WARNING : Explicitly unimportant material content with no obvious moral may offend. Rated PG (Strict Psychiatric Guidance Recommended!)
How much do you know about commodity futures trading? Not much? Good! I will sound quite knowledgeable then with the very limited amount I know about the market forces of supply and demand and how commodities trading was invented and continues to be driven by greed and the greedy. And that is it really, pure and simple. You want something someone else can supply, and depending on how badly you need it and how greedy your supplier is, the price for this commodity will continue to increase.
Of course if you do not believe or like my explanation, you can find everything you did not need to know on the internet. As a friend suggested recently, modern journalism is such that everyone with a computer can be a journalist without any traditional journalism training. She also said that if you did not agree with what other people said in the newspapers, it was quite easy to blog or write your own “opinion” column.
Journalists, Economists, Politicians and all sorts of ex-spurts have looked long and hard at the reasons why the price of oil, which is traded on the commodity markets, has suddenly gone haywire and has been predicted to reach the US$150.00 a barrel mark before the end of the year.
Pretty scary stuff if you have a government vehicle or two which any responsible government would seriously consider taking back to reduce its fuel budget. The Brisbane City Council in Australia are actively promoting the use of push bikes for its work force and have set up a Bike Garden where bikes can be stored safely and where the bikers can shower and change from work clothes to bike pants etc and the other way round. That is even scarier still for our large number of workers who probably couldn’t get a leg over to get on a bike.
It is always great to hear about things responsible and concerned citizens are already doing or planning to do in their communities to reduce the negative impacts of rising oil prices and global fossil fuel dependency. Was there something in the Annual Budget about Public Service Budget Cuts? Taking 50% of the current Public Service vehicle fleet off the roads in the next three years would be a good start. Well, 49% then with the remaining 1% to be removed after the elections so that you could transport all those voters to the voting booths. And instead of cartons of elegi to coax the voters to exercise their democratic right to take part in the free elections of their representatives in government, those intending to run in the next elections should seriously think about offering push bikes. Our rural population would all probably be driving around in not-so-new RHD vehicles by then but the price of petrol would definitely keep them idle for long periods of time except for the trips to the plantation which have been reduced to twice a week only as well as the short trip to church every Sunday and the not-so-short trip to the Saturday night Bingo in the next district. There are some things even US$150.00 a barrel crude will not prevent us from driving our car to.
I love a conspiracy theory and since the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the United States of America announced that they were investigating the possibility of oil market manipulators being responsible for the sharp increase in the price of oil, I have tried to establish an Al Qaeda connection where Osama Bin Laden, who has billions of dollars invested in hedge funds and investment banks, is driving the price of oil up so that the American and Western economies so dependent on oil would eventually collapse. I know that the Americans very quickly tracked down the 9/11 conspirators through their e-mails and internet connections but I think if you went through Google, you would be pretty safe.
The International Crime Unit Coordination Centre is rumored to be relocating to Samoa from Fiji soon because of our neighbor’s continuing political instability. I could ask those guys about a peer review of my Al Qaeda theory, sort of like the reviews done on Doctor Clydesdale of Massey University’s “underclass” paper. But talking about Fiji has reminded me of how unpatriotic the Fijian media is according to the Commodore and Interim Prime Minister, Frank Barainimarama. They are being offered every chance to write whatever they liked as long as it was not anti-Fiji or anti-government. But as journalists are mostly, they would rather write the truth. They could probably be compared to Afamasaga Toleafoa who is dubbed an “opposition” journalist by our Deputy Prime Minister.
I have mixed feelings about the way on-line media and the internet is changing the face of responsible journalism and journalists. Can the Commodore (I prefer the macho title to the wimpy Interim Prime Minister) close down a web site and deport bloggers and commentators from all over the globe? Traditional journalists would rather be at ground zero reporting on actual events happening and comments made but they would have to be done in a pro-government way. Tricky eh? Have a nice one folks!
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