Gas out here in Orange County now approaches $4 a gallon. At the cheapest station around, run by Arco, I just saw the lowest price, for 87 octane, at $3.956.
Oil’s price now is $139.40 a barrel.
There’s one person to blame for this: Bush. When he took office, oil’s price was about $20 a barrel. Weren’t he and other oil industry big shots like Cheney supposed to know how to keep oil prices low? Wasn’t the Iraq war supposed to turn on the spigot of Iraq’s oil supply, second biggest in the world?
But Bush and his Federal Reserve chairmen, first Greenspan and now Bernanke — whom he chose for their jobs — have been inflating the dollar. That’s the real reason for the increase in prices. Inflation means higher prices, first for commodities like oil, then for everything else.
Abandoning the gold standard
It all stems from America not being on the gold standard since 1971. If we were still on the gold standard, gas would cost 31 cents a gallon. I remember the price because that was the year I turned 16 and got my license to drive on my birthday.
The Democratic Congress, backed by most Republicans and even more clueless than Bush, is blaming OPEC. Reuters reports:
The bill would subject OPEC oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela, to the same antitrust laws that U.S. companies must follow.
The measure passed in a 324-84 vote, a big enough margin to override a presidential veto.
The legislation also creates a Justice Department task force to aggressively investigate gasoline price gouging and energy market manipulation.
All that would do, if it becomes law, would be to spur those countries to stop selling to us.
It’s embarrassing that such economic illiterates run America’s government. They have the wrong target. For one thing, the top oil importer to America is Canada, with 1,727 thousand barrels/day, as of March; followed by Saudi Arabia with 1,535, Canada with 1,232, Nigeria with 1,138, Venezuela with 858, and Iraq with 773.
What are they going to do, invade Canada and Mexico?
Or maybe, invade Iraq? (Wait, they already did that. Hmmm.)
If Congress really wanted to do something, they would abolish the unconstitutional Federal Reserve Inflation Board. Kick Bernanke and his cohorts back to academe.
The Constitution stipulates that Congress, and only Congress, has the power: “
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures.”
That is, money is supposed to be given a specific value, much as the “Standards of Weights and Measures” fix a yard at 36 inches, and so on. For most of America’s history, until the Fed was imposed, gold was fixed at $20.67 and ounce. Check out this historical chart. The Fed was imposed in 1913 and, for until 1933, behaved itself somewhat. Then in 1934 FDR mandated that gold be devalued to $35 an ounce — a vast stealing of the nation’s wealth. FDR made Bonnie and Clyde look like pickpockets.
4,367% inflation
As of today, after almost a century of Fed inflationism, gold was at $923.28. That’s inflation of 4,367%.
I’ve been writing about this for 35 years — especially the last 7 years of Bush inflationism.
Do you get it now, America? Apparently not, because you keep electing these planariae to Congress.
The only one in Congress who understands this, Ron Paul, couldn’t gain contraction even in the GOP primaries (although he just got 15% in Oregon; maybe people are waking up a little from their Ambien overdose).
Americans don’t much understand what’s going on. But they’re going to blame the party what now runs the White House: the Republicans. The GOP once got this stuff, at least sort of. Reagan’s two election platforms promised a return to the gold standard. Although he broke those promises, at least he made them.
Bush is going to be gone in 8 months (thank God!), but the Fed will still be with us — unconstitutional, unelected, undemocratic.
So, don’t blame OPEC, or the Arabs, or even the Iraq War. Blame Bush and the Fed, the Fed, the Fed.
Then abolish the Fed.
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