Who thinks the manipulation of gas prices is an attempt to handcuff the recovery

[DainBramaged]

Poll question: Who thinks the manipulation of gas prices is an attempt to handcuff the recovery

and place the blame at the President's feet yet again?

[Curmudgeoness]

1. I may need to make myself a tinfoil hat, but I do.

I also think that the reason there is a jobless recovery, and housing recovery is not happening, is because the players are playing a chess game here.

:tinfoilhat:

[yurbud]

2. the price of gas dropped right as Bush was leaving office because the speculators were

temporarily low on cash.

Now that they have our bailout money to fuck around with, they are fucking us with it.

[TimesSqCowboy]

8. Amen.

Oil, food, commodities...it's all the cash sloshing around the economy courtesy of the fed's quantitative easing, and traders looking for better returns than the stock market or, even, actually investing money into a productive enterprise.

[Fire1]

3. Man, that is one cute kitty!!! n/t

[Enthusiast]

32. We will soon be using them for fuel.

Kitties and old people.

[notesdev]

4. Oil is not rising in price

the dollar is falling in value

Did you know our main oil storage in Cushing OK is full and not accepting any new deliveries? We have all the oil we can handle.

The dollar is extremely close to all time lows and may breach them as early as Tuesday. China may have sealed the deal on that with its latest announcement.

[stevedeshazer]

5. Your blatant attempt to get me to vote by posting a pic of a cute kitten was successful.

Just thought you should know.

:hi:

[Fire1]

6. Isn't Eric Holder supposed to be "looking into this?" n/t

[tridim]

20. He is, can you give him a few days?

[taterguy]

7. People that rely on a finite resource and are grasping at straws instead of confronting reality?

We're running out of the stuff.

Time to evolve to something other than internal combustion engines to get around.

[BlueCaliDem]

9. Absolutely, I do! Just like businesses holding billions and not creating jobs

so the Republicans could campaign on Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! And corporate media repeating this bullshit until the gullible masses began chanting it, too, just before the 2010 elections.

[madrchsod]

10. i was driving on the ronald reagan tollway yesterday....

i`m figuring that average mph of the cars and small trucks was around 80-85 mph. i guess no one is worrying about the price of gasoline.

[villager]

11. all of the above, actually

n/t

[Turbineguy]

12. No

It's just the sheer number of traders. Years ago I was in Karachi and discovered they did not have unemployed. They had Tour Guides. OK, we do have unemployed but we have lots of traders.

[me b zola]

13. There's a recovery?

[PBS Poll-435]

14. It is more to do with the ASE and GM's inability to develop a large-block V8 in DOHC style.

:shrug:

[cali]

15. I want want want that kitteh.

[DainBramaged]

34. Kitteh rules the DU!

[doc03]

16. As I remember the last time gas was at the $4 level

crude was going at around $140-$150 a barrel. This time crude is in the $110 range. That seems strange to me.

[readmoreoften]

17. The Republicans are so all-powerful. Makes you wonder how come the banks backed Obama in 2008.

Do you really think the Democrats are so "radical" that gas and oil are changing their prices to affect an election? All our presidents do the bidding of banking and oil. They would not need to manipulate prices to pick their pawns. Their pawns are not that powerful.

[doc03]

18. How many times does this have to happen before the

American people get the hint? We got the first warning way back in the 70s and yet people never learn. Today I stopped by a car dealership to see what they had in stock and saw several people looking for small cars and hybrids. Just 6 months ago they had a backlog of hybrids and small cars and people were only interested in 4x4 pickups and SUVs. Isn't it convenient every spring gas goes up before vacation season then in the fall gas prices go down just before the snow starts falling.

[Historic NY]

19. the Commodities Regulators need to go & take out a few speculators...

follow the money trail it leads to the rabbit hole.

[Aerows]

21. They want a new normal of $5/gal

and they want Americans spending more money on EVERYTHING. Until we end speculation on energy and commodities necessary to sustain life, things are going to continue to get worse.

[AlabamaLibrul]

22. I don't - reason being they don't give a jolly damn who's in office nt

[Imagevision]

23. Big Oil speculators are simply taking advantage of using middle east as right of passage

[robinlynne]

24. GREED. GREED. GREED.

[loudsue]

25. Oil prices started going up the MINUTE republicans re-took the house.

In fact, I commented about it to my friends one day. Republicans in office, gas prices sky-rocket.

Remember when Nixon used to enforced price freezes? We used to think he was conservative.

:banghead:

[azul]

26. No fear of oil windfall profits tax while GOP is busy blessing profits.

It's a tough one though for Saudi Monarchs Inc.: world gas usage down, how to keep income flowing to angry mobs for pacification?

When you're driving the SUV over 55, you're giving Prince Bandar a ride to the White House's CIA entrance to the Pentagon. Call me crazy, please.

[kenny blankenship]

27. This is your Fed policy at work

Quantitative Easing trashes the value of the dollar AND simultaneously pumps liquidity into asset markets, inviting people with access to credit (not ordinary folks, but bankers who can borrow at the lowest Fed rates and the discount window) to gamble on the price of oil, among other commodities. The stock market has been on a rampage at the same time that the price of gas rises and rises. There's some seasonality in the rise of gasoline, but the string pushing of the Fed is behind both of these phenomena (destructive speculation and rising prices). Like another poster said: gas isn't getting more expensive - your dollar is getting progressively more worthless. Food prices have also been affected during the past two years of QE.

Some say that the Fed's quantitative easing programs are at an end (QE2 is scheduled to end in June) and that there won't be any new phase, since our creditors won't allow it anymore. Others say QE will continue, because without it stocks will crash (eliminating the only apparent economic bright spot) and the "recovery" will vanish like a dry leaf in a furnace. There is widespread agreement among economists that QE hasn't worked, unless saving the bankers and uber rich at the expense of everyone else was the goal.

[Iwillnevergiveup]

28. $4.11 for regular unleaded at Arco in L.A.

Now can I have the kitteh? I won her for my fact check-in, right?

[Desertrose]

29. Combination of first & last.....greed and they get to blame

the failure of the "recovery" on Obama...but they're gonna do that anyway.



I love that kitteh!

[Keith Bee]

30. Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Nigeria, Mexico

Do you really think they'd want to participate in replacing Obama with a wingnutty Repuke?

[Enthusiast]

31. I predicted this.

Not only the gas prices but the economy in general.

[TheWebHead]

33. combination of reasons

and blame is shared... there's increased demand in the BRIC countries, there's a global economic recovery going on, Bernanke is banging down the dollar with QE2 and keeping rates at 0 as the ECB and just about everyone else has begun raising rates, there's the mideast unrest and the fear trade that at some point more oil will go offline and we will run out of spare capacity, and there has been a slowing of approvals for domestic drilling, especially deepwater in wake of the gulf spill. This combination of events puts the wind at the backs of oil traders and those trying to hedge the dollar decline by moving into all commodities, including oil, and as is often the case momentum investing moves the price of an asset up beyond what most view as reasonable until the fundamentals move in another direction. If there is no QE3, if Ben begins raising rates later this year, if there's some stability and resolution in the mideast, and as we get beyond the peak driving season, we should see gas prices decline.

[Romulox]

35. Oil prices were declining just as the Nobel Peace Prize winner launched our THIRD war

in the Middle East. Who are we supposed to blame? :shrug:

[JuniperLea]

36. That is one serious kitty!

Stink eye kitty!

It wouldn't surprise me, so I had to vote in the affirmative. Besides, I'm be skeerd of da kitty! :scared:

[Butch350]

37. Maybe gas goes up - because the US dollar is going down in value.

[DainBramaged]

38. kITTEH IS STILL NOT HAPPY, ONLY FIVE VOTES.....