Running Out of Money And Gas

Yesterday I called an old friend to wish him a happy birthday, he is 90 years old. A veteran of World War II, a retired pharmacist, and one of the best analysts of the market that I know or ever met. He is, despite his advanced years, still as sharp as ever with a nose for asking the right questions. Many of his generation are special people that loved this country and knew what they had when they came home from the war.

I read this morning that a survey of Congress finds that 9% of those surveyed believe Congress is doing a good job. They went on to point out that this is the first time since the survey began that the approval rating fell to a single digit. With a plus or minus 3% error, that is still a very poor level of confidence the 1,000 people surveyed on July 1, 2008 have in the performance of our Congress. What do you think of our Congress’ performance in the face of so many economic problems? Did they sell the average worker down the river? For who’s protection are the laws written? The worker or the corporation?

Where do we go from here? Yesterday, my posting spoke of the individual in the United States will ultimately lead us out of our present condition as it relates to new sources of energy. The government has not tied all of our hands, but that is not saying given the opportunity they would not try. There is still a little freedom to act on the part of individuals to solve the energy problem.

After I posted my piece yesterday, I watched T. Boone Pickens, an old and one of the most knowledgeable oil men in the world, talk about his involvement with wind and natural gas on CNBC. Later in the day, I saw his commercials that he is running talking about the fact that while he is an oil man, we can not drill our way out of our energy problems. The presentation, which only took a few seconds, was very well done. Perhaps one of the most important things said in his commercial was that the transfer of wealth of $700 billion dollars a year to foreign governments for the purchase of oil is the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the world.

Over the last several months, since the middle of February to be exact, I have used my blog MONEYTHOUGHTS to try and explain the relationship between the importing of foreign oil, the decline in the value of the US dollar on the foreign currency exchange markets, the slow down in the economy, the increased domestic unemployment, the trade and budget deficit, the lack of adequate regulation and oversight in the security markets and the influence that foreign governments have over our Congressional representatives. While I have enjoyed reaching a few people, what I saw yesterday on the TV makes me feel that there is light at the end of this tunnel. Barring men like T. Boone Pickens being thrown in jail, our energy problems and our lack of a comprehensive energy policy will be addressed. Individual Americans will come up with solutions to our energy problem.

Many times in our history, it has been the private sector, not the government, that has solved this nation’s problems. At the beginning of the last century, newspapers and books woke people up to the conditions where change was needed. THE JUNGLE (1906), a novel by Upton Sinclair described the meat packing industry in Chicago and eventually lead to the establishment of the Pure Food & Drug Act of 1906. But now, even the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has become politicized under the current administration. TV and the Internet will break the hold that money has had over the electorate. There are still enough good people in the United States to correct the problems and abuses that we suffer under. Unless foreign money and foreign governments further corrupt our system, the American people will find a way out of our importing of foreign oil and the ruin it has brought and is bringing to our domestic economy. We can not continue down the road we are traveling, eventually we will run out of money or gas or both.

Stay tuned.