Disgusting! Obama Funds Off-Shore Oil Drilling For Brazilian Company; Forbids U.S. Companies To Drill; George Soros Makes Millions From Deal!

Gateway Pundit:

Already this year democrats banned offshore drilling, scrapped oil and gas leases in Utah and opened the 111th Congress by introducing a bill to permanently prohibit drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). But, Team Obama is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil to finance exploration of its huge offshore oil field discovery. Unreal.
Over the past 30 years:


Democrats have blocked the development of new sources of petroleum.
Democrats have blocked drilling in ANWR.
Democrats have blocked drilling off the coast of Florida.
Democrats have blocked drilling off of the east coast.
Democrats have blocked drilling off of the west coast.
Democrats have blocked drilling off the Alaskan coast.
Democrats have blocked building oil refineries.
Democrats have blocked clean nuclear energy production.
Democrats have blocked clean coal production.

Hot Air wonders:

Is it a coincidence that Obama backer George Soros repositioned himself in Petrobras to get dividends just a few days before Obama committed $2 billion in loans and guarantees for Petrobras’ offshore operations?

Bloomberg reports:

His New York-based hedge-fund firm, Soros Fund Management LLC, sold 22 million U.S.-listed common shares of Petrobras, as the Brazilian oil company is known, according to a filing today with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Soros bought 5.8 million of the company’s U.S.-traded preferred shares.

Soros is taking advantage of the spread between the two types of U.S.-listed Petrobras shares, said Luis Maizel, president of LM Capital Group LLC, which manages about $4 billion. The common shares were 21 percent more expensive than preferred today, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. …

Petrobras preferred shares have also a 10 percent additional dividend, said William Landers, a senior portfolio manager for Latin America at Blackrock Inc.

“Given that there will most likely never be a change in control in the company, I see no reason to pay a higher price for the common shares.” Brazil’s government controls Petrobras and has a majority stake of voting shares.

WSJ reports:

You read that headline correctly. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is financing oil exploration off Brazil.

The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil's Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.

The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a "preliminary commitment" letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. Ex-Im Bank says it has not decided whether the money will come in the form of a direct loan or loan guarantees. Either way, this corporate foreign aid may strike some readers as odd, given that the U.S. Treasury seems desperate for cash and Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the Americas.

But look on the bright side. If President Obama has embraced offshore drilling in Brazil, why not in the old U.S.A.? The land of the sorta free and the home of the heavily indebted has enormous offshore oil deposits, and last year ahead of the November elections, with gasoline at $4 a gallon, Congress let a ban on offshore drilling expire.

The Bush Administration's five-year plan (2007-2012) to open the outer continental shelf to oil exploration included new lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico. But in 2007 environmentalists went to court to block drilling in Alaska and in April a federal court ruled in their favor. In May, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said his department was unsure whether that ruling applied only to Alaska or all offshore drilling. So it asked an appeals court for clarification. Late last month the court said the earlier decision applied only to Alaska, opening the way for the sale of leases in the Gulf. Mr. Salazar now says the sales will go forward on August 19.

This is progress, however slow. But it still doesn't allow the U.S. to explore in Alaska or along the East and West Coasts, which could be our equivalent of the Tupi oil fields, which are set to make Brazil a leading oil exporter. Americans are right to wonder why Mr. Obama is underwriting in Brazil what he won't allow at home.

Secret billionaire club seeks population control; Gates, Rockefeller, Turner, Oprah, Buffett, Soros, Bloomberg attend meeting (Video)

What the hell is this?

Billionaire club in bid to curb overpopulation

America's richest people meet to discuss ways of tackling a 'disastrous' environmental, social and industrial threat.



World Net Daily reports:

WASHINGTON – Some of the richest men and women in the world met secretly recently in New York to conspire on using their vast wealth to bring the world's population growth under control.

The meeting included some of the biggest names in the "billionaires club," according to the London Times – Bill Gates, David Rockefeller, Ted Turner, Oprah Winfrey, Warren Buffett, George Soros and Michael Bloomberg.

The meeting at the home of Sir Paul Nurse, a British Nobel Prize-winning biochemist and president of Rockefeller University, was the inspiration of Gates and took place three weeks ago.

"The informal afternoon session was so discreet that some of the billionaires' aides were told they were at 'security briefings,'" the Times reported today.

Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, speculated that the secrecy surrounding the meeting may have been due to concern that "they don’t want to be seen as a global cabal."

George Soros: The Whole Banking System is Insolvent (Video)

Liberal financier George Soros on the economy and the banking collapse. This is the same man who said last month that is is "having a very good crisis", as his hedge fund managers make billions off recession.



Telegraph adds:

George Soros, the billionaire financier, helped unsettle markets by voicing fears that share prices had further to fall. In an interview, he said: "It's a bear-market rally because we have not yet turned the economy around. This is not a financial crisis like all the other financial crises that we have experienced in our lifetime."