Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Why Hasn't the Price of Gas, Diesel, and Fuel Oil Dropped?

Now that the populace has their attention focused on the failed bailout, I'd like to ask a few open questions of not just our incumbent politicians but also of those seeking to unseat them.

The price of crude oil has fallen approximately 32% from its all time high. It closed yesterday at $96. per barrel. The price of gas has fallen just 12%. Why is that? What are you going to do about it?

Wall Street may be in a downward spiral now, but it will recover. What has me concerned, and should have everybody concerned, is the cost of energy is hitting those with the least, the hardest. Where is that so called Democratic Leadership that cares so much about the poor and middle class? Here in the Northeast, I think that there are going to be many families that aren't going to be able to heat their homes and afford gas to drive to work. What are their options going to be? Do one and not the other? Do neither and feed their families?

The solution, sure as shit, is not Barry's "Windfall Tax" plan. Companies will just pass that cost on. In particular, I am asking the 15-20 people from house.gov and senate.gov that read this site each and every day. I am asking specifically for Paul Kanjorski, Chris Carney, Lou Barletta, Chris Hackett, Bob Casey, and Arlen Specter to give us all some answers!!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I did the math. Gas should be $2.72 a gallon now. I hope at least one of the pols gives an answer.

NEPAExpat said...

Be ready to freeze this winter. We will probably not see oil go below $70 a barrel unless the speculation is much larger than anyone thought. We are competing with the developing world for energy and our trading partners are the ones with hard cash.

Instead of investing in wind, solar, and nuclear energy technology, we decided to all become "rich" and sell each other houses. We ended up in the Great Depression the last time we thought that collectively.

Read up on 1990's Japan to see the best case scenario that lies in front of us. Our demographics and financial decision mirror theirs almost to a t. The difference is that we are still the world's reserve currency (for now) but they had a 10% savings rate versus our large amounts of public and private debt we will not be able to repay without a lot of luck.