Hillary says OPEC can no longer be a cartel

[motivez]

Clinton's attacks on oil prices as artificially inflated, Enron-style, keep escalating, and today she appeared to threaten to break up the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

"We’re going to go right at OPEC," she said. "They can no longer be a cartel, a monopoly that get together once every couple of months in some conference room in some plush place in the world, they decide how much oil they’re going to produce and what price they’re going to put it at," she told a crowd at a firehouse in Merrillville, IN.

"That’s not a market. That’s a monopoly," she said, saying she'd use anti-trust law and the World Trade Organization to take on OPEC.

Clinton has cast herself as a warrior for working people against the oil industry and malicious "speculators," and made that -- along with her push for a gas tax holiday -- central to her closing message in Indiana.

It's a potent message, like the attack on "Wall Street money brokers," with deep roots in American politics. It' It's also very hard to figure out what exactly she means by the threat to break OPEC.

Ben Smith's Blog - Politico.com

Meant to post a thread about this last week. I kind of found it interesting, primarily because of the text in a related bill:

`(b) Sovereign Immunity- A foreign state engaged in conduct in violation of subsection (a) shall not be immune under the doctrine of sovereign immunity from the jurisdiction or judgments of the courts of the United States in any action brought to enforce this section.

Search Results - THOMAS (Library of Congress)



In other words, if our courts find them guilty of this or that, we're saying our courts supercede any national sovereignity they have to make decisions for themselves about their own companies, etc..

Seems like this is one of the reasons the rest of the world hates us. We have this idea that whatever we decide should be binding...for the rest of the world, their wishes, desires, and decisions be damned.

[thewise1]

"I don't like how you're selling to us, so I'm going to tell you how you can sell to us, or we'll, uhh, well, since we can't just not buy it, we'll just take it"

[6SpeedTA95]

Thats a bit scary, I dont like OPEC, but holy hell this is ridiculous. It seems to imply that we'll get the oil however we need to the oil. As in a true war for oil which would be disasterous.

The high price of oil right now is due to the weak dollar more than anything else. Had the dollar not fallen 10% the last year it'd be about 85/bbl which is a lot more reasonable. Take away hte war in Iraq and instability in Nigeria and it drops to 65 or 70 pretty quick.

[6SpeedTA95]

Another thing that cracks me up about hillary is Energy companies should be her model corporate citizens, they provide cheap, VERY cheap health insurance and great retirement benefits for their employees. All the things she says a responsible corporation should do....except energy prices are too high and its politically correct for her to make Exxon look bad.

[JaJae]

This ideology reminds me of a certain someone she attacks politically on a daily basis. It's interesting how she can attack the Bush administration for doing this for their reasoning, but advocates it for hers. It makes one wonder if she's really any different.

[IminWonderland]

Originally Posted by thewise1

"I don't like how you're selling to us, so I'm going to tell you how you can sell to us, or we'll, uhh, well, since we can't just not buy it, we'll just take it"

That sounds like the American stance we've had about our international economic policies.

Greeeeeeaaaaat. Because it's worked out so well.

[IminWonderland]

Originally Posted by JaJae

This ideology reminds me of a certain someone she attacks politically on a daily basis. It's interesting how she can attack the Bush administration for doing this for their reasoning, but advocates it for hers. It makes one wonder if she's really any different.

Yeah, I am sick of this attitude when it comes to our foreign economic policies.

It's always in the name of our "interests." And the approach of the Mega-Super-Power Country in the world, 'so you better listen to what we want and how we want it' routine is currently making Rome fall.

[WickedLou9]

This seems like alot of hubbub about nothing. Yeah Hillary is a stooge. But honestly it doesn't really matter if we say that or not. We can say that we have authority over another countries companies but really what can we do? Call them mean names? Scold them mercilessly? I think military action would be out of the question, and going to the WTO would be useless. So what would be the consequence of this? Sounds like nothing.

[TankRizzo]

Originally Posted by 6SpeedTA95

Thats a bit scary, I dont like OPEC, but holy hell this is ridiculous. It seems to imply that we'll get the oil however we need to the oil. As in a true war for oil which would be disasterous.

Yeah, I don't like OPEC either, but they hold all of the cards and it's best to rattle the monkey cage. If you want cheaper oil, chiding OPEC isn't the way to go about it.

[thewise1]

What folks need to realize is that oil will never be 'cheap' again.

[TankRizzo]

Originally Posted by thewise1

What folks need to realize is that oil will never be 'cheap' again.

I don't think anyone is expecting $0.95/gallon again, but $2.30 sounds really good about now.

[thewise1]

Originally Posted by TankRizzo

I don't think anyone is expecting $0.95/gallon again, but $2.30 sounds really good about now.

It'd be nice, but I don't see it happening. :\

[Scrum]

Originally Posted by thewise1

What folks need to realize is that oil will never be 'cheap' again.

They have no reason to lower their prices.
There is no threat of someone undercutting them and we just keep on buying their product no matter what they charge.

[thewise1]

Originally Posted by Scrum

They have no reason to lower their prices.
There is no threat of someone undercutting them and we just keep on buying their product no matter what they charge.

Also demand keeps rising even if we lowered ours, thanks to China and India and such...

[Ardentfrost]

Originally Posted by thewise1

Also demand keeps rising even if we lowered ours, thanks to China and India and such...

Yeah, the only way we could stabalize energy prices is to either become energy independent, or import other sources of energy. Brazil used to be dependent on oil and now after years of developing their sugar crops and turning them to ethanol, they are a net exporter of energy.

Corn was a bad idea, but we can still turn the ethanol thing around by focusing on the more effective sugar-based ethanol, tear down the taxes in place to keep foreign sugar out of the country, and finally get our energy prices stable.

That could be done quickly while we still keep on the R&D for the next big thing as far as energy is concerned.

[thewise1]

Originally Posted by Ardentfrost

Yeah, the only way we could stabalize energy prices is to either become energy independent, or import other sources of energy. Brazil used to be dependent on oil and now after years of developing their sugar crops and turning them to ethanol, they are a net exporter of energy.

Corn was a bad idea, but we can still turn the ethanol thing around by focusing on the more effective sugar-based ethanol, tear down the taxes in place to keep foreign sugar out of the country, and finally get our energy prices stable.

That could be done quickly while we still keep on the R&D for the next big thing as far as energy is concerned.

becoming energy independent wouldn't work either - assuming we still used oil - because it would make more sense to sell it to the rest of the world at their higher prices than it would to use it ourselves.

That might not have been what you meant, though.

[Ardentfrost]

Originally Posted by thewise1

becoming energy independent wouldn't work either - assuming we still used oil - because it would make more sense to sell it to the rest of the world at their higher prices than it would to use it ourselves.

That might not have been what you meant, though.

Well, obvously if you're mixing ethanol and gas there's a point where our price is equalized with the world and our ethanol exports would be used to make our energy companies more money. But I was just talking about stabalizing energy prices internally by allowing that to take place (sugar imports if needed, and sugar ethanol creation).

My post wasn't meant to bring in a lot of math, mostly just to point out that we have the ability to move to other energy sources than oil if we could bring down the fences put up by the government that prevents it.

Corn ethanol hasn't brought down the price of gas b/c corn is in such high demand for foodstuffs. Increasing the demand for corn only caused our food prices to increase and not stave off high gas prices at all. And only in the past week has the gov't admitted this fact.

[TankRizzo]

Originally Posted by Ardentfrost

Corn ethanol hasn't brought down the price of gas b/c corn is in such high demand for foodstuffs. Increasing the demand for corn only caused our food prices to increase and not stave off high gas prices at all. And only in the past week has the gov't admitted this fact.

We need to stop pushing corn so hard and move onto something like switchgrass.

Studies on switchgrass, a prarie plant which should not be mistaken for sawgrass, demonstrate that, since it is such a laborless crop to grow, it yields 540% of the energy used to harvest, and process it into ethanol.

[Ardentfrost]

Originally Posted by TankRizzo

We need to stop pushing corn so hard and move onto something like switchgrass.

Yes, pretty much anything besides corn

[DosEquis]

I am not sure we should use anything that grows. Though switch grass may be more efficient than corn at producing ethanol, it still uses land that we could be growing feed corn and other food product crops.

I think we should focus our move toward hybrids that involve electricity, hydrogen, or both.