DISQUS

jr · 1 year ago

"there's no inflation"-Ben Bernanke's next circle jerk meeting

KerrynowCampau · 1 year ago

So the oil company profits are not as massive as they seem?

donotmakemecomedownthere · 1 year ago

Someone please ask John McCain how much it costs to fill up the gas tank on his wife's pretty little jet - and who's footing the bill.

OlderAndWiser · 1 year ago

And Bernanke is expected to drop the institutional interest rate to 2% on Wednesday.

Doesn't anyone in DC have any sense? Think I answered my own question.

steve303 · 1 year ago

Your title actually suggests that this administration has a monetary policy -- it doesn't! They are far more interested in providing large corporations with free or low cost money than actually trying to maintain a stable economic system. A number of us, for the past year, have been screaming about this. BushCo with the Fed have been pushing rates down and down to a point where some treasury bonds now yield negative returns. This is an unmitigated disaster, the government believes that because they control the CPI calculation they can hide the 5%-9% inflation people are actually experiencing.

Chris From Maine · 1 year ago

imagine that.. a Bush policy that makes oil men richer.. what a shocker.

michaelt · 1 year ago

the more i know, the less i care.

mccain for president.

let the whole thing burn.

OlderAndWiser · 1 year ago

Anyone seen this yet? Stevens sided with the rightwing...

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087...

devlzadvocate · 1 year ago

Bush's solution - use your stimulus checks to further stimulate the oil companies

jimfromthefoothills · 1 year ago

John, since 4/2003 the dollar has lost 45% of its value against the Euro ($1.1 vs $1.6). Since Bush dumbass took office the Dollar has lost 74% of its value ($.92 vs $1.6). Overconsumption in America, combined with government deficits and low savings have led to the decline.

Forget global fucking warming, we will be bankrupt as a country before that happens.

PeteWa · 1 year ago

heck of an economy, Bushie.

VietnamVet · 1 year ago

During the drive to work on the radio the American Trucking Association economist said that there is a direct correlation between the value of the US dollar and the price of oil. I bet, there is the same correlation with rice and wheat.

To stop the slide of the dollar, interest rates have to rise and the federal government has to stop deficit spending by raising taxes and stopping the flood of money to the DOD for two Middle East occupations.

Not likely when corporate media keeps ignoring the obvious.

vwcat · 1 year ago

Bush has destroyed the economy and the middle class and probably feels he did a service to us by doing so. The man is slime.

Viceroy · 1 year ago

That is utter nonsense. The problem is as follows: 1) the United States in the last decade has faced massive competition for oil from China and India that was not present before (meaning oil goes up) , 3) Americans ("No blood for Oil" remember?) insist upon consuming increasing amounts of oil unnecessarily by driving huge suvs that they don't need, and by having the habit of driving five miles to get a stick of butter. This is not a matter of federal regulation, except in so far as the Government is not interfering with American's wasteful habits. The end result is we are spending much too much on oil sending billions overseas unnecessarily resulting in the devaluing of the dollar. Now if we don't get a Democratic president and Congress that will insist upon raising taxes and thus making businesses less profitable, maybe we can make lemonade out of a lemon by producing more and selling more in Europe and elsewhere. bottom line, regulation of the industry will not work, because corporations are multinational, and will simply move assests and registrations out of the country. I would also point out that the economy was doing fine until we got a Democratic Congress and the threat of higher taxes that stifled investment. I would also point out that George Bush's economic policies took us from the brink after 9-11 when the economy took a trillion dollar hit. No, the problem is American selfishness and self-indulgence (if you are driving more than four cylinders, you are wasting oil), and Democratic threats of raising taxes. End of story.

steve303 · 1 year ago

Viceroy, This is probably one of the most uniformed, irrational, and confused things I've heard. After 9/11, Bush's answer to the economic turmoil was to encourage consumers to borrow and shop by pushing interest rates down -- inflation be dammed. Meanwhile, he's racked up the largest increase in national debt ever by funding tax breaks to speculative investors, two wars, and no-bid, cost+ contracts to unsupervised corporations as he, and congress, either ignored or revoked age old regulation which was designed to prevent the very problems we are seeing.

Oh, and just to be clear, the EU has significantly greater regulation on goods and working conditions then the US does, and their currency seems to be doing pretty well. The problem, for the past 20 years, has not been under-regulation, but the lack of enforcement of existing regulations and the desire to scrap regulatory oversite instead of updating it.

DeadeyeDickCheney · 1 year ago

@Viceroy: Blame Americans first, eh?

Andrew · 1 year ago

Viceroy.....What you have stated is utter baloney. Prices have risen because the dollar has fallen and the reason the dollar continues to fall is because there are two America's. The real one, the Constitutional America was put into a 75 year coma when Roosevelt declared the US government bankrupt in 1933. Don't believe that? Read the congressional record of that year. What was then created was the Corporate U.S. of A and the Federal Reserve bank which is today bankrupt. We are the greatest debtor nation on the face of the earth, but because we rammed the US dollar down the throats of the rest of the world as the reserve currency, their being pulled down as well.
I wouldn't point a finger of blame at those driving SUV's but rather the car makers as well as government. Build it and they will come was their motto and government has done squat since the 70's oil embargo in funding alternative energy sources let alone refiners builiding another refinerfy which hasn't happened in 35 years.
The morons in Congress who decided in their infinite wisdom that using food for fuel would help has to be one of the dumbest things they've ever done as a political body. As I've said before, if I were selling a finite commodity like oil and the purchasing power of the dollars I'm being paid in is falling, then I can't continue to live the life style I was used to. I still want to build my cities in the desert, have my arabian race horses and continue to provide education and medical care for free to my citizens. If the dollar continues to fall, then the only recourse I have is in raising my price so I can still maintain the life style i was used to.
You can point the finger to all those who bought SUV's, but rather you should be giving the finger to those we have elected both Democratic and Republican who decided that taking money from lobbyists was a better deal than looking out for the American people.
This country since the 70's has needed a Manhattan project to advance new fuel alternatives. Frankly, we have wasted the last eight years and trillions of dollars in killing people on the other side of the world over a commodity like oil rather than use our funds in a more directed way at finding alternatives. If you want to place the balme somewhere, look no further than Washington D.C as well as the Corporations which control it.

BlueNTexas · 1 year ago

Sorry Bushie... The credit card demons all have dibs on my check!

DickJones · 1 year ago

Pinning the high cost of oil directly and solely on the fall of the dollar is a huge oversimplification of the issue and just not accurate. There are many reasons the cost of oil is up. Mostly it's due to a worldwide escalation of living standards. The world is getting richer and more and more people worldwide are getting their first cars and using oil. Also over the last 8 years the world economies have been chugging at very high levels and that means manufacturing and development has been at an all time high. Oil demand is through the roof and supply is not keeping pace. When more money chases a limited supply of oil, prices go up. It's the classic supply vs demand principle taught in econ101. Huge new oil finds in Brazil and off the cost of Cuba will be coming online in a few years and help the oil supply. There is also the chance that the huge oil field in North Dakota will be tapped too, if the leftist environmentalist can be beaten and drilling can be accomplished.

Drilling for more oil will create very high paying jobs and provide more oil supply to the market. Combined with greater conservation efforts, the price of oil will come down. But oil is nothing more than a commodity and NO commodity is the same price today as it was a few years ago. It's just not logical to assume that oil should remain the price it was 10 years ago.

SociologistTina · 1 year ago

Thanks for posting this. Economics is not my strong suit, but I'd really like to understand the causes of these over-the-top gas prices better.

Principal · 1 year ago

The logic of oil's rise in price compared to that of other commodities suggests more than a usual and customary inflation rate that is simply to be expected. Yes, there are several factors, including weather, that impact the rising price of commodities . But to suggest that the radical, right-wing economic policies of the IMF, the World Bank, the Federal Reserve, and the Milton Friedman acolytes in this administration have nothing do to with this state of affairs is disingenuous at best. See below a report on rising commodities prices between 2003 and 2007. Note oil has gone up $40 dollars in just one year; have the Bush War chickens come home to roost, yet?


The Best Commodity Performers: 2002-2007
Written by Matt Hougan at HardAssetsInvestors.com
October 05, 2007

Between 2003 and September 2007, gold has gone up 106.8% ($368 to $743).

But even yellow gold has been no match for black. Since 2003, a barrel of oil has inflated 157% - starting at $31.10 a barrel and rising to $80.03 by the end of September 2007.

Natural gas is the poorest-returning commodity we're looking at today, with prices increasing only 22.5% from $5.605/mmbtu in 1/03 to $6.870 in 9/07.

Overall, soybean prices are up 75.75% since 2003 ($5.64 to $9.91). ... Corn has been a different energy story. A few months ago, the news was all about corn and prices were at historical highs. They've come down a bit from then but are still 56.5% higher than they were in 2003 ($2.38 vs. $3.73). Volatility has been due for the most part to the dance between supply levels, exports and crop reports.

But the big winner, as most commodity wonks would tell you, has been copper. It’s the proof in the Chinese pudding. Copper was just chugging along, almost flat until the beginning of 2004, when it started to creep steadily upward until breaking out like crazy in 2005 due to finally-realized increased demand and shortages coming from beleaguered mines. A pound of copper now costs 358.69% more than it did back in '03 (up from 70 cents to $3.63).

nygenxer · 1 year ago

I work in the oil industry.

Oil is priced in US dollars (aka "petrodollars"). The dollar is in the toilet thanks to George Dumbya Bush & the "Federal" Reserve Corporation (why do we borrow our own money at interest from a private corporation?). Oil has become cheaper for everyone else who doesn't use our currency, or whose value isn't attached to ours, to buy. Being relatively cheap for everyone else has helped to increase demand, while production is at or near total capacity for this finite resource.

Additionally, our oil companies have no incentive - just the opposite, actually - to increase refining capactiy. This was intentional on their part; do a google search and you can read the internal memos about reducing refining capacity to increase profits for yourself...sorta like Enron's manipulation of the energy markets by taking power plants offline during times of highest demand.

But the main reason is that the dollar is worth sh*t.

It's important to note that $4 or $5 per gallon of gas is not nearly the true cost either. If you include the cost of the Iraq war, the loss to the US Treasury because of the tax cuts the oil companies get, the cost to the taxpayer for environmental cleanup, the healthcare costs...it goes on and on...the price would be somewhere around $20 a GALLON. You don't see that at the pump because we're borrowing it and politicians from both sides of the aisle are good at hiding debt.

charles1960 · 1 year ago

The people of this country are alot to blame for the soaring prices at the pump due to our ignorance of standing for it. We are proving that we will pay the price by going on and paying the prices they want to throw at us. But the point of the matter is if we can protest abortion, and gay rights, and the right to bare arms and any other thing we don't agree with why is the gas prices not being protested against this country nedds to sit down for 2 or 3 days and then see if the prices come down. so what if we loose a couple days work it would be worth it in the long run. 1 pay check versus the continuing prices of gas to keep us broke and wondering how we are gonna get the next tank of gas.

scottinsf · 1 year ago

That same exact quote leaped out at me too when I was reading Chris' link. When the media reports drops in the value in the dollar they make it sound as if it's no big deal. Ultimately, this huge disparity in the value of the dollar and euro hurts both sides.