Oil, The Dollar, and the Grand Scheme

The Grand Scheme is unfolding well. Oil closed at $99 a barrel yesterday after rising above that magical $100. Why the rise in the price of crude? China is now the 2nd greatest consumer of crude, just behind us. They will overtake us, the experts tell us, in 2010. But that's not the only reason for the rise: it's the shrinking value of the dollar. As its worth dilutes on world markets, the price will naturally rise as oil is configured in U.S. dollars.

Some predict $4 at the pumps by the end of February. Surely this will be the death knell for the American economy. Will the so-called middle class become enraged? Apparently their fuse is hard to ignite, rolling with each new tidal wave that strikes at them. Yet one has to wonder how they will fare with a Tsunami like the collapse of the dollar and the market. The market lost 220 points on the first day of trading yesterday, an indication of how the year will develop. Those who collect data say that the first few days of the market's new year has an 82% chance of closing the year in the same direction.

As oil has been historicaly our society's glue: what has this administration and this Congress done about alternative energy in the past 7 years? All talk and no show. Of course, with former oil men Bush and Cheney at the helm, who would have expected anything alternate? I hearken back to that very secret energy meeting held in early 2001 hosted by Dick Cheney. Too bad that meeting was not taped; if it were, no doubt Cheney would have destroyed it.

We Americans have been cast as stooges. Stooges, no kidding! We have allowed ourselves to be fed and led like sheep by two oil men for the past 7 years, years that saw the price of crude go from $28.66 in January of 2001 to $99 in January 2008. Raise your hand if your think that this was part of the grand Cheney scheme.

No doubt Cheney has been getting congratulatory phone calls throughout these 7 years from the energy industry, especially from the oil execs. Of course, big coal has not been treated too shabbily either. The grand scheme has been highly successful. I'm thinking fascism. Raise your hand if you suspect that as well.

Another full year and 17 days left for more of the grand scheme to unfold. Of course, the people-sheeple are so beaten-down that they will adopt bunker mentality and wait it out, if they can. They and we will be broke, financially and spiritually. The once proud bastion of our democracy, the middle-class, will have been reduced to a huddled mass, a whimper. The fat-cats, however, will be smiling with the success of the Grand Scheme.