The People's Car

[RICHARD ROMEO]

Snell also tells
>the juicy conspiratorial tale of how GM, Standard Oil, and one of the
>rubber companies formed a holding company that operated in the 1910s and
>1920s to buy up healthy streetcar companies in about a dozen cities
>throughout the US, close them down, replace them with fleets of GM buses
>burning Esso gas and riding on ______ rubber tires, and then sell them 
back
>to local owners at a profit.  End of clean electrified American mass
>transit.
>
>Jeff Meikle
Having worked for "the Sign of the Double Cross" for a couple of decades, 
I
can at least verify that there is more truth than myth in this particular
recounting of the demise of the streetcar in urban America.
Another fable of economics is that higher crude oil prices make it 
tougher
for the seven sisters to make a profit. The opposite is true: 8% profit
margin on US$20/barrel crude is more than the same profit margin on $10/b
crude. One of the spoor of a monopolistic industry is the ability to
maintain profit margin irregardless of market forces. Just watch the 
price
of light sweet crude, which is now hanging around $19-20/b, and the
corelation with oil co's stock price.

"It's a magical world, Hobbes, ol' buddy... Let's go exploring!"
30


With regards to oil prices and profit margins-is this the same magical 
world where Milo Minderbender can buy eggs at $5 a dozen and sell'em for 
$3 a dozen and still make a profit?  No wonder economics never made 
sense-it was fixed from the beginning...

P.S.  Also in Sunday NY Times Book Review there is a literary home page 
home page and suggestive links-Pynchon's says "Close but no cigar" try 
J.D. Salinger's home page; I liked Beckett's too and Kafka's (there is 
nothing here, links grown cold; unadulerated suffering respectively)

rich
nyc