Gas prices: 50th day of pumped-up cost

Ah, those Oil Corporations and their insatiable capitalistic greed. Isn't American capitalism wonderful, when it allows the Corporations, the privilege to gouge us, citizens, into living, from paycheck to paycheck. Isn't it, just Jim Dandy !! Other Corporations, are good enough to make it easy for us to die early, because we can't afford the" best healthcare " in the world. " Best healthcare in the world ", for who !!? For those who do the least amount of hard work and therefore, are not likely to need healthcare, as often or as badly as those who must deal with the possibilities of injury and illness, due to hazardous materials and unsafe working conditions. Come on, you Republicans, stop being the Party of NO, show a little more compassion, for your fellow citizens, many of whom, make barely enough to support their families and themselves. They work hard, for the little compensation they are lucky to earn. Give them the chance to raise their family as well, as some of the better off Americans have had the good fortune to do !!? Remember one of the many great mottos, of this good nation: ".... with liberty and justice for all ! "
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, BRING THEM HOME, ALIVE AND WHOLE. NOW.

Naughty, naughty boys down in Oil Patch.

Keep this up and Obama will come after you next.

Ah, those Oil Corporations and their insatiable capitalistic greed. Isn't American capitalism wonderful, when it allows the Corporations, the privilege to gouge us, citizens, into living, from paycheck to paycheck. Isn't it, just Jim Dandy !! Other Corporations, are good enough to make it easy for us to die early, because we can't afford ...

Posted by: Don Fitzgerald, IL | June 17, 2009 6:43 PM
----------------------------------

We seem to go through this little whiney routine every time that gasoline prices get a little higher than what someone thinks that they should have to pay. Except for a gas station attendant running out to post the new price, oil companies have very little to do with establishing the price point. I know the total futility of trying to explain the concept of a commodity or a futures market, so there really is no point in going through all of that for the nth time except to only say that if I were a Futures Trader, I would be bidding the price up too. One damn thing for certain is that Mustapha Mond and the democrat majority will be doing nothing to favorably affect the supply side of this purely evil commodity.

Here is a concept for you, ~ you don’t like the price, then switch over to one of your “renewable”, “green” alternatives. Take public transportation. Liberals are always talking that one up. Get a skateboard, trick it out with a sail mast. Exercise your right to be immobile. You don’t have to put up with this.

Remove speculation from something as important to national security as oil.

Remove speculation from something as important to national security as oil.

Posted by: bill r. | June 18, 2009 7:41 AM

And then what Bill? How would you facilitate actually setting the price of oil -? Or is the template solution going to continue to be surrenderring more liberty to the annointed one and let him appoint a Oil Price Czar?

You are either ignoring basic, fundamental economics or just don't get it...thanks to the evil speculators- you enjoyed a pretty nifty drop in oil pricing for the last year or so. Demand is coming back- without any less expensive supplies available - increased pricing is going to follow..

And given your terse support of mandating oil pricing stability in the name of national security- where are you on removing all of the government mandated regulations on increasing domestic oil production?

Dear Django,

I already use bike and train daily to get to work. But I'm living in Hamburg, Deutschland, a city with the infrastructure to make this possible. Perhaps one of the important changes you could campaign for is an improvement in the U.S. transportation system. Just building more highways and filling them with bigger and bigger vehicles has not worked.

The heavy dependence on oil for transport, heating and even electric power was a mistake in the last century and it continues to be so in this one.

CB in Hamburg

Demand is coming back
Posted by: heartburn | June 18, 2009 11:03 AM

Don't kid yourself heartburn...demand is not up, but speculation of the economy coming back is what is driving the prices.

"You are either ignoring basic, fundamental economics or just don't get it..."

You seem to be ignoring the fundamentals....Supply & demand. The price of oil is being run by financial flows rather than fundamentals. If you think the violent swings in oil prices are because of Demand....you are kidding yourself.

Chris,

If you can get from A to B by bike or train, then that is great. I would do the train part too, IF there WERE a train. The last Installed Cost for rail that I saw, more than 5 years ago, was $1,000,000 per mile. The single most reviled red state in Amerika has 1.9 times the land area of the Federal Republic of Germany. Unless people are now willing to work for nothing, with materials donated from somewhere, economics has to eventually enter into any realistic decision to construct anything of this magnitude at some point in the process.
I am all for improvements in the U.S. transportation system. Republicans would greatly benefit from that, and I can only assume that democrats would too. Not only that, it would be something that someone can actually see and understand how it works and the purpose that it serves. I really don’t think that the problem on the open highways is as much a problem of the size of the vehicle that it accommodates, as much as it is a problem of the volume of vehicles.

I am very sorry that I do not get or understand your last point in your last paragraph. What other viable powered transportation options would have been available from 1900 to say 1980? Would you have preferred exclusively coal for heating and electric power generation? Would you have been o.k. with nuclear, for anything. Electric power is generally generated by natural gas, cogeneration, coal, hydraulics, and some nuclear. Very rarely would fuel oil have been used over the last 30 years, and even then, it tended to be a short-term emergency stand-by. German engineers do not build rinky-dink stuff and non rinky-dink stuff is going to consume some serious energy. There is something that powers those German trains.

Chris, I don’t enjoy dropping a Jackson and a Hamilton either when I load gasoline into my Sebring, but No one really forces you to buy a gasoline or diesel consuming vehicle in America. Unlike democrats, I don’t look to throw up every exploration and refining restriction roadblock imaginable, increase the state and Federal taxes, demand investigations and hearings of executives, demonize same executives, hold in contempt a product that the manufacturer of my car would say that I have to have, and then whine and gripe about the price when it is still LESS than the price of the off-brand Coca Cola in the throw out bin at Sam’s. This is the type of complaint that a 5-year old would make. I will always have an issue with that. Thank you.

Posted by: bill r. | June 18, 2009 2:21 PM

*You are contradicting yourself when you say ...
=="...If you think the violent swings in oil prices are because of Demand....you are kidding yourself..."

*And then also say...
== "...but speculation of the economy coming back is what is driving the prices."

Economic recovery implies an increase in demand for oil consumption. - or put another way- when economic activity increases there will be more demand for energy -

So yes- speculators are bidding up the cost of oil - betting that oil will be in more demand soon... and yes-of course financials (especially dollar valuation)- plays a big part.

In either case- I think there needs to be some reasonable regulations on futures trading - my guess would be that we already have these , but are likely really bad at monitoring or enforcing them-

So - back to the point- are you thinking we need an Oil Price Czar?

FITZ and Billy are trying to explain markets - that's sweet.

The recent run-up in oil is caused by some speculation - speculation that the economy is recovering.

The other impact on oil is the supply and demand - of the US dollar. When there is an increase in the supply of US dollar (think of the increase in M1) and there isn't a lot of demand for the US dollar - the price drops. And as anyone that has taken economics will tell you, when the value of the dollar drops, the price of commodities (FITZ and Billy - oil is a commodity) will rise.