Oil Up—or Oil Down?

Pumpjack located south of Midland, TX (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Last year’s “Arab Spring” toppled four Middle East governments and threatened thirteen more.

That regional uprising was partially inspired by the rising costs and falling supplies of food.

Modern agriculture has been described as the process of turning crude oil into food.  The relationship between crude and food is seen in the petroleum-basis for fertilizer and for the gas and diesel fuels that power tractors in the field and trucks hauling produce to market.

Thus, the global price of crude oil will largely determine the global supply and price of food.  Therefore, the price of crude will determine how many nations are destabilized, how many governments are overturned, how many people riot before they starve to death.

 

Currency Wars: The Final Battle?

Français : plusieurs billets de 5000, de différentes monnaies : franc, yen, lire, dollar (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) describes itself as, “a member-owned cooperative through which the financial world conducts its business operations with speed, certainty and confidence. More than 9,000 banking organisations, securities institutions and corporate customers in 209 countries trust us every day to exchange millions of standardised financial messages.”

SWIFT is the backbone of global free trade.  By means of SWIFT, businessmen in virtually any country can digitally buy or sell products to other businesses anywhere else on the globe.  Without access to SWIFT, global trade would be slow, uncertain and difficult.

The US gov-co has recently ordered Iranian banks be denied access to SWIFT until the Iranian government agrees to meet US demands concerning Iranian nuclear weapons.  Nations such as India (which are buying crude oil from Iran) are also threatened with restricted access to SWIFT unless they stop purchasing Iranian crude.

According to Bloomberg (“U.S. Wants Iran Oil Buyers to Pledge Cuts or Risk Sanctions”),

 

“If a country doesn’t prove it’s making the necessary reductions [in the purchase of Iranian crude oil] by the end of June, any institution in that nation that settles petroleum trades through Iran’s central bank will be cut off from the U.S. banking system.”

And conversely, the US banking system (and US dollar) will be “cut off” from any nation that continues to trade with Iran.

The question is:  Who needs who?

 

The Curse of Crude

Oil fire at the Rumaila Oilfield, Iraq (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The political and economic “equations” that define the Middle East are too complex to be understood, let alone solved.  The number of competing forces and variables are innumerable.   Rates of change are too quick to comprehend or predict.  I doubt that there’s any cohesive order or even pattern in the Middle East.

We send ambassadors or armies to negotiate or impose commercial agreements or peace treaties.  When the negotiations (or invasions) are finished, what’s changed?  What’s been accomplished?  Nothing.  As soon as we turn away, chaos returns.

Look at Iraq.  After receiving over 8 years of tutelage (invasion, actually) in the fine art of democracy, as soon as Americans leave, the Iraqis are back to bombing and killing each other.

 

The Truth Hurts (Really)

Image via Wikipedia

I was on 60 Minutes two weeks ago for being an extremist.  However, compared to the video below, my behavior is well within the bell curve for “normal”.

In fact, this video is so well assembled and “in your face,” that is it truly painful to watch.  The speaker is so bold and brazen in her statements, that I am embarrassed to live a life that is so (by comparison) “politically correct”.

I don’t agree with the some of the video’s statements.  The author blames the problems on “whites”.  I would blame those problems on anyone of any race who is, at heart, a “corporatist,” a “fascist” or driven by the love of money.  I have a few other quibbles.  Nevertheless, assuming the facts cited in the video are essentially true, the video makes me ashamed to be an American.

Even if the video’s facts are not precisely true, the video’s content is horrific.  In this case, the truth really does hurt.

If the numbers in this video are correct, we are killing several hundred Iraqi and Afghan children for every American serviceman who dies.  I don’t care how you justify the Iraqi and Afghanistan wars, you can’t kill that many children and still claim to be the “good guys”.

video  00:03:56

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIRddZUGQXk&feature=player_embedded

 

World Bank President: “One Shock Away from Full-Blown Crisis”

Image via Wikipedia

Robert Zoellick (right) is President of the World Bank.*  Speaking in Washington at the recent spring meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, Mr. Zoellick warned that the world is “one shock away from a full-blown crisis.”  He cited rising food prices as the main threat to poor nations.

Mr Zoellick said, “The crisis in the Middle East and North Africa underscores how we need to put the conclusions from our latest world development report into practice. The report highlighted the importance of citizen security, justice and jobs.”

International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn also expressed concerns about high levels of unemployment among young people:

“It’s probably too much to say that it’s a jobless recovery, but it’s certainly a recovery with not enough jobs.  Especially because of youth unemployment . . . there is now a risk that this will be turned into a life sentence, and that there is a possibility of a lost generation.”

 

Prophecy? A.D. 2011 Currency Collapse?

Image by epSos.de via Flickr

Here’s a 1 hour radio show wherein three men claim to have heard independently, but more or less simultaneously, from both God and men in positions of power that:  1) the European Union’s euro will fail in the first half of A.D. 2011; 2) the euro’s collapse will trigger the collapse of the US dollar somewhere between April and July of this year; 3) the US dollar will be suddenly devalued by 50 to 70%–and ultimately by 100%; 4) a global economic collapse ill result;  5)in response to this global economic collapse, a new global currency–and the New World Order–will be ushered in A.D. 2012.

 

The North Atlantic Current is Gone . . . ?

Image by catface3 via Flickr

The linked article (below) alleges that the British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon catastrophe–aggravated by the discharge of millions of gallons of “dispersants” into the Gulf of Mexico–has caused the North Atlantic Current to dissipate and perhaps die.

I’m not sure of the article’s credibility.   The author appears to be among to first to report evidence of a phenomenon which, if true, will have global implications and may be more devastating for some countries than a nuclear war.  The author offers interesting explanations.  But it remains unclear whether the author has leapt to an unwarranted conclusion based on “evidence” that is not yet verified, or if he’s written something prescient.

The article is worth your consideration.

http://europebusines.blogspot.com/2010/08/special-post-life-on-this-earth-just.html

 

More Trouble at the Deepwater Horizon Well

I don’t know if this video is real or some sort of hoax.  It looks real, but who can say?  It certainly looks scary.  The video implies that some force within the earth was able to make the sea floor suddenly move upwards about 4 feet and moments later fall by perhaps 8 feet.  If the video is real, it implies that Deepwater Horizon problem is a long ways from being finished.  2:44.    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5alY3-ydJ8&feature=player_embedded

 

Kenyan Leadership & Oil Cleanup

Maybe all the Gulf oil disaster needs is a little more “soaring rhetoric”.   5 minutes.  http://vimeo.com/12933322

 

BP Cleanup a PR Event?

Chris Matthews, Hardball video on current BP cleanup efforts as Public Relations exercise.  Gov-co cooperates in deception.  10 minutes.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/ns/msnbc_tv-hardball_with_chris_matthews#38115125

CNN:  128 BP cleanup workers sick; told not to go to public hospitals.  24 seconds

http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/cnn-128-bp-oil-cleanup-workers-sickened-in-louisiana-told-not-to-go-to-public-hospitals-video