Jan 6, 2009
Its All About America Economic Supremacy
A couple of recent events have made me realize that I need to change the way I interpret international affairs…perhaps I should once again start reading that publication but that is for another post.
The first was the Russian invasion of Georgia. My first thought was something like “well Russia is certainly feeling their oats and we don’t have enough international political muscle to do anything about it.” I figured if we did have anything to do with it, our plans had backfired. A few months later, I heard an article talking about international investment in Russia slowing down as a result of their blatant nationalistic aggression. Looking at the situation from a different point of view, if we did intervene in Georgia to get them to start the fight with Russia, it might have worked out exactly as we had planned. After all, economics beat the Soviet Union, not bombs. If Russia wants to be a bully, it will never live up to its economic potential and therefore never again pose a threat to the US. Guess Putin saw things differently.
The next thing that made me rethink my geopolitical world view was my initial and subsequent reactions to sky high gas prices. I was convinced that traders were running up the prices and that we were selling our American souls by the gallon. That certainly may have been true, but the aftermath of the oil price bust has proven one thing resoundingly. The economies of the American-hating-oil-rich-we-are-so-fucked-when-this-black-stuff-runs-out countries, are far more vulnerable to an oil price collapse than we are to a price surge. Again, depending on the news you choose to listen to, Russia is not financially solvent with oil below $70 and Chavez is about to run out of money. Its beautiful, we help them get all fat and greedy on our gas money and as soon as their budgets and politics start depending on bubble economics, POW we pop the bubble.
Certainly the global credit crisis/finaicial meltdown is the main driver of lower oil prices but…but what if traders were driving up the price of oil. Not Wallstreet traders, but the CIA. Kind of makes deregulation and loose oversight of the oil futures trading make sense doesn’t it?