Oil as a weapon

When gas prices go up, everybody starts pointing fingers.

And with it being currently around $4.35/gallon here in my end of the Chicago metro area, the vernal urge to travel will be tougher and the list of the "to be blamed" will grow longer.  President Obama screwed it all up.  The Congress is inept.  Oil companies are greedy bastards.  There is a bit of truth in those statements but as is usually the case, reality is wider than all of it combined. 

A recent edition of Coast-To-Coast AM made me rethink much of this topic.  The guest on the program was journalist James R. Norman, author of The Oil Card: Global Economic Warfare in the 21st Century.  Norman asserts that the high gas prices are a form of attack on China.  It is true that our government fights the Chinese every day in the form of trade practices, interest rates, and currency levels.  High gas prices are just another weapon intended to force a crack into China's economic and political system. 

We've done it before.  During the 1980s, we used the same tactic in part against the then Soviet Union.  True, we ended up paying high cost per gallon just as they did but Americans were better able to absorb the cost than Soviet citizens could.  Now, we find ourselves again as "collateral damage" in a political/economic conflict.  Norman also made an interesting analogy:

"Companies like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley are the economic warfare equivalent of a carrier battle group, because they are able to project power-- that's why financial restrictions were lessened for them," he explained.

So it's not all greed, eh?
Oh good.  I was worried for a minute there.



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