“During the 2000 election campaign, the Bush camp rhapsodized about bygone days when “one of America’s greatest strengths was its energy self-sufficiency.” The theme has since been reiterated frequently, for the United States now produces at home less than half the oil it uses.” from Brookings.edu

Over the past decade the United States has made unprecedented efforts to increase the production of domestic energy. From huge subsidies to energy companies, to elimination of regulatory review, to making it easy as possible to use the most modern extraction techniques the US is now producing more energy than ever before. Problem is they are exporting this energy because it’s more profitable to do so.

So what happened to Bush’s self-sufficiency sentiment of 10 years ago? What happened is that we’ve yet to stop Wall Street / big banks from doing whatever is most profitable for themselves in ways that don’t protect vital domestic interests.

NEW YORK (AP) — For the first time, the top export of the United States, the world’s biggest gas guzzler, is — wait for it — fuel. Measured in dollars, the nation is on pace this year to ship more gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel than any other single export, according to U.S. Census data going back to 1990. It will also be the first year in more than 60 that America has been a net exporter of these fuels. Just how big of a shift is this? A decade ago, fuel wasn’t even among the top 25 exports. And for the last five years, America’s top export was aircraft.

This routine where our nation keeps giving more money to the rich in order to lift up the poor must end! Exporting what makes us strong and self-sufficient only makes us weak. And none of us do this willingly.

We do this because the big banks, the oil companies and Wall Street have no sense of social responsibility, no sense of loyalty to anything other than quarterly profits for shareholders. The free market culture as it exists today will ruin us all if we don’t make it go away.

This is the economic culture that makes our nation and the greater world increasingly weak and more and more easy to exploit in the most dangerous of ways. This isn’t advocacy for nationalist protectionism. This is about the basic fundamentals of an economic system that can only be sustained if it benefits the many rather than the few.

Therefore anyone who tries to maintain this culture is the world’s real enemy. They have way too much control over the world’s energy and money. These elite movers and shakers think they can rule with no accountability, with no sense of liability to laws that were meant to represent the needs of us all equally.

Thus, we have to regulate this status quo faux free market to death. We need a new economy that divides up all the money equally. And those doing the dividing up of the money need to be beholden to the people’s interest, not the shareholder’s interests. We must put an end to this corporate capitalist’s super nationalist power grab.