escape from the cube

Well, here’s where our money is going! If you don’t think your finances are directly affected by politics, then you are living in a dream world. We, as a country, need to educate ourselves.

Why hasn’t CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times, MSNBC, or any other media outlet in the US mentioned this little tidbit?

Do you remember this post of mine a while back?

Well, it seems that I should have made the check out directly to Halliburton:

For the first time, the extent to which some private contractors have profited from the conflict and rebuilding has been researched by the BBC’s Panorama using US and Iraqi government sources.

A US gagging order is preventing discussion of the allegations.

The order applies to 70 court cases against some of the top US companies.
To date, no major US contractor faces trial for fraud or mismanagement in Iraq. Henry Waxman who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said: “The money that’s gone into waste, fraud and abuse under these contracts is just so outrageous, its egregious.

“It may well turn out to be the largest war profiteering in history.”

In the run up to the invasion one of the most senior officials in charge of procurement in the Pentagon objected to a contract potentially worth seven billion that was given to Halliburton, a Texan company, which used to be run by Dick Cheney before he became vice-president.

Unusually only Halliburton got to bid - and won.

Read the entire sickening story here. Then, like me, you may want to vomit in your waste basket.

We’ve posted a $7653 increase- not bad.

Another article about investigation of speculation in the oil market. Seems like this has been under investigation for a while. I’m surprised given the huge surge in gas prices (now over $4/gallon where I live) that more people aren’t concerned about this.

Elsewhere, there were scattered signs recently that worldwide demand for petroleum products might be easing. MasterCard, the second-biggest credit card company, said this week that U.S. gasoline demand dropped 5.5 percent last week. Meanwhile, Indonesia, Taiwan, Sri Lanka and Pakistan have recently indicated that they would trim fuel subsidies and raise prices.

One of the CFTC commissioners, Bart Chilton, wrote a letter dated May 9 to Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) praising the work of Congress in scrutinizing the rapid rise in gasoline prices. “It’s not good enough to say, let the markets take care of this, when there is even the possibility that uneconomic forces may be at work,” Chilton wrote.

Mocek said yesterday that the CFTC had about 60 price manipulation investigations in progress aside from the one looking at the national crude oil market. Some of those investigations also involve oil and gas firms or traders, he said.

This isn’t just a matter of supply and demand- everything is connected.

Fed lowers interest rates = cheap credit for investment bankers and traders = nowhere to put the money since housing market bubble is over = putting money into a sure thing- commodities that people can not live without.

So, I went to Network Solutions’ web site to see if a domain name that a friend of mine (who isn’t web savvy) wanted to register was available. I’ve done this a million times and never had a problem before.

I went to my web hosting company to register the domain a few hours later and lo and behold the domain was taken! Now, this was a weird name and I couldn’t believe it was taken already. I did a whois search to see who had bought the domain and surprise! It was registered to Network Solutions! WTF!?

Now, Network Solutions is much more expensive than other domain registration services, and I didn’t want to register with them- but what choice did I have?

They are using insider information (ie spying on users) to get a competitive advantage over other domain registration companies who have a better price. Isn’t this illegal?

Note: I called them and they agreed to release the domain in 4-8 hours. This is really shady. I suspect that they know that they are doing something wrong and are trying to cover their asses.

What have we come to? For the record, I don’t think God much cares how much we have to pay for gas. This is right up there with people who pray before a sports game- as if God gives a crap whether the Ravens or the Colts wins.

I don’t do much praying but when I do it’s usually for people whose lives have been absolutely, tragically destroyed- like the people in New Orleans, Sichuan Province in China, or Myanmar.

Here is the article.

Standing alongside a row of gas pumps at a Shell station, Rocky Twyman joined hands with several cohorts, prayed to God for economic and social relief then sang “We Shall Overcome” - inserting the lyrics “We’ll have lower gas prices” the second time around.

For nearly a month, Twyman, a Rockville resident who serves as music director for a Baltimore church, has been praying at gas pumps - and anywhere else he is welcome - asking God to lower prices. Of course, since he started his prayer campaign, or what he calls a movement, the price of gas just keep inching upwards.

Finally- this is what I have said was going on all along! I hope someone stops these immoral bastards.

As the nation’s financial markets have struggled with housing and credit problems, big Wall Street funds looking for more reliable returns have increasingly shifted money from the stock market to the commodities markets, fueling dramatic spikes in the price of everything from a barrel of oil to a bushel of wheat.

These funds, commonly known as speculators, have been blamed for upsetting the balance of the commodities markets. Though speculators have always existed in the commodities trade, critics say the recent influx of speculative investment has caused the price of raw materials to become disconnected from the economic fundamentals of supply and demand.

So my savings went down by $3110 to $20,610, entirely due to our income tax bill. Hopefully we’ll be able to build that back up quickly since I want 30k by the year’s end. When I get that $1500 stimulus check, you can guess where that’s going to go.

Surprisingly, my retirement account rose by $6,662! Wow.

See my updated net worth chart here.

OK, now check out these interesting articles:

• Could the recession be as bad as the great depression? (could this article be fear-mongering)

• Agricultural companies are currently making huge profits, while many people are starving. What is wrong with this picture?

Monsanto last month reported that its net income for the three months up to the end of February this year had more than doubled over the same period in 2007, from $543m (£275m) to $1.12 billion. Its profits increased from $1.44 billion to $2.22 billion.Cargill’s net earnings soared by 86 per cent from $553m to $1.030 billion over the same three months. And Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world’s largest agricultural processors of soy, corn and wheat, increased its net earnings by 42 per cent in the first three months of this year from $363m to $517m. The operating profit of its grains merchandising and handling operations jumped 16-fold from $21m to $341m.

We have a bunch of what I suspect are squash seedlings coming up in our garden. We mixed some compost into the soil, so no doubt the seeds came from there. Many of them need to be moved out of the garden to make room for the plants that we have planned to plant, but we’ve run out of sunny places to put them. Is it wrong if I plant a bunch in a park down the street? It’s huge, underutilized, and mostly taken over with weeds…

You hear so many supposed reasons for the sudden spike in the price of food. They say it’s a drought in Australia, it’s cropland being used for ethanol, it’s rising demand in China. This is for the most part bullshit, IMHO. These may be contributing factors, but I think that there is ONE big factor that dwarfs the rest, and it’s rarely mentioned.

Here is what I think is going on in a nutshell, and it seems like I am not the only one: We had a bailout of investment banks by the Federal Reserve- they loan money to these crooks cheaply at a very low interest rate. Now the crooks have pockets full of cheap money. This in turn enables all the crooks to start investing in commodities (read: rice, grain, etc- and oil too, but that’s another rant) since all of those shady securities are no longer a good investment- the money has to go somewhere, and you know people will pay anything for food because they have to eat! This glut of investment leads to a price spike on said commodities and half the world starves. This is totally what is going on, folks! We should not allow these crooks to get away with this.

Raise interest rates NOW or this will continue with disastrous consequences, not just for our country but the entire world. Food is a basic necessity that people need to live, not just another way for the rich to get richer.

If I sound pissed off about this, it’s because I really am.