Tuesday, March 31, 2009

How Bad/Good Is The U.S.? - A Look At Energy


The drama continues.

It is a pity the U.S. is still trying to borrow its way out of a crisis that occurred basically because it has borrowed too much. To make it worse, failing U.S. companies expect the government to borrow to save them. It’s an ugly, ugly marriage and divorce will likely be one causing the death of the other. It is fine that U.S. wants to make a mockery of themselves, but dragging the rest of the world down with it? That is just….. I can’t even find the word to describe it.

This brings us to what actions Obama and the American government must take. Ideally, they can convert new debt into working capital and invigorate its economy to pay the debt off. Then again, the last time I checked, the debt was several trillions of Dollars.

But all is not lost for the U.S. for they have their advanced technologies and enormous coal reserves that, if developed, would make it much less dependent on foreign oil. China also enjoys reserves of comparable size and quality and will continue to exploit them. It will not surprise me if they work together on an agreement to share technologies particularly on clean coal and coal gasification.

Of course, the U.S. is still sore from China's remarks on a new world currency. Make no mistake, a new world currency will happen along with sociological and ideological changes. Too many mistakes have been made for people to remain tolerant. The U.S. system has failed. The Chinese system is corrupted. The democratic system is not so democratic and people are not content enough to go back to communism. As such, the IMF currency will not get the required consensus and we are back at the drawing board for the next grand idea.

Russia has the world’s greatest Gold reserves so we can safely eliminate gold as an option to avoid creating another all-dominating superpower. Even if all trades are to be pegged to gold, it has to be physical gold we are referring to and not just another inflated value on a piece of paper. The plus side, at least it looks shiny.

So we come back to the option of energy – fossil, nuclear or renewable. Since there are boundless demand and uses for energy, it makes sense that they will be the most desirable commodity. If an index of energy is the new benchmark, there will also be less resistance.

It is not hard to imagine that in the foreseeable future, energy prices will climb to ridiculous heights and the country that controls energy controls the world. Is that the reason why the U.S. exploits other countries of their oil reserves instead of harnessing their own? Considering that other developing and developed countries are draining their resources, some would say that U.S. is well positioned to keep its superpower status.

At least this show is interesting and special - the bad guys always win.

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