ROCKMAN wrote:What's happening in the shales isn't so much a ponzi scheme IMHO but selling folks on a business plan that's very vulnerable to price volatility as well as not being very sustainable in the long run.
heh, very diplomatic. lol
The thing is, the current hype doesn't affect only the investor. If it did, as some of the other schemes you've mentioned, I wouldn't really care, that's the game. Actually if it was going to unfairly affect the price of oil, giving the schemers some extra profit at the expense of the consumer I wouldn't consider it a big deal, scams happen all the time. You seem to feel like the stink gets on you but as far as I'm concerned it's just business, whatever the market will bear and all that.
But the O&G lobby advertising blitz and a couple of well placed "press releases" such as the bought and paid for Maguleri fluff and the recent IEA forecast that prompted Diane Sawyer to gush on the nightly news that the US would soon be the "worlds largest exporter of oil", are certainly influencing the public's perception that we've entered the golden era of frac'ed oil. Ditto for the Golden Age of Frac'ed Gas.
That I think
is a big problem because it negates to some extent the price signal that was starting to influence long term behavior. Relocating to reduce drive time and increasing preference for "walkable" neighborhoods, switching to renewables, perhaps better milage vehicles, etc were all increasing since 05 or so.
I think the O&G marketers have made a very big coup by making it believable that we will actually have a prolonged glut because of a whole new discovery of oil, when in fact we're paying more than we ever have before for oil we've never needed before.
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The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)