At the beginning of Jan 2007, crude prices were $46 per barrel. When the official start of the recession began in December 2007, crude had almost doubled to $85.52 per barrel. In one year, crude prices increased 39% causing gasoline prices to increase.

Combined with the uncontrolled greed of a decade in the banking and insurance industries and lack of oversight on Wall Street along with the political greed, people didn’t have any extra money in their pocket because of the high gasoline prices and with 2/3 of the economy dependent on consumer spending, I think it all came to a head causing the collapse. They say there are some signs the economy may be improving as spending this Christmas is up and the economy hasn’t shed as many jobs so once again this speculation causes oil to increase on the commodities market back to a two year high. We have already seen the increase at the pump and it appears more increase will follow as gasoline prices on the market has increased faster than crude.

I believe that government shouldn’t stick their noses in places it doesn’t belong, however, I feel the government should do something about speculators on the market driving prices. These people buy and sell but do not accept delivery of the product at all. If they buy, they should have to accept delivery of the product before selling. In a sense it would be like them buying up a large number of cars, leaving them on the lot in Detroit never accepting delivery but holding them to drive up the price of them before selling them to a dealer. I don’t understand the concept other than to make money at the expense of the consumer. Manipulation of crude and gasoline on the commodities market is rampant. They can control whether the prices goes up or down, mostly up, just by the release of a government statistic, the threat of a storm that may or may not make landfall or any other world news event. I know our country was founded on freedoms such as free markets but to me, due to its importance in everything, from the making fr plastics to the running of power plants, manufacturing plants and automobiles, it should not be open to the dangers of speculation that is so prevalent on the futures market.

There is little doubt in my mind that gasoline and crude price is one of the main, if not the main, driving force of the recent recession and with prices increasing again, I look for a “double-dip” recession, if not a depression, very soon.

I still do not understand how crude oil prices could remain constant in the teens from 1978 to 1999 ranging from $13 to $19 per barrel and in the low $20s in 2000 but almost quadruple in price under a President who also happens to be an oil man. Something just doesn’t seem right there. Maybe I am way off base but it doesn’t seem fair to those of us who try to eek out a living struggling to make ends meet while the rich get richer and the oil companies continue making record profits at the expense of the little person, the working person, the consumer.

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The price of a barrel of oil would be closer to $10 if the commodity wasn’t traded as an investment instrument, given the record-high levels of U.S. oil inventories, Peter Beutel, president of Cameron Hanover, told CNBC Monday.

“I honestly think that if there were no investors using oil as an asset that the price of oil right now would be $10 or $15 or $18, but it wouldn’t be anywhere near where it is,” Beutel said.

“We have so much oil right now, more than we’ve had in 27 years. Why is it 27 years? Because that’s how far our records go back. It’s probably the most in 50 or 100 years,” he added.

Part of the reason the price of oil is currently above $74 // [US@CL.1 74.17 -0.53 (-0.71%) ]// a barrel is because of a belief in the economic recovery, Beutel said.

Comments by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke over the weekend gave the commodity a boost as he signalled a willingness to support the fragile economic recovery with additional policy measures.

From a historical perspective, Beutel pointed out that the current level of inventories is even higher than when the price of oil was below $20 a barrel.

“We’ve got 50 million barrels of crude more than we had two years ago. We have 176 million of distillate,” Beutel said. “When I started in the business back in 1980 we used to think to ourselves: “Gee, we would love it if we had 140 million barrels of distillates to start the winter.”

Not all market watchers agree that the price of oil should or will go lower. Jonathan Barratt, managing director at Commodity Broking Services, told CNBC that he thinks oil will rise to between $82 and $85 a barrel.

YOUCUT WEBSITE CLICK HERE

Do you have a career in Welfare?

Immigration
Immigration needs to be dealt with by securing our borders, sending back ALL illegals, including the ones in prisons and requiring everyone to go through the legal steps of becoming a citizen.
The illegals in this country cost us billions every year and take away jobs from our citizens. It is said that these are jobs nobody else will do but how do we know, especially with unemployment near ten percent. Send the illegals back to where they came from whether Mexican, Middle Eastern, Asian, European or whatever. It is a slap in the face to every person that came to our country legally and became a citizen. It is a further slap in the face for these illegals to fly their country’s flag in place of our flag. This is like spitting in our face. The illegals here that protest and march think that WE owe them and we do not. I applaud Arizona and their new law. If our federal government refuses to enforce the current laws then local governments need something to keep crime down in our communities. We do not need a half baked immigration reform law like we got with the so-called health care reform either. We need something that will help save our country billions of dollars annually and keep track of who comes and goes in our country, especially after 9/11.

The incumbents from both parties must go and the voters and taxpayers in this country need to demand fiscal restraint. Our borrowing and deficit is out of control. Portugal and Spain recently had their ratings dropped after the Greece financial crisis. Greece has a deficit vs. GDP of 118 percent. Portugal’s debt is 86 percent of their GDP and they were downgraded. By the end of this year, the United States debt will be 92.6 percent of the GDP. What does this say for the US? We have yet to be downgraded because it would put the entire globe into economic crisis. The United States is close to bankruptcy and our government keeps on spending and borrowing. Bailout after bailout at taxpayer expense with the latest being Fannie Mae, who is seeking another $8.4 Billion in aid. The housing crisis has continued even with the bank bailouts and the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailouts. The banks are still foreclosing at record pace and the bailouts aimed at homeowners keeping their homes are not working. These agencies are keeping the money and investing it to make more money for themselves while the homeowners are kicked out. It seems that Washington thinks bailouts are the norm now. There are small businesses closing every day and they don’t receive help from the government so why should the bigger companies/corporations?

Government has to be held accountable and one way to succeed at this is to get rid of the incumbents. We need term limits today more than ever before. Every year, term limits are brought up by a newly elected member to Congress and each time the incumbents sweep it aside keeping it from reaching the floor for a vote. The incumbents do not want the new members in Congress to change the status quo. They enjoy the high life they are living with all of the perks at the expense of the taxpayer. Nothing will change until we get these incumbents from both parties out of office so that other members elected will realize that the people are now holding them accountable.
I for one am mad as hell at the political shenanigans of both parties. They do not seem to care what the people think or want. They do not seem to care about our country and the current shape it is in. They only seem to care about blaming each party, fighting with each party and having back room closed door meetings to ram through so-called reforms so they can give each other attaboys and pats on the back. It is time both parties work together and do what is best for the country or our country will be the next Greece and we will fall like Rome.

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ORANGE COUNTY ( CALIFORNIA ) NEWSPAPER-New Immigrants
This is a very good letter to the editor. This woman made some good
points…
For some reason, people have difficulty structuring their arguments
when arguing against supporting the currently proposed immigration
revisions.. This lady made the argument pretty simple. NOT printed in
the Orange County Paper……………….

Newspapers simply won’t publish letters to the editor which they either
deem politically incorrect (read below) or which does not agree with
the philosophy they’re pushing on the public. This woman wrote a great
letter to the editor that should have been published; but, with your
help it will get published via cyberspace!

From: “David LaBonte”
My wife, Rosemary, wrote a wonderful letter to the editor of the OC
Register which, of course, was not printed. So, I decided to “print” it
myself by sending it out on the Internet. Pass it along if you feel so
inclined. Written in response to a series of letters to the editor in
the Orange County Register:

Dear Editor:
So many letter writers have based their arguments on how this land is
made up of immigrants. Ernie Lujan for one, suggests we should tear
down the Statue of Liberty because the people now in question aren’t
being treated the same as those who passed through Ellis Island and
other ports of entry.

Maybe we should turn to our history books and point out to people like
Mr. Lujan why today’s American is not willing to accept this new kind
of immigrant any longer. Back in 1900 when there was a rush from all
areas of Europe to come to the United States , people had to get off a
ship and stand in a long line in New York and be documented. Some would
even get down on their hands and knees and kiss the ground. They made a
pledge to uphold the laws and support their new country in good and bad
times. They made learning English a primary rule in their new American
households and some even changed their names to blend in with their new
home.

They had waved good bye to their birth place to give their children a
new life and did everything in their power to help their children
assimilate into one culture. Nothing was handed to them. No free
lunches, no welfare, no labor laws to protect them. All they had were
the skills and craftsmanship they had brought with them to trade for a
future of prosperity.

Most of their children came of age when World War II broke out. My
father fought along side men whose parents had come straight over from
Germany , Italy , France and Japan . None of these 1st generation
Americans ever gave any thought about what country their parents had
come from. They were Americans fighting Hitler, Mussolini and the
Emperor of Japan . They were defending the United States of America as
one people.

When we liberated France , no one in those villages were looking for
the French-American or the German American or the Irish American. The
people of France saw only Americans. And we carried one flag that
represented one country. Not one of those immigrant sons would have
thought about picking up another country’s flag and waving it to
represent who they were. It would have been a disgrace to their parents
who had sacrificed so much to be here. These immigrants truly knew what
it meant to be an American. They stirred the melting pot into one red,
white and blue bowl.

And here we are with a new kind of immigrant who wants the same rights
and privileges. Only they want to achieve it by playing with a
different set of rules, one that includes the entitlement card and a
guarantee of being faithful to their mother country. I’m sorry, that’s
not what being an American is all about. I believe that the immigrants
who landed on Ellis Island in the early 1900′s deserve better than that
for all the toil, hard work and sacrifice in raising future generations
to create a land that has become a beacon for those legally searching
for a better life. I think they would be appalled that they are being
used as an example by those waving foreign country flags.

And for that suggestion about taking down the Statue of Liberty , it
happens to mean a lot to the citizens who are voting on the immigration
bill. I wouldn’t start talking about dismantling the United States just
yet.

(signed) Rosemary LaBonte