Oil!

Brazil Oil Finds May End Reliance on Middle East

"Brazil's discoveries of what may be two of the world's three biggest oil finds in the past 30 years could help end the Western Hemisphere's reliance on Middle East crude...The finds they've got so far are just the tip of the iceberg. Brazil is going to change the balance of the global oil markets..."



VIDEO

The Energy Non-Crisis - 75 min

Bakken Oil

FURTHER READING

The Energy Non-Crisis by Lindsey Williams

"A Free Market in Gasoline" by Ron Paul, October 31, 2005.

"Undoing America's Ethanol Mistake" by Kay Bailey Hutchison, 4/25/2008

"Environmentalists' Wild Predictions" By Walter E. Williams, May 7, 2008.

Investigate Big Congress, Not Big Oil
by Alex Epstein | ARI | May 29, 2008
With gasoline prices exceeding $4 a gallon in some states, politicians are responding as usual: Blame Big Oil First.

Dumb or Ill-Informed
Walter E. Williams | June 04, 2008
What assumptions do congressmen make about the American people? Do they assume that we're dumb or ill-informed about the energy problems we are experiencing?

Start Drilling
By Robert J. Samuelson | Washington Post | April 30, 2008
What to do about oil? First it went from $60 to $80 a barrel, then from $80 to $100 and now to $120. Perhaps we can persuade OPEC to raise production, as some senators suggest; but this seems unlikely.

Drill Now For Energy in America
Roy Innis | June 12, 2008
America’s energy situation is becoming more untenable and intolerable by the day...But this unacceptable situation has nothing to do with running out of vital energy resources. The shortages and soaring prices have been created and imposed on us by government policies and edicts. They are artificial.

Do the Right Thing: Start Drilling!
Victor Davis Hanson | June 12, 2008
The debate in Congress over more refineries and nuclear power plants; drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and off our coasts; and developing oil shale, tar sands and liquid coal has been usually a predictable soap opera.

Drill! Drill! Drill!
By Daniel Henninger | WSJ | June 12, 2008
At this point in time, is there another country on the face of the earth that would possess the oil and gas reserves held by the United States and refuse to exploit them? Only technical incompetence, as in Mexico, would hold anyone back. But not us. We won't drill.

American Solutions
As gas prices continue to increase, Congress continues to blame others while ignoring practical steps to stop the pain Americans are feeling at the pump.

Greens thwart gasoline production
By Steven Milloy | June 12, 2008
Four-plus dollar gasoline is forcing Americans to realize that increased domestic oil production is needed to meet our ever-growing demand for affordable gasoline.

Bakken and Torquay Formations
A Saudi Arabia of oil under Saskatchewan, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Manitoba.

Oil Is Making Millionaires in North Dakota
By JAMES MacPHERSON | The Associated Press | June 30, 2008
In less than a year, Stohler and his wife, Lorene, 82, have become millionaires from the production of one well on their land near Dunn Center, a mile or so from the sod home where Oscar grew up. A second well has begun producing on their property and another is being drilled — all aimed at the Bakken shale formation, a rich deposit that the U.S. Geological Survey calls the largest continuous oil accumulation it has ever assessed.

Bail Out

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox, New York Fed President Tim Geithner, and Treasury Undersecretary Robert Steel testified today before the Senate Banking Committee.

They all stated that the bankruptcy of Bears Stearns took them by surprise even though Bears Stearns had already nearly collapsed one year ago when Bear had to bail out one of its own hedge funds, Long-Term Capital Management. This is the hedge fund that was bailed out by the Federal Reserve in 1998.

The witnesses also claimed that the Fed did not "bail out" Bear Stearns; not exactly. But rather they bailed out the broader financial industry that was somehow intricately connected to the success or failure of Bear.

Well, that is correct. Yes, Bear Stearns took it in the shorts and were made an example. But there was a bail-out.

So who specifically was bailed out? The liability that is the network of fraudulent financial connectivities. Banks and other financial institutions are hedging their bets by investing in each other in a Ponzi scheme that must collapse.

The only thing standing in the way of this collapse is the federal government. The government can postpone, seemingly indefinitely, the inevitable consequence of deception; as indeed they have done in other sectors. This is called "reassuring the markets" and it leads to restoring confidence and stability.

The government-sponsored "bail-out" by the Federal Reserve, a private bank, shields the network from disruption and mitigates the systemic liability that precipitated the original risk of industry-wide collapse, and which made the bail out necessary in the first place.

In this way, government intervention prevents the free market from operating as it should. In a free market, Bear Stearns would be in bankruptcy court, its executives and CEO would be out of a job (with a leaden parachute) and charged with fraud. Instead, Bear and all of its securities and assets are the newest acquisition issuing from J.P. Morgan's bargain-basement offer to salvage their evaporating value, whose risk-laden securities would now be backed up by guarantees from the Federal Reserve to absorb any and all losses.

In free markets, both success and failure are options. If government interventions prevent businesses, like Bear Stearns, from failing, then it is not truly a free market. As painful as it might be for Wall Street, banks, even big ones, must be allowed to fail. --Ron Paul, On Money, Inflation and Government

The other consequence of the bail-out is that there remains no incentive whatever to disconnect from the fraud. There is no move toward risk aversion. This is why these failures, and their subsequent "necessary" bail outs will continue.

Until the free market is allowed to operate, they must.

FURTHER READING

"Have You Met Fannie and Freddie?" by O. Max Gardner III, Shelby, NC, March 31, 2008.

"Paul Phenomenon" 19 Apr, 2008.

"The Fed Muddles Through a Bailout" By George Will, Sunday, April 20, 2008.

AUDIO

The Fed: Dealmaker, Interview with Gerald P. O'Driscoll.

VIDEO

Too Big To Bail: Alex Epstein, a business analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute, explains how the government's "too big to bail" policy encouraged financial institutions to make billions of dollars in bad subprime investments.