Morales Nationalizes Natural Gas Industry

President Evo Morales nationalized Bolivia's natural gas industry and oil Monday, ordering foreign energy companies to send their supplies to a state company for sales and industrialization.

Speaking at the San Alberto gas and oil field in the south of the country, Morales warned that companies that reject the decree will have to leave Bolivia within six months.

There's also this:

Venezuela buys Russian oil to avoid defaults

Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, has struck a $2bn deal to buy about 100,000 barrels a day of crude oil from Russia until the end of the year.

Venezuela has been forced to turn to an outside source to avoid defaulting on contracts with "clients" and "third parties" as it faces a shortfall in production, according to a person familiar with the deal. Venezuela could incur penalties if it fails to meet its supply contracts.

"Bolivia nationalizes petroleum industry"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060501/ap_on_bi_ge/bolivia_gas

When you say 'trend' perhaps you mean that that is how  financial institutions have been structured/organised with the encouragement of some very powerful organisations - eg IMF.
I saw that John Ralston-Saul has a new(ish) book out in which he argues that globalisation is over - it's just that most people don't realise it yet. He cites India and more especially China as examples of a more pragmatic approach to development - and whereas western commentators suggest that the adoption of 'western' practices has led to 'success' he argues that it is the non laisser faire policies (eg currency controls) that are responsible.
(Vale -  JK Galbraith)

Also, when HO says "We currently have a small program going in biodiesel, but the plants that generate on any scale are still measuring in thousands of gallons a year, when we need millions of barrels a day." Isn't this 'need' more realistically a 'want'. Let's face it, biodiesel is not going to be able to replace current consumption - ever (or is that what you meant/mean?). It can replace some of our needs but not all of our wants and the approach should be to identify the needs that can (could/might?) be met thru biodiesel.

Historically, what worked for the US was a liberal trend with a strong dose of conservatism reigning its wilder impulses back into line. What we have now is dog-eat-dog capitalism of the worst sort, which is just as bad as the social apathy of tried and true communism. This is why I discount the Democrats as being worth anything if elected to office. What are they offering? Harry Reid for gosh sakes? Demagogue Chuckie Schumer? Such are just as bad in their own way as BushCo. Look at the years wasted under Clinton, a brilliant man but a moron of a politician who let his gonads do his thinking for him.

However, I doubt that we can successfully re-establish the balance between liberalism and conservatism. It's dead and while we can admire the corpse, we can't revive it. So we need to replace it. Any solution that does not automatically exclude the Demopublican/Republicrat mess is doomed to fail and any solution that is going to succeed needs to "throw the rascals out" on both sides of the aisle.

Thxs for responding.  Have you read Jeff Vails's EnergyBulletin article for his version of a postPeak Ecotopia?  This is possibly where we should be headed, but I am amenable to any workable alternative as well thought out.  Remember, postPeak detritus entropy means NEVERMORE, ALWAYS LESS--any new paradigm must seek to optimize biosolar energy, which is unlimited.

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az  Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az

I fear we may indeed be entering a new historical paradigm, I call it the move from "expansion" (which was made possible by cheap and abundent energy) to "contraction" (which results from constrained energy supplies.)

Recently I've been thinking about what it may have felt like to live in Britain when the Roman Army and administration left, and the province was no longer part of the Empire. Ostensibly everything was pretty much the same on the surface. Civilization didn't just switch-off overnight. All the trappings of Roman civilization were still there and worked; only slowly, very slowly things began to fall apart. The economic, social, political, financial, military, trade, and cultural bonds, began to breakdown. More and more links in the chain of civilization, rusted and then broke, one by one.
This was especially true of the Roman road network and the harbours and shipping routes. These things iterally held Roman society and civilization together.

It must have been strange, frustrating, and un-nerving, watching civilization slowly crumbling and not being able to do anything to reverse the process. At a local level individuals must have worked frantically to preserve as much of civilization as they could for as long as possible. But slowly these islands of civilization must have got smaller and smaller and increasingly isolated from one another. All over economic activity and wealth just kept on going down and down. Perhaps the rate of collapse was so gradual one didn't even really notice the decline? In other areas it was probably dramatic, one slipped-off civilization rapidly and forever.

I have another really big problem with the change-over from one historical paradigm to another; aren't such events usually connected to massive social disruption and usually war?

What if we indicate the pump tax is paying for the 3 aircraft carriers in the Gulf? Or the 150,000 men and women in Iraq?

Would that make it philosophically acceptable?

 If one could determine an accurate Net Present Value for light sweet crude, it would probably include the value rising much faster than a discount for the cost of capital. That is, the price might be even higher. After all, don't we thinkt that light sweet crude will grow much faster than, say, 6% per year?

That suggests that the President of Iran may be right in calling the value of oil still too low, though his reasoning is different and not persuasive. The oil producing nations fear what will happen when the oil runs out, so it really may be worth more to them than they can sell it for yet.

Funny, I never see economists mention these responses, they just talk about substitution.