This is how messed up the American economy is. Our government actually has no money of its own, all the money it throws into pits like the Iraq war and wipes its ass with is all in the form of loans given by the Federal Bank. With the name being the "Federal Bank" you may think that it would belong to the government, when in reality the federal bank is no more "federal" than Federal Express. The Federal Bank is a privately owned corporation. In order to get the money the government needs to do anything, it must go begging to the Federal Bank for a loan. The loans from the Federal Bank come attached to a 19% interest rate. So you may ask "how does the government cover this compounding interest if it has no money?" well that is easy, it borrows more money from the Federal Bank, pulling us as a country deeper and deeper into a perpetual debt that we can never free ourselves from without drastic changes.

Decades ago every dollar printed in this country said clearly on it that it was "redeemable in gold." All Americans today are aware to what our dollar says on it now, "legal tender" which means that every bill in your wallet is nothing more than worthless paper. One may ask "why would our government ever want to have to beg a private company for money when nothing comes out of it but more and more debt?" well the answer to that question is obvious as well. The Federal Bank system, in effect, gives the government a blank check to do with any way they want. The largest reason for why the American dollar is so extremely weak right now is because of the Federal Banking system and how when the American dollar becomes stretched and the government wants more, they simply ask for more from the Federal Bank. The Federal Bank, instead of bringing more gold into the economy, simply prints more money which leads to the end result of a fixed amount of gold being spread among more and more dollars leading to a dollar that is worth less and less every day.

Faced with the growing pressures of paying off the tremendous debt held by our government right now, the president feels that the country should cut programs like social security and welfare, hiding behind the excuse that these programs are actually costing the government money. This, however, is a gross lie. The part of American funds that pays for social security and welfare are covered by the federal income taxes and are running HUGE surpluses. The largest surpluses ever at over $3 trillion, with a T, dollars. Even the part of government funding that covers highway repair and the interstate roads is running a profit of $2 trillion dollars. The only reason the government wants to cut social security and welfare is so they can take that money and divert it straight into those never-ending money bonfires like what the government calls "The War on Terror."

Unfortunately we are not going to hit rock bottom until we get a president who understands that the first thing you do when you get to the bottom of a pit, you stop digging. It seems Obama is going to be very busy.

In today's day and age there are few things that make Americans more frustrated than the recent steep rise in the nation's gas prices. While gas prices are going up, it is easy to blame the middle-eastern countries of purposely limiting the amount of oil that is exported to the U.S. Some people may even think that the foundation of the crisis lies with the major oil companies, and their extreme greed, others think the gas prices are going up because the Earth is simply running out of oil. I am definitely not saying the oil companies have America's best interest in mind, but companies like ExxonMobil, Marathon, and Chevron are huge corporations with many large factories throughout the United States, factories that employ thousands of American citizens each, raising the standard of living and lowering the poverty rate. During a time when it seems as though all of our "American" companies like Ford, and GM are relocating their factories overseas, it looks as though we need more companies like the oil companies to help America from plummeting into a deep depression.

Another fact is that, though the world's oil reserves are receding, there is much more oil right under our feet than you may think. A large oil field has recently discovered on the border of North Dakota, a field holding billions upon billions of barrels of oil. There is also much more oil throughout Alaska that has not yet been tapped into yet.

The truth about what is behind that high price of gas, and where your money goes when you buy a gallon is also shocking, not as much as you would think goes to the big "greedy" oil companies. The oil companies have to buy the crude oil from overseas at a current price of about 142 dollars a barrel, one barrel of oil is equal to 42 gallons, so the gas companies have to pay about $3.38 per gallon for nothing but the raw materials. After the oil was refined into gasoline and ready to put in your car, ExxonMobil recieved about 58 cents a gallon in 2007. Now is when it gets weird. Of the 58 cents, 25 cents went straight to the government in income taxes leaving the oil companies with a profit of about 33 cents per gallon. At the pump the feds collect about 18 cents in excise tax, plus each state charges it's own level of "excise and environmental" tax usually around 20 cents per gallon, on top of all this there is still the sales tax, which would equal about 24 cents for a gallon of gas worth $4.00. So in the end, the oil company recieves about 33 cents per gallon when the government recives about 87 cents per gallon, talk about greed.

The largest reason as to why the price of gas in America has become such an insurmountable burden on American society is also the one that is kept the quietest, and that is the dramatic decline in the strength of the American dollar. Eight years ago the euro was worth 82 American cents and oil was between 30 and 37 euros. If the economy leveled off at that point and the strength of the dollar steady, the price of a barrel of crude oil would cost $80 with a price at the pump of less than $3 per gallon. So as the American government insists on spending trillions of dollars that it doesn't have, the price of gaslone has quadrupled in this country while it has only doubled in European countries.

Hey everyone. I am just posting this as my first blog and still trying to figure out all the ins and outs of this website.