Jay Bookman

By valarie

June 3, 2008 1:51 PM | Link to this

I work for GM in Moraine Ohio, the one ole’ Rickie Boy is closing because he is uncaring about EVERYTHING but the American worker, it is not in his greedy budget..this is a 4,1000,000 square foot plant with thousands of employees he is killing..thanks Rick,,, hope you sleep well in the state of Chimexipan..not America, Mr. Greed Rick Wagoner,,you should be ashamed..

By valarie

June 3, 2008 1:54 PM | Link to this

work for GM in Moraine Ohio, the one ole’ Rickie Boy is closing because he is uncaring about EVERYTHING and he must detest the American worker, it is not in his greedy budget..this is a 4,1000,000 square foot plant with thousands of employees he is killing..thanks Rick,,, hope you sleep well in the state of Chimexipan..not America, Mr. Greed Rick Wagoner,,you should be ashamed..

By Tony

June 3, 2008 1:55 PM | Link to this

Yep. Same old doom and gloom. I was around in ‘73 when we had gas lines and in ‘79 when the price of gas doubled overnight. Then came the “oil glut” of the early ‘90’s when prices plummeted. Things like this are cyclical. Everybody needs to print this column out and save it for 5 years from now. Just like the Y2K scare and all the other crap-ola that the media has put out over the years. I remember in 1967 “experts” saying all the people in America would have to wear a gas mask to breathe by 1990. Well, 1990 has come and gone and I still don’t have my gas mask yet. Predictions are just that, predictions. They are not prophecies.

Also, anybody who believes GM is doing this ONLY because of the drop in demand for large gas guzzlers are on some good drugs. They are doing it to rid themselves of high paying union jobs that they can outsource to scab outfits that pay dog food wages.

This is not new folks and it’s not news.

Tell your predictions to shut up, Jay.

By Thor

June 3, 2008 1:59 PM | Link to this

GM and Ford sell products today nobody wants. They totally abandoned fuel efficiency and made high dollars off trucks and SUV’s. Japan once again beat them. Its not labor - after all, Honda/Toyota build here and there are no problems. If management would develop a car people want, they will buy it.

And yes, $4 a gallon gas is here to stay. Until the next international incident when it skyrockets.

By hillbilly ragger

June 3, 2008 2:02 PM | Link to this

Uh, Tony @1:55, maybe I’m just picking nits here but — if GM’s announcement that they plan to close four (4) truck plants is not news what, pray tell, is?

By Political Foreskin

June 3, 2008 2:04 PM | Link to this

CNN just reported that a cycling bear was found dead on I-75 in Cobb County. The bear, escaped from a circus, was unicycling and relying on his right of way in the bicycle lane he must have the HOV lane was.

The motorist did not stop.

By Tony

June 3, 2008 2:12 PM | Link to this

Hillbilly:

How many plants have closed in the last five years? Ford and GM have been closing and outsourcing since the early 1990’s. If it is news it’s old old news. They are only using this as an excuse to get rid of good paying jobs.

By Mikee

June 3, 2008 2:16 PM | Link to this

It is true that after oil production peaked in the continental United States in 1973-4, we were able to switch to global oil supplies and return to the days of the oil glut. But that was then. What will we do now that global oil production is peaking? Get oil from the moon?

By ByteMan

June 3, 2008 2:21 PM | Link to this

Two thoughts to counter this, Jay:

(1) GM has consistently been wrong for so long, it’s hard to seriously use them as a good example to back up a prediction.

(2) There’s currently a worldwide shortage of oil tankers for lease as well as a sudden drop in supply for oil. Those full oil tankers will eventually have to put into port somewhere and unload. Costs about $140K per month to lease them. Can’t keep them floating around the world forever. Eventually, that oil will hit the market and we’ll have a mini-glut for a short time and that will cause prices to correct downward.

Just something to ponder.

By hillbilly ragger

June 3, 2008 2:22 PM | Link to this

Tony, I am not arguing your valid point that plant closures are tied to global corporatism and so forth. They are.

But the fact is, when GM announces that four plants are to be closed, it’s news.

Furthermore, I don’t believe their decision to shut down a whole lot of truck production is utterly unrelated to fuel prices.

By Political Foreskin

June 3, 2008 2:29 PM | Link to this

CNN just reported that a cycling bear was struck and killed on I-75 in Cobb Country. Witnesses claim the bear refused to yield to faster traffic and instead adhered to his right of way in the bicycle lane that wasn’t there. A state police spokesman said this wasn’t the first time a bear had been fooled by the HOV lane.

The motorist didn’t stop.

By Tony

June 3, 2008 2:34 PM | Link to this

Mikee:

Who says it is “peaking”? The same “experts” who predict all this other crap? There are reserves of oil that can be tapped right now that the oil companies won’t touch because with prices so high they can continue to rob, rape and pillage the rest of us.

I am not arguing the fact that we should all conserve. In fact, unless I am driving to work I don’t drive. I manage to do all my necessity shopping either on the way to work or on the way home. If my wife and I go out to dinner on the weekend we go to a place within 5 miles of home. This can cut down on your gas consumption radically.

However, in my 50 years on this vile earth I have seen too many “experts” and “professionals” make predictions and end up looking like jackasses to believe most of them. They may be right. More than likely they won’t be. As far as GM’s credibility goes, (or ANY American corporation, for that matter), I wouldn’t believe them if they told me the sun rose in the East.

By RealityKing

June 3, 2008 2:45 PM | Link to this

GM is merely following the rules of supply and demand, much like gas prices. Isn’t that one of those primary business principles?

And WHO believes that we can stop global warming? Man-made help or not, it’s been occuring for 400,000 years now. Are we to bankrupt our economy for little or no gain??

In fact, if Jay and his liberal friend in the Senate were to have their way today. Gas prices would soon hit $8 a gallon and your Ga. home electricity bill would rise 150%. An economic hit of nearly $670 billion by 2030, mostly from the poor.

Is this the change Obama and his media cronies are promising us?

By Thor

June 3, 2008 2:52 PM | Link to this

What should trouble everyone is that neither McCain nor Obama have a sound energy policy.

We have been and will continue to be in the Middle East in order to secure the flow of oil. We are risking our national security placing so much weight on this disaster region.

Where is your energy policy, Mr. McCain? Where is yours, Mr. Obama?

Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow may not come (Oh the Boomers live for that theme)

By Copyleft

June 3, 2008 2:56 PM | Link to this

Ah yes, the famous “petition,” where signatories include Hitler, Daffy Duck, and anyone willing to CLAIM they’re a scientist with no proof or validation whatsoever.

Let alone any evidence that they’re actually climatologists, the only ones who know what they’re talking about! But hey, the opinion of a civil engineer with a PhD is just as good, right? It was good enough to deny evolution, after all….

(snicker)

By Mikee

June 3, 2008 3:50 PM | Link to this

Back to you Tony: You may be right about Peak oil ‘experts’, but as best as I can tell the real experts are the mathmeticians and geologists who have been predicting oil supplies fairly accurately for decades. The naysayers tend to be politicians who want to blame the opposition, laborers who want to blame industry, and greedy persons in general.

Certainly when the stakes and profits are this high you can not trust anyone, but I will tend to invest on the basis of science and statistics over advice from pundits and brokers.

By Tony

June 3, 2008 4:41 PM | Link to this

Mikee:

There are just as many mathematicians and geologists who say we have plenty of untapped oil as there are who do not. I don’t know how old you are but I have heard people with a plethora of science degrees “predict” for most of my 50 years and in my experience the only way they stay consistent is in how far off they can be. A good many of these so-called experts (your mathematicans and geologists) are in the pay of the oil companies themselves, and the speculators who profit from these ridiculously high prices. If not, they get their money from government grants and they have to perpetuate their existence by manufacturing crises in order to justify their jobs.

Bottom line, you can believe what you want to. I remember all the computer “experts” who predicted doomsday when Y2K hit. The only people who got rich were the same experts who sold their books on how to deal with a crisis that never happened. Sure, the price of gas is high now. It was exponentially high in 1973. Hell, we couldn’t even get it then, had to wait in line. Same thing in 1979. BUT, eventually it leveled off, the decreased. The price of gas has nothing to do with how much petroleum there is, it is because of the speculators using it as a hedge against the weak dollar. This won’t last and neither will the high prices. Nothing lasts forever into blissful eternity. And to quote Solomon, “There is nothing new under the sun.”

By Mikee

June 3, 2008 5:51 PM | Link to this

Tony, you may well be right about manipulation of oil supply and demand (and by the way I am a good bit older than you are). However, the science and the math are solid and fairly simple. I do think that it is interesting that during this whole period of oil ‘problems’ that nowhere, not in the media, not in the department of energy, really nowhere, is there a trustworthy source of good information on oil supplies and how long they will last. The best sources that do exist disagree with one another wildly, and change dramatically from day to day. Do you think that no one really has any idea of how much oil is left and how long it will take to use it up? What do you think that information would be worth to someone in the know?

Here is what I do know: 1.At current rates of growth in oil demand the world will use as much in the next 30 years or so as it has used in all previous history.

By Mikee

June 3, 2008 6:24 PM | Link to this

(accidently hit “post”) 1. continued: This is based on simple math of compounding growth at about a 3 to 5 % annual growth rate in demand. Historic growth rates were much higher until the 1970’s when they dropped to below two percent. They have been rising steadily ever since. 2. It will be very difficult to put online enough new infrastructure to meet this level of demand. It may also be impossible to amortize that new equipment over the long haul in the light of declining reserves and slowing discoveries. 3. Another way of saying this is that there is as much oil left in the ground as has been used in all previous history. Equally true but implying a misleading meaning that there is also as much time left to use it in the future as we had to get to this point. 4. Known free flowing oil reserves in the US and nearby offshore, while seemingly gigantic, are nowhere near capable of sustaining the current levels of growth and / or replacing our consumption of foreign oil. A few years of extra supply at most and then it will be gone. 5. We have a growth based economy. Shifting away from growth will be impossible, savings will have to come from improved efficiency and alternative fuels. 5. Massive conservation will be necessary just to slow growth of demand, much less to reduce current levels of consumption. 6. While no one seems able to produce real numbers, it seems safe to assume that we are at or near the point where demand will surpass supply and we need to be preparing for the future because it will get here whether we like it or not.

By Mikee

June 3, 2008 6:30 PM | Link to this

Jay, Why do you think that there is no reliable information anywhere on available oil supplies?

By eat raw gator

June 3, 2008 10:53 PM | Link to this

Now apply that same lesson to gasoline prices. Watch the people who have to invest billions of dollars on whether this runup in price is temporary or permanent. For example, what is General Motors, with all of its high-paid analysts, telling the rest of us with this announcement: FAR TOO LONG WE HAVE ALLOWED OURSELVES TO BE TOLD BY PUNDITS, PAID BY DO WE KNOW WHOM, TO SPEAK, TELLING US…just talking heads…we got the FED and the Bushes and Cheneys mess to unravel…just like the savings and loans of a decade ago, now its the mortage industry, and…investors in the crude oil…as important as this issue is, we have been told to focus on this pig show of an election…that we are unable to wipe our own rear ends…to dump our large vehicles and buy smaller cars, and go further into dept…where is my little red book..where is my little red book…MAO !! MAO !!…long live the chairman…oh how we love the chinese, and he shoddy products they sell to us, oh the sweet buy and buy…MAO !! MAO !!…toys filled with lead for our children to munch on, they are hungry, and we are out of bread, here son eat an import toy lead based…and now for the sports news…and now for the latest sports news…a nation of television idiots…believing whatever they tell us…thank ALLAH that we have Lou Dobbs…and the “accident” on the border…another illegal drunk…the roads are filled with them…$$$$$$…add the cost…

By BenDoubleCrossed

June 4, 2008 10:34 AM | Link to this

Are you willing to accept an ever declining lifestyle? Choose:

FOREIGN WARS OR DOMESTIC OIL

A rapidly devaluing dollar, aggravated by the cost of the War in Iraq, contributes to recent rapid increases in the price of gas. And if the trillion plus dollars the US spent fighting that war had been invested in a Manhattan like project to produce oil from known reserves in the Gulf of Mexico, the Continental shelf and synthetic diesel/gas from America’s abundant coal fields, gas would be $2 a gallon or less.

And reducing trade deficits keeps jobs in America. Every billion of trade deficit costs 13,000 jobs. $400 billion for oil last year: do the math.

Plus declaring American energy independence is the neighborly thing to do. It would place downward pressure on world oil prices by making more OPEC oil available for the UK, France, Japan, Turkey, etc.

Harness your anger at the pump. Call Congress and demand domestic production in this decade. Raise your voice or the oil companies and politicians will assume you are ready to pay even more.

By Copyleft

June 4, 2008 10:39 AM | Link to this

DoubleCrossed: It’s a good message, but it oversimplifies. It assumes that we HAVE to keep using oil at the same rate, “so we might as well make it here at home!”

This overlooks another, obvious alternative: get off the oil habit. The choice is not “Start war or drill more,” it’s “Keep our country addicted to a single, finite resource, or cut back on the dosage and explore alternatives.” Check with your stockbroker: “Diversify” is not a dirty word.

By BDAtlanta

June 4, 2008 11:04 AM | Link to this

What do you expect when you elect an oil man and a war contractor into the Pres and VP positions? You’re going to get war with profits for military contractors and fuel profits to energy companies and BushCo’s friends in the MidEast.

By the way, this is an election year so prices will come down significantly in mid-October until shortly after the election.

By Taxpayer

June 4, 2008 11:28 AM | Link to this

Mr. Bookman,

Here’s something (see below) interesting from seekingalpha.com. Of course, we know Mr. Gramm knew exactly what he was doing, given his background in economics, when he slipped through his Legislation.

Michael Greenberger, the former head of the CFTC’s Division of Trading and Markets, testified yesterday before the Senate Commerce Committee on the topic of Energy Market Manipulation. He stated that the investment banks, namely Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS), control the price of oil and natural gas through the ICE futures market. He cited that Morgan Stanley currently owns 27% of the natural gas futures.

He stated that former Senator Phil Gramm of Texas sneaked the Enron loophole through a large piece of insignificant legislation years ago: the result was that regulations upon the futures industry were abandoned. This loophole eventually allowed the current CDO-subprime crisis, and the current energy market crisis because regulations, which once protected the market from manipulation, are no longer enforcable.

Greenberger suggested that the current attempt of closing the Enron loophole by Senator Levin through the Farm Bill, would not work - as it would leave the government with the constant burden of proof to prove manipulation was occurring. Also it would only be enforcable on domestic market manipulators and not international ones.

Greenberger said that legislation immediately closing the Enron Loophole with a broader, international scope would stop market manipultion and would cause oil prices to plunge over 25% overnight.