I was just watching the CEO of Virgin Airlines on FOX Business and he mentioned something very interesting. Wikileaks recently released some documents concerning Saudi Arabia. They are selling oil for $14 a barrel, yet we are paying $101 a barrel. Who's pocketing the difference? Speculators. Oil is a major economic driver. When it's cheap, more happens, when it's expensive things come to a crawl. It's tempting to just ban this activity, but just opeing it up to competition would do wonders. Imagine if oil companies could buy direct at $14 a barrel and pass that savings on to consumers rather than lining the speculators pockets. Apparently that isn't allowed and the reason is probably spelled "Congress".

Now world events certainly have something to do with this, as OPEC is fighting and wanting to charge more, excepting Saudi Arabia, to pay for social programs to placate producers populations and prevent the Arab Spring from moving to their country. How does $5 a gallon for gas grab you?

To make matters worse, companies are not hiring. Why? The most commonly stated reasons are a weak economy and the cost of medical insurance. ie: fears about Obamacare and gvmt mandates that they must provide it. Well, rather than focusing on paying for expensivecare, what about making health care affordable again? about a third of that could be accomplished by abolishing the FDA, but 2/3rds of it is insurance companies. Part of this is Congress, part of it is the states and limiting what companies can sell where, killing competition and part of it is contractual from the companies, so providers get paid poorly, and most billed dollars go to the companies. How do you fix that? Getting them out of the medical insurence would make medical costs drop like a rock! Oh, and medical liability.

So thoughts?

-t