Quote from limitdown:
What smacks of entitlement was the disposition and attitude of your comments, as if somehow we as Americans, who consume slightly more than 25.01% of available petroleum need to pay more or should pay as Europeans do.
What also smacks of emotionalism in your comments were the notions that somehow these conditions, which have surfaced and dominate the business media and news, since the Bush Administration took office are justified and rational.
Shame on you, and enjoy paying $4 gasoline, no, $6.85 gasoline prices. [/B]
1) European gas prices are a reflection of higher taxes for the most part. I never implied that we -should- pay just as Europeans, or just as Chinese (which have subsidized gas), or anyone else.
2) rational is a relative term. I think the california housing market's boom seemed fiscally insane. But cheap money lended to everyone and their grandmother with no standards of credit requirement propped it up. So it became rational in the big picture. At least, we understand why it happened. Same with the tech boom - very high PE ratios, unprofitable companies, and booming stock prices, all fueled buy speculation and excitement. Not rational to an old school value 'investor', but certainly rational when considering the economic circumstances of the time, with increased investor access to leverage, excitement about a major cultural and economic change (internet has changed our live's genuinely), and a pool of venture capital liquidity waiting to be consumed.
today's commodity boom has its own rationalizations. I think gold is worthless, and don't get the appeal. But enough people disagree with me in its safe haven inflation fighting value, so why fight it? I think energy is a better inflation hedge, but supply and demand laws still determine its price. Perhaps there are faults in the market, but those faults rationalize where we are at, and until those faults are remedied, nothing will change, and commodities will continue to be expensive.
Your bitching about a desire for cheap oil once again just reminds me of the typical complaint of every uninformed redblooded american who has no understanding of the basic concept of supply, demand, and market forces and faults that determine price. It reminds me of the same ignorant fools who bitch about 'price gouging' from gas stations or want oil companies to pay a windfall tax because they have sour grapes that someone is making money while they are losing it.
The irony is that these are the very same people who are so proud of our free market democracy and ready to fight wars in its name. These are the same people who paradoxically really desire a socialistic system. They're just to 'shamed' to say it. If they can't admit that, then all I'm left to call it is a sense of entitlement.
All I'm suggesting is that the market tells the story. This is not simply an elite upper class conspiracy like you point out. Perhaps there is a little of that, but no system is perfect. It is a combination of possible broken price discovery, genuine supply concerns, media hype (stimulating long spec buying), too much leverage available to future traders, and very real hiked demand issues resulting from booming economies.
Oil will spike up, from all this hype, we'll have a worldwide equity bear market for a few years, and demand will back down. And for a while, oil will once again be cheap (I don't think $25-$35 cheap, though). If we're even luckier, maybe nymex will be pressured to reduce available leverage to traders - but not while we have a Bush administration.
That is, of course, until the next iteration of supply worries, if not from politics, from declining worldwide production. That'll be your next bull oil market.
And don't bother shaming me; if you get off shaming strangers on the internet, perhaps your desire to feel self confidence could be channeled in more constructive ways.
Me calling you emotional and calling your sense of entitlement probably hit a chord because maybe there's some truth to it.