By which I mean the House Republican Conference:
Hey there … since you were kind enough to post our previous House GOP Conference web video on FISA, “America at Risk,â€Â I wanted to be sure you saw our latest … this one on skyrocketing gas prices.
Remember when Speaker Pelosi promised a commonsense plan†to lower gas prices in the 2006 campaign? We do. The second anniversary of that promise is …. TOMORROW.
And now gas is more than 50 percent higher than it was she was sworn-in in Jan. 2007. We call it the Pelosi Premium. We highlight it in our latest video … please check it out if you get a chance: http://youtube.com/watch?v=M5UYNX_XGQAÂÂ
She’ll get to it, Dan. Managing all of your and my best interests takes a long time.
But it’s still not as high (adjusted for inflation) as in March 1981.
The House Republican Conference should listen more and talk less I think. I have a few thoughts I would like to share for sure.
What’s the GOP plan to stop the rise in prices? They going to stop the Fed from cranking out more funny money, perhaps? Or do they plan to pass a law to freeze gas prices, and bring back those ever popular gas lines?
please, Ardsgaine, like the Dems ever have anything more constructive than “Ur doin it r0ng”
;D
1. End ethanol subsidies
2. End CAFE credits for fleet fuel economy to auto manufacturers
3. End farm subsidies
That’ll have more effect on food prices than anything else. Fuel prices at the pump are governed more by futures trading in crude oil than anything else. That bubble is going to have to burst, and eventually it will. And, it’s going to hurt–worse than subprime mortgages. But gasoline will be very cheap afterward.
So here’s point 4 which will have an impact.
4. Bring every pressure to bear on the NYMEX to raise the margin on pertroleum by a significant amount.
The current margin price on oil is rougly $3500. For that price anyone can make a futures contract on a quantity of oil that is worth $74000.
The world today is awash in petroleum because of this. When you hear that the price of a barrel of crude is $117, that’s not what you’d pay for a barrel of oil down at Ye Olde Oil Store, for that you’d have to look up the spot price. when futures prices are higher than spot prices, holders of pertroleum, hold it. It’ll be worth more in the future.
For this reason world stocks of oil are greater than ever. Production is higher too; even Iraq which exceed pre-war production levels last December. Supply isn’t the problem. Demand, specifically future demand, is.
Raise the margins, discourage speculation, prices will come down.
Hmmmm.
Just watched O’Reilly. I cannot believe the guy simply doesn’t understand a free market. He had some finance guy on the show talking about oil prices. The guy carefully explains that the oil market is a free market with lots of people in it. But O’Reilly just keeps yammering on about “who is the guy that sets the prices?” like he’s a complete asshole.
God Damn! Hasn’t the jackass ever been at a flea market? Bid on something on Ebay?
O’Reilly is a fucking idiot.
For a free market it’s getting kind of expensive though.
I’d tell him that “the guy” is a high school kid, making a little more than mnimum wage, that changes the numbers at the gas station on the corner.
Fuel prices at the pump are governed more by futures trading in crude oil than anything else.
Intelligent people think the price of crude is going to go higher in the future. Instead of making it illegal for them to act on their belief, maybe we should ask ourselves why they believe it. It might be because they think there’s a good chance that the US will be pulling out of Iraq within six months after the next inauguration, throwing the Middle East into chaos. It might be because they think that our government is going to keep producing funny money, and they’re holding crude as a hedge against inflation. It might be because they know that in spite of major new discoveries of oil in this country, there is zero chance that the environmentalists will allow anyone to bring it to the market.
Don’t blame the speculators. That is like killing the messenger.
Here is my solution to the oil problem.
1. Let specualators run wild.
2. Refuse to let anyone drill for oil ANYWHERE that is even marginally American
3. Refuse to let anyone build a new refinery on American soil.
4. Mandate totally ridiculous ethanol percentages in gasoline.
5. Let all moronic politicians demand boutique gasolines for their own districts.
6. Let the Chinese sit two miles from our oil in Cuban waters, and steal it by drilling horizontally into Americab “reserves” – which our retarded politicians refuse to let us even THINK about touching.
My God! What kind of assholes are actually stupid enough to elect mongoloids like Pelosi and Reid, and the rest of the fucking assholes that pretend that they have half of a brain? When I think about it, their thousand dollar an hour hookers are nothing compared to what WE have to pay for them to stick their egos up our butts.
I really do worry about my son, who is daily being stuffed with horseshit that makes Eugenics look like genius.
RTO Blasphemy! You believe in Govt. Regulations on Markets? You should be shot!! The whole point of the Bush/Cheney Oil Patch monogamy is Monopoly and Profit. (why’d the Dems miss the fact that Cheney was a resident of Texas before getting elected w/ Bush as I believe it a constitutional violation…of course he was from Wyoming years before….but still had residence in Texas prior to election for about 7 years. A technicality, you bet, but then Conan should be able to run for Pres. if Two dudes from Texas could do the State Monogamy thing in the Pres/VP slot. besides Wyoming is a colony of Texas….cornholed Texas cowboys.
maybe with any luck if the cowboys stopped doing it on the mountains they’ll pass Vermont to let VT be the least populated state.
bmoe, embarressed? you should be. He’s one of YOUR chief Propagandists. O’Reilly! I’ll take Terri Gross over that @@=s**t any day.
Dan, linking that weak tea twice is a bit much. Yeah, sure? Dem’s own maybe 1/2 of the 3 whole branches of govt.? I don’t think they could do much even if they’re main contributors ala Citibank, Wall Street scions etc. would let them. Ever heard of Republicrats, Democans? I don’t see Lieberman asking to limit oil future’s trading any time soon. Maybe he and McCain will surprise us riding down off of Middleclass-Brokeback Mtn.
“3. Refuse to let anyone build a new refinery on American soil.”
Making up shit as you go, eh?
Oil companies can build as many refineries in Texas and other southern friendly states as they want…but it costs money, and might increase supply and reduce profits. Simple as that. And refiners tend to be “independent” entities and forced to take it in the ass just as the big guys limit their costs and want to make Govt. and enviro’s look bad just as they’ve planned this all along. More refineries would cost money and limit profits, again you should remember M. Milkin’s rule: privatize profits, socialize costs. i.e. like GW Bush’s Ranger’s baseball team Franchise tax the people to build a stadium and take away some of their homes to do it, and reap all the profits from a virtually free circus for the owners. Can’t you tell I love Professional Sports?
Like Enron cooking the books remember?
“Let the Speculators run wild.”
hah, is that sarcasm as to Republican doctrine? Enron’s Senator Phil Gramm is McCain’s and Bush’s Uncle Advisor. Besides unless there is a miracle in Nov, the Republican Executive has a veto to any restrictions on the market and he’s backed by a Republican-conservative packed Supreme Court.
The world reckons oil prices in dollars, and the value of the dollar has been collapsing faster than Obama’s reputation among waffle shop patrons. Until somebody does something about that, intelligent people are not mistaken in thinking “the price” is going to keep going up.
Thing is, I think the somebody that’s supposed to do something about the value of a dollar, is too busy trying to take over the job of regulating Wall Street to do its real job.
So what’s your point? That O’Reilly’s not a complete asshole?
Cite, please ;)
Wow.
Just… wow.
Look, the price of gasoline is almost completely determined by the price of crude, the cost of refining the crude, distribution and marketing costs, and tax. Oil company profit margins are relatively low, compared with other businesses, so even if you cut said profit margins to zero, you’re talking a couple of dimes difference in the cost of a gallon of gas.
So, who determines the price of a barrel of crude? The market. The notion that current pump prices are caused by refinery bottlenecks is…not well-substantiated, to be kind. You could get within a nickel of the current pump price, using at-the-pump numbers from a half decade ago.
Rob C – I have a 2 week old daughter at home that has already forgotten more about economics than datadave has ever known, or will know in the future.
Well, maybe not within a nickel. The numbers I have are nationwide averages, so what you’re going to be able to predict is more of a nationwide average.
Normally prices in Florida are fairly close to the nationwide average, but I paid $4.47 a gallon here in Orlando just this morning, and the nationwide average figures are almost a dollar cheaper. I’m guessing that there’s some time-averaging going on, and that those numbers are actually more than a week or two old.
Slightly OT, but a construction question for datadave:
If you were going to do it all over again, how would you lay out your earth-berm home so that your compost toilet wouldn’t contaminate your potable water supply and, in turn, mitigate further brain damage?
Oops, that should have read $3.47.
Oil companies can build as many refineries in Texas and other southern friendly states as they want…but it costs money, and might increase supply and reduce profits.
I don’t know, dave, I think most of us would gladly pay a little bit more to not have to wait in those long lines at the pump or fool with those rationing cards.
And in fact taxes make up a much bigger share of the price of gasoline than oil company profits. Fun fact — confound your friends.
And only dogmadave would honestly believe oil companies — or anyone else, for that matter — have found a way to make more money by selling less product. Even OPEC figured out after the second embargo in the ’80s that jacking up the price of crude only made non-OPEC supplies more profitable to exploit.
But that was before it became obvious we were never ever ever going to drill in ANWR.
A fact that will become untrue at around $8 a gallon, but for now: no quibble.
“No new refineries” is not quite the case.
It’s quite true that nobody has cleared land and put up a brand-new facility in a long time. That’s pretty well impossible, even in Texas and Louisiana — we have plenty of real estate agents with enough time on their hands to gain control of local politics, and serious concerns about “impacting property values”.
But if you travel along I-10 or the Intracoastal Waterway you will see a lot of aluminum-painted knots of piping, tanks, and incomprehensible gear, none of which was there as recently as ten years ago — there was something there before, and only the deeply knowledgeable can tell the difference, but what’s there now is all new. This is because you can’t get a permit for a new refinery, but you can get a permit to overhaul the old one, especially if you promise to reduce emissions and/or increase payoffs to local government. They “repair” or “expand” a lot of old equipment, almost always by razing it to the ground and putting in new.
This may be slowly coming to an end. “Repair and modification” permits are getting harder to get, because Texas authorities are sensitive to the charges of having an outside “carbon footprint”. The excess comes almost entirely from processing the fuels that go up the pipeline to the blue states, but nobody figures it that way. It’s going to be interesting when Texas tries to reduce its carbon footprint to that of, say, New York. The only way to do that would be to either live in mud huts or cut off datadave’s fuel supply. Which do you reckon might happen?
It goes back to the op-ed writer who declared that the Northeast shouldn’t provide refuge to the redneck victims of Global Warming when the time comes, on the ground that it’s all their fault anyway. I’ll take that declaration without complaint, provided that I’m entitled to the reverse principle — when the glaciers cover Boston, I’m entitled to refuse to ship more gas up the pipeline on the ground that it would irresponsibly increase my contribution to CO2 emissions.
Regards,
Ric
Some. Quite a bit else is, just like teh tech stocks, just like subprime, a significant number of eager beavers chasing after the newest trendy fad. That these might also make you rich is just extra incentive.
Illegal? Who said anything about illegal? I said pressure the NYMEX to raise the margin prices.