Michigan Votes Forum

A gallon of regular unleaded now sells for $1.58 at the station down the street from my house. Check out these charts of historic gasoline and crude oil prices from the US Energy Information Administration. Adjusted for inflation, that same gallon cost over $3.00 in 1919, and again more than $3.00 in the early 1980s.

It was, of course, in the $4.00 range just six months ago.

And now, adjusting for inflation, we have some of the lowest prices of the century -- literally some of the cheapest gas since the invention of the car. So, if congress was calling "Big Oil"  a den of "evil profiteers" at over $4.00 a gallon, then they must be "greatest American heroes" today, right? 

When is Congress going to call in the CEO's of Exxon and BP Energy and publicly thank and praise them for their generous pre-Christmas conspiracy to bring down the price of gasoline and put so much money into the pockets of American consumers? Did I miss that announcement during the recently concluded campaign?

Where was the TV commercial praising every candidate who was "doing the bidding of generous oil"?

Yeah, right.

Instead, the same bunch is probably waiting for the price to go down another 50 cents, at which point they'll offer price supports and a taxpayer bailout of the "struggling" oil companies. It's been known to happen. That's why not just anyone is qualified to be a politican.

 Stoopit incompetent oil barons - they can't even keep a simple conspiracy to loot the public working. They're just as bad as the Detroit 2.5. I suppose they'll be looking for a bailout too.

And where are the speculators, anyway? I suppose they had nothing to do with this debacle either.

$1.58 - How is an honest demagogue supposed to foment political theater at that level? Don't these people have any respect for the institutions of government?

Johnnie, the speculators (assuming that they ever existed at all) are now getting cut to ribbons. Would you be eager to reach into your pocket for money to take delivery on that $142 a barrel December oil futures contract that you agreed to back in July?

IF there were a conspiracy of speculators deliberately bidding up the price back then with no intent to ever need the oil, then they are actually the ones you should be thanking for this drop in prices. If they were bidding above market prices in the summer, then that would have sent a signal to the oil companies to pump more oil than was actually needed later on, thus causing an over-supply... and falling prices.

An alternative theory that Congress doesn't like hearing is that nobody actually has the power to control the price of oil and that it floats up and down like every other commodity in all of human history, reacting in highly complex and unexpected ways to a variety of market and environmental signals that nobody can ever predict or fully understand (such as, to give just one of MANY possible examples, a delightfully non-destructive hurricane season.)