-- Posted Friday, 5 October 2007 | Digg This Article
For days and days I had been watching oil http://www.marketwatch.com/quotes/?sid=1747746 go down and down in dollar price - down to $82, to $81, to $80, to less than $79 a barrel - while watching the dollar go down and down in terms of purchasing power, and it is such a cognitive dissonance that my Puny Little Mogambo Brain (PLMB ) refuses to accept the input. After a little consulting (Me: "Is it me, or is something seriously amiss?" She: "Your breath stinks."), I easily diagnose that the problem is that the systems in my Earth body are somehow misaligned, causing me to perceive incorrect data.
Naturally, I wisely and sagely decide to "adjust" my Earth body by drinking cheap tequila with Margarita-mix chasers, straight from the bottle, like the macho, he-man, swaggering hunka-hunka-burnin'-love kind of guy that I really am.
Then, last Thursday, I was pretty well "adjusted" and could barely hold my head up off the bar, when… Wham! The oil future shot up over $2.79 to $83.09! Hahaha! I was right! Absolutely correct, from an investment perspective, but unfortunately I was too poor to do anything about it then (e.g. like buying more oil stocks, oil ETFs, oil futures, and oil options on the way down), although not too smashed to do anything about it now (loudly whining, complaining and raving about a conspiracy against me).
The Desidooru Saloon at The Daily Reckoning notes that "Whatever the ministers of OPEC decide at their meeting in Vienna, this much is for certain: OPEC production has been rising for weeks now, even as prices approach a record. Yes, surprise surprise, OPEC members are cheating on their production quotas - just as they have for decades. And more to the point, does it make any difference? If oil prices have been rising the whole time OPEC output has been rising, is demand outstripping supply even as supply grows? That's the real story that's getting lost amid the speculation of what's going on behind closed doors in Vienna."
And in MoneyWeek.com, I was captivated by their headline, "Why the end of cheap oil could spell death to suburbia" which is oddly reminiscent of Jim Kunstler's "The Long Emergency". As the editor-in-chief around here, I find that I disagree with the use of the word "could" to describe the probabilities of the phrase "death to suburbia" when oil (and thus gasoline) get to be horrendously expensive, the economy is in the toilet and nobody makes enough money to buy the energy necessary to ride around in their cars when they can't even afford to keep their damned little houses warm in the winter!
So I am looking for my red pencil to make the changes to the sentence so that it will read "Why the end of cheap oil will definitely spell misery and suffering and the death of suburbia, although everywhere will be aflame with inflation in prices like you will not freaking believe, with people rioting everywhere, and the people in suburbia will say, 'At least we're out here in suburbia! The rioting city dwellers don't have the money to buy gasoline, either, and so they can't get out here to harass us! And if they ride the bus out here, we'll send them over to The Mogambo's house and he'll shoot the stinking bastards for us! Hahaha!"
But I can't find the damned red pencil, and then I think how long it will take to make the corrections even if I found it, and so I decide "To hell with it!" and decide to just abuse MoneyWeek.com by calling them "worthless, gutless cowards" for using the word "could" instead of something more appropriate. Like, for instance, "certainly will", probably because it inexorably leads to, "We're all freaking doomed!"
I think my incessant carping got to them, as they suddenly acquiesced enough to say, "there are rising concerns about petrol and heating costs. At most, 10% of suburban households face incipient crisis in the short-term." Ten percent! Yow! This is the literal definition of the word "decimation", for crying out loud!
The article goes on to reveal that it is not just suburbia, either, but asks you to remember that oil is a big part of everything these days, and to, "Just ponder this… the average Caesar salad travels 1,500 miles to the supermarket shelf."
And I have to make a trip of the last few miles to buy it. Where's the justice in that crap?
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Editor's Note: Richard Daughty is general partner and COO for Smith Consultant Group, serving the financial and medical communities, and the editor of The Mogambo Guru economic newsletter - an avocational exercise to heap disrespect on those who desperately deserve it.
The Mogambo Guru is quoted frequently in Barron's, The Daily Reckoning and other fine publications.
-- Posted Friday, 5 October 2007 | Digg This Article
