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Feeling Gassy
Sunday, November 23rd, 2008It cost me $38 to fill up this week. It cost me almost $80 six weeks ago.
All of those evil speculators, gougers, and price-fixing oil company executives must be on vacation, huh?
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I had a similar discussion with a co-worker the other day. He was one of those people who always complained about evil oil companies, loved the idea of a windfall profit tax in order to “punish the oil companies for gouging us.” I tried so many times to tell him how economically ignorant he was.
Just last week he told me how much gas cost him on his last fill up, to which I replied, “Man, those oil companies are such a humanitarian group, lowering gas prices so that you can better afford to fill up your car. Just think, they could have kept charging you $3.50 to $4.00 a gallon (because you were paying it), but now only have to pay $50 for a barrel of oil. That is awfully humanitarian of them.” He looked at me like I was smoking crack.
He told him that if he was going to damn them when prices went up, that he was also going to have to praise them when prices went down.
*shrug* It was worth a try.
Seems like they always go on vacation between October and March…
The elimination of the Enron loophole in late 2008 has had an immediate impact on prices. Enron was able to manipulate energy pricing to extract billions of fraudulent profits from the market. It just makes sense that if you can manipulate the price then you should buy the futures which is why the now-defunct Morgan Stanley was so deep in heating oil.
Just wait until January 20th. Since you were willing to pay $4.00/gal before, don’t be surprised if they raise gas taxes to you can pay $4.00/gal forever…….
The way things have been going, Congress is probably going to tell us we need a hundreds-of-billions dollar bailout for all the people who are now underwater on oil futures.
I don’t know about the “gougers, and price-fixing oil company executives” but I’m guessing some speculators are really unhappy right about now…
Feel the hate, jwh, feel the hate.
But when they feel the pain themselves, maybe they’ll hate you less.
The problem with that idea Windy, is that the speculators who everyone was upset about were shorting, or betting that the price would drop. Mind you, I could never figure out why short sellers were causing the price to rise in the first place, but I am sure they are real happy that the price has dropped. Only long buyers would be upset at the lowering in price but there were few of those speculators around since the consensus was that the high price was not likely to continue.
Who’s wailing on the speculators now?
http://rightklik.blogspot.com/
“All of those evil speculators, gougers, and price-fixing oil company executives must be on vacation, huh?”
Nah. They’re just trying to butter us up in case they need to come ask for a bail out in the coming months.
Oil prices were Bush’s fault, right? Maybe this is just another eeevil Rovian plot? Either way – with the new bunch in charge, I’m bracing for gas TAX gouging.
You’re thesis seems to be, that in order for gouging or futures manipulation to exist, it must continue to exist forever. But nothing goes on forever, particularly when the cash supporting the manipulation has dried up and the so-called Enron loophole has been closed in the crude market.
Obama hasn’t even taken office, and already he’s bringing about change!
People be driving less.
Roads are emptier.
Truck traffic is way down.
Somehwere I think I read that prices fall when demand falls.
Somewhere else I think I might have read that falling prices ( deflation ) is a bad thing; if one is a banker.
The best part is that Venezuela is so dependent on high oil prices to maintin the Chavezization of the government. It’ll be interesting to see how things go for him if this continues. Unless the evil oil execs that control the world come back from Planet Doom, where they currently congregate to plot our destruction.