Government Bailout of the Financials Begins

After accumulating billions in bad mortgage debt, the financial institutions have finally conned the government into bailing them out. The first on the list is Bear Stearns. The Fed is set to trade good debt that it is holding for bad debt, which Bear Stearns has in spades. According to the article, this may be just the tip of the iceberg. Get ready for the Savings and Loan bailout all over again. That only cost US taxpayers a half-trillion dollars.

Oil speculators: Harbingers of destruction?

Is the run-up of oil by speculators a search for profit or an attempt at destroying an economy?

After years of trying to blame everything from demand to terrorism for the continuing rise in the price of oil, economists have stopped trying to find excuses and have blamed those who were to blame from the beginning: oil speculators. Speculators have been running up the price of oil since the invasion of Iraq. After President Bush (ala Lyndon Johnson in JFK, “Just get me the election; I’ll give you your damn war.”) invaded Iraq, he gave Big Oil and those invested in it the green light to start making the kind of profits they long waited for, but once the light turned green, oil was fair game for anyone and everyone.

Now that the United States is in a recession, putting the brakes on oil prices became a necessity, but also an impossibility. Greedy profiteers and foreign countries hell bent on the destruction of the American economy and the economies of the rest of the industrialized world are now in control of the price of crude oil and the fate of these economies. Who are these foreign governments? China? Saudi Arabia? Iran?

What better way to destroy the economies of the west than to control the price of this vital liquid. Pandora’s box has been opened by the rich oil interests here in America and abroad. Are we to be destroyed by their self-interested greed? Likely so. There are no politicians with the will to fight it. The American public is clueless to fight it. We are held hostage to it. Is this the end of America? Our addition to oil and the savage weight of our national debt has virtually crushed hope of a recovery. Most certainly, America will never be the same.