A brief look at this gasoline price index shows us that we are in a volatile state where the price of gasoline will jerk around quite a bit depending on how many oil-exporting countries the NATO regime wants to threaten plus the relative value of the dollar versus other currencies. What we see today is something rather ironic: the US oil producers are importing oil from Mexico, Canada and using oil from home fields to refine and then…EXPORT. This way, they make better profits overseas just like our manufacturing powers are doing and this causes inflation at home plus we have the burden of ever-higher trade deficits since we import a lot of oil to refine and then sell. A lose/lose for Americans but a win/win for international oil merchants! Who own our government every bit as much as AIPAC. And both work in tandem, choosing which Muslim oil exporters to attack next.
Here is a funky headline in the mainstream news that expresses surprise yet does virtually no examination about why things are happening the way they are going: U.S. exports record amount of refined fuels – latimes.com
In 2007, U.S. exports of all kinds of fuel held steady throughout the year at 1.24 million to 1.25 million barrels a day, according to Energy Department statistics. But by 2011, exports of diesel, gasoline and other products surged. In November and December, U.S. fuel exports averaged between 2.77 million and 2.89 million barrels a day, the highest ever.
The oil pipeline controversy whereby the US builds this immense multi-thousand mile line from deep inside Canada to the Gulf of Mexico is being built not to bring gasoline to US drivers but to process and then sell Canadian oil to Europe! Period. It has zero to do with servicing US consumers. The GOP inserted legislation enabling this export/import scheme into budget bills we need to run our government. So the pipeline to Europe will be built. The negative effect of importing Canadian oil will go on our trade ledgers and the sale of this gasoline to the EU will then be justified to fix our massive trade deficit but like all previous ‘fixes’ will fail to do this and we will run even bigger trade deficits over time since we ceased being a sane domestic economy and focus nearly entirely on trade profits for the top 1% of the economic mix.
Here is a graph from our own government which merrily tracks the 50 year-long trade disaster. It shows how happy we all should be because we are exporting gasoline even as prices at home shoot upwards and kills the domestic economy: Foreign Trade: Graph of the Month
The Big Bankers and the Big Exporters and Big Oil guys are happy as bugs in the bed. But we know from past experience, higher gasoline prices=bad economy for car-obsessed US consumers. The more money that burns in the tank of US cars which are ridiculously big and inefficient even after seven years of high prices, the less money is available for other things. Since the average American can’t get around without burning lots of gasoline, this dooms most people to a declining income for buying other stuff. In past years, this was fixed by importing cheap labor goods.
We see from this graph how it has worked. We have run up immense trade deficits and even after a global collapse due to too much credit from NATO bankers, we are still running very deep in the red and things are not improving at all, just not as bad as during the recent credit bubble: ALFRED Graph – ALFRED – St. Louis Fed
Despite all the saber rattling in Asia and screaming at the Chinese, look at our trade balance with them! It is, in a major global recession, still pretty immense: Foreign Trade – U.S. Trade with China
It is nearly $250 billion in the red this last year! Wow. True, it was worse in October, 2010. But it is still a yawning chasm. Our trade with Japan radically altered after March, 2011, but this was due to Fukushima and the tsunamis plus the floods in Thailand wrecked Japanese auto producers who have increasingly moved production there to exploit cheap Asian labor. Here are some screenshots from a video about the trade deficit.
A constant theme here is how self-destructive humans really are. The richest Americans like the richest Japanese, knows perfectly well, the present system isn’t working well and will lead to the destruction of their home base. Alas, many ‘American’ rich think their home base is Israel! So they really don’t care all that much about this place in the first place. The dire information inside of our trade numbers can’t be ignored forever. There is no infinity here: we cannot import to infinity.
The high cost of fuel is due to US war policies causing massive unrest and turmoil in Muslim oil exporting nations and our trade deficit is causing inflation, not stopping inflation. Hitherto, dropping US wages and cheap imports fixed monetary inflation caused by war spending and other internationalist efforts. But now, it isn’t working so well and so we have real inflation where we can’t escape it and the flood of foreign goods which gives us pleasure are now costing more and more, too. Inflation is growing greater even as we have ZIRP lending so it isn’t caused by interest overhead rates, either.
It is pure and simple money printing and the US consumer has to compete with foreigners who have ‘money’ for things we produce here in America! Our exports have shot upwards as our imports have done but this means, we can’t buy our own production!!!! A huge problem for the majority of the US population in the long run. This is not being debated by anyone in this election. Even Ron Paul is totally guilty here. The Ross Perot election was all about trade issues. Ron is correct to go after our military spending but he doesn’t understand how capitalism joined with government leads to destruction of our economic system. He thinks cheap labor at home will fix things. Well, it won’t. It can’t. Never, ever has a country survived destruction of its own economic base and worker purchasing power is very much an ‘economic base,’ and needs to be protected.
Email:
emeinel@fairpoint.net
MAILING ADDRESS:
EMS NEWS
P.O. BOX 483
BERLIN, NY 12022
Make checks out to ‘Elaine Supkis’
Click on the Pegasus icon on the right sidebar to donate via Paypal.
Culture of Life News 
Fuel now USA #1 export!
Its a mad world.
I saw that headline. What idiocy! This is how capitalism does not work. It makes no sense to export oil that is needed here because it costs money to move the oil, not to mention the environmental damage that occurs while moving it, which is never figured into the overall cost of doing business.
It is like running a liquor store, but not telling the accounting department about the number of bottles stolen by alcoholics hanging around out back at the loading platform. They have to be counted someday, just as all the destroyed farmland, polluted streams and rivers, and industrial disasters have to be “counted” as well.
You know, while we debate economic issues, Russia Times has been following a story that does not appear here in America: that of the imminent conflict between America/Israel and Iran. I seriously doubt we are pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan quietly for peaceful reasons.
It appears that our masters in Israel have finally found a smoking gun, or rather a means of producing one. By pushing for an all out embargo on Iranian oil sales, which support 70% (I think) of Iran’s economy, the Iranians were forced to draw a line in the sand: if they cannot sell their oil, no one else will either. They will close the Straight of Hormuz and destroy the UAE’s oil refineries.
Our fleet and their fleet are facing off in the straight right now, and RT has reported on every single development in that powder keg. If we go to war over this, I hope all of Europe freezes to death, as deep down I know they and Israel are pushing for this war. The oil goes to them and China. Europe wants all of the oil, including the Iranian oil as well as our own (hence, the “exports”).
If I were the Iranians, I would let the Chinese know that if they sit on their butts and do nothing, then all of the oil fields will be set ablaze before the Chinese can come in and buy them after we wreck their nation. That will leave China only one option for oil: Russia, and Russia is not too pleased with China’s population.
Happy New Year everyone.
Geeze…what do you think us Canucks think of that pipeline filled with OUR oil.
If us Canadians actually controlled our own resources we would stop importing foreign oil into Eastern Canada and stop exporting oil into America and send the Alberta oil to Eastern Canada.
But whats the profit in that for the 1%.
If we did that then Canada would be self sufficient!!Can’t have that.
The new pipeline should be heading east not south from Alberta.
No wonder we see other countries nationalize their resources!
There is plenty of oil here in the US. The international oil industry is essentially a huge money laundering operation…getting the huge profits of the oil oligopoly out from the mitts of the us tax machine.
Transaction costs rigging is the oldest trick in the book. Ask Dr Gucci about that one.
Personally, I welcome out insect overlords
our
Do Canadians call themselves “Canucks”?
I ask because I am deaf and I have never seen that word before.
If I was Canandian, I would be outraged, but America has used up all my outrage, so there’s nothing left even if I moved there.
The Vancouver B.C. NHL hockey team is called the Canucks. Has been since the seventies.
@DeVaul: Canadians might call themselves Canucks, it depends on personal taste. It is somewhat of a stereotype like “eh”, that is common in colloquial use. It likely comes down to two versus four syllables are easier to say at any given time.
***
I have technical training for several resource industries but I find the petroleum business complex and sophisticated. I’ve long whined about the lack of refining capability in Alberta for tar sands heavy bitumen. But I think the current system actually makes sense, for now.
There is capacity on the Gulf Coast and a high density of sophisticated refining facilities, to handle the heavy bitumen of the tar sands. Alberta doesn’t have either the facilities to currently handle the tar sands bitumen to final product, although there are plans to advance refining in Alberta. It’s worth noting that there are conventional oil and natural gas reserves in Alberta and there have been refining facilities there for years for that product. The volume and consistency of heavy bitumen from the tar sands is a special case.
At the locale of the tar sands there are serious water resource quality and quantity concerns (limited flowrates from local rivers, dewatering tailings) and power costs are high in the area (lack of hydro generated power infrastructure). These issues discourage advanced refining locally and may in time limit mine development.
There is already some degree of refining (Synthetic Crude Oil) at the tar sands. But apparently, combining less viscous SCO with very viscous bitumen presents it’s own technical challenges at the refinery, despite that’s often what’s in the pipelines from Canada to the US in order to move the bitumen through the pipe.
Add in costly environmental issues, such as dead birds on tailings ponds, or pipeline spills into fish bearing watercourses with the associated politics. Sufficient political and economic risk exposure can quickly destroy such a capital intensive project as a refinery. Of course, the environmental issues are arguments for improved technology and systems management, not deprecation of the tar sands related projects. But dead birds and fish are great PR for enviros.
Add in the immense complexity and variety of oil well source and refined product chemistries and how combining them to one degree or another may or may not work at the pipeline collection or refining level and what looks like something silly makes sense.
My dear emotional Canadian. You sold off 100,000 of refining capacity on the East coast -Newfoundland with Harvest to Korea along with 125,000 boe equivalent production, mostly in crude actually – when crude was less than fifty. That was reel smart bidniz. You sold off Daylilight to China, which had beautiful deep wells/10,000 ft which last and last, in Alberta and nice hydrology to drill for twenty years to come. You sold off Prime West to Korea with another 100,000 plus boe conventional production, not the hydrocracking or shale methane shit. That’s 400,000 boe/year and I can’t remember the first one that went in ’07 (Daymark?), but if you take a min from pumpkin eatin you can find it. Anyway why the high dudgeon now, emotion is no substitute for knowledge. The way I see it, that crude/methane isn’t yours for very much longer.
Rocket man, a story for you. I had a friend who was a high school exchange student from the subcontinent. He would constantly mispronounce words that no one else even knew. Truthfully, he was from a simple background and he only encountered these words while reading. While it was funny, no one would say the guy was anything but well read and highly intelligent, as opposed to, oh let’s say, a moron. In fact he had read/learned many, many words that he had never heard, and others from ‘cultured’ families did not encounter in their lexicon. The point I am trying to convey, is that the only requirement for literacy, in the strict meaning of the word, is to read. Something perhaps you could not fit in to your plutonium missions to Pluto.
American soldiers blowing up dogs in Iraq while laughing:
http://www.firstpost.com/topic/place/iraq-liveleakcom-dog-blown-up-by-american-soldiers-video-A58_Q34vB5M-19-1.html
hmmm.
About that picture?
iPads are not made in the US.
Navigators are not made in the US.
Projectors are not made in the US.
Bicykles might be made there.
Movies are made there.
Music is made there.
Entertainment is made there.
And the profits from these products go to stockholders of these companies.
Heh…
You would think it was easy to do the right thing over there?
The jobs are not coming back. Ever.
So…
higher VAT
energy savings and smaller cars
more taxes on the rich and shareholders of companies (and then just giving it to the unemployed)
Keep the peace and the society together.
Yes, Canada is being stripped of its commodity resources and these are being bought by manufacturing nations that export value-added Industrial Revolution goods. This is the place where power lies: in having the strongest INDUSTRIAL system.
The Pentagon made a huge strategical error when it thought the massive military/industrial complex can be used to wage all out war against a powerful industrial nation like China. It can’t. That is, in all wars, civilian production is used to produce war materials such as say, TRUCKS or such. Instead, we offshored our auto production and even though we assemble trucks here, the stuff we need to make them run like the electronics are produced in Asia.
So the Pentagon hopes to fix that problem by unilateral sneak nuclear attack on China. A la Japan against the US. But Japan couldn’t destroy our massive industrial base, only cripple temporarily our navy.
The problem with this nifty new plan to ape the Imperial Japanese with a sneak attack is, China can do this, too or respond after the beginning of an attack and destroy us totally. Mutual assured destruction is something few ‘consultants’ to the State Department or Pentagon ever discuss.
Gasoline is so cheap I’m beginning to wonder that the effects of peak oil have been overstated (at least in the short term).
Iran war threat.
Money printing in US and EU.
Record consumption and new users all over the world.
Gas is 1.52 euros per litre here.
5.76 euros per gallon.
7.45 dollars per gallon.
And it does not bother me one bit.
Gasoline is still very cheap.
Where do you live, JT? Are you from Finland? Can’t remember.
Here in Kentucky, gas is almost 4 dollars a gallon, but we must drive far just to get ordinary household items, so it adds up fast. My gasoline bill went from 35 dollars a month back in 2005 to over 100 dollars a month this past year.
Granted, a lot of that is from my wife driving around while I am at work, but even if I yanked her license and the keys, I bet it would still be 75 bucks a month given all the activities my daughter is in and how far away they are (we chose the closest locations, too).
There is no public transportation here. There is a bus system that runs like a 17th century stage coach (arrival time: today), but nothing else. I use an electric scooter to get to work. It takes about one hour. I also have a three-wheeled bike now (made in China, and it feels like it too) in case the scooter dies.
My next goal is to learn to ride a horse, which, here in Central Kentucky, would seem like the next logical step. If I lived in Australia, I would already be riding a horse on my income.
JT, that was my thought when I read the headline.
DeVaul, you should get to know your neighbors — the ones you can walk to. Gardening is a good thing, too.
The peak oil prediction is that it will be much like the peak whale oil market — there will be wild swings as alternating waves of deflation and scarcity sweep the economy. As the production rate continues to decline, the economy will inevitably shrink to match it.
It is far from a sure bet that they will consistently print money.
It is a very sure bet that those in power, in the roles of central planning, will attempt to hang onto and increase that power by all means available to them.
“My next goal is to learn to ride a horse, which, here in Central Kentucky, would seem like the next logical step. If I lived in Australia, I would already be riding a horse on my income.”
You are going to have to house the horse and feed it. And that is not cheap. It was not without reason that the rich in the Jane Austen novels boasted about their carriages at every possible turn. The poor had to rent horses/carriages or more likely WALK.
We’ll all be walking while the rich run us over in their cars (using up the last of the fossil fuels).
@devaul
Yeah Finland.
We have a pretty good public transport system (my wife takes the bus to work to centre of Helsinki every day).
But that is by choice she does not like to drive in traffic (she reads a book when going to work).
Families have just one car usually here (well nowdays that is changing also).
I hardly ever use the public transport system.
But trains I really like when going from city to city (or town to town might be more accurate when Finland is concerned).
Many people take their business trips by train here.
My gasoline bill has gone down, I just drive less nowdays and my car consumes 1/2 the amount my old one did.
(I do a lot of work remotely from my house and plan my business visits so that I fit 2-3 to one day and then stay at home for a couple of days per week).
But that is by choice also not because of gas prices.
When I got my drivers licence decades ago gasoline was already 3,50 markka’s per litre (that would be about 3 dollars per gallon so the price has doubled since then).
Gasoline has always been very expensive and we finns consume about 50% less per capita than the US.
I don’t feel the pain at all.
I live 20 km from the centre of Helsinki in a residential area.
We have small cars and small energy efficient houses.
That is the secret IMO.
Small is beautiful here 😉 .
The US refused to change back in 1980. They voted for importing oil and Ronnie Reagan and cutting taxes so we began our fatal trade and government deficits back then.
Now we have to pay the piper and we don’t want to. We will be forced to export ALL our oil in the bitter end thanks to all this present red ink.
ahemm…Up here in Canada.. Canuck is just that..a Canadian.eh?
Now I am not so sure I like the term “cheesehead” which Canadians got called crossing the border for cheap american cheese.
Though I never could understand spending all day in traffic and putting up with customs just to save a few dollars on dairy products.
Main thing to understand is the banksters know no borders and will trample us equally .
Well, I loved to walk, before I lost the ability to do so. It is the best option, as you do not even need to own a car — a financial black hole if there ever was one.
Sounds like Finnland has a nice system. The German one was excellent. We don’t really have one here, except for the rich Senators and their aides. I know that horses are expensive to maintain, but right now they are being abandoned by their owners, so at least you get the horse for free.
Also, I should mention that my gasoline bill is quite small compared to my neighbors (those that are still left on my ghost street). Their’s is more like 300 to 500 dollars a month, which would bankrupt me instantly. They also have 2 or 3 cars per household. I don’t know where they get the money for that.
I know my truck does not get good gas mileage, but I don’t know what I would do without it. I haul oak logs in it to grow mushrooms in my backyard, which has no sunlight. I suppose I could cut down all the trees, but I like trees. Keeps the air cool and helps blots out the ugly, abandoned homes around mine.
@devaul
“Well, I loved to walk, before I lost the ability to do so. It is the best option, as you do not even need to own a car — a financial black hole if there ever was one.”
Well cars are taxed extremely heavily here (about 20% taxes on top of the car price+23% VAT). We’ve never had much car industry here so that has always been the case (Germany does not like this so maybe they will be cheaper in the future).
I think we have only one plant making Porcshe boxters here.
The average age of cars here is 15 years 😀 .
We are a bit like Cuba in that sense.
But you are right. Buying a new a car is the worst investment you can make.
And buying a foreign car is not very good for your country’s economy.
(That is one thing someone should have told the eastern europeans when their economies opened up. The youngsters in Estonia went banktrupt buying german cars. Now that was very stupid.)
I plan to drive my current car for 6-10 years and see how much less they consume in 2020 (I’m guessing new cars will consume 2 litres/100km then).
German engineers are the best 😀 .
But those taxes partly pay for free health care, free education, free daycare, public transports and benefits for the unemployed.
So I don’t worry about that too much.
Fixing old cars is kind of the national pastime here.
And there is a kind of nostalgy and excitement in driving shitty cars on snowy roads.
(Maybe that’s also why we finns are so good at motorsports, who knows).
So no need to be envious about the situation here.
Maybe we are just slowly boiled frogs and a used to our misery 😉 .
I just ment to say that gas prizes have no effect on my daily life since I’m used to them.
Rising food prices I’ve noticed more.
DeVaul,
I’m sorry to have been so flip… I think you mentioned your situation before but I had forgotten. I should only listen to my own advice and know my neighbors. Mostly Indian and Chinese immigrants in this neighborhood.
Elaine,
I’d like to up-vote that last comment of yours but can’t find the button.
reminded me of the Irish potatoe famine, where before revisionist history frauders reported was attributed to foreign ownership of the means of production and the selling of the greater majority of the food stuffs to foreign markets and people willing and able to pay higher prices leaving the Irish the only crop producable in small areas the blighted potatoe not being enough and starving them off the lands thus enabling greater foreign ownership of the means of production…………
i liked this column,except for the jab at ron paul.
is it actually cheaper to ship goods halfway around the world, with high oil prices and the cost of “empire”, or are we just led to believe that?
what we need is a competitive US banking system (competing against our own crooked banks) which backs american business start-ups, which only produce american goods and tap into american resources.
can you imagine the business generated by a lower priced all american goods store here? of course, the push for globalism will tell us that it isn’t feasible, but they aren’t tryin either, are they?
All we need is good old tariffs. Ron Paul isn’t a ‘conservative’ in the sense that say, my grandfather was a ‘conservative’. He is an economic liberal radical but doesn’t know this anymore due to no historical perspective. If he were a true conservative, he would be for tariffs. He imagines a gold standard would stop imports and it would.
But that is stupid! Gold without tariffs simply kills the economy at home! Once upon a time, 30% of our Federal budget was paid for by TARIFFS. So why not today?