The United States has evolved over many years as an exciting, fast paced way to your golden dreams. Other countries have not had quite the same history of luxury and riches of the USA. Looking back just a decade ago we had the “Oil for Food” program which was intended to help the Iraqi citizens survive the sanctions against that country by trading oil for food. The people of Iraq received the things they needed to live while the money they received helped rebuild the country of Kuwait after Saddam Hussein try toppling it.
Much in the same though we are working here in our own country under a new program seemed to be newly adopted by our greedy bankers and oil companies. The new “Houses for Gas” program seems to be working not as well as the other program did. In this program People give back their houses to the banks in exchange to be able to by gas for their cars. However, in this triangle, the money is then given to Big Oil so they can claim the largest profits in the history of the world, and the bankers receive dead property. It’s got a little twist in it and people don’t really understand it just yet. Instead of everyone winning in this program, only Big Oil wins.
What this means is Americans can now afford gasoline to drive to work, the grocery store, and even to pick up the kids at work. It’s simple really. Just stop paying the mortgage, rent, utilities and then BAM! You have money to drive with. The downside is that after you drive and get the things you need you have no where to go home to. At the end of the day America is headed to the dark side of a recession and people are losing their dreams faster than ever before. Many have no where to turn as their credit suffers, and friends and family wind up in the same boat. Who had the responsibility in the first place though?
Fingers are pointed everywhere these days to find someone to blame for the worst credit crisis and economy seen in a long time. You could easily blame the banks for lending the money in the first place, but only if you ignore that they had their arms twisted from people screaming discrimination as they were denied credit. So the banks try to approve more people by creating these cute interest upfront loans, or reverse mortgages. So on one side the bank has a catch 22 to overcome and in many ways overwhelmed by the harsh reality of bankruptcies.
Then you have the individuals who took out the loan for not being smart enough to realize they couldn’t pay it back in the first place but instead hoped to cash in on a quick rise in property value. The people in the worst situations such as foreclosure and bankruptcy did not walk in the bank or fill out a credit application under gun point. Instead they willingly did whatever they could to make themselves look credible to get their dream house or car. So in the end the people of the U.S. did this to themselves by not reading the fine print and understand what they were responsible for.
Finally, Big Oil could be blamed for the rising coast of fuel and earning the biggest profits known to mankind, however, they don’t run Wall Street where the price of a barrel of oil is set. Instead we should look at the people investing over fears, uncertain times, and lies about running out of supplies. These are the people trying to earn a buck off of predicting the future and creating frenzy on the trading floor in which we see prices hit ceilings day after day.
Many people will say that finally America gets to pay the price of what the world has been paying. In reality though how many pumping stations are in the U.K.? We pump oil right here on our own property. The U.S. has resources and as citizens we can’t even take advantage of what we have here. Sure, this article isn’t going to solve everything or even cover everything, but it’s a start to get some people thinking about whom to blame. Tough times come and go and we will go through more in the future. As wise men have said for decades, “History will repeat itself”.