Monday, June 15, 2009

Gas prices keep climbing as a meek public pays the piper!

                              By Dave Stancliff    
       Did you happen to notice that gas prices rose again today?
That’s 48 straight days of getting gouged which matches a record for this decade. We keep getting ripped off despite the fact that the demand for gas is weak.
       Crude oils upward swing has been mirrored by the declining value of the dollar. That's because crude futures are bought and sold in U.S. currency, meaning that crude gets cheaper for many buyers as the dollar falls.
      Prices at the pump rose 0.6 cents to $2.669 a gallon, according to auto club AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Services. Prices are a nickel above where they were a week ago and 30.8 cents above month-ago levels, but remain $1.408 below year ago levels.
       Consumers are now paying about $1 billion a day for gasoline compared with about $600 million a day over New Year's weekend and $1.5 billion a day or more a year ago, according to Tom Kloza, publisher and chief oil analyst at Oil Price Information Service.
       The more than 60 percent increase in prices so far this year exceeds anything going as far back as the 1970s, Kloza recently told the press. With all of this in mind, my next question is why haven’t these rising oil prices made front page headlines? Have we already forgotten about last year’s high point in ripping us off at the pump?
       Worse yet, are we just so blown away by this bad economy that we are now accepting whatever hits us like a bunch of sheep? I’m not sure what to make of this. Some experts are saying the good news is that prices look like they may be peaking.
       I wouldn’t bet on that however. It’s rapidly becoming clear to me that we’re going to be back at $4 plus per gallon by Christmas! That should really help stimulate the economy. People are struggling to have the very basics in life right now.
       It seems to me that something is fundamentally wrong with a system of speculators that can make life hell for the majority of Americans by driving up the price of gas whenever they feel like it. I’d call it un-American, but we are a capitalist society, and this is one of the scummy by-products that result.
        I’m trying to think of some upside to all of this. The best I can do is note that fuel-efficient cars will become more prevalent in the future. That is, of course, assuming that we just don’t go back
to walking and riding bicycles like many third world nations today!
       As It Stands, we’ll never be free until fossil fuel is no longer part of our economy.

image via Seeds of Doubt    

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