"The proof is all over the place, from Enron to the present."
Just as I expected. An appeal to popularity argument, spiced up with a reference to the evil Enron Corporation.
"Bushies lied that prices would go down if we went to war."
I'd challenge you to prove Bush ever said that, but it doesn't matter. Oil prices DID fall when the war started. The average world price per barrel of oil fell from $32 at the end of Feb 2003 to $22 by the beginning of May. It remained below $30 until almost a year after the war began.
Oh, and it was $32 two months before the 2000 election, remained around $31 for a couple of weeks after the election while Gore's lawyers were trying to manufacture Florida votes, and then collapsed to $21 almost immediately upon their failure to litigate their way to the White House.
So Bush's election caused an immediate 32% DROP in the price of oil.
And if you weren't such a dope, you'd know that the main reason oil prices have risen so much in the last two years are, first and foremost, a booming economy here and especially in China; and secondarily, supply disruptions in the Gulf of Mexico.
"War in the ME" has a marginal effect at most and then only to the degree that Iraq isn't pumping at its full potential. It has no effect on supplies from the rest of the ME except to the extent that a few countries may be pumping MORE than they would otherwise.
Besides, as anyone with a rudimentary understanding of markets would know, neither Exxon nor Halliburton, nor any of the other big evil corporations you mention has any control whatsoever over the world price of oil. If you want to find someone who might be able to affect prices, you need to look in the halls of OPEC or perhaps the Kremlin, but even OPEC's ability to artificially inflate prices has been shown to be unsustainable as is usually the case with cartels.
Oh, and Enron was not an oil company, dope. They operated - actually, they STILL operate - natural gas pipelines, generate electricity, market gas and electricity, and trade in those and related commodities. Late in the company's pre-BK life (during the tech bubble), they also dabbled in e-commerce and the market for internet bandwidth. But it was NEVER an oil company of any sort, so your reference to them is either out of utter ignorance or is yet another disingenuous, but failed, argumentative trick. Or more likely BOTH utter ignorance AND disingenuousness. |
