in my day i have purchased gasoline for 29.9 cents a gallon and seen it as cheap as 19.9 cents a gallon in a gas war ...this was fifty odd years ago...that's true...however my memories are clear...a couple of bucks and you could drive all night...and we did...but that is beside the point...while i have seen gasoline that cheap i have never seen a barrel of oil have a negative price...seriously? they are going to pay me thirty-seven dollars and sixty-three cents to take a barrel off their hands? one assumes the world's oil storage capacity is just about full right now...in 2008 i remember oil at one hundred and forty-seven dollars a barrel...i also remember a spike in grain prices, food riots, and its indirect but substantial impact on "the arab spring"...one is forced to wonder what impact this will have on "normal"...
the president and "business leaders" are screaming that the country needs to "re-open" no matter how many of the rabble die because big greed needs a fix...oil at a negative price cannot bode well for what we were conditioned to perceive as "normal"...the diminution in the use of petroleum products may be good for the environment...economically it seems the inverse...everything we do is tied to electricity and petroleum products from transport to agriculture and you have to wonder what the depression in oil prices is going to do to all the industries involved since, in a capitalist framework, the only sensible thing for oil producers to do is stop producing...at least until the price rises to positive figures ...so does that help a very ill global economy or drive in the last nails? energy is the key to almost all current human activity and i don't think anyone has seen this sort of price drop ever...it is currently fashionable ( and so entirely trite ) to speak of "uncharted territory" ( or, even worse, "uncharted waters" )...and yet, here we are..what are we "going back to" and is "back" even attainable...the economic impact on people i know and care about has been dire so far and that worries me...the powers that be are clueless...they do not know any more than you or i...and they are convinced that "business as usual" can carry on because if it does not they are no longer an elite...that would not be a bad consequence in my eyes...they are pretty much the responsible parties in this ( not that i did not play along and do the whole suburban homeowner business...i am not blameless )...it was their lust for wealth and power that drove the system and it paid them well as they blew out propgandist bullshit about "equal opportunity" and the whole "bootstrap" crapola...times are weird...republican legislators are giving away free money ( at least until they can figure out how to take it back with interest ), much against their calvinist proclivities, to keep the greed machine going, and republican governors are defying the bozo in chief by keeping their states closed...sorta...dogs are running in packs and blood is weeping from the walls...we are living in "interesting times"...they are not over...hang on..we could end up miles from here
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