Can this be true?

[wyguy]

The environmentalist nut-jobs will protest and keep it in the courts for years and years. They will not stop until the entire country if full of windmills, electric cars and tofu burgers. It is the habit of our courts to make the rest of us conform to what the minorities want (homosexuals, atheists, etc.).

They WANT the higher gas prices so that the rest of us will finally cave in to the tree-hugger agenda.

[wyguy]

We can pay our debt right now and within a short number of years by raising tariffs on all Chinese imports.

As you said, it won't happen. We will never bite the hand that holds our economy - and the Chinese know it.

[Matthitjah]

We can pay our debt right now and within a short number of years by raising tariffs on all Chinese imports.

As you said, it won't happen. We will never bite the hand that holds our economy - and the Chinese know it.

Actually, we hold their economy. If we stopped purchasing their goods they would crumble rather quickly as their economy grinds to a halt. Why do you think they are hitting emerging markets so hard right now. They don't want to be beholden to us exclusively for their propped up foreign consumer driven economy. That's why they haven't cut off the funds we keep borrowing yet. If they did we couldn't keep spending like drunken sailors on a weekend binge anymore. Our spending would grind to a halt. That's not really a bad thing though. No massive trade deficit, no China. It's not a mutually assured destruction situation because honestly we could survive without them. It would take some tremendous belt tightening but it would work.

[wyguy]

We can pay our debt right now and within a short number of years by raising tariffs on all Chinese imports.

As you said, it won't happen. We will never bite the hand that holds our economy - and the Chinese know it.

Actually, we hold their economy. If we stopped purchasing their goods they would crumble rather quickly as their economy grinds to a halt. Why do you think they are hitting emerging markets so hard right now. They don't want to be beholden to us exclusively for their propped up foreign consumer driven economy. That's why they haven't cut off the funds we keep borrowing yet. If they did we couldn't keep spending like drunken sailors on a weekend binge anymore. Our spending would grind to a halt. That's not really a bad thing though. No massive trade deficit, no China. It's not a mutually assured destruction situation because honestly we could survive without them. It would take some tremendous belt tightening but it would work.

I agree with most of what you said, but if China decides to demand full, immediate payment of our debt, it would collapse the U.S. economy overnight. China's trade with Russia alone would save her economy.

[oldzimm]

Here in Pa it is well known that we have a large resource of natural gas, what people don't know is that only a couple thousand feet below the natural gas lies a field of oil, larger than the field in Alaska. The catch is we must tap the natural gas resource first, then we will use the same wells to tap the oil.

[RGR]

Several years ago (10 years maybe?) a guy came out here w/ some gas company (I'm in SE Missouri). They were attempting to get mineral rights to drill for oil out here in this area. He said they have reason to believe there is a great supply here but the last I heard, even though everyone signed off on mineral rights, it was being held up in court.