Rick Siegel Prespectives on Freedom and Liberty

Gas Pump Blues As You Pay Your Dues

There is no black magic in figuring out why gas is so expensive at the pump. Politicians hiding the truth from the voters with distractions such as speculators, oil company windfalls, etc, blaming them as the cause for the rise in oil prices are a pile of horse pucks meant to confuse rather than explain. The cost of a barrel of oil is not based on a dollar value it is based on gold. The oil producing nations are no longer happy eating the inflation of an out of control US government.

It is a wonder that this did not happen sooner. Oil producers cannot keep a flat dollar price on a barrel of oil when the dollar does not keep its own value. If they did that they would in effect subsidise the US governments wanton spending on wars and social programs that reflect a rather empirical communist blend. There are very few nations out there willing to back that kind of loser program without being forced at the end of a gun, like Iraq and soon Iran.

Americans, it is not profiteers that have robbed your values, it is your bankers in their greed for profits and the government that is willing to secure bad loans and profits with fiat currency at the expense of your buying power. Each time the government bails out another stock brokerage or bank your buying power is cut for the profits those banks and stock exchanges earn. For example saving Bear Stearns will cost you over $40 billion dollars that must be just given to them for the bad loans and high risks they took to make profits. There is actually no risk for them as the government waxes the pole for them to easily land with all their assets in tact while Americans will suffer the fate of a currency printed with no validity or value.

While the price for oil on the markets is paid in dollars the sellers want value, and the dollar has very little as it is so far in debt for wars and programs to give away what should be earned. For example; 3 years ago the $30 dollar a barrel oil was getting 1/10 of an ounce of gold, today 1/10 of an ounce of gold is $110 dollars, just about what a barrel of oil cost. The price of oil did not rise, the value of the dollar has tanked. The price of oil is stable pegged to exchange of real money – gold. If you owned gold you would see no real inflation and you could buy as much today as 10 years ago with the same amount of gold.

Our government lies about the causes of inflation and fiat currencies as it spends/borrows more each day on war, death, empire building, saving other nations, pork bellies for the military industrial complex, and all the while our roads are ruined, our manufacturing is moved to China, our major corporations leave for Saudi Arabia, there is no money left to help with the disasters or relieve our own people of poverty. Meanwhile the banks and government work to continue the spending spree by printing money rather than earning it and using that fiat currency to secure their own profits.