My Take On The "Boot"

Yes the current situation in the Gulf of Mexico is a disaster, yes it is going to get worse before it gets better, and yes BP acted irresponsibly, but everyone needs to take a step back and have a new perspective. I am here to offer you a little because let's face it, you cannot turn on the TV or read a newspaper without hearing about it.

Let's start with the reality that this is not the worst oil spill of all time in the Gulf. There has been much worse, and the Gulf survived, rather it thrived, with absolutely no clean-up or containment operations. During World War II, back in 1942, upwards of 300 million gallons of fuel were dumped into the water. To date, the high end of the current estimate of the BP oil spill is 100 million gallons. The key element here is blaming the Germans who we were at war with versus blaming BP who actually gives us a tad bit of oil independence from the Middle East. I'm just sayin', looking at it from a different angle it does not look as bad.

Moving on, there is a negative public sentiment against the president of BP. Some feel  he should be jailed for the company's negligence. Nonsense, I say. Mr. Haywood had been acting president for only a few months when the explosion occurred. No surprise, Obama- no let's call him Barry- tries to jump on the public sentiment, like a bunch of monkeys jumping on a football, and immediately demands BP to fork over cash. Does this bother anyone else but me? The president does not have the constitutional power to demand that a corporation hand over shareholder money to a governmentally controlled escrow account. His job is to enforce the laws made by the elected Congress, not to create his own laws and enforce them himself. This is reminiscent of him also firing the head of GM immediately after assuming office. Bothersome indeed, and dangerous to our country's future. Can you imagine what message this is sending to all international companies that have a stake in the U.S.? At the blink of an eye our acting president can choose to take money from a corporation like BP?

Which leads me to my next interesting, and off-the-wall, observation. The Journal of Commerce's published list of importers/exporters in the U.S. was recently released. Top importers of U.S. products are paper companies (American Chung Nam, International Paper, Weyerhauser, etc.). Great news for the U.S. GDP that our economy is resting on high bulk, low margin, paper products! Meanwhile, top exporters into the U.S. are Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot, Dole Foods, Sears, etc. Even better. We are buying furniture, appliances, and beer (high margin, low volume items) from other countries and selling them paper. I sure hope we can maintain our tree population or we may soon be sitting in empty homes drinking tap water.

My mind takes me to some very strange places, I admit. That was your dose of randomness for the week. Hope you got to thinking about your outlook on our country's current situation. It is easy to get lost in the media's fuzzy pictures and wordy publications. You heard it here first. America needs to get rid of the "boot". Tune into the 2:00 mark of this YouTube video for my reference, The Boot.