UPDATE: American TurmOIL

Here are a couple of interesting examples that go along the lines of what I was talking about in "American TurmOIL." As the world is getting stared in the face by a possible double-dip recession, state-capitalistic Brazil just posted a 9% economic gain in the past 3 months! Also, remember Dubai's Burj Khalifa tower? It used to be more appropriately named the Burj Dubai tower, but in light of Dubai's economic crash, they renamed it after a neighboring prince of Abu Dhabi and president of the UAE, Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan.

This may not sound like a big deal, but to give the battle some background, the Al Nahyan family and Dubai's ruling family, the Al Maktoum family, have fundamentally differing economic philosophies. Both families are aware that they will not be able to surf the wealth of oil forever, and have made efforts to diversify their economies. Dubai has done this by inviting free-market principles into their country and developing real estate. Abu Dhabi has diversified by setting up a sovereign wealth fund (SWF). SWFs are basically huge pools of government surplus that is set aside for the purpose of investment and may be drawn from for stimulus. Since SWFs are controlled by the state, they are a common tool of the state-capitalists. Again, we see state-capitalism vs free market, and who needed the giant bailout and had their tower renamed? The free market guys.

The reputation of the free market is taking a hit big time, all over the world, yet somehow here in the US, where we should be laying low a bit until things blow over, we have this ridiculous resurgence of free-market purists, even though it was our unregulated private sector that initiated this global bust! And getting back to oil, even the guys who HAVE it and are soon to be rich off of its high demand, are moving away from their economic dependence on it, because they know they're going to run out of the stuff in the relatively near future! Yet HERE we're protesting regulations designed to ween us from our oil habit, and our SOLUTION is to drill more oil... the oil we don't have. That they have and they're running from because it is a dwindling commodity... Unbefreakinlievable. My brain is seriously going to fall out of my face just thinking about the stupidity.

We're idiots. That's got to be it. My next post will expand on this a bit, but hopefully more from a human standpoint than an American standpoint.