There appears to be no logical reason for oil prices to have doubled in the last year, except for pure speculation. At some point George Soros and the rest of the speculators are going to run out of money to pump the bubble. Demand hasn't gone up 100 percent. Gasoline demand in the US is starting to go DOWN.
This is exactly what happened to the housing market in the housing bubble. Certain people, (we'll call them idiots for want of a better term) kept the market going up and up until regular people couldn't afford housing. No matter what the idiots did, people couldn't afford the outlandish prices (doubled in some places in a very few years) so demand started down, then prices followed, when there was no longer enough demand to support the idiots pumping the bubble.
Only in this case, the spike in gas prices is causing far deeper problems. People are having to choose buying gas or eating in some cases, and worse things in others.
George Soros is a known speculator and tried to break the Bank of England once and very nearly did. That takes a hell of a lot of money. I'd almost bet that disguised under several layers of phony companies, he's helping to push the oil bubble, so he can get his way in politics here in America. And he's probably not the only one, just one of the more noticeable ones. What if he's trying to break the Federal Reserve Bank by pumping oil? He's made it known, though his funding of MoveOn.org and other liberal front groups, that he wants a LIEberal in the White House. And anyone that has enough power to nearly break one of the largest financial institutions in the world has enough power to at least try to get what he wants. What if the high price of oil is just Soros' way of making sure Obama is elected in November? And who is going to object? The Saudis? Hell, no, they're more than happy to get double their money from the Western infidels. The oil companies? Hell, no, they're reaping record profits, while at the same time complaining about how much their raw material costs, and not exploring for new sources. (And don't the oil companies have a vested interest in the crude price of oil coming out of certain fields anyway?) The government, neither the Democraps nor the Republicants don't really seem to care either, because they're getting record revenues from the high price of gasoline, diesel, and other petroleum products.
Once again, the American consumer get it right where it hurts. Many of us are already trying to conserve, and have been for some time. But cutting the demand doesn't even seem to have an effect on the price, either. That's a serious sign that something other than the natural law of supply and demand is determining price. Where the hell are the consumer watchdogs? They're strangely silent these days. We hear a lot of talk about high gas prices, but I haven't seen, except maybe in the Wall Street Journal, anything deeper than mere bitching about high gas prices.
Are we going to start referring to George Bush as Herbert Clark Hoover the next? People don't remember their history at all. Herbert Hoover was a hero during WW1 for implementing conservation without rationing here in the US, and after WW1 for helping feed Europe while they were still recovering. He was also a hero for keeping the radio mess under control in absence of any effective regulations prior to 1927. But what most people think of when they think of Herbert Clark Hoover, is the Great Depression and his failure to do enough about it to make a difference.
Will that be George Bush's legacy? Instead of the hero of 9/11 and the war against terrorism, will we remember that it was on his watch that gas went from 1.85 to over 4 dollars a gallon, while the dollar collapsed and the economy soured?
Charles the Curmudgeon