Please explain in simple terms

[jerry]

I still don't get it. If America just stole 13 trillion dollars (or whatever the figure is) or supposedly 25% of the world's oil from Iraq, then why are oil prices going up?
Thanks in advance.

[MoneyWhereMyMouthIs2]

I still don't get it. If America just stole 13 trillion dollars (or whatever the figure is) or supposedly 25% of the world's oil from Iraq, then why are oil prices going up?
Thanks in advance.

If the average person really believed they were going to be in on the theft, then that's too bad and they deserve the nothing or worse that they'll be getting.

[jerry]

I think I'm getting closer to answering my own question. Here's a comment to the same question on another web site (Mother Earth News)

Dale Hanks 6/27/2008 9:07:48 AM

The biggest reason that oil continues to rise is that the largest pension funds in the country are now using a loophole to invest in oil. Until 2004 they were not allowed to. This coincides with the rise in the cost of gas. Combines this with the falling dollar and you can explain the quick rise in gasoline prices almost perfectly.

from: http://www.motherearthnews.com/Ask-Our-Experts/Green-Transportation/Price-of-Gas.aspx

[jerry]

bare with me, slowly adding the pieces together. So oil prices are not really going up. It's just the value of the dollar is going down so it seems like oil prices are the same. So how about most other goods?
How is it that oil and homes are the two main things that need more dollars? I'm not being a troll, I'm a "simple" Canadian just trying to follow along and understand. Thank you PA for producing RP, he's also my role model. Good luck in St. Paul!

[Kraig]

bare with me, slowly adding the pieces together. So oil prices are not really going up. It's just the value of the dollar is going down so it seems like oil prices are the same. So how about most other goods?
How is it that oil and homes are the two main things that need more dollars? I'm not being a troll, I'm a "simple" Canadian just trying to follow along and understand. Thank you PA for producing RP, he's also my role model. Good luck in St. Paul!

Well if you think about it, Iraq was selling oil before the war, when we invaded, most of that oil production came to a halt. It's not something they can steal and start using right away, they would have to get the oil fields going again and setup some bullshit legal framework to make it happen first. So you have all the oil Iraq produced coming to a stop for a few years, supply goes down, not really because the world is running out but because one country stopped producing. Prices go up, and all the other oil companies that were already producing make a killing off of it.

The dollar is going down as well, but this is one of the reasons oil seems to rise faster than everything else.

[noxagol]

Inflation. Compare price of gold and silver to price of oil, almost a flat line for the last hundred years, with some exceptions.

[Zippyjuan]

The value of the dollar. From 01/01/2001 throught 01/01/ 2008, the price of oil in the US increased almost five fold. Vs the Euro it has only gone up about three fold. http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=147536 Supply and demand is also an important factor and there has been an increase in the volume of activity in the purchasing and selling of oil futures contracts. That is not all by speculators but also companies trying to lock in future prices of oil so that they can make reasonable budgets for their future activities. Airlines and delivery companies like UPS are big futures buyers. Right now, rather than contracting Southwest Airlines is expanding because they bought their fuel in the futures market and are not being hit as bad by rising fuel costs as other airlines are.

[constituent]

wait, iraq is exporting oil again?

when did that start?

[Mahkato]

Worth a read: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/12125

[jerry]

Thanks for the energybulletin link. I think I'm gonna vomit. The more I read about this empire stuff, the sicker I feel. "the dollar is backed by oil" It's really hard to stomach all this. Maybe this adds to why Ron Paul is so directly confident about what he is saying, it's because he's researched all this stuff and he understand it.

- one paragraph form this article:

"When in 1970-1971 foreigners demanded payment for their dollars in gold, The U.S. Government defaulted on its payment on August 15, 1971. While the popular spin told the story of “severing the link between the dollar and gold”, in reality the denial to pay back in gold was an act of bankruptcy by the U.S. Government. Essentially, the U.S. declared itself an Empire. It had extracted an enormous amount of economic goods from the rest of the world, with no intention or ability to return those goods, and the world was powerless to respond— the world was taxed and it could not do anything about it."