Secondary to John’s earlier post, Rick Ungar at the Washington Monthly had already dipped a toe into the murky waters:
According to the Automobile Club of America, gasoline prices have risen, on average, 13.1 cents in the past month—despite the fact that gas prices traditionally fall in the month of February as people drive fewer miles during the wintery month.
__
What’s more, virtually every projection out there suggests that gas prices are about to make a dramatic rise to, potentially, record levels with some suggesting that $5.00 a gallon gas or more —double the prices of just a few months ago—could very well be in our future.
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This becomes a particularly odd statistic when one considers that Americans are using less gasoline than it has at any time in the last fifteen years. Currently, we burn up 8 percent less gas than we did during the peak year of 2006 while most experts expect the trend to continue to where we will be using 20 percent less gasoline by 2030…
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While Wall Street’s ‘priority one’ is to make money, it is clear that, for this year, priority two is the destruction of Barack Obama’s presidency. Accordingly, from a Wall Street point of view, it certainly is a happy coincidence that that priority one, making big money on oil speculation, could directly lead to accomplishing their second highest mission. I am left to wonder whether this is a happy Wall Street coincidence or a clever strategy that could pay off big-time come November.
__
Gasoline prices have a ‘real time’ impact on middle-class voters. Can you imagine a better way to make voters good and angry than to insure that they are paying five bucks a gallon for the gasoline that will be powering them to the voting booth in November? And if you subscribe to the theory that the President’s opponents would like to keep economic growth down until the election is over, what better way to accomplish such a goal than to force a precipitous rise in gas prices?…
__
As a result of what is coming, it might be a good idea for the Obama Administration to start talking about the reasons for rising gas prices and I’d start talking about it now. This is one instance where silence is anything but golden and without a plausible explanation as to why the Administration is not responsible for what might be a dramatic rise in gas prices, it may be President Obama who is left holding the pump nozzle come December.
Of course, if the President does talk about “the reasons for rising gas prices“, he’ll be accused of both scare-mongering for electoral advantage and of depressing the vote for down-ticket Democrats by poor-mouthing what will be labelled as his administration’s failures. But if you believe that more information is always better, it’s another piece in the jigsaw puzzle…
BGinCHI
Windfall Profits Tax, plz.
Plus regulate the speculation on gas/oil and call it a move toward greater “national security.”
What else you got?
dr. bloor
The railing against Obama’s “failed economic policies” isn’t going to be nearly as obnoxious as the mouthbreathers’ endless ranting about how our energy problems would be solved if we just got busy raping wildlife preserves and fragile offshore habitats for the three days worth of crude they contain.
vtr
Yeah, I noticed the price rise almost immediately after the administration’s opposition to Keystone was announced. Dril, baby, drill, so we can export even more oil to China.
ploeg
It depends on how much money these folks are prepared to blow. I remember back in 2008, when we had actual world demand for oil (driven by the Beijing Olympics and a world economy that was set to supernova). If these folks want to drive up prices in the absence of big-time demand like that, they have to be willing to put some serious coin at risk.
Or they can go on their news network and have all their useful tools do it for them.
c u n d gulag
This is evil.
They say that OWS has no message.
I say, bring out guillotines, wicker baskets, pikes, and gallons of gasoline, to this spring’s OWS rallies.
Take mannequins, chop off the heads with the guillotines into the wicker baskets, put them on the pikes mount and them along the road, pour gasoline on the bodies, light matches, and ask, “You assholes said we have no message. Are you getting the FUCKING MESSAGE NOW?”
Hill Dweller
The CFTC did pass regulations cracking down on speculation last year, but two Wall Street companies are currently asking a District Court judge in DC to halt them. I think the hearing is scheduled for the 27th of this month.
pj
Talk about the reasons? No. Instead, slap down price controls. 2.99 a gallon sounds good to me. Let the class war blossom. 99% vs. futures speculators.
mai naem
Anybody shocked by this? I’m not. As soon as I saw them going up I knew it was to damage Obama’s chances and of course greed because these fcukers truly don’t give a crap about anybody but how much money they have right now. They aren’t happy till the whole western world is turned into a serf/lord situation.
Cassidy
@pj: Would never get through. Sounds nice.
Dan
Start planning regulation of speculation-driven oil prices while dumping lots of bbls of oil from the strategic reserves to reap speculator’s cash. Then buy back low to replenish the reserve.
dr. bloor
@c u n d gulag: I am interested in your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
pj
To be clear: Price controls “get through” by executive order. Congress not needed. That’s how Nixon did it, and if gas prices hit 5 bucks a gallon Obama better do the same.
General Stuck
The good news is, while voters have swayed this way and that with Obama, and their anxiety that he do something to fix the economy, they never really have blamed him and dems for the economic crash in 2008. The polling has been consistent on that. So if the right wing and their corporate whores and traders want to play the gas card bidding up oil futures, then bring that on as well. Obama and senate dems can just add that to the ‘ econ equality’ populist sloganeering, and follow it up with proposing leg to even things out, and let the wingers continue protecting the oil companies, that in addition to gouging us all with their thinly veiled profiteering, they also continue to get large tax payer subsidies that the wingnuts block ending, via both Obama and dems efforts to end.
Amir Khalid
@dr. bloor:
And don’t forget that it can take a decade or more between the start of exploration and the first day of commercial extraction from an oil well. No new oilfield approved by a US president will result in gasoline for sale before he is out of office.
Soonergrunt
OT–Rescued from the mod filter:
“Awesome things here. I am very happy to look your post. Thank you so much and I am having a look ahead to touch you. Will you kindly drop me a mail?”
I’m thinking I might add this guy to the whitelist.
Linda Featheringill
@pj:
Price controls:
A short stroll on Google convinced me that gasoline price controls have been established by executive order. But I really don’t know the legal ins and outs of that.
Cassidy
@pj: Did not know that. Very cool.
MikeJ
@Amir Khalid: No need to open new exploration, the US is already a net exporter of oil.
mb
There needs to be a concerted effort to identify, name and shame the speculators that are running up the price. I have no doubt that some enterprising wonk could ferret out exactly who these nameless speculators are. Then the pressure of public anger can be brought to bear on them and/or their enablers.
Hypnos
I’m sorry guys but welcome to peak oil. Brent is pushing 120 again. Not such a great idea to stop OPEC’s second largest exporter when demand is already scraping against the ceiling of production.
Oh and yeah, North Dakota – in the time it took shale oil to get to 400k barrels per year, Alaska was at 2.2m. That didn’t stop US long term oil production decline either.
Look on the bright side. We might not have enough fossil fuels to turn the planet into Venus.
Rafer Janders
And if you subscribe to the theory that the President’s opponents would like to keep economic growth down until the election is over, what better way to accomplish such a goal than to force a precipitous rise in gas prices?…
Except for the fact that, you know, oil is a worldwide commodity, and factors like Persian Gulf tensions, destruction of Libyan oil rigs, rising Chinese and Indian demand, Brazilian ability to bring new offseas deposits into production, and decreasing Saudi stockpiles all have their place to play in determining the worldwide price, far more than the ability of American speculators.
Look, it’s a worldwide price, set by worldwide demand. Wall Street couldn’t determine the price of oil at this point if it wanted to.
Rafer Janders
Also, too, it’s a market. For every market player who wants to see the price of oil go up, there’s another market player who’s made a bet in the opposite direction and wants to see the price go down.
PeakVT
This becomes a particularly odd statistic when one considers that Americans are using less gasoline than it has at any time in the last fifteen years.
Somebody should tell Ungar that oil is a global commodity. Most of the developing world is still getting richer at a pretty good clip, and their demand is increasing.
Also, I don’t know where he’s getting his numbers, but gas prices are unlikely to be double the prices of just a few months ago.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Soonergrunt:
My blog gets 20 of those a day. Fucking Indians, ruining the intertoobz for everyone.
Redshift
@dr. bloor: Yes, apparently Newt was giving a stump speech that he would give orders to open up everything for drilling, so we would never again have to rely on evil foreign countries for energy. Because apparently we have an infinite supply — who knew?
He also did his usual blather about “bowing to Saudi princes.” It’s really sad they feel compelled to pretend Bush didn’t exist, since he’s the president who actually did that.
BBA
The federal gas tax is 18.4 cents per gallon. The article mentions monthly increases of 13.1 cents, so in the grand scheme of things a tax holiday won’t matter much.
I’ll also note that when Congress let the airline ticket tax lapse for a couple of weeks last summer, the airlines just kept charging it and pocketed the “tax”. Gasoline isn’t quite the oligopoly that air travel is, but don’t assume that all the tax cuts will be passed along to consumers.
Southern Beale
This actually isn’t new, nor does it necessarily have anything to do with Wall Street trying to take down Obama. I wrote about this last May:
“Oil Speculators & Gas Prices: Is Feature, Not Bug?”
I linked to an NPR interview with Ed Wallace, who says banks and investment houses are speculating on the commodities markets instead of making loans to small businesses because they can make up for everything they lost in the mortgage meltdown much faster that way, and that in fact the Federal Reserve is aware of this and is even complicit. Links at my post, for anyone who wants to explore it some more.
WereBear
Then, there’s this:
Koch Industries Lackeys Admit To Manipulating Oil Prices…and Gloat About It, Too
Martin
@pj:
I can hear the shrieks of ‘soçialism’ already.
Southern Beale
Also, while gas prices may be high for February, they have hit much higher in the past. We aren’t at a record high by any means.
We’re also producing more oil than ever before, and we’re actually exporting more refined fuels like gasoline and jet fuel. 2011 was supposed to be the first time since 1949 that the U.S. was a net exporter of refined fuels.
So why is the price so high then? Why are we exporting gasoline and diesel instead of selling it here? Because demand here is low, and it has been low since the recession started. That won’t change until the economy picks up.
Of course, since I drive electric, none of this matters to me.
redshirt
I mentioned this several days ago. I don’t know who might be the bigger global ratfucker – the “markets”, or Israel. Each could try and sway this election in favor of the Wingnuts, and FSM help us all if one of them gets elected.
And if you don’t think 5.00 a gallon gas is a big deal, imagine it when Fox and Friends is blaring it every moment of every day and all the legions of MSM lemmings follow suit.
Heck – they can make a crisis about Birth Control on a whim. What could they do with record gas prices? OBAMER FAILED US!!!
WereBear
Last time, this happened during the campaign, and Obama encouraged people to check their tire pressure, and McCain was all “haw haw we can’t solve the MidEast Crisis thingy with tire pressure thingies” and the Auto Club came out and how we could save this big amount and McCain looked like a dingdong.
So there’s that.
Maude
@Southern Beale:
And on Bloomberg radio, the explanation is that there aren’t enough US refineries and when demand picks up, the prices will rise. This is said by guests, not hosts.
The winger talk show hosts will be yelling drill for oil.
The House Repubs are trying to get Keystone forced down the admin’s gullet. They are dumb enough to chant that because Keystone was turned down by Obama, the price of gas is going up.
On the other side of this. The gas prices hurt people, the 99%. Those who have been unemployed for a time are really having a rough time. Food prices are high as well as utilities. It costs more to just squeak by.
El Cid
@Southern Beale: Also, way back when people used to believe in supply & demand and such, we’d notice that oil companies are selling their products at lower quantities at higher prices, so profit is way up.
Now, for some reason, we think that oil companies will choose to spend a lot more increasing production while we’re using less all so that they can lower their own profits on their product.
Every time I hear the ‘drill baby drill’ stuff, I ask whoever’s telling me this why an oil company would want to spend a lot more money to produce more product to sell to us and make less money?
Just to be nice? To give us gas prices we like?
They already make more money while selling us less.
Where’s the sharp-eyed business-minded types on this? Whose business rushes out to spend more money to produce more of a good to sell in lower quantities in limited demand at a time when that product is being sold at the greatest profitability?
If they ‘drill’ more (i.e., produce more), they will sell that product where ever it is that demand exists such that it can sell it at its current profitable rates. That’s why refined gas is being exported again.
What the hell is wrong with our sober, business-wise conservatives? Why the fuck are oil companies going to just undercut their own product’s profitability? For fucking charity? To be nice? Because we’d like it? What?
Cassandra
@c u n d gulag:
Or, just sit back and knit.
dr. bloor
@Southern Beale:
Driving electric wise and admirable, but unless your electricity is being generated by a private army of hamsters in wheels or chimpanzees holding kites in thunderstorms, it should matter to you.
bjacques
Ah, well, the Romney Express hit a pothole in Arizona.
GARY CAMPBELL
I vote that the speculators and wingnuts be hunted down and garroted by individual Jeffersonian patriots starting with that fat uneducated pig Gush Limbaugh!
Sort of a cleansing of the sewer rats!
scav
@dr. bloor: Don’t forget nothing purchased should require transportation or reflect those transportation costs either for it not to matter.
Frank
@mb:
I assume you will also demand the names of speculators when the price goes down…
I never understand the logic; people blame speculators when the price goes up. But there is never a peep when the price goes down.
mclaren
Why is this “an odd statistic”?
The world is running out of oil and the Chinese are using fantastic amounts of it at an accelerating rate. What do you think is going to happen to the price of oil, idiots?
Take a look at this graph and see for yourself.
Obama is a fool and the rest of you are thoughtless jackanapes. I’ve been telling you and telling you for years now that with the world running out of oil, we’re going to see gasoline prices and oil prices in general skyrocketing in the near future. The only reason we haven’t seen skyrocketing gasoline prices in America so far is because the entire world is a mired in a massive recession that has crushed demand. Obama should’ve required Detroit to totally re-engineer production for something like electric mopeds or biodiesel busses, instead of unsustainable insanely wasteful single-person cars. I’ve been saying for years now that one of the best ways to whip this recession would’ve been for Obama to announce an emergency crash program bigger than the Manhattan Project to produce new multi-person vehicles that are orders of magnitude more energy-efficient that our current bizarrely crude and foolishly wasteful single-person cars. I’ve been saying for years now that we have to tear down most of our cities and rebuild ’em to accomodate mass transportation. These huge projects would employ many tens of millions of people, and would require trillions of dollars of government investment…but at the end of the process, we’d be well on our way to totally renewable energy, instead of stuck in our current doomed 1950s-style Happy Motoring pipedream — soon to turn into a nightmare as gasoline prices soar past $20/gallon.
You people just laughed and laughed. “Gas costs only $3 per gallon,” you people snickered. “Mclaren is off his thorazine drip,” you giggled.
When I predicted that Southern California would grind to a halt after gasoline hit $20 per gallon, you people just howled with laughed. Well, it’s gonna happen — and not 100 years from now, but within the next few years. Nobody knows exactly how soon, but certainly within the next few presidential election cycles.
And what is America’s halfwit reaction to this onrushing economic oilpocalypse, when $20/gallon gasoline shuts down Southern California and empties out Phoeniz AZ and crushes interstate trucking into economic infeasability?
Nothing.
Shithole America is sitting around with its thumb up its ass, repeating “NEENER NEENER NEENER, I can’t hear you!” while it manufactures ever bigger SUVs and builds ever more Wal-Marts which can only be patronized by soon-to-vanish customers roaring around in giant hulking cars that burn soon-to-cost-$20-per-gallon gasoline.
Stupidity, thy name is America.
Canuckistani Tom
Ah, quit yer whining, you folks have it easy
http://www.GasBuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx?city1=USA Average&city2=Canada Average&city3=&crude=n&tme=72&units=us
ETA Stupid WP, make link work!
Southern Beale
@dr. bloor:
Sorta. It’s being powered by the solar array on my roof.
Martin
@dr. bloor:
Almost no electricity in the US is generated from the oil chain. Coal, natural gas, nuclear – virtually no oil used at all.
MikeJ
@Martin: Mostly hydro here in the PNW.
Southern Beale
@Martin:
80% of electricity in the U.S. is generated by coal.
Also, don’t forget hydro.
DanielX
Nothing happens by coincidence in politics. Everything happens for a reason.
bjacques
Man, I need to catch up. Anyway, the GOP scandals are colliding into each other at this point.
Southern Beale
@MikeJ:
THEY FORGOT HYDRO!
:-)
Speaking of power, just saw this about Cincinnati poised to become America’s largest city powered entirely by renewable energy.
I sorta feel like the GOPs “drill here drill now” stuff is akin to their trying to roll back the clock on contraceptives and other culture war stuff. They’re fighting another losing battle, because the economics are just not in their favor. We’ve reached a point in this whole Peak Oil thing where renewables are cheaper. So for the most part they’re just trying to whip their base into a frenzy over something that even they can see hurts their pocketbooks. Like that stupid lightbulb thing.
Yutsano
@Southern Beale: I saw a presentation given by Michio Kaku (who appears on FOX too much for my taste but he’s still a smart man) where he said that we’re approaching the intersection where renewables and oil are cost-effective at the same level. Then we go through a rough transition for about twenty years. Then fusion comes online. We may have just started to hit that intersection point, so we just need to ride out the transition. If the feedback loops don’t take us out first.
lacp
Wall Street’s “priority two” is the destruction of the Obama presidency? Republicans, sure, but I can’t think of any reason Wall Street would be particularly interested in that.
Chris
@lacp:
Where does the one end and the other begin?
dmsilev
@Yutsano:
Commercial fusion has been twenty years away for the last fifty years.
(old joke, but quite true unfortunately. It’s a hard hard problem.)
Chris T.
@Southern Beale: You’re ahead of me: my solar array won’t be up and running for months yet. (I’m also doing a pretty minimally sized system, and will expand it later. The guys who are doing it for me use “microinverters” on each panel, so that you can add one panel at a time if you like.)
JoyfulA
Our local school district just installed a solar array on the entire slanting side of a big building.
Almost makes up for the enormous number of school buses.
Chris T.
@Southern Beale: It’s not 80% (coal), it’s just over 50% (if you use “total energy”).
If you use “generating capacity” rather than “energy produced”, it’s well under 50%, as new capacity these days is mostly natural gas. Gas fired plants cost much less (about 1/3 as much) to build than coal plants. Coal plants are run more today—hence the higher total-energy number—because the fuel is relatively cheap, i.e., once you’ve already wasted the cash (in today’s terms) to build the coal plant, you might as well run it really hard. (In the 1970s the coal plants were cheaper to build, and they last about 50 years, hence they’ll be going off line this decade.)
demimondian
@Southern Beale: Not true. Coal produces less than 50% of US base load — it’s useless for transient supply — and base load comprises no more than 40% of all US electric generation.
redshirt
I have a solar system supporting a geothermal heating/cooling system, the net result is I use no fossil fuels, or wood, or anything outside my own house. Love it.
RareSanity
I think I have a pretty simple fix for our Wall St. betters…
In the futures markets, for “sensitive” goods like oil, wheat, milk, frozen concentrated orange juice…wait, that last one was from the movie Trading Places, so never mind.
Anyway…these derivative markets should have a “sliding” rule, as follows:
In order to purchase contracts, within the current, or a future expiry period, you must have actually taken delivery of said commodity, at least once in the three months preceding the initial purchase of the position. If you don’t meet that requirement, you will still be allowed to open a, current expiration period position, if you agree to the following stipulation: You will actually take delivery, of 100% of the quantity of the initial contract purchase. The size of the position can not be adjusted, unless there is sufficient explanation of how the initial quantity, would have meet the purchaser’s needs, and how the purchaser’s needs have changed, requiring an adjustment of the positon.
Not taking delivery of 100% of the held position, will initially result in a warning, and a fine equal to the unexercised portion of the position. Failure to take delivery of at least 75% of the position will result in a fine, and a the entity being placed on “probation” for the next three months.
The less and less they take delivery of, the heavier the fines and penalties get, until eventually they lead to an entity being banned from trading in commodities markets.
This way, you make sure that they only people participating in the market, therefore setting the “market value”, of a commodity, are only ones that have “skin in the game” and force out all the speculators, that have no intention of ever actually using the commodity they are artificially raising/lowering the price of.
What do you guys think? Not that it would ever happen, but it’s a good idea, right?
mb
@Frank: I guess I’m not clear on why I should blame the speculators if the price goes down? Or even why I’d want to “blame” anybody for prices dropping.
My point is that we are being told that the prices are high because of speculators who, I assume, are not folks like airlines who speculate on oil futures as a cost stabilization strategy but rather humps who are just trying to keep prices high to make a buck. Personally, I think we ought to regulate them out of the market, but since that seems unlikely, we should know who they are and they should be exposed to the anger of people whose money they are, imo, stealing.
If you want to yell at them when the prices drop, be my guest.
magurakurin
@mclaren:
To be fair to the people who may have made that jab at you, your opinions on dwindling world oil supplies probably wasn’t actually the reason for those jabs. Your kung fu is strong, brah.
Chris Andersen
Gas prices always go up in the Spring of a presidential election year. What’s interesting is that they often seem to fall by the time the actual election comes around.
My theory: even if there is some attempt to manipulate the market going on, it is imperfect at best. It may work for a few months, but sustaining it over an entire election year is nearly impossible. Those who may try it always seem to start to soon. If they started jacking up the prices in the Summer then the inevitable fall back would come after the election. But they always seem to jump the gun.
magurakurin
@lacp:
yeah, why exactly does Wall Street want to destroy Obama? The DOW is poised to hit 13,000. My own portfolio is up 98% since January 2009.
Obama certainly hasn’t sucked for my stock portfolio.
GWB…not so much.
General Stuck
A lot of people have been saying the same thing for years now, including me, Obama, and a cast of thousands. There has to be the political will for at least 60 percent of the voters and senators to make it a reality. If Obama hadn’t pulled a sneaker by loading up his stimulus bill with R anD D money, we would just about be doing nothing to find alternative energies. It’s called the real politick world, and Obama and the rest of us have to live in it, until the usual impending disaster motivates the apathetic voters to make it happen.
I don’t know why anyone would say such a thing to a thoughtful reasonable, intelligent individual like your self, McClaren. Oh wait
Your treatment here is in your hands, dude. You have a lot of info and ideas to offer. But you just have to leave off the acid tripping Howard Beale routine, if you want to be taken seriously.
ice weasel
Oh there’s so many things here.
-If we learn anything from history we know that the right will do anything to win an election. Anything. In essence, anything that damages the left could be an act of someone trying to influence things. That may sound paranoid but it’s not. Look back at that the four decades of elections.
-While some folks with EVs or hybrids may be buttheads, the strategy, not being as reliant on the pump price of gasoline, is a good one. Just keep that in mind.
-If you using an argument that Fox uses to bash something, you might very well be wrong. Broken clocks and blind squirrels aside, using less gasoline in private automobiles is a good thing, no matter what.
-I will be very interested to see how gasoline prices continue to change for the rest of the year. I can’t make predictions other than, it’s usually a sucker bet to think gasoline will be the same price it is now or less. The trend is ever upward with small, usually short term, downward blips.
-One other thing about petroleum that is almost never, ever discussed. The dumbest fucking thing we can do with petroleum is wastefully burn it in cars. It just is. Arguably, there is a limited supply of the stuff. We use petroleum a number of very important ways. The idea that we can burn millions of barrel of this stuff and not adversely affect our future isn’t about the cheap price of gas, it about plastics, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, many of which are based on petroleum. My point here is simple. If we were a rational society (and we’re not) we would look at the things we make from this limited and ever getting more expensive resource and ask ourselves, what are our priorities for this resource and how can we use it most effectively.
-Don’t forget, gas you don’t buy, goes to China. Jokes on us, save 8%, we export more.
trollhattan
@ice weasel:
Pretty much spot on.
It took a long time to orchestrate but I now don’t need a car to commute to work, so my car is a weekend & vacation vee-hikle. Guess I’m a DFH by default. We get 300+ sunny days/year here so at some point, PV will go on the roof, which will take a big whack out of our bill. Our electrical utility is ahead of the mandate on their renewal portfolio, and uses zero coal energy from anywhere.
Just read San Diego Gas and Electric is trying to penalize their PV generating customers. Could become an important test case for the PUC.
mclaren
@General Stuck:
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@mclaren:
To paraphrase the Tao Te Ching: One should go into Peak Oil as one goes to a funeral.
Why are you so excited?
General Stuck
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
Going to a funeral is like attending the Senior Prom for Mclaren. On a moped fueled by the vapors.
guckertgannon
@c u n d gulag:
That is some seriously good idea-ing. The wicker baskets and the pikes! Yikes!
guckertgannon
@mb:
You’re on the right track, though there are some real world numbers out there that serve as guidance.
The key is, as you identified, the amount of, and the timing of taking commodity delivery.
I don’t know the exact numbers these days, but I think in much of the last 20+ years, oil futures buyers (includes pure speculators) have had to take no more than 25% of the oil, probably within 90 days of getting the oil on a ship; if anything, fewer days than that.
Commonly accepted calculations show that if you budge the percentage figure up in a couple 5 or 10 point (not basis points) moves, you radically diminish a speculator’s profits. Around 50 to 60 percent, you’ll wipe out the speculators almost entirely, which only buys you powerful political enemies, so the presumed route forward is the aforementioned, measured steps of 5 to 10 points.
If Obama is going to fight to win this election, he’d better get working on exactly this subject. Most of the control is at regulatory agencies, i.e., unavailable by mere POTUS Executive Order, so he’s got to start figuring out how to push the agencies in timely fashion.
guckertgannon
@RareSanity:
That immediately previous note of mine was meant for you, dahling, not MB. I don’t like MB any more. Only you I think of. Do you like this outfit?
fuckwit
Boosting gas prices is the best thing for the economy, entrepreneurs, business, this country, the environment, and our future.
Let the oil companies do this suicidal thing they seem to want to do. The higher oil prices are, the more economically viable conservation and green technologies become. And let’s get off of cars and start building public transit. Let every single investor in solar energy, wind power, hydroelectric, alterative fuels, and rail get a big return. Let more green jobs flourish.
I don’t see any loss, really. I want Americans to be angry that we have a train system that would embarass Bulgaria, that we waste ridiculous amounts of money on highways and roads, and that we have squandered our national wealth in impossible, unsustainable, “free market” suburban sprawl.
Gas prices are too damn low. Europeans already pay the equivalent of $5/gal for petrol, or more. A lot of that money goes to taxes to fund public transit. Which is as it should be.
chopper
@General Stuck:
guys, you don’t realize. mclaren is the one who told us all about the idea of peak oil. nobody knew it at all until he himself coined the term. those of us who have been tracking and studying the issue for years literally don’t exist.
bob h
There is always a very convenient loss of refining capacity, and I think we have that now, as well. I suppose he could open the national petroleum reserve, if it is not already open.
Not Sure
@ploeg: Or the Powers That Be can choke off the supply. Maybe start a refinery fire or two. How else can diesel, the demand for which is usually augmented by the supply for home heating oil, be $4.30/gal. already when we’ve had the mildest winter in many years in the Northeast? Come down to my basement and let me show you the gauge on my oil tank. 3/4 full in late February. I’m still stitting on 85 bags of wood pellets out of 200.
chopper
@mclaren:
I would think that dropping half a trillion dollars or so to wholesale change the entire personal transportation system in a country with 250 million passenger vehicles alone is not the sort of thing a president could do with the stroke of a pen. it ain’t like dropping a bomb on some al Qaida nut bag in a training camp somewhere.
McJulie
@El Cid: And thus you have summed up the problem with libertarian thinking. I have similar arguments with space mad libertarian science fiction lovers. I try to point out that if space was profitable, big business would already be there, making a profit. Because that’s how this works.
I think it’s because they aren’t really capitalists in the usual sense. They worship the free market as a god. So they make the appropriate sacrifices in the faith their god will bless them. When the blessings don’t come, the only answer is pray harder.
General Stuck
@mclaren:
Well, you got me there. I was talking about creating a Manhattan Project for alternative fuels, mostly, which I have heard Obama mention, and I mentioned it myself just the other day here. I am sure Obama didn’t come out for getting rid of “personal vehicles” for some other kind of vehicle, because I don’t know what that means. Something like the Jetson’s tooled around in? scratches head. Or, maybe Fred Flintstone’s yabba dabba doo feets powered car?
Evolving Deep Southerner
@mclaren:
You took the giggled words right out of my mouth.
ice weasel
@chopper: You may be right but that doesn’t make the point itself less true. Sadly, we’ve lost the ability to take on big projects in this country but it is what we need.