I saw a gas station advertising regular unleaded for $2.09 the other day. When the fuck did this happen?!? I don't drive, so I don't generally pay much attention to gas prices, but I was honestly shocked when I saw that. Was I hallucinating?
That's not exactly true. Demand is down due to the global recession, but not nearly enough to justify a 40% drop in crude oil and gas prices in just a few months. The overinflated energy prices that we saw for most of the year were due to excessive speculation in the unregulated commodities market. When the investment banks (many of whom were engaged in purchasing outrageous amounts of fuel strictly for the purpose of driving up the price of energy without ever taking delivery) started to collapse, the commodities bubble burst and the prices began to normalize. $147 a barrel oil was a direct result of a lack of government regulation and a painful lesson about the idiocy of engaging in totally unfettered capitalism.
All that is econo-speak for "The Bush Administration gave the oil companies who backed it in '00 and '04 a license to print money." That prices are going down just as he leaves office is no coincidence.
It's not just about the oil companies being given free reign. We're seeing the consequences of the adherence to the theory that the essence of the free market eliminates any need to codify a set of rules and regulations that governs business transactions and punish transgressions against said circumscriptions because the drive for profit in and of itself forces individuals and companies to conduct themselves in an ethical manner. Additionally, there's the farcical notion that average consumer and the economy as a whole benefited from the "trickle down" effect after the oil companies and a handful of other corporations made huge profits from energy prices. :smt101 If you give a person a chance to fuck someone else over with impunity in order to enrich himself with no consequences, he will. It's human nature.
complete, no-holds barred degregulation often benefits those who are most capable of "working the system"...the problem now is that the coporate big-wigs have gotten burnt..and they want a way out...while holding on to as much cash as possible
I've driven through nearly every state in the west over the past 4 months. Today i saw fuel for $1.99 in the middle of Nebraska..Woah. For all Americans complaining about the cost of fuel - when it was over $4 a gallon a few months ago - it was still some of the cheapest fuel in the world. The price now, divided into Litres...is less than I remember fuel costing at home for at least 12 or more years... I am shocked, and kind of happy! Yeay for the driving holiday and cheap fuel!
Yeah, but in just about every other developed country there's a wider selection of fuel efficient vehicles as our CAFE standards are a bad joke, and the taxes that are collected on those petrol prices in the other parts of the world go to much more extensive public transit systems, health care and a lot of other things many Americans don't have access to without paying exorbitant fees. Keep in mind that the so-called "middle-class" in this country subsides largely on debt at this point, so a lot of people were pushed close to the breaking point when fuel prices spiked last summer. It's really not fair to make that comparison without looking at the way that our country is structured.
