A Good Reason To Bike, Stop Buying Gas & Why Investment Banks Suck

Zero $s Per Gallon

Do you need a good reason to bike? After reading this article I never want to buy another drop of gasoline again. Check it out here: How America is being bought by Middle Eastern Sovereign Wealth Funds! It was written by Matt Taibbi, a journalist for Rolling Stone, and probably one of the journalists I trust most at the moment.  It's kind of depressing when the state of the media is so bad that the people I trust most are Rolling Stone and Comedy Central.  

Matt Taibbi

In the past few years Matt has written a variety of exposes on the abuses of power going on in the Political/Corporate system that America is today.   He's publicized the abuses by Goldman Sachs aka "The great vampire squid sucking the sole out of America", and other Wall Street firms of the financial system before and after they were bailed out by the government.  

In his latest article he describes how Wall Street banks are cooperating with Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, which are basically giant pools of money in the hands of Middle Eastern governments.  The whole deal began a many years ago after the OPEC nations decided to create fuel embargo after the US started meddling in Middle Eastern affairs, specifically aiding Israel.  However, the problem compounded lately as Wall Street helped drive commodity prices and specifically Oil to prices never before scene.

We know the amount of speculative money in commodities exploded, that between 2003 and 2008 the amount of money in commodities overall went from $13 billion to $317 billion -- Matt Taibbi

Remember that $4.00/gallon gas?  Well that was mostly a result of Wall Street flooding the commodity market with money, and thus creating a scenario where the Middle Eastern countries that control most of the oil supply made shit loads of money, trillions of dollars.  And now Wall Street is helping them use that money to buy up giant municipal projects in the USA, such as the rights to all parking meters in Chicago (now owned by Abu Dhabi at a bargain basement price) and other giant highway/tollway projects.  The whole thing is just so fucked up that I had to write something about it.  Investment banks and banks in general are no longer a benefit to society in the capacity they are now operating.