The story goes that if you put a frog in a pot of water then slowly turn the heat up you will cook the frog before he realizes that he is toast.

Do you see any similarities to today's economy?


Below is data of Total US Crude Oil imports according to the US EIA

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MTTIMUS1&f=M

As well as the Cushing Oklahoma yearly Crude Oil prices.

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=rclc1&f=A

Multipling the two gives a very "crude" estimate of the total amount of dollars leaving the US shores each year to buy foriegn Crude Oil... notice the trends.

Crude Oil imports peaked.. (peak import oil?) in 2005 at 5.006 Billion barrels.. and have fallen to last year's hard number of 4.7 billion barrels.  Meanwhile prices peaked in 2008 at a yearly average at Cushing of $99.75  Notice that total dollars leaving the country didn't change a whole lot before the turn of the Century reaching $76 Billion dollars in 1996,1997 and 1999.  Notice that we had pretty steady growth in Crude Oil imports throughout the 1990's up through 2005 growing from just under 3 billion barrels to a little over 5 billion barrels.

However, as prices took off after Hurricane Katrina and Rita in 2005..  Money leaving the country zoomed to a peak of $471 Billion dollars in 2008 $395 Billion more than in 1999 or a 620% increase.  This $395 Billion dollar increase is MORE money than the 2 year $787 Stimulus Bill...(at $393 per year) no wonder the economy isn't roaring back.

It is expected that when the economy fully recovers that Crude Oil imports will also start to recover...???  What happens to price is yet to be determined.  However, you can see that "the world has changed" in regards to the amount of money we send over seas to support our "mobile" economy.

I don't think this is sustainable with a vibrate recovery..  We are going to have to promote policies that drive down this hidden tax on the US economy.  Certainly biofuels can play a part.. but it's going to take more than just that.. imho.

        Imports            Billion
        Million  Cushing   $$
Year  Barrels Price    Outflow

1983  1,844  30.66     56.53
1984  1,990  29.44     58.58
1985  1,850  27.89     51.58
1986  2,272  15.05     34.19
1987  2,437  19.15     46.68
1988  2,709  15.96     43.24
1989  2,942  19.58     57.61
1990  2,926  24.5       71.70
1991  2,784  21.5       59.85
1992  2,887  20.58     59.41
1993  3,146  18.48     58.15
1994  3,284  17.19     56.45
1995  3,225  18.4       59.34
1996  3,469  22.03     76.42
1997  3,709  20.61     76.44
1998  3,908  14.4       56.28
1999  3,961  19.3       76.45
2000  4,194  30.26    126.91
2001  4,333  25.95    112.44
2002  4,209  26.15    110.05
2003  4,477  30.99    138.73
2004  4,811  41.47    199.52
2005  5,006  56.7      283.81
2006  5,003  66.25    331.45
2007  4,916  72.41    355.96
2008  4,727  99.75    471.52
2009  4,468  70        312.73

(note: I added the last quarter of 2008 Crude import data on to the end of the 2009 to project the trend.. which probably violates some data presentation rules.. but had to do something.. also the $70 Crude number is a total guess.. so the whole $312.73 number is a hatchet job.. but needless to say we should be down from the 2008 level.  Exactly where is yet to be determined.)

There's probably a site somewhere with this exact data.. vs the convoluted way I went to put it together which will be way more accurate.  However, the "general trends" should be similar.

I believe this is the main reason our economy is so sluggish and why the jobs numbers look so horrible.  We have to solve this problem in order to put the Country back to work.