Americans have learned in the past months how inextricably linked our energy and our economy have become. A disturbing indication of how poor regulation may push the technology and production of alternative fuels off shore has emerged. If we don’t pay attention now we may find ourselves being held hostage to foreign alternative energy sources, much as were are to foreign oil.
Let me start by saying I am not an economist, a financial advisor or a Wall Street trader. I’m a middle class working mom. I do have many years of experience in the insurance industry, so I know something about risk and managing risk. I also believe I possess a bit of common sense and (most of the time) good judgment.
This evening I heard two or three different talking heads on TV saying that a trillion dollars vanished today. Wow! What a neat trick! A trillion dollars can just vanish? How does that happen? Did Houdini come back to life?
The only thing to explain it in my mind is the trillion dollars was never there in the first place. Our dollar isn’t backed by anything. When you think about it, what is a dollar anymore?
We all have mortgages on our homes. Many mortgages are worth far more than the homes that secure those mortgages. Our homes are worth no more than someone else is willing to pay for them.
The stock market is no different. The value of a stock is the amount you receive from the sale of that stock. If there is nobody wanting to buy the stock, the stock is worthless. All of us who have saved in 401k’s and IRA’s are gambling that when we retire someone out there will purchase our stocks for more than we paid for them. In a totally free market this might not be such a bad risk, but we’ll never know because we’ve never had a totally free market.
Social Security isn’t a better bet for my generation or my children’s. With the way our government is spending money, how on earth will the goverment be able to live up to its obligations? Thanks to modern medical advances we are living longer, but spending more to stay alive.
To me, we have an artificial economy. When a trillion dollars can ”disappear” in a day, something is very wrong. How is it a good thing for our government to magically produce a trillion dollars and inject it into the economy? Won’t they simply reinflate that bubble that someday has no choice but to burst?
I certainly don’t believe all hope is lost. Rather than investing in bad mortgages, we need Congress to get out of the way and let us invest in our own natural resources. While the media and left bash Sarah Palin they totally disregard her knowledge of the energy industry. When she talks about energy being key to our economic strength and national security she’s sneered at. But she’s right! No wonder they despise her.
Energy is probably the last commodity that we KNOW is valuable. We should start basing our economy on that, and keep those dollars here at home. Enough with the false economy.
There’s quite a bit of information out there and I’m working on pulling it all together into one coherent piece, so please stay tuned.
How would Thomas Jefferson feel about some of Barack Obama’s recent promises (bribes) offered to the electorate in 2008? What would he think of a man who openly declares that he will take oil companies’ profits, and redistribute those profits to those who didn’t earn them?
Had our government left us free to regulate our own pursuits of industry and improvement we would not be paying $4.00 per gallon for gas. We wouldn’t be funding our enemies. We would be extracting our own resources from our land. We would have more nuclear power plants and cheaper electricity. Don’t people get it.
Could Thomas Jefferson have contemplated what would become of the government he fought so hard to establish?
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