Trump had a press conference about opening up Venezuela to American Oil Companies.\u00a0 Of course it was full of \u201cTrump speak;\u201d the greatest this, the greatest that, etc.\u00a0 But what it came down to is Trump is telling the Venezuelans that American oil companies will be returning to Venezuela and will be under the protection of the American military.\u00a0 That\u2019s pretty damn good.<\/p>\n
These companies had all of their oil extraction and processing equipment seized when Communist Hugo Ch\u00e1vez became the leader in Venezuela.\u00a0 He nationalized the industry and it proceeded to fall apart.\u00a0 Instead of engineers the industry was handed over to political hacks.\u00a0 They brought in the Cubans to help them and they proved that they could make a fabulously oil rich country into a basket case in just a decade or so.<\/p>\n
Of course, Trump didn\u2019t provide a lot of the details on how these things will be arranged.\u00a0 But based on how things worked before Ch\u00e1vez botched it up, the oil companies and Venezuela will both make lots of money.\u00a0 And all of that extracted oil will lower the price of American gasoline and oil by quite a bit once it\u2019s going strong.<\/p>\n
As I said, \u201cTrump speak\u201d is maddening.\u00a0 It\u2019s like listening to one of Muhammed Ali\u2019s jibber-jabber brag sessions before his fights.\u00a0 Everything is over the top and outrageous but the results are there.\u00a0 Ali was the greatest fighter of his generation and Trump is the only President in forty years to actually produce the results he promised.\u00a0 So, I\u2019ll let him have his bragging session and then I\u2019ll look for a translation into English and the bottom line.\u00a0 He\u2019s pretty smart.\u00a0 Increasing oil production (enormously) will have a major positive effect on consumer costs in the United States.\u00a0 And the revenues that these oil companies will gain will also improve our GDP.\u00a0 And capturing Maduro let\u2019s Latin America know that Trump doesn\u2019t play games with tin-pot dictators shipping fentanyl to this country.\u00a0 I expect to see positive results in Mexico and maybe even China because of this.<\/p>\n
Okay so where does that leave us with Iran and Ukraine and Greenland?\u00a0 Well, I may have underestimated the people of Iran.\u00a0 The actions there have grown from protests to open rebellion.\u00a0 They\u2019re burning down police stations and IRGC barracks and so far, the military doesn\u2019t seem to be able to stop it.\u00a0 The size of the crowds is staggering.\u00a0 There are literally millions of people in the streets of dozens of large cities.\u00a0 I think the Ayatollah is going to take a plane ride to Moscow and join Assad in the section of Moscow reserved for former Middle Eastern dictators in retirement.\u00a0 It looks that active.<\/p>\n
Ukraine is hopeless.\u00a0 The Russians and Ukrainians will fight to the last man.\u00a0 God help them all.<\/p>\n
Now what the hell are we going to do with Greenland?\u00a0 Military bases, oil and mineral extraction?\u00a0 Ice for drinks?\u00a0 Trump says he wants to buy it.\u00a0 I mean, who figures out a fair price for Greenland?\u00a0 But as I\u2019ve said, after you get finished with the bluster get a translation into English and chances are you\u2019ll discover that Trump is right about Greenland too.\u00a0 But what do you bet he wants to rename it Trumpland?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Trump had a press conference about opening up Venezuela to American Oil Companies.\u00a0 Of course it was full of \u201cTrump speak;\u201d the greatest this, the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[4753,2260,5112],"class_list":["post-35741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-trump","tag-greenland","tag-iran","tag-venezuela"],"yoast_head":"\n