(The Swamp) -- Back in September of 2008, I wrote a piece on what I thought would happen due to the high price of gas. Every single bit of it came true. But the real joke was on all of us, when the Bank bailout was passed and we were all left with a gaping wound where our wallets used to be. I was so sure people would reject Barney Frank and Dick Durbin who had caused the meltdown as well as their party clown. Barry Obama. It just goes to show that no matter how right you turn out to be, people can still be fooled.

Anyway, here it is. As you read it, notice the enthusiasm. I think I've lost some of that. But that's ok. I'm still in the fight. But it's not even the day before Gettysburg, symbolically speaking, It's Thermopylae, and it's hand-to-hand.

Sept 17,2008 - It's not that we SHOULDN'T have the free flow of gasoline at market prices - we should. The problem is that this "free flow" does not and has not existed for almost 60 years.

In the early 1910's when the great train barons moved their money to oil fields around the world and incredible fortunes were re-enforced, something else happened. The same barons started to populate the same businesses. In effect, there was a shadow monopoly created among the businesses of petroleum producers, petroleum refiners, and petroleum deliverers.

By the early days of post-WWII, a gas station was owned by the same company which drilled the oil and refined the oil which was needed to make the gas it served up. Gas was cheap, not just because Americans expected it to be, but because the people who drilled, refined, delivered, and served were also Americans who had shared a common victory over evil in Germany and The Pacific Rim. Nobody minded.

As the years passed and more and more gas was needed, we helped rebuild the middle east by supporting their oil trade. They were grateful for the US's interest and cash inflow. What also occurred was that the US investors were American Oil Companies.

Those same American oil companies were paramount until the late 70's when Middle Eastern countries nationalized their oil drilling operations. Under the guise of nationalism, with the help of either the CIA or the KGB (or even both, sometimes), the ownership of the oil wells seemed to move completely away from American corporate control. What actually happened was that the American corporations became world-wide corporations and their interests and loyalties no longer rested in their own country.

But rather than becoming a "one world of cash, flowing freely around that one world," as multi-billionaire, Arthur Jensen (played by Ned Beatty), says in the 1976 movie, Network, the world became a funnel for the free flow of oil cash - directed by well-meaning, but disastrous liberal economic policies - into disinterested cash-holding companies who didn't care if the price rose or fell or who was effected, as long as they could play the government game and come out with the most cash.

The result of this profligate over-regulation is that now nobody is responsible for the excess cost of gasoline while the investor/holding companies continue to profit by the billions in a system whose regulations hurt only those who are the most vulnerable.

But there is a rough justice of sorts. With the little guys not having enough to pay for gas and their houses, they're not making their house payments, and the big oil guys, who are also invested in and on the boards of the big banks, are being butchered - at their greedy banks.

Nobody wins. Everybody loses. But at least the big guys are inconvenienced for a season.. until the stupid government steps in and saves their worthless butts.

This may be the only good thing out of the latest real estate debacle. But at least we know that the more gas costs, the more the big guys lost their mortgage companies - for a while.

So in a way, the last laugh is on the big guys. It's still a hollow laugh, at best, though.

It sure as heck was..

- Dick Anderson

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