Greed part deux

Hi Everyone:

Back in March I talked about oil prices. Now I can't believe that Americans are not hanging out of their windows and screaming, I am mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!

Just in the past 6 weeks or so the price of gasoline has increased almost $.75/gallon. Now let's review what happened about a year ago. We were all told that India and China were using a lot more gas to fuel their economic development and consequently demand was higher and supply was lower. Well we all know now that that wasn't really the case and that speculators were the real culprits in the extraordinary increase in the prices. One year ago, a barrel of oil was selling for $148.00 with the price of gas a little over $4.00 per gallon. Today the cost of a oil is around $75.00 per barrel. That is almost 50% less than a year ago. BUT, the price of gas is closing in at $3.00 per gallon. WHAT? By my math if $148/barrel of oil equates to $4.00+/gallon of gas then $75/barrel of oil should equate to about $2.00/gallon of gas. There is a huge problem here! Doesn't anyone else see this?

Let's further review the differences between now and a year ago. We are now in the worst recession since the great depression of 1929 which lasted for years afterwards. In our current recession, millions of people have been laid off from their jobs which means that there are fewer people commuting to work and people are doing less driving period. It has been published in numerous media outlets that we, as a country, are using a lot less gasoline. Let's also not forget that this current recession is a global one and not just affecting our country. The global economic factor is lowering the global consumption of gasoline/oil. Less global consumption means less demand which equates to a larger supply. This all means that the price of gas (or the price of oil) should not be increasing. If anything, the prices should be decreasing. Six months ago when the OPEC members lowered their production, the prices kept sliding.

Now though it seems that it is business as usual for the oil companies and probably the speculators that the summer driving season means higher prices. It is very apparent that greed rules supreme and damn the people who can hardly afford to live (due to the massive layoffs). Again I repeat, why aren't people mad as hell about the price of gas? It is evident that common sense looses out to greed every time. This is wrong at every level.

Til next week.