I've been hearing news about subprime mortgage crisis and skyrocketing gas price. I knew critical events were happening when I heard Aloha airline going broke and people losing their jobs and homes. But honestly, it wasn't until a few weeks ago that I realized how serious the situation was. In the last few days, major financial institutions like Lehman Bros, Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual and AIG have hopelessly failed. Now, the government is rolling out a whopping $700 billion bailout plan to save the financial market.
Being a regular joe, it's not like I can fly to Washington and have a say about the $700B bailout plan. Maybe the bailout will save us from going further into economic crisis.
What's the cause of this financial bubble? Some say it's the subprime lending. Frankly, I don't see a problem with lending money to low-income people with credit problems. People should all get equal opportunities in buying new homes whether they have good credit or not.
I think the housing bubble began to surface when crude oil price started to rise. Rising gas price resulted in rise in food prices, too. Climbing costs of living was too much for people to handle, so they couldn't pay their mortgages any more. That's how this housing bubble started.
The more I think about it, the clearer things become. It was all about the oil, or more generally, the energy resources.
As the world population increases, the natural resources become more and more scarce. Among the most precious natural resources is the fossil fuel such as oil and natural gas. In fact, the world events are moving around the context of energy resources. The recent Russian-Georgian conflict, Iran standoff, Iraq war and Afghanistan war were all motivated by the need for control of energy resources.
Now, nations are beginning to weaponize their natural resources. Russia has long since seized oil and natural gas companies under government control. And the recent Russian conflict with Georgia was believed to be motivated by Russian interests in the underground natural gas pipeline through the conflict territory.
The soaring gas price across the globe may be the work of natural resource weaponization. OPEC kept tight control of oil supply and drove up the price of crude oil across the globe to the United States. The majority of OPEC members are Arab nations. Maybe the Arabs were so threatened by the establishment of Americanized liberal democratic nation in their midst that they covertly designed a counter attack of soaring oil price and delivered it to the US, thus dealing a fatal blow to the US economy.
The world is now entering a new era of cold war, and this war revolves around one goal. That goal is to capture the most of ever so scarce sources of energy.
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