Jane,
Don’t forget the restock charge!

Oh, right. Ayers isn’t actually still involved in scheming to bring down the government while Vennes i still ROBBING MIDDLE CLASS people.

“She’s known him several years through some connections with Twin Cities charities,” Marston said of Bachmann’s relationship with Vennes. “She knew about his attempt to turn his whole life around. It would appear that his public act of contrition wasn’t quite what it should have been.”

An FBI search warrant contends that Vennes made $28 million in commissions for recruiting five investors — including Minnesota Teen Challenge — to contribute $1.2 billion to companies Petters’ controlled through the Fidelis Foundation, a Plymouth faith-based nonprofit.

In her pardon letter, Bachmann had singled out Vennes’ backing of Fidelis among his charitable works.

Fidelis serves as an investment agent for other nonprofits, including Minnesota Teen Challenge, a faith-based nonprofit on whose board Vennes served until recently.

Fidelis now holds $27.6 million in Petters Co. investments that may be worthless, including $5.7 million owed to Teen Challenge — a Minneapolis-based drug- and alcohol-treatment program.

In a television interview on KSTP Channel 5 last week, Bachmann said she knew Vennes through her own involvement in Teen Challenge.

Definitely speculation, and I’m betting that a few people in the administration made a chunk of money on it.

But the simple fact is the world is awash in oil right now; tankers full of the stuff sit offshore because they have no buyers.

And with demand indisputably down, hopefully they will stay low (below $3/gal) over the next 12-18 months.

One other fact in our favor is the two oilmen are leaving the White House.

At least we’ll have a chance at a sane energy policy going forward.

It never was totally about ’supply and demand’ as we were fed constantly in the first place as I point out in my response to you @108.

The days of 30 or 40 to 1 leverage are long gone.

Now I agree that things should be done to keep prices from running away when supply does become an issue again. There should be no slowdown in alternative fuel projects and vehicles.

If we can keep demand low, this will buy us the time necessary to make the changeover.

I hope FDL keeps hammering on this. It will be front and center in the Republican primary race for governor of Alaska. It also sends an important message about “conspicuous consumption.”

digg

But seriously folks, I’ve heard no discussion on why the price of a gallon of gas has taken a nose dive off a steep cliff. Oh I’ve heard the standard line about how the economy is tanking so gas prices are following the trend and how we’re all using less gas.

Very astute of you to not believe the ‘economy is tanking’ bullshit.

Yes, the economic slowdown is contributing, but as I have pointed out before the main reason has to do with the exit of speculators from the oil futures contracts.

Once their enablers (Lehman Bros., Merrill Lynch, etc.) collapsed, they could no longer get the 35-1 leverage they were using to drive prices up in the first place.

It’s funny how as prices went up to $147/bbl all you heard was “China & India, blah, blah, blah”.

Well, sure China and India’s growth is slowing, but from 8-10%/yr. to maybe 4-6%/yr.

While in the meantime, gas is down more than 50% in less than 3 months.

It was (and I seem to remember Hugh pointing this out as well) all bullshit, and now many of the hedge funds are throwing “Going out of business” sales, which is driving prices of oil (and unfortunately many other stocks) down.