Posted by PJM on May 22, 2008 at 9:13 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Hey! Where's the unions when you need them?? Why aren't the teamsters and other unions impacted by sky-high fuel prices protesting and blocking roads, ports, etc...??? Are you waiting on your European colleagues to lead the way? We are all definitely frogs....slowly being simmered; when the boiling point comes, it'll be too late. To all the #@$!! liberals that wanted to keep us energy dependent, what's your answer NOW???
Ticked-off-at-the-pump

Posted by LiveYourBestLife on May 22, 2008 at 9:20 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Drill in Anwar!

We got it, use it.

Posted by ptmama73 on May 22, 2008 at 11:21 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Drill in Alaska the Caribou will adjust.

On a serious note, these men and women are losing their jobs, homes, etc. due to rising gas prices. This has a domino effect on all of us.

We are paying more for necessities and those are rapidly getting to a point where the average middle-class family cannot afford them.

Forget the caribou - think about the humans.

Posted by gcs on May 22, 2008 at 12:35 p.m. (Suggest removal)

You're taking away from my diamond ring fund!! Thanks, asssssholes!!

Posted by PJM on May 22, 2008 at 1:29 p.m. (Suggest removal)

JohnQ I like your idea of a nationwide boycott, but your talk of govt control sounds a bit communistic. Again, the real culprits in this deal are the liberals, though there are plenty of guilty republicans as well, who have insisted on keeping us energy-dependent and refused to fund alternative technologies that are plentiful (biofuels, hydrogen fuel cells, etc..)You think gas prices are bad, wait 'til winter rolls around and people can no longer afford to heat their homes! Blame politics, blame oil industry lobbyists, but don't let this drive us to Socialism.

Posted by whome on May 22, 2008 at 1:46 p.m. (Suggest removal)

JohnQ: Nationalizing (much more palatable than socializing) the oil refineries would not really solve the problem because most of our oil comes from overseas. That being said, the fastest growing economies, the BRIC countries, have basically nationalized all of their energy industries, making them not only stronger economically, but also militarily. The irony is that even mentioning nationalizing certain industries by the US government leads to outrage, but so far no one seems to mind when FOREIGN sovereign wealth funds have been buying huge chunks of our largest banks and energy companies. I mean, what is a bigger national security (i.e. SOVEREIGNTY) threat: the two idiots that had fireworks in their car, or that Citigroup (the largest bank in the world) had to sell part of its company to foreign GOVERNMENTS (not simply foreign investors) to clean up its balance sheet.

Posted by ptmama73 on May 22, 2008 at 1:55 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Drilling in Alaska is not going to fix anything. I agree with that.

My whole point was that NOTHING is being done to alleviate the problem. I believe (just my humble opinion) that the government COULD and SHOULD remove the tax breaks that are given to these industry giants especially since they are pulling in BILLIONS of dollars in profit. The government could then (wishful thinking) apply those funds to developing alternative sources of fuel.

Posted by whome on May 22, 2008 at 2:56 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Jane:

First, Bush had 6 six years of a Republican Congress to get drilling in the ANWR passed. Instead, his solution was to buy oil for the national reserves. Under your Econ 101 theory, GWB was directly responsible for increasing the price of oil because of the artificial demand. On second thought, if the government sells the oil on the open market, they've made quite a profit. Anyways, drilling in ANWR only makes sense if you nationalize it; sell it on the open market and the trillions of dollars from the SWFs will simply bid the price back up to where it was. According to Senate hearings yesterday, the "virtual" demand by funds going long on oil was equivalent to the demand from China.

Second, oil companies don't pay double most companies simply because of their status as oil companies; it's because of the corporate tax rate is marginal, just like the personal tax rate. Comparing ExxonMobil (38%) to the small business making less than 50k (15%) is disingenuous. Finally, the private motive rational may be ideologically correct, but realistically foolish. Gazprom (Russia) and Petrobras (Brazil), both top 10 world corporations, are state-run monopolies that use foreign petrodollars to subsidize domestic energy that fuel their economies.

Want to subsidize your gasoline or natural gas bills? Because of "geniuses" on Wall Street, you can help manipulate oil and natural gas prices by buying USO and UNG ETFs, respectively.

Posted by bkeelin on May 22, 2008 at 5:26 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Drilling in ANWAR and othe places like the Dakota's will not immediatly reduce gas prices. We currently have half the number of refineries that we had 20 years ago. Demand has gone up but the liberal tree huggers have passed so much rediculous legislation when they were in power that it has not been economically feasable to build a new refinery to refine crude oil so we must import it from overseas. These liberal whackos are causing hard working Americans to sacrifice their livilyhoods because they worship the earth like pagans from ancient times. It will take a couple of years once the process starts but we MUST tap our own resources in this country and build refineries both of which will do two things, 1)put Americans to work in higher paying jobs to build the refineries which will be funded by the profits of the oil companies and 2) bring down the cost of crude oil and the cost of gasoline. Thirdly it will reduce or eliminate our dependence on foreign oil which is what real Americans want but the liberal whackos who want socialism and a one world government are going to push the US into bankruptcy, and that includes some who call themselves republicans but are far from it.

Posted by Zod on May 22, 2008 at 6:32 p.m. (Suggest removal)

To the first question: Independents are NOT represented by Teamsters. They are INDEPENDENT!

ANWAR only answers one question. The answer is that of reliance upon the guarantee of another sovereign nation providing us with enough oil to consume. As of today oil supply is not an issue. OPEC is producing all the oil that their customers are requesting. The issue that the misguided should be citing is that of refinement of the oil. Enough OIL is already in the market place.

The prices at the pump are directly related to our economic disaster. You can trace it right back to the mortgage crisis. Money supply was tightening last year. The federal reserve did nothing. They could have eased rates last year. Instead the federal reserve waited for disaster. The REAL problem with prices at the pump is that Investors can find no place other than commodities to make money. Prices at the pump will not change until our economy has struggled out of the credit crisis. The Federal Reserve can then increase the fed funds rate which in turn increases bond yields and the likes. Until this happens, the money will stay in commodities and we will continue to pay for the credit crisis.

Posted by kerwin1959 on May 22, 2008 at 7:03 p.m. (Suggest removal)

I think Iraq owes us enough oil to flood the market. In Texas, there are unused oil fields due to ground water contamination. We don't have enough refineries; none have been built since the '70's, I've heard. When is our Congress going to step in and say......no more???

Remember who your incumbents are when you vote in primaries or the November election. Is your representative doing their job, or just having a good time in Washington with the other members of Congress?

Posted by whome on May 22, 2008 at 7:30 p.m. (Suggest removal)

The REAL problem with prices at the pump is that Investors can find no place other than commodities to make money.
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Zod's got this right. The reason why everyone's in a clusterf**k right now is that no one has ever seen what happens to traditional supply and demand economics (i.e. competition) when there's foreign nations have 10 TRILLION Dollars of reserves (almost the size our entire economy). Under traditional S/D economics, when someone bids the price higher, suppliers come in and drive the price down. But what happens when the individuals bidding the price have so much reserves so that they effectively can corner the market? S/D economics also assumes that producers never price anything below cost, so that the inefficient producers leave the market. If you sell a desired widget more efficiently than say Wal-Mart, do you think they'll actually leave the market? Or would they simply under-price you and effectively corner the market?

According to more observers, long term positions in commodities were meant to allow purchasers to hedge against future prices, and not to be an asset-class in themselves. But the money that financed our housing boom simply moved to commodities, once they milked the housing markets. Already, we've seen airlines, who for decades have hedged against oil fluctuations, basically get obliterated because of speculation. That's why ANWR doesn't work in the long term, unless you somehow prevent the oil from entering the free market. As soon as the oil spigots open, the speculators would simply bid the price back to pre-ANWR prices.

Posted by Neponset on May 23, 2008 at 5:39 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Whome
I think you are right about S/D and speculators. However consumption is also part of the problem - we just use too much energy to get the job done. Trucking is a good example - trucking should not be used for long haul - one trailer, which will not haul as much as a RR box car, requires a very heavy tractor and a driver. Trains are much more efficient both in fuel and manpower. Use trucks for short haul and dist. Air lines are a similar situation.
If we don’t get some decent leadership we will all be walking or if we are lucky catch a bus.

Posted by Ted999 on May 24, 2008 at 10 p.m. (Suggest removal)

The price of diesel keeps going up. Inflation took a big jump this month thanks mostly to gas prices. Food prices are going up because it costs money to produce and haul food to it''s destination. Food staples like wheat, rice and corn are getting expensive and fuel costs are partly to blame for this. It''s a vicious circle. Do the gas companies really think this will not come back to bite them. As public trust of oil companies continues to diminish, they may find they could be facing a strong consumer backlash. It's true they hold the oil and gas but we hold the dollar and remember, it ain''t called the almighty dollar for nothing.

Oil companies sell gas and carmakers sell cars that use gas so it's a mutually beneficial situation for both of them. The solution is to stop buying new cars for a year until carmakers start building 100% electric or hydrogen powered cars, not hybrids. This would send a message to both the carmakers and oil companies that they understand. Sorry car makers but you brought this on yourself by not speeding up the conversion. No pain no gain. Problem solved. Visit our website and take our gas price poll at http://www.nbtv.ca

The results of the poll on NBTV indicate 76% of the public believe that the gas companies are fixing gas prices. 87% believe they are price gouging. 75% believe the gas companies and carmakers conspired to prolong our dependence on gas powered cars. 57% believe the gas companies and government conspired to keep the price higher than normal and sofar our new trust poll it shows that 85% of respondence DO NOT TRUST the oil companies. These are all the results up till now 11:34 pm Thursday May 22, 2008 You can check out the results yourself on www.nbtv.ca if you like.

A study done for the US energy dept says oil prices will spiral upward some day and they predict when this happens all heck will break loose. read the hirsch report http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirsch_repo... . Harper says he can do little to help the consumer so it's up to us.

Posted by Ted999 on June 10, 2008 at 11:27 a.m. (Suggest removal)

I find it interesting that billionaire financier George Soros calls this OIL phenomena a Bubble when everyone else sees a sharp spike in oil prices. He says he believes there are lots of bubbles building in financial markets, and in OIL. To quote him he says "He believes better regulation is necessary to keep commodity prices at more reasonable levels." That's what I have also been saying. The government needs to step in and do something about commodities trading. First of all, OIL and Gas should not be traded like poker chips. The consequences of a mistake are far too grave. Look whats happening in Europe now with strikes and protests etc. Imagine if the same thing happened here. To help make my point imagine if we traded wheat commodities and wheat jumped 100 percent so traders all jumped in and bought more driving the cost up even higher... soon the whole world would starve because wheat prices would skyrocket. There are probably controls on wheat trading so this can't really happen but what about oil. Can Investors drive the price up indefinitely? What controls are in place to prevent a huge spike in prices on the NYMEX. Oil is a key commodity and it's basic for the proper operation of commerce in America. For investers to gamble with this commodity in Futures speculation is very irrational and irresponsible. I firmly believe there needs to be safety controls in place to prevent greed driven spikes in prices on the commodities exchange the same as there were safety controls implimented after the great crash of the Thirty's to prevent a bottoming out of stocks. It's a big game to them... but if the rules of the game are flawed then accidents happen. A huge spike could take prices through the roof and this would not be good for for anyone except PERHAPS for the speculator involved. The Canadian Government is investigating this as we speak and rightly so. If other governments follow suit then futures traders may be forced to follow new rules of trading. Visit our website and take part in our gas poll on http://www.nbtv.ca