The price per barrel of oil is back up near $100 as of the end of last week and through today’s trading. According to the free-marketeers, that must mean gasoline demand has been through the roof. Oops, not so much: demand is down -4.3% YoY, at 8671 M gallons vs. 9056 M a year ago, as noted at The Bonddad Blog.
Clearly, something other than just demand is and has been at work. Oil trading is as much gambling as the stock market is. All the volatility that consumers are affected by arises primarily from large amounts of bets placed on anticipated prices.
Why is this important? As NDD notes, “This [oil's price] is back above the recession-trigger level calculated by analyst Steve Kopits. Gas at the pump declined $.03 to $3.42 a gallon. Measured this way, we probably are still about $.15 above the 2008 recession trigger level.” Those bets have real-world implications. Recessions are easier to trigger when oil and gas prices remain high.
I’ve heard a lot and read a little about the Occupy Wall Street groups that obviously started in New York City but have quickly spread to metropolitan areas across the U.S. since September. A couple of things I read today warrant a small piece of my attention away from more homework than I know what to do about.
Distinctions are drawn by liberals between the origins of the anti-Wall Street drive, which they say is more spontaneous and authentic than a Tea Party movement boosted into existence by Fox News, a favored news source for conservatives. Another difference: Tea Party followers were focused on one issue — cutting government spending — while Occupy Wall Street is amorphous in its aims.
Beyond that, there are broad similarities. Both movements are decentralized and nonhierarchical, driven largely by an alienated and outraged citizenry that favors the same two-word phrase: fed up.
It’s painful when these journalists parrots cannot distinguish between corporate astroturf groups (Tebaggers – they haven’t formally formed a party like the Greens) and organic groups (Occupy Wall Street).
It’s even more painful when their messages are purposefully misscharacterized. Where were the Teabaggers when the Bush Regime was spending Trillions of taxpayer dollars and blowing up the debt and the deficit? They were cheering the Regime on, saying spending wasn’t fast enough. Why did they choose 2009 to start wailing about the spending they used to support? Because there is a Black Man in the White House. I call shenanigans.
The Teabaggers’ assault on the political scene in 2009 was orchestrated and paid for by the same ultra-wealthy entities that Occupy Wall Street is protesting. It was anything but decentralized and non-hierarchical. What happened when reporters tried talking to the Teabaggers at the beginning? Amorphous and ridiculous commentary was offered. The organizers quickly picked up on this and ensured their well-trained communications liaisons were the only ones talking to the corporate media. There is no way that any disparate group of individuals getting together are well organized when they first form. Occupy Wall Streeters prove that; the Teabaggers also prove that.
The Teabaggers are mostly right-wing extremists who should feel alienated – all extremists should. The Occupy Wall Streeters are a much more diverse group who have rightful grievances against a government that is increasingly under corporate dominance.
Next up: an extremist extraordinaire, Jon Caldara, who offered up this nonsense that a different parrot dutifully made into “news”: “‘They wish (for) European-style socialism,’ he said. ‘It’s not corporate welfare they hate. They hate that it’s not all going to their causes. When they want to end all corporate welfare, I’ll douse myself with patchouli oil and join them.’”
Always available for jack-assery, aren’t you Jon? When the wealthiest 1% control over 50% of the wealth; when real take home income hasn’t changed for the bottom 99% since 1979 while it’s 240% higher for the 1%; when U.S. and foreign banks are loaned Trillions of dollars while millions of Americans lose their hard-earned jobs and homes, people in the 99% are eventually going to show how upset they are. It has nothing to do with Jon’s obsession with European socialism.
When Jon and other “free-marketeers” stop free-loading off of the socialist infrastructure this country and its citizens built and operate for them on a daily basis (roads, water, air, police, fire, radio, on and on and on), then they should be quoted in the media. The ridiculousness of quoting somebody who willfully refuses to live up to his own ideals is pathetic.
For those still left wondering what happened this election cycle, perhaps the Fed’s plan to buy up to $900 Billion in Treasuries by next June can shed a little light on things. They’re going to announce details of how they’re going to buy them ahead of time, allowing wealthy investors (not average Americans) the chance to buy them first, then sell them to the Fed for a profit. The rich devise plans to make themselves richer, not share with the rest of America. That’s one reason why tax cuts for the rich are such a stupid idea. Wealthy entities are wealthy for a reason: they horde their wealth. Keep the nonsensical Bad Trade deals around while inventing new ways for the wealthy to multiply their wealth and the rest of America continues to fall further and further behind.
Jobs aren’t coming back, they’ve been shipped overseas. Without jobs, Americans can’t spend. Without growing consumer demand, corporations have no incentive to hire. Meanwhile, banks get to kick people out of their homes, which in some cases might be illegal. No jobs and no houses means no growing economy. Nobody in government is stepping in to meaningfully stem the tide on these disastrous trends, letting the “market” to iron out the problems instead. This is what worshipping at the free-market mantle has wrought.
The Democrats left in office are for the most part more progressive than the corporate apologists that got voted out of office. If they want to fare better than their colleagues did in 2012, they had at least better make a show of fighting for Main St and tell Wall St to start sucking it up. The economy is not too far away from that cliff President Obama keeps talking about. If Republican Teabaggers get what they want, we’ll fall right over it.
Ninety-one days ago I gave you thirty days to fix the U.S. economy that you broke:
I’m just a simple, average citizen who has listened to you jawbone for decades—amplified non-stop by Fox News, CNBC, the Wall Street Journal and right-wing radio—about how perfect your system of “unfettered everything” is. How greed is good and regulation is the devil’s work. And yet, you seem to be strangely ineffective at fixing it when it breaks. Could it be you’ve been bullshitting us all along? …
Fix the damn economy on Main Street already, you Ayn Rand-worshipping free-market capitalist wizards. Show us how it’s done. Be the heroes we’ve been holding out for.
Bummer. You couldn’t do it, even with a two-month extension. Not even close. Instead of rolling up your sleeves and getting to work, all you’ve done is continue pointing your fingers at the Big Bad Government—the one that statistics confirm single-handedly saved your asses from Great Depression II—and whine. Hell, even your Savior of All Things Economic, Grover “Ayn Rand With a Beard” Norquist, couldn’t convince voters in Washington and Maine that your ideas were worth a bucket of warm spit.
Oh, sure, Wall Street is thriving, in large measure because they’re up to their old backroom book-cooking tricks again. (I did challenge you to work your magic “honestly, ethically and legally,” remember?) But Main Street is still tanking. So I guess it’s true—you’ve been bullshitting us all along.
That doesn’t sit well with me. Because, see, I’ve been programmed by Frank Luntz and the GOP spin machine to think of two things when I hear the word conservative: fiscal competence and defense. You fucked up the defense part real good. And now you’ve failed to prove your worth on the economy. I mean, good gracious Gerty, I gave you 90 days and look at what you did: in what should’ve been your moment of triumph, you dithered.
