way back in the same period. Bush has not inflated the stock market. In fact, if anything, he has done a decent job keeping it from floundering for a good while (mostly as a result of – the tax cuts).

So there you go. A logical rebuttal, as requested.

BTW, I am no supporter of W. If you want to blame him for his actual screw ups, I won’t stop you.

PCH101:

Yes, the Treasury creates the debt, but it is the Federal Reserve that controls the flow of money. They can not just arbitrarily declare interest rates are x, they have to ensure that there is a supply of money (though not necessarily printed) available at that interest rate. So, when the government is borrowing money like crazy (I’d say a trillion dollars per year or there abouts is pretty darn crazy), the only way to keep interest rates low in general is to make more money available. When the increase in money suply outstrips increases in production, you have inflation. Of course, there are a number of other factors, but that would be a rather long discussion for a blog.

p.s. I agree that a gold standard would not necessarily be a good thing, but neither is unchecked government spending and borrowing.

But my original post was just about ONE of those reasons, the top reason cited in the survey, government. They clearly do have some responsibility for this mess, and I think my explanation of ineptitude that created this cause and effect relationship is still sound. No one has yet to offer anything to convince me otherwise.

Sorry, but everyone knows we have the most powerful military in the world -on paper.

However, if we consistently don’t win confrontations due to the lack of will. Our enemies and friends will rightly surmise that we are weak, and not able to do much other than blow up some stuff.

We presently have the ability to react to any crisis on the planet with enough military force to destroy any enemy without even resorting to nukes. PERIOD. It will be hard, and cause pain, but we have the ability. WHAT WE LACK IS WILL. Those who you are listening to, that say what we cannot do are assuming that we won’t CHOOSE to do things that we seem to not have the stomach for. What we can’t do is police any other countries, but what does that matter to a dead tyrant?

Leaving Iraq without victory will likely be the tipping point and cause our empire to begin decline. That would be a real shame when we are getting so close to being able to reasonably claim victory. Hell, we could have been at this point two years ago if we had presented our opponents with a united will to win instead of all this crap with people trying to take political advantage. The best idea would be to take all the folks who voted for the war, and then started whining about getting out and put them in uniform and tell them they can come back when they have won, and not before.

Let’s face it. The dollar doesn’t have a large advantage over the euro in any way except as a refuge in crisis. No one is willing to bet on Brussels in a crisis. We prove once again that we will not be cowed by violent thugs, and we will once again be seen as trustworthy leaders of the world.

It is the Treasury that creates debt. The Fed prints money and (attempts to) set short-term interest rates.

That’s why the war is much of the culprit. The war costs money, which turned the surplus into a deficit and increased the overall debt. Investors don’t like the United States’ fiscal and political problems, and are punishing the dollar accordingly.

The Federal Reserve is not the problem. The underlying implication of the attack on the Fed — that a gold standard would fix this — is just wrong. (You aren’t making that point, but some others are.)

Gold standards produce endless cycles of economic depressions, not stability.

Personally, I would like to see people stand on their own two feet. I guess this makes me a greedy evil conservative, despite the fact that I spend a portion of my time and money helping others. You know what the result of this type of charity is as compared to government forced “charity”? People who actually deserve a break get one. The money, and time, actually go to the aid of the people who I am directing it towards, not to beaurecrats who administer the programs and ensure that little money goes to the people that are supposed to be receiving the help.

Now what was the original post about?

It’s the opposite. Everybody (except for Americans, apparently) knows that the US is a paper tiger unable to handle crisis while it is stuck in Iraq.

To be a superpower, you need to be able to react. A the moment, the US can’t respond to anything, and it is reminding the world every day how ineffective it is. Losing a war live on TV is not behavior well suited to maintaining superpower status.

Toward the end of the Vietnam war, at a time when everybody except Americans understood that we were losing, we experienced the exact same phenomenon of a weakening dollar and rising commodity prices. We’re just repeating history that apparently taught us nothing.

Withdrawing from Vietnam was the best thing that we could have done for the US economy. We need to learn from the past, and understand that our war creates massive opportunities for speculators. Markets don’t like uncertainty, and we are paying for that doubt at every fillup.

You can make a good argument that the war is having a negative effect on the value of the dollar, but don’t let anyone make the mistake that quitting the war will turn that around. In the event of large global turmoil, the dollar becomes as good as gold if, and only if, there is widely held fear and respect for our military power and willingness to use it in a good cause.

If you want to see oil at $500 a barrel, just pull out the troops. No worries about filling the tank of your mercedes, you won’t be able to buy the parts for one anymore anyway.

Marc,

The idea that liberal ideology has done nothing to get us into the current mess is just laughable. Most of your posts on this thread have been so ridiculous that they did not warrant a reply. Wildbill’s argument was easily as logical and serious as any of yours. Get over it. Both sides of the aisle have plenty of responsibility for our energy crunch and economic woes which are only being pushed from “challenging” to “worrisome” by constant hype from the press and the left.

Note the reality. Unemployment lower than historical average. Fuel lines and shortages – none. We all know it’s not ideal, but let’s keep it in perspective that the present situation is best described with something like: “Things might seem okay, but…”

PS I am with you on the grammer thing on forums, if it’s easily readable, it’s fine.

“A little knowledge is dangerous, why open your pie hole!”
“You blame Bush because you are a flaming liberal and have BDS, you can’t help yourself.”

First off, those are comma faults. In both sentences, you have two independent clauses separated by commas. You need conjunctions, buddy.

Don’t try correcting my grammar.

This is a blog. I don’t have time to bother with the subleties of grammar as I run to my computer in between teaching English lessons to my students.

Second, Bush and his Big Oil and PNAC cronies have gotten us into this mess. I’m proud to be a liberal. I’m proud that we liberals did not create this mess, and I’m proud that we will be given the chance to spend the next 8-16 years fixing it. You just keep on listening to the fear mongering by your friends Michael, Ann, Rush, Bill, and Sean while we clean up this oil-soaked mess you left us. Just keep listening to their propaganda, spin, and lies. Fortunately for the rest of us, America is waking up from this 8-year nighhtmare.

BTW, you did nothing to actually argue my logic. I’m heartened that this could potentially mean that your post was meant to be tongue-in-cheek. Even if it was, there are too many right-wing nutjobs that actually do think like that. Maybe one of them can argue my points with some reasoned logic and some hard facts? Anyone… anyone… crickets…

The free market determines the (lack of) value of the dollar. There isn’t much that the Fed can do to change the value of the dollar.

If you look at the M1 money supply figures, you can learn in about two seconds that nobody is operating the printing presses on triple shifts.

The dollar is declining because the free markets that determine its value have decided that at the moment, they don’t think much of what backs the dollar. That would be the US government, and the budget deficit and quagmire that it is mismanaging in Iraq.

In any case, it’s good that 68% of the public has figured out that there is a war premium being paid for at the pump, because that is obviously much of the issue. The war weakens the dollar, ties down the US militarily and financially, and creates uncertainty, all of which are fodder for speculative markets.

Combine that with low interest rates, and it’s no surprise that commodities of all sorts have been skyrocketing in price. Maybe I should start a Peak Rice blog and create a cult following for the doomsday food crowd.

I am seriously thinking of picking up an 2004 ninja 250 if I find out it gets better gas mileage than my current bike. Should be fun and something easy to hand down to my brother who is currently working on his m/l class.

A little knowledge is dangerous, why open your pie hole! (I corrected your punctuation, that isn’t your forte either!) You blame Bush because you are a flaming liberal and have BDS, you can’t help yourself. Your are sick.. Dr. Wild Bill prescribes listening to Rush and Hannity and reading Ann Coulter and Michael Savage until you are healed.

reclusive_in_nature, thank you for your service in the fight for liberty!

My wife has a plan: “Kill ‘em all. Take their oil.” The world is scared because they know we can do it.

Decreasing Supply + Increasing Demand = Higher Prices

It’s a physical fact of nature called Peak Oil.

No boogeymen needed.

The free market is their most fair, most humane, most efficent way of allocating any resource, petroleum included.

No Big Mommy Government needed.