Saturday, April 23, 2011

Things Up With Which We Will Not Put

Let's get this straight. Wall Street speculators gambled with home mortgages, running up trillions of dollars of collateralized debt obligations. Millions of people lost their houses.

Americans were unmoved. They shouldn't have bought houses that they couldn't afford when the mortgages went up.

Wall Street speculators gambled with wheat and rice commodities, leading to widespread hunger and food riots in 2008. Americans paid no attention, even to reports that Haitians were eating mud. Serves them right for living in poor countries.

But Wall Street speculates on oil and the price of gas goes up? Outrage! Even President Obama is moved to make stern noises!

Never mind global warming. Never mind peak oil. Never mind the 50,000+ dead in car crashes a year, the dead bodies along all our roads, the air pollution, the urban sprawl.

Americans have a right to cheap oil!

It's blood for oil, right? That's the bargain? And we've spilled plenty of blood, so where's the cheap oil?

4 comments:

Grace said...

For a long time now I have thought it appropriate to put a skull and crossbones over gas tanks.

wagelaborer said...

Good idea, Grace!

Pangolin said...

Cheap for who? Not for thee or me but for those who own the refinery. They then charge us whatever they think they can squeeze out of us before they tip the whole ark over and then a penny.

Anonymous said...

Exactly right. End the subsidies for oil and see what 80 years of subsidized sun could do...it seems to work for our satellites.