Boy, this lecture sure did get the ol' comment thread to come to life.

Sheesh.

The Dark Wraith should have known more than an hour of economics lecturing would put everyone to sleep.

Sorry, Wraith. I did listen to this late last evening, but after had to deal with thunder boomers and by the time they were finally over, sleep was trying to take me over.

Aww, durn. No video this time… but this is another great lecture! You surely do get mental wheels turning. So…

On oil: "...all kinds of public charts and documents..." Ummm... you wouldn't be referring to any of those by creative number crunching / information filtering incompetents in governmental departments, now, would you? "...and you can see the what's on the high seas..." Except perhaps for any accounting of the oil in Iraq that is being pumped without working meters??

Interesting, too, (thought I read a while back, somewhere) that "the plan" is for the US military bases there (...or the ones to be built there) to be situated "over" the wells? So, who is going to guard all that? The regular military, or the no bid contract private army/mercenary militia?

After 30-odd years, (more than just odd, lately) the biggest four oil companies are about get "no bid" (surprise, surprise?!) contracts to deal in Iraqi oil? Oh, how sweeeet! Wonder if that is what those secret Cheney sessions were all about? Nah. Having two oil men in the highest two political offices in our country would have nothing to do with that!

Prevailing price. Set by a trade board with no oversight? Naw, can’t be any regulatory problem there!

Perception. "Agreeing to certain sets of rules." Yeah, riiiight. Byte me. We already know who the biggest evaders of "rules" are. The same war crimes regime that propagandizes lies in order to invade and occupy a foreign country, that just happens to have a large oil supply, and used the boogie man mushroom cloud threat of imminent danger to take rights away. Next stop…

Conditioning. Progressively goose up the market price a little more, then a little more. Oh, now drop it a bit just before elections, and the people will say we’re such good guys, and reelect us… then, goose it up again and again and... We are so being Mc*ucked by the Dewey Screwem and Howe cabal.

Foreign oil resources. That's really is just WTF bushco has been after all along, isn't it? ("Where are those WMDs... over here? Nope. Over here?")

Nope, nothing to see here. Except maybe for who is going to screw it forward?

Yep: "One unified ball of crap."

I guess there are other benefits to being older. Like, less time to have to deal with that crap. But I really do feel sad for the upcoming generations.

(Hey! I wonder who is really making the most money on transporting / importing / selling that "poppy crop"? And are they shipping any drugs back to the US in coffins... again?)

Eeks, I don't think I'm really awake, yet. I need more coffee. Or something.

Dammit, now I want some Chinese food. Funny fortune, cookie.

Hi Dark Wraith,
I'm not about to try to listen to it on my normal piece of crap computer. The darned thing is so slow, it would probably play the first sentence then have to buffer again. So, I had to wait to listen to it on a faster computer... which I now have done.

Interesting molecule/atom bit. I never knew they sounded that way, but I'll take your word for it:)

Near the end, when you were explaining about the Coke/Pepsi oligarchy, my mind took off thinking about the Rock Star Energy drink. Huh. Nothing to do with your lecture, I'm sure:) except it's one of the few energy drinks I've found that REALLY work!

oops... after thinking about it, I realized you weren't talking about oligarchy, instead, the word you used was oligopoly. Ack, my bad.

Pretty good performance Wraith, I give it a thumbs up.