Stock Brokers and Hedge Funders
Reading shit about Peak Oil has led me to reading shit about stocks and hedge funds and shit like that.
I've ended up watching things on youtube with JEFF CRAMER and FAST MONEY, etc.
Who are these fucking weirdos?
They remind me of Robert Cohen from The Sun Also Rises. All Hemingway says he's 'awful' but still nice.
They are like that guy in high school that is okay looking, okay at being a friend, gets good grades, has nothing interesting to say, and absolutely impotent as a human being.
They could be defined as 'tools.'
I'm saying men because I haven't seen any female stock brokers. I see some attractive females on the shows that probably got communications degrees and were put there for sexiness but that's it.
What fucks with me most is that on shows concerning stocks and hedge funds when they bring up oil they never interview a geologist. They interview some random person, I'm not sure how they pick the person. Can't figure it out. Probably goes by seniority or something.
Why would you interview a stock broker about oil prices?
I haven't looked deeper into it, but they probably interview stock brokers about crops instead of a farmer.
I think all this interviewing of stock brokers is why so many Americans think that oil companies are DOING THIS FOR PROFIT.
But this isn't how you make profit:
Profit comes in these steps pretty much.
1. Cheaper product cost: Make a machine that puts out more parts, or a fertilizer that puts out more crops, etc. Innovate the process.
2. Cheaper labor cost: Pay your workers less, drive out the union, infiltrate the union and make it corrupt, move the factory to where people will work for cheaper, hire in prison labor, use temporary labor, in case of office work hire state college graduates instead of ivy league graduates.
3. You come out with new products that entice people to buy your shit.
4. Advertise.
5. Send out coupons to get new people to buy your product and maybe become a new costumer.
NO WHERE DOES IT SAY, "RAISE YOUR PRICES 100 PERCENT IN ONE YEAR."
Someone could say, "But everyone needs oil, they are holding us hostage."
EVERYONE HAS NEEDED OIL FOR FORTY FUCKING YEARS
So if a price of a commodity is going up
that implies the supply is going down
but the demand is still the same or rising
Stock brokers are not going to say that and not even notice that
the stock brokers that exist today, have only existed during the oil age. They have only studied only old-age stocks.
Besides working with oil, they work with all stocks, from shoe companies to amazon.com.
Shoe companies and amazon.com are renewable things. They aren't like fossil fuels.
This has led to some fucked articles about the price of oil.
Pretty much any article written about a geologist or a person that prefers reading the geology they say the amount of oil being produced, which is I think 87 million barrels a day is going down. It has plateaued and going down, and will continue to decline.
Every article I've read by a stock broker or economist says, and I'm going to write it like they do, "Oil will rise up to 100 million barrels a day. And it will drop for awhile and come back to a normal stable price. But during this Americans will use less oil. Then the price will go down."
I don't know where they get the 100 million barrels a day figure. I've seen it like ten times. The world has never produced 100 million barrels a day. It will never produce 100 million barrels a day. Americans, even though it has gone down a little, a fraction of fraction, it doesn't make up anything. And China and India use is rising, so that just sucks up America using less. We have to remember that China's gasoline is cheaper than ours because theirs is distributed by the communists who don't take a profit. (Yes, the communists have allowed shoe and shirt and cup companies in, but they have retained the idea that if everyone needs it, then the government should run it.)
The stock brokers seem to live in some strange land where there are no reasons.
They don't seem to have any idea that they are even involved with something that involves humanity.
They don't seem to have any idea that some stocks involve science and not their 'picks.'
I think that is probably it.
They must have some sort of god-complex in which they tell themselves that their 'picks' make the civilization. That they are like God, because if they 'pick' this, then certain people prosper, and if they 'pick' this, then others suffer.
This is horrible behavior, irresponsible. Interviewing and letting stock brokers write absurd articles on oil. Now actually interviewing a geologist, but a stock broker.
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I think it is personally really interesting to see the psychological reactions of people when they hear and see gas prices are rising. When they hear about banks collapsing and the dollar falling and things going wrong all over the place.
poor/blue collar people tell me that they think it is the corporations all the time seeking a profit. Or they say it is the tree huggers not allowing to drill in Alaska, even though there is enough oil is Alaska for like three months and getting that oil is expensive as fuck.
People who write articles and on television, who grew up with money, went to good colleges all say it a passing fade that will just end and everything will be wonderful again. That OPEC will actually be producing 100 million barrels in ten years.
Or the white collar person mentions the electric car or ethanol, but the electric car's battery is uncased in plastic, and doesn't have the power of a semi-truck. Yes, you can drive to work, but if you work at a restaurant there still won't be any food there because there was no truck to bring it. If you are teacher, you can drive there, but there was no bus to bring the children there.
This is all mystical thinking created by fear. It is easy to see how a religion is created or how nazism can take place by looking at people's reactions.
When a human gets really scared they have this ability to make shit up to feel better.
posted by Noah Cicero @ 6:22 AM
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