Re: Massive new oil find ...
RvS ...all of 2 years worth.
TB ... More like 1.25 yr @ 20 bbl/yr.
...yet it is still 15 billion barrels recoverable ... so let's put
all these numbers into a more general "wealth "perspective, at the
current price of around $70, that amounts to one trillion dollars.
It will be more by the time it is extracted.
That compares with a current GDP for the USA of about $15
trillion. But what about - compared to national wealth?
Hmm... you may not realize that the USA, because of the Iraq War,
is now a net debtor nation, so it could represent all of our
national wealth !
Even before Bush's war on Iraq (more like a war on wealth) the
federal government was keeping two sets of books. The set the
government promotes to the public has a $318 billion deficit in
2005. Bush even called this "healthy" without mentioning the many
years of surpluses in the previous administration. And those were
probably false surpluses, anyway.
To paraphrase from "America for Sale" by William Norman Grigg, an
"audited financial statement produced by the government's own
accountants, following "standard accounting rules" instead of
spin-doctoring - actually discloses that the real baseline deficit
was $760 billion, due mostly to hidden military expenses which
were not considered as "costs" but were amortized, or other
accounting tricks used by Rumsfeld and the Pentagon. If Rummy were
at Enron, he could be in hot-water for that.
And if the cost of Social Security and Medicare were included in
the total, as any honest accounting would require, the federal
deficit would have been $3.5 trillion (against "all income" not
tax income, of $14.5 trillion). Is it any wonder why we have
become a net debtor nation ? Thank you, Congress.
BTW ... Enron's Ken lay was convicted of violating accounting
rules, among other things, but those corporate transgressions were
miniscule compared to what is happening to the books in DC. Is
keeping two sets of books OK for Sam but suicidal for Ken? Maybe
not... there was a KL sighting recently at a trendy cafe in Dubai.
He was reportedly sharing photos and coffee with a skinny
pale-faced guy with a fake nose, and wearing one glove <g>.
And back to that $3.5 trillion - it is the annual real deficit -
not the national debt. You do not even want to know what that
figure really is, if you haven't had breakfast yet, by normal
accounting rules, that is. But it would be comparable to the
average Joe borrowing about a quarter of his net income *every
year* and blowing it for ... what? ... "security against
terrorism"?
Even if we used the much lower spin-doctored "public" number - in
what sense is a deficit of nearly one-third of a trillion dollars
'healthy' "? Grigg rhetorically asks the President, following his
State of the Union address. He continues "In roughly the same
sense that congestive heart failure is "healthier" than a sucking
chest wound: Both are lethal if untreated, but the latter will
kill more quickly."
"We're a bottom-line culture, and we've been hiding the bottom
line from the American people," complains Rep. Jim Cooper, former
investment banker, who has offered a draft resolution - supported
by congressmen on both sides of the aisle - but vehemently opposed
by Bush: to require the White House to include audited spending
and deficit numbers in his budget proposals.
"It's not fair to [the people], and it's delusional on our part."
... that Washington has invested heavily in the preservation of
such a false accounting system that Rep. Cooper's proposal for
honest accounting wasn't even considered by the Senate's
leadership. Grigg is right-on - and that is just a true no matter
who or which party ends up in the White House next time.
Anyway, if that massive new oil find is real, it may be all we
have going for us these days, wealth-wise ... or is that un-wise ?
given that next year we will have to borrow against that oil find
to keep troops in hostile lands ?
And yet, personally, it all makes me wonder how and why do I
remains so optimistic?
Jones
