That's what I'm talkin' about! :)

Here in Los Angeles if you have an SUV and premium is at $2.80-$3.00+ and you try hitting the highway you might as well light your own ass on fire. You're burning sitting gas but the stops and starts kill ya. You sit hours on the freeway trapped!

That's why I only drive mini-RVs and conversion vans with a bathroom in them. It's horrible watching people trapped in traffic having to leave their cars to do their business like animals.

Oh they're not worried about alternative fuels and alternative energy technologies. They'll do what they've done for the past 70 years:

Kill or buy off anyone who invents alternate fuels and alternate energy technologies.

Americans won't bitch about gas and oil until the prices of beer and cigarettes and dope go up.

Stop and think about it.

In the early 1960's then President Kennedy set a guidline of sending men to the fucking moon and returning them safely within 10 years.

It was done with flying colors and they didn't have anywhere near the computers we have today and we can't even get a ship into orbit and back without some shit falling off of it.

Here we are over 30 years later after the first big energy crisis and we STILL haven't solved the problem???

What part of " Dumb fucking asswipe chimp-for-brains " did we Americans 'not' understand???

It's the same families and cohorts ripping off the people of the world over and over again.

Don't believe me? Just google ' dead microbiologists ' and see how it's done to shut people up.

We're living in the prequel part of 'Mad Max' and 'The Road Warrior'

Supply has everything to do with it. Oil companies know their days are numbered unless they make the switch to alternative energy sources. Why do you think BP changed their name from 'British Petroleum' to 'Beyond Petroleum'?

The world is running out of oil. It has nothing to do with refineries, politics, or war. It is supply and demand. That is all.

Using GDP to measure the economic health of a country is an extremely blunt instrument at best, and often misleading. There are more and imo better methods to measure improvements 'on the ground', as it were.

For instance, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average earnings increase from 2000-2004 was 3.86%, 3.22%, 3.12%, 1.71% and 2.39% respectively. Now compare those increases against inflation to get real wage growth... For those years, annual inflation was 3.4%, 2.8%, 1.6%, 2.3% and 2.7% respectively. Take away inflation from wages and overall wage growth becomes .46%, .42%, 1.52%, -.59% and-.31% respectively for 2000-2004. A meagre 1.5% increase in 5 years, and that doesn't factor in increases in energy prices, health care, insurance or any of the other things that people would generally consider essential to their lives. Most people are seeing more and more of their money go towards just staying afloat (the anecdotal 'heat or medication' conundrum)... and with 'bubbles' Greenspan cranking interest rates at every opportunity, even base inflation will start climbing to difficult rates.

Take also the jobs situation. Over the last 5 years, over 2.8 million manufacturing jobs, 2.3 million goods producing jobs and 550k high tech jobs have disappeared. Now, some of that is due to natural rebound from the dot-com bust (particularly in the high tech area), but manufacturing has been sliding downhill fast, and those have traditionally been quite good paying jobs. Those have been replaced largely with service industry (wal*mart and/or burger flipping), construction (housing bubble), government and health industry jobs. Of the three, only health pays wages anywhere even close to the levels of the lost work on average.

Bush started his term in January of 2001 with 132,454,000 million jobs. The total non-farm payroll number for July 2005 is 133,786,000. This means that the economy created 1,332,000 jobs over 4 and a half years. However, just to keep up with natural attrition (people shifting jobs) and new kids coming into the workforce, 150,000 new jobs a month must be created just to keep up. Over the same time span, the economy should have created 8,100,000 new jobs to maintain at par, with no real economic growth. That means the Bush administration is currently 6,768,000 jobs behind what is needed just to tread water. To make matters worse, 30% of the jobs created between winter 2001 and winter 2004 are temp positions. Additionally, we know from repeated anecdotes of people working 2 or more "McJobs" in an attempt to get the equivalent of one decent paying job... which factors into those 'productivity' numbers.

Spot on, here. It's a hard sell for anyone to preach the virtues of hard work, conservation, frugal living and savings on a country which has been in a consumerist orgy for the last 2 or so generations particularly when it's growing increasingly difficult for the lower 2/3rds to even save any money for a rainy day. So many people out there's net worth now is tied entirely to the value of their property and god only knows what will become of those poor bastards who are leveraged out the ass when the land bubble pops. The party will have to come to an end eventually, and I pity anyone caught up in it when it comes.

Of course, for the top 10%, it'll be like a new gold rush... which kind of makes it difficult to GET people in the white house that want it changed. :2 cents:

http://inflationdata.com/inflation/i...l_20050819.gif

The significant difference between the rise in the current rise in the price of oil and other such highs (eg early 1980s) is that there is no single external shock that is driving the price up. The increases are fueled (no pun intended) by several factors:

- speculation to the upside bases on emerging demand issues especially from large, developing countries (eg China)
- speculation of some event that will affect oil production
- Real supply vs. Demand factors (long term and short term, eg seasonal changes in demand, popularity of gas-guzzlers, real demand in countries like china)

The reason this rise is manageable is because it is not volatile. Like inflation, rising or dropping prices are manageable when they are predictable. That is, high inflation is ok if you know that its going to be high. Volatility and shocks are problematic. The market has basically priced in a fairly large shock already, which would lessen the effect if there were an actual shock.

Also, for those of you who are griping about the price of gas, you can hedge yourself by participating in the rise in price by purchasing oil and energy related stocks and income products. There are a ton of energy ETFs that pay out nice dividends that increase along with the price of oil.

The worlds not running out of oil; it's running out of cheap oil.

Agreed. And, the reason the world will never 'run out' of oil should be clear to anyone who's taken even the most basic economics course. If oil were ever really that scarce it would be reflected in the price - when the price of using oil is prohibitive vis a vis other products, then there's something called 'substitution' that takes place.

Is there an online university that offers ECO101 for cheap? As anyone who participates in these threads should be forced to take it before speaking.

I don't know if I can agree with you in terms of volitility. Admittedly oil prices aren't bouncing around like a superball on speed, but on this day 1 year ago it was hovering around the $40/bbl mark. A 70% increase of any basic material over a year is going to cause pain and suffering, let alone the material that underpins the entire economic welfare of the country.

Also, if by "the market" you mean Nymex, I'd be inclined to agree... to a point. I think there's still plenty of upward to go. Depends on how cold this winter gets... if it's a serious chiller, I don't think the $100 barrel is entirely out of line this year, and I think it has more upward room beyond that still, even factoring in heavier crude grades brought online. Oil is still one of the cheapest liquids available commercially... even at $68/bbl that only works out to around $0.40/quart!

But if by "the market" you mean john and jane doe, then I've got my doubts. The entire country is built on a foundation of cheap, easily available petro energy, and as such it's a very inelastic market. You're going to need to see serious increases in price before seeing a serious decrease in consumption. The barriers to alternatives are too prohibitively expensive for many people.

Eventually, as prices continue to rise, it'll become too expensive to commute and people will either move, quit or switch to mass transit (if available... good luck with that all you peeps in the city of angels!) In the meantime, they WILL forego other things, including things we wouldn't consider luxuries. Low income / Fixed income families may well be choosing between fuel oil and food, or gas and medication. :2 cents:

Yes, by 'the market' I refer to the price setting commodity markets - obviously there are many makrets as well as many grades of oil (north sea, brent, texas, etc...).

Hit me up in ICQ if you have any questions or concerns and i'll be more than happy to give you a hand.

Here is a a snipit from an icq i received yesterday from another satisfied dreamsubmitter user:

Amateur-Flix (03:02 PM) :
BTW, this program has been working out great. The time it has saved me has allowed me to make more galleries every day and I've nearly doubled my traffic in the past month (from 200k to over 350k daily)

Nifield (03:04 PM) :
im glad to hear ds is working so great for you man, you'll love version 2 for sure

Amateur-Flix (03:06 PM) :
this program is as much of a jump in gallery submitting as from when I went from all manual submissions to using Advanced Submitter, my previous program

Nifield (03:16 PM) :
wow. thanks a lot for the kind words, would you mind if i qouted you on that?

Amateur-Flix (07:47 PM) :
np, go right ahead

Look at your own graph. When did the oil prices start to rise? When Bush took office. Seems strange that all of a sudden the world started to run out of oil when he took office, doesn't it?
Seems more like the corporate "pigs" were at the trough waiting for the feeding to begin.

I have read all of the statistics about the oil production bubble, and it has had several holes poked in, by people smarter than you or I. It's simple profit taking. If it was a supply problem, then I doubt Exxon-mobil would be having the largest profit ever for a US company.

Just look at today, oil prices are up because of the tropical storm that "might" hurt production. There seem to be a lot of these "mights' lately.

We are all at fault for buying these gas pigs of cars. I myself bought a very gas efficient car a couple of months ago. Kind of funny that they are pushing hybrid cars that get 40-50 mpg. Shit back in 81 I had a dodge colt that got 45 mpg, and it wasn't a hybrid.

How did we go backwards so far. Very short memory, I guess.

But hey, the just extended the tax credit for hummers and full size suv's! :thumbsup

uhhh.. thats why I said 'speculation'.. broad speculation in a market is more powerful than the whim of a corporation to profit-monger. And please dont mention enron, they traded in proprietary markets.

You are absolutely right. The beginning of my post was a response to someone who had bought into the headlines about "record deficits" and the like. We now face a media which has gone from dumbing us down to actually feeding us misinformation, the result is that we end up squabbling over irrelevancies.

Your comments about employment expanded on what I was referring to in "There is globalization which has a direct effect on (real) employment levels and wages". You could also have mentioned that during the past 20 years, while blue collar wages have barely increased at all, CEO salaries have jumped 300%. That isn't just a symptom of a sick economy, but of a sick society and if that trend continues, gated communities will become not merely a vanity, but a necessity.

To drift even further from your response, there have been many changes in the political landscape during my lifetime. Possibly the most curious is that back in the 50's and 60's, Americans didn't think in terms of left- and right-wing when talking of the two big parties. Instead, we took it for granted that all Americans (except for a few eccentrics perhaps), were essentially right wing and that the main differences were which constituencies they represented: Republicans the wealthy, Democrats the workers. The middle class split according to the degree of optimism they felt about their futures.

I throw in that observation because it is another way in which we have been manipulated into debating irrelevant issues and adopting positions which have little to do with reality. And while we are busy insulting each other as immoral fascists and flag-hating liberals, the politicos and their friends have their snouts deep in the trough.

Jayeff,

I respect you much as over the years you've never lied or bullshitted us. I've seen you hold your own and keep things on an even keel when others were falling apart at the seams.

So I value your opinions and observations whether they're industry based or not.

Yet this time you've hit the nail on the head to something that I can speak from from experience and that is the media and it's being used to fuck us over.

I got out of mainstream news almost 20 years ago because I saw how the intelligence communities were taking over during the Reagan Administration. People bitch and moan about Reagan but we loved that old man. He was always there for us no matter what and many a great newsman and newswoman who raised me knew him personally. We knew he was in trouble soon as he took office and when he got shot it confirmed that. We were all on our toes. Reagan wasn't the problem, it was the leeches and scumbags surronding him that were.

There were stories of great importance that would go by the wayside in favor of propoganda. Those were the days when the Iran Contra thing was going on. Dope and weapons and sex slaves were the name of the game then.

Lots of news guys split. We had no choice but to take our chances in the streets or other venues. Lotsa guys played it 'safe' and are working cushy jobs but their consciences caught up with their asses and now it's eating them up.

Yet when you tell people this they wanna call you a conspiracy nut or some shit.

Well whose cryin' now? Let's look at the stats:

We're in a global debacle caused by a religious nut we funded decades ago.

Nuclear weapons are proliferating amongst our old enemies who are back to being our enemies again after the supposed Cold War ended.

We have horrid diseases about to envelope the planet and no one paid any attention because only us conspiracy nuts talked about it.

Global warming is a fact. So what yeah any volcano could do the same thing if it super erupted, but why add to the problem?

We are one remark away from a totalitarian state and our legislative, judicial branches are about as helpful as wipin' your ass with sandpaper.

Whether you like them or not, guys like Jeff Rense from rense.com and Alex Jones from prisonplanet.com have been warning about this shit for years.

Oh, I'm already sold!

I know how auto submitters can do wonders and I've been using cool Craig's TGP Wizard. Works like a charm!

I know how your submitter works cause I read the specs and there is no doubt traffic and quality traffic can be had in a short time. That's the key, quality traffic. TGPs and MGPs are the trick, not search engines anymore.

That pay per click and keyword bidding shit is for the birds.

Look! MISSING WHITE WOMAN! OVER THERE! Find out what completely irrelevant people think about it! Also, 72 things in your kitchen CAN KILL YOU! Are your children at risk of SUDDEN, HORRIBLE, PAINFUL DISFIGURATION AND DEATH? Find out at news at 11! :karaoke

Globalization is only one half of the story. Money's being syphoned out from the top by the BigCos and jobs are being eaten away from below by globalization/outsourcing. People in the middle are feeling the pinch in a big, big way.

I also didn't get into how much people are now dependant on debt (I touched on it briefly about leveraged real estate being the sum of personal wealth for many) and the bankruptcy laws which may well reinstate indentured servitude wholesale... and woe betide anyone who happens to fall ill, with or without insurance (50% of all bankruptcies over the last year are medically related, and 75% of those bankrupts had insurance at the start of their illness)

I think we're both reading from the same page on this issue though. :thumbsup

I think Frank Zappa said it best:

I used to have a job an' I was doin' very well
Depression came along an' everybody start to yell
"Where'd they go, them good ol' days, an' all that crap we used to sell?"
Now I'm in Hot-Plate Heaven, at the Green Hotel

Republicans is fine if you're a multi-millionaire
Democrats is fair if all you own is what you wear
Neither of 'em's REALLY right 'cuz neither of 'em CARE
'Bout that Hot-Plate Heaven... 'cuz they ain't been there!


Really, the trite, contrived tit-for-tattery of what passes for journalism is what they trundle out when they can't sufficiently distract people from a missing white woman these days. It's bread and circuses, except they make you pay for the bread, and if you have cable, you pay for the circus too. :2 cents:

Things are going to get very ugly (much worse than now) really soon...

Too late edit:

Really, the trite, contrived tit-for-tattery of what passes for journalism is what they trundle out when they can't sufficiently distract people WITH a missing white woman these days.

Rick, as much as we may argue and beef on the boards you are so dead on balls accurate!

Glad someone around here is old enough to remember Zappa! ( Titties & Beer )

Yep, we're all set up for slavery for sure! I know all about the debt scams going on. Did news reports on them for years!

Medical expenses and divorces. Two worst things that can happen to a guy. It's destroying the family structure of the country as it is! I remember as a kid if someone was divorced it was a news item of the day! Now if someone is married long enough to have an anniversary or two it's a miracle!

Dudes get FUCKED in our society. Be a breadwinner and you might as well walk down the street with a bullseye painted on your forehead.

About that kid in Aruba who's missing? NBC or ABC did a big ass special about how there are far more missing people right here in the U.S. that never got one second of air play because they weren't white! I mean they OWNED the news media over this shit. I can understand why as the majority of people in the U.S. are white. People forget that fact. When you have 200+ million white people in a country of almost 300 million the news is gonna swing in the majority's favor. It doesn't justify what the news media does but it's a fact.

Dig where the average guy is now, if he's just out of college and owes $100k what job can he get to pay that shit off? If he gets married and has a kid he's in hock til he's 60 years old. If he gets a divorce which is a 55% probability, he's FUCKING OWNED FOR LIFE.

And now he can't even claim bankruptcy.

Makes me wanna hold up in a mountain cabin and make porn all day.

I hope not but you may be right if we don't do something quick.

You are all just speculating without any solid evidence to support your claims, if you are so sure it will hit $100/barrel by winter, talk to your broker, buy some options and make a killing. But let me guess, you won't have the balls to put your money where your mouth is?

Diesel reached an historic price here today... 1?/liter :helpme

Y'see, I hate it when I'm right about things that are wrong:

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/08/26/D8C7BBRO0.html

It's a story update on violence regarding high gas and oil prices. If we don't do something fast we might end up at each other's throats by winter.

Well here's a story that spells it out in precision terminology and historical events. Well worth the read as it breaks down what is going on and how it could get worse.

http://www.rednova.com/news/display/...urce=r_science

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/ns/news/...&w=RTR&coview=

I was right. Oil is NOW over $70 per barrell. 25% of the U.S. refined oil is dead in the path of this monster storm.

I expect it to hit the $80 mark by next weekend. Expect $4 to $5 per gallon for premium by mid September at the latest.

A barrel will NOT hit $95 this year, maybe $68-70, next year it will go higher, thanks to Bush for that!

If it get over $70, and the fisrt to post on my board get clothes for the rest of the year from me!

Dude, like spamming during a disaster thread is like lower than snakeshit in quicksand.

Oil has already hit $70+ just read the link above yours. I want a year's worth of clothes by default as I posted it first. No I ain't signin' up for your program to post on your board.

Gas prices risin' in Los Angeles faster than a new nookie boner.

http://www.forbes.com/finance/feeds...afx2205462.html

Told ya so. Forbes just published an article about oil reaching $100 a barrel.

We should all invest our money in moped manufactures...

try again :-/

I'd much rather oil hit $100 for psychological and speculative reasons now, rather than critical supply shortages later. God knows the planet needs a serious kick in the ass to get it started SERIOUSLY on looking for a replacement to liquid dinosaurs.

71% increase in heating if you use gas, 31% increase if you use oil for this winter according to NBC Nightly News.... Add to that just the price of filling your tank, and the increase in goods due to higher costs and you can see a collapse coming...

Let's just hope this doesn't happen, the economics effect of such a hit would be pretty nasty for the whole world.

I'll go further and say $100 this winter... $200 within 2 years.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/09/08/D8CG3S7O0.html

See? No sooner said than done... Watch the shark's smell blood in the waters ....

There is a thread on Forbes' prediction on a near-term and sudden drop/normalization in oil price back to previous levels of $35 to $40 per barrel.

Bump for people who still talk about $100 oil... it's still not happening no matter how much you panic and talk about it.