The three biggest lies current in the world today: 1) “The check is in the mail” (still a favorite, after all these years). 2) “Lower taxes for the rich means more jobs for the poor” (well into its fourth decade as a popular inversion of reality). And 3), the newest and in some ways the biggest; “Don’t worry, Saudi Arabia will increase oil production to keep prices from going too high, OR to compensate for the loss of Libya’s/Iraq’s/Egypt’s production, OR to reassure the re-election of American politicians if their name is Bush, OR whatever.” It’s easy to understand why the Saudis do it. If the ordinary people who work in the oil fields and the palaces of Saudi Arabia ever understand what is about to happen to them — that their jobs and security are about to start evaporating, with no hope of recovery — especially in this Arab Spring of rebellion against wealthy tyrants, then a lot of Saudi princes and hangers-on will shortly lose their jobs, if not their heads.
What is not so easy to comprehend is why the industrial world accepts the increasingly desperate lies of the Saudis about their ability to meet world oil demand, as they sound more and more like tales from the Arabian Nights. Perhaps it’s for the same reason a person dying of cancer will blow his life savings on treatments with gamma rays from the planet Boron focussed by an aluminum-foil hat. He doesn’t like what the real doctors are telling him, he’s going to go with the optimistic hack. (read more)
