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Bedrock of the Community
United States
10982 Posts |
Some food for thought. The net worth of the average U.S. household in the "top 1%" is around $14 million. There are about 1.4 million U.S. households in the "top 1%". So, the combined net worth of the "top 1%" of U.S. households is about $19.6 trillion! The "top 1%" could pay off the U.S. National Debt by themselves and the rest of us would feel so much richer!  |
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Bedrock of the Community
13014 Posts |
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The "top 1%" could pay off the U.S. National Debt by themselves and the rest of us would feel so much richer! And when theyre bankrupt and firing everyone they can no longer afford to pay it wont seem like a good idea. That also doesn't pay off the debt. Our debt goes up 50k a second. If you reset it interest goes down but the trillion+ budget deficits each year just start it right back up again. So in essence youd eliminate the debt for a year at best |
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
10982 Posts |
Oh yeah! It was just a joke.  You're right, 10 years after stealing to pay it off - It would be right back where it is now. The real issue is our spending addiction and the fact that revenues will likely never be able to cover expenditures again. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
3670 Posts |
Well if G@S both kept going up they both would get so high no one could buy which would make zero sense....
It does seem like in the times now when it drops down and bottoms out, it is a wee bit higher then the time before....
With all this new efforts going heavy into mining new areas previously not possible to mine, COMBINED with an ever growing population and a ever depleted SUPPLY of resources natural or man made, mixed with war and economical upheaval makes me think we are not EVER again in our lifetimes gonna see the prices of say early 2000, via gold in the 250 an oz. range and 4 bucks per oz. silver....
Edited by Silverhawk74
10/01/2012 03:05 am
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Pillar of the Community
Australia
7096 Posts |
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The real issue is our spending addiction and the fact that revenues will likely never be able to cover expenditures again.
Therein lies the answer to the US deficit. If everyone lived within their means and didn't buy anything on credit then there would be NO debt to service. I think it isn't the average Joe creating the insane debt that the US has , I would think it is the "Big End of Town" doing most of the borrowing then going toes up and expecting the gubmint to bail them out all the time. These businesses should have been left alone to die a natural death, Sure this would have been painful at the time but at the end of the day someone else would fill the void and run their business successfully with no need of a "Bail Out" and the US public wouldn't have such a huge debt to repay. As this isn't going to happen any time soon I can see G&S continuing to gain value |
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Bedrock of the Community
13014 Posts |
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Oh yeah! It was just a joke. Sadly enough some people really do think thats a legitimate solution. Quote:
These businesses should have been left alone to die a natural death, Sure this would have been painful at the time but at the end of the day someone else would fill the void and run their business successfully with no need of a "Bail Out" and the US public wouldn't have such a huge debt to repay. The bail outs were part of it and GM is the perfect example. Tons of government money yet they continue to produce money losers like the Volt for whatever reason. The real problem is all the free programs have gotten out of control. They all started with good intentions but have spiraled into ever increasing expenses. Once you start to give something free you can never take it back. That and people realized they can vote them selves free stuff and installed a government willing to do so, the question will be are there enough people fed up to reverse that trend |
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
815 Posts |
Basebal, my issue is twofold; first that the government did not pick up enough equity in the bailed out companies, and that corporate salaries/bonuses/stock options were not severely scaled back to reflect the severity of the situation.
In the corporate word, top level management works a lot like sports free agency, where the CEO et al "must" be paid these grossly inflated salaries, in order to retain their services, as another company will snatch them up. *I* do not agree with this philosophy, but I understand it.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1590 Posts |
Interesting analysis the EIS put out. It seems our domestic oil supplies us with 82 percent of our total petroleum. It also says that by 2017 we will be an oil exporting nation again. In other news....lol...if you read the testimony in front of Congress this summer the CEO's of our nations Oil industries were asked what percentage of the price of a gallon of gas was due to speculation. The answer? "40 to 50 percent". So at $4 a gallon the "true" price would be $2.40/gal down to $2.00/gallon. At 100 billion gallons a year if you reduced the price to its true cost that would free up...uh...well....lets see...100 billions gallons times $1.60 per gallon would be $160 billion dollars a year you could pump into the rest of the economy..as well as all the money saved from lower transportation cost which would translate into lower food cost; which means MORE non core spending. More jobs, yadda, yadda, yadda. Sometimes it really is that simple. Silver; again we have a surplus each and every year. So why is the price going up? There is no shortage of physical gold. Most of you know I am a dealer and demand is down, down, down. Gold? Forget it. You can't move it at these prices. Sell it on ebay? Are you crazy? Lol. A once ounce eagle is getting around $1900, on a gooooood day. I have seen many sell in the mid to upper 18's. Deduct your fees and you are selling for below spot. To buy and make a profit, of any sort, at those levels you need to buy in the $1600 to $1650 range. People who are selling right now are selling because they heard how high gold is. They also remember that for the past few years most reputable dealers paid AT spot and then made it up on the premium. As a result they are not selling at anywhere near that much under spot. I, in fact, am not buying right now. The margins just are not there. If it dumps on me I stand to lose a lot of money. And if it keeps going up....well...I have a lot of inventory that NO ONE has been buying at these prices; because it is so high. From my end it is all paper gold and silver,and paper oil. These things have no connection to the real world. I think we are beginning to see a real divergence between what the real world can pay and what the "pie in the sky, it will never go down" paper people are doing. I have no doubt it will go higher to something drastic happens. After all we are in the Golden Age of Greed. |
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Bedrock of the Community
13014 Posts |
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Basebal, my issue is twofold; first that the government did not pick up enough equity in the bailed out companies, and that corporate salaries/bonuses/stock options were not severely scaled back to reflect the severity of the situation. They picked up 40 or so billion of GM, its why people call it Government Motor any more and they would have had to pull it off the stock market and call it a federal agency. The Department of Transportation gets 14 billion a year for a comparison. The problems that caused the bailouts werent solved, making to many cars no one wants. People dont like the CEO severance, but its a drop in the bucket compared to the other expenses and specifically with GM the pension plans they could have never afforded short of massive growth every year. It certainly doesn't help but the occasional couple million buy out isn't going to make or break billion+ dollar companies. In fairness some of the car company problems were Government regulations fault. The average mile per gallon made them produce and eat losses on countless cars when everyone wanted SUVs and Pick Up trucks. That said though theres no excuse for GM to be investing millions for a car (the Volt) it loses money on with every sale and no one wants despite even more government money kicked in as an incentive to buy it and it still doesn't sell well. Theyve shut production down at least 3 times from them not selling. They still owe the government billions and as just wasting money all over again. In order for the Government to break even GM stock needs to be $50 or more. It currently sits at 22 dollars with a high of 26 in the last 6 months, not even close to where it needs to be. Theyll be asking the government for a bail out again when they fail yet again from not learning a thing. Ford never took a dime and is doing just fine so their excuse that it was industry wide doesn't cut it. The banks are bit different since the damage of them failing would have been far worse, but like trout said if a private company cant cut it you have to let them weed themselves out for companies that can. Its not the federal governments job to make sure every company stays alive. Without that safety net of bailouts theyd be far smarter with their money and if not someone else will pick it up if its a good brand and restructure it to be profitable. Someone would have bought GM for the name and they would have almost certainly got the books in line. Instead were left with 50 billion we probably wont see again and the exact same situation playing out all over again. No one wants to see companies fail but they do. You save bailouts for the most serious of situations, banks, state/local governments ect. A car company doesn't fit the bill. You could have spend 1/10th of that and Camden, New Jersey and Stocktonm California to name a few wouldnt have laid off half their police/fire department and had those paid for years which would have been money much better spent. Whats next a bailout for best buy or how about we bring back Circuit Cities? The free market isn't so free when the government starts paying for private companies. Its spending decisions like that which is why we have $34 an ounce silver and $1700 an ounce gold. If people had faith in the ability to control spending wed be seeing those prices cut in half at least Edited by basebal21
10/01/2012 04:30 am
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4008 Posts |
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They can lie about whatever they want and only they know the truth. Indeed they can and I am sure that they do. But, is this not the inherent nature of the political class, wherever they are located? Quote:
Germany, China, any combinations of several smaller countries doing a little each. Often times you just need the perception of help to spark investors and the market which will provide the real help. Possibly but I would not bet money on it. Germany has ALL it can handle with European flailing, without getting into the US financial mess too. I still think that China would be VERY happy to see the US crash hard. In fact, it would not surprise me a bit if they were helping that along. Quote:
Well have a civil war and start fresh before we allow the government to seize all our assets. Thats the beauty of the 2nd Amendment, its prevents extreme solutions. Even if it didnt get to civil war you can bet every last politician advocating it will be recalled I find that possibility terrifying because it is likely. The US government is rapidly losing sight of the fact that its interests and those of its citizens are not only not quite the same but are diverging over time. At what point do we cease to be "US" and become "US vs Them"? I don't know but I do know that this is the point at which all elections becomes fixed and the bullets fly. |
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Bedrock of the Community
13014 Posts |
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But, is this not the inherent nature of the political class, wherever they are located? To an extent. Some will lie about more things than others. Complete honesty usually doesn't get you elected anywhere though Quote:
I still think that China would be VERY happy to see the US crash hard. Weakened yes, crash no. Our crash would hurt them just as much as our imports from them would come to a crawl. Quote:
At what point do we cease to be "US" and become "US vs Them"? I dont think were in danger of it happening tomorrow but it wouldnt surprise me if 100 years from now theres two USAs. There is a large divide in the country currently going in vastly different directions, without some leaders to bring people back together or an event you can only pin people against each other for so long before you see things happen. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1590 Posts |
But Ed, don't you think that, at least at the National level, all elections are already fixed? I agree our votes determine which Republican or Democrat get the office. But those candidates are hand picked by "the one percent". When was the last time a grass roots candidate actually won an election to Congress or the Presidency? I'll bet it hasn't been in the last 40 years. Look at what happened in 08. Fuel prices doubled and this was the trigger that caused the "Great Recession". That's not opinion, it is the opinion of most economist that have studied it. What never came out till a few years later was that gas consumption went from 142 billion gallons of gas a year down to 68 billion gallons a year. And profits for that year for the big five totaled 137 Billion dollars. And that doesn't count all the other oil companies. So while the country was being driven into a great recession by out of control oil prices, half of the cost of every gallon was pure profit. That is a profit of 100 percent. If a foreign agency had driven our economy into the ground like that, it would be considered an act of economic terrorism under the Patriot Act. But because it is just CA, it is considered good business. The same thing with PM's and other commodities. Raising prices in Energy and Food sap any discretionary income the majority of Americans might have. As their actually wages lose value both in "absolute dollar for dollar" terms, and through inflation. I do know one thing. I finally figured out how to become rich. I just need to start selling fiddles.  |
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Bedrock of the Community
13014 Posts |
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But those candidates are hand picked by "the one percent".
When was the last time a grass roots candidate actually won an election to Congress or the Presidency? I'll bet it hasn't been in the last 40 years. There picked by primaries, if enough people wanted they could put whoever they wanted up there. Perot more than likely would have won in 92 but he dropped out and lost to much support by the time he reentered. The greatest strength of a democracy being able to elect who ever you want is also its greatest weakness Quote:
So while the country was being driven into a great recession by out of control oil prices, half of the cost of every gallon was pure profit. Not sure where those numbers came from but the number one beneficiary of profit from gas is the US government. Every gallon is taxed at least 30 cents a gallon and the vast majority of states are far closer to 50 than 30. NY and CA its about 70 cents a gallon. Plus oil oil profits are worldwide not just the US. Oil companies themselves make very little profit per gallon, pennies in fact. Other people are the ones that make all the money off of gas, oil companies just sell so much it adds up real fast. They arent the ones supplying the pumps, exxon stations are just the type of gas they end up with they arent actually run by exxon. By the time it hits the pumps quite a few people have added their profit margins to the price then the government tax hits. Gas is for all intensive purposes a PM aside from the fact its not a metal. The way its treated is exactly the same with speculators and trading of it. Like Gold or Silver large buys drive it up and large sales drive it down. Both are affected by world events and both can make or break fortunes Hunt Brothers style. Both can also be sold by greedy owners, ever notice how some stations are always cheaper than others. Theyre buying the same thing but its like how some coin shops sell silver for spot plus 3-5 dollars others sell spot plus 8-10. Theres no real reason for it other than because they can. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1590 Posts |
"they are picked by primaries". Right, and who decides who gets to run in the primaries? If I wanted to run in the primaries I guess I could but how far would I get without "patronage" or sponsorship?
Ummmm profit is the amount left over after the taxes are taken out. Profit is by definition the amount left over after all expenses including taxes are taken out.
Lets look at this logically for a moment. If as you say the oil companies make just pennies on the gallon. Then lets explore that for a moment.
In an article dated Apr 28th, 2011 Reuters stated that Exxon's first quarter profits were 10.65 Billion dollars. So if they made "pennies on the gallon', then, if we use seven cents a gallon as our basis, they would have had to sell 152,142,857,142.85 gallons in just that first quarter. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that total gas consumed FOR THE ENTIRE YEAR, from all sources was 134 Billion gallons.
In other words for the "pennies on the gallon" statement to be true Exxon would have had to sell more fuel in the first quarter, by itself, than was actually sold in the entire year by all the oil companies combined. In fact if we use the seven cents a gallon statement that is being bandied about in the propaganda....er..literature...then .07 times 134 billion gives us a total profit of about 9.38 billion dollars. This would be the total profit split up between all oil companies. That number is well less than 10 percent of reported profit from just the 'big five'.
Oil profits are world wide. The US is just, far and away, the largest user. Be that as it may from 2010 to 2011 production among the big five went DOWN four percent. Profit went up fifty percent.
Oil companies like to use downstream statistics and avoid, at all cost, upstream statistics.
At .07profit/gallon, for a profit of 100 billion dollars, you would have to sell 7 trillion gallons.
One last note, this last May when oil was about 100/bbl; Exxon-Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson admitted that $30 to $40 dollars a barrel was caused by speculators in the Commodities market.
Now I ask, if you were a really smart man and you were the CEO of an Oil Company; AND you knew you could increase profits by leveraging the Commodities market; would you do it? With the added bonus of a Scapegoat; looks like a win-win to me. By the way I can't find any oil traded on the Commodities Market that has ever been called for. I'm sure it's happened, but not enough to notice.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
2168 Posts |
It is the gas station that makes the pennies. Those oil companies clean up as you state!
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Replies: 90 / Views: 7,589 |
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Posted 10/01/2012 01:55 am
