Thursday, April 24, 2008

Just "Supply and Demand" for Oil? Maybe.

From Counterterrorism Blog:

The factors involved in the pricing of oil are both extremely obscure and enormously complex, and few people can truly claim to understand them. I certainly am not one of them. But, broken down into its most basic components it apparently involves a mixture of the following factors: OPEC Oligarchy practices, intensified international competition for secure access to essential commodities, increased reliance on middlemen for oil lifting, profit-motive purchasing policies and upstream practices of major oil companies, the falling dollar, and intense speculative upward bidding of oil futures on the world’s merchantile exchanges. Taken together these factors have driven up the spot price of oil and pumped tens (dare I say hundreds) of billions of dollars into the coffers of countries known to either encourage or tolerate state and/or private funding for terrorism. One may well conclude, as I am beginning to believe, that mercantile speculation, greed, and corporate profit taking are as responsible as OPEC, if not more so, for the windfall profits that help fund terrorism.

It is a simplistic mindset which yammers "supply and demand" as the only answer to oil pricing, and "peak oil" theorists (or scare-mongers) are happy to take advantage of the continuing propaganda of "supply and demand."

Other (highlighted) items all have the faint outline of the signature of George Soros or like-minded people--and no one ever accused oligopolists of being kind-hearted.

Worth mulling over.

No comments: