Yahoo! News provides its readers a good relief this morning with the news about oil prices finally falling beneath the $100 level, from as high as $147 in record levels.
That’s a big boost for every motorist and industrialists as well, where economic activity would surely be on the upswing and public convenience should be improved in the days to come. I remember how about a year ago, world oil prices were merely at the $60 to $70 per barrel level that I believe we could hope and still push the falling prices further down below from the present $100 level, towards the $80 per barrel region.
I tell you, the record level of oil prices in the past few months was such a thorn on the side of every motorist and it was so life-changing that everyone we know at work and from the neighborhood were so gasping in breath just to adjust to new and direr situations. It was so steep an increase in so very little time that I could not help but see malice in the eyes of oil producing countries or OPEC (Oil and Petroleum Exporting Countries); asking why in the world would they ever want the world to suffer by allowing such radical upswing in oil prices. The global community is like a web of life, if most of the world suffers and feels so much difficulty, to be sure they would similarly feel such negativity, sooner or later. And besides, it’s the poorer or less-developed countries like the Philippines who feels the pinch and suffers all the most; the richer countries like America and Japan would just have to make some minimal adjustments. To be sure, OPEC wouldn’t want to punish poorer countries all the more, and reward richer countries by giving them more advantage in trade and in public conveniences. To me, that’s nearly hideous and highly irresponsible.
They could have allowed very gradual increases so as not to set a firestorm in public inconvenience, where every household could change and adapt to newer conditions in a gradual and slow pace. That way, the difficulty might be stifled and not so deeply felt in a long term basis. I feel so strongly that any unusual and abnormal rise in prices, of every commodity especially such as petroleum products, should be caused by none other factors than artificial instigation by greedy traders and middlemen, those insidious trading schemes that circumvents and synthesizes in their favor the law of supply and demand, towards faking the dilapidation of the resources for sale, in order to drive demand upward and selling prices to the roof.
The spate of incessant series of oil price increases in the world market that had started last year could most possibly be man-made and artificial, borne out of speculations by middle traders who are merely out to make big profits for themselves, artificially instigating the sudden and steep rise of oil prices.
Now we hear that the New York Stock Exchange is in major turmoil as stocks fall down in very wide margins, being a rattled response to the closing down of one of America’s oldest and biggest financial company, Lehman Brothers Holding Co., which filed for bankruptcy yesterday.
As I read through the news on the recent stock plunge in America, I read that Lehman, along with other financial and investing companies like Merrill Lynch, were the ones that were very active in last year’s commodity boost, one that had set off the series of steep oil price increases.
I do not mean to be sardonic (in the face of the stock crisis in America) but it’s clear that there is a correlation between the movement of oil prices and with the most recent falling down of stock prices in America. And that the oil price increases were man-made and artificial all along, as many had suspected.
It was malice all along. For price manipulation is such. By those who are merely looking out for themselves, to make more and more money and not be thinking of the plight of those who would be gravely affected by their extreme greed and ravenousness.
(Image used courtesy of Stockvault .)
No comments:
Post a Comment