The Buck Stops A-Ways Over There
April 21st, 2011 - 1:48 pm
Faced with the prospect of $5-a-gallon gas this summer, President Obama said today his Justice Department is creating a team to “root out any cases of fraud or manipulation in the oil markets that might affect gas prices.”
“That includes the role of traders and speculators,” Obama said at a town hall in Reno, Nevada. “We are going to make sure that no one is taking advantage of American consumers for their own short-term gain.”
Translation: Jooooooooooooos!
Hey, Mr. President — want to know why gas prices are so high? Then take a look at what you’ve done to the dollar.
Why bother. Just put a tax or fee on long oil positions that don’t result in physical delivery. Have the rate increase with price.
…and watch all the “offending” trading activity move to Singapore or Dubai. Yeah, that’ll show ‘em!
NEXT!
Definitely needs to be addressed.
Oh, and drill the gulf, anwar, and arctic.
Stop tilting at windmills ( they are not economical and only profitable for manufacturer/sellers).
And build some frac-ing infrastructure
Concerns about the arctic are silly. Likely more natural gas than oil there. Horizon like spill worries will soon prove to be unfounded. The oil may be heavier and the temps reduce evaporation, but the gulf spill proved dispersants. The bacteria that process oil are most efficient in cool waters and high pressures. Even if the temps are too low for the gulf bacteria, certainly the arctic has its own share of seepage. It must have bacteria suited for its environment, otherwise there’d be a bunch of oil just below the ice.
(Sell it as a Carbon Tax to fight global warming.)
There is a natural bias against the short side of commodity futures. A small tax would help balance things out. We need more down-side speculation. The above policies would make those payout.
Also, don’t underestimate the signaling power of an aggressive US energy policy. If we stop hoarding and announce that we must take advantage of our resources before alternatives collapse the price, current producers’ capacity and efficiency rise will be fantastic.
The argument that we shouldn’t drill because we don’t have enough oil to reduce prices is also a strawman. So what? That’s a good thing. Every barrel we produce increases GDP by the price, it also increases GDP a second time by reducing imports by the price. This is all before even considering multiplier effects.
It’s only a matter of time before he starts blaming spies and saboteurs along with the speculators.
Will the investigation of “manipulation” include the White House’s fraudulent moratorium on drilling in the gulf? The issue of high gas prices can be completely answered by looking at governments–exporters and importers both. There’s no need to look further than that.
But that would mean looking at the problem honestly. Something we’re not likely to see under any administration.
drill baby, drill. And quit printing so many dollars.
I can understand that a president may not know fundamental economics, but when it extends to his entire economic team, that’s not a coincidence, there’s something sketchy going on.
The real solution is that we get rid of that nasty black oil stuff and replace it with a coal fired car……….like the volt!!!
The internation oil market uses dollars as the standard currency. Due to massive printing of money (QE2), the value of the dollar has decreased sharply. I’d love to see a definitive analysis as to how much the declining value of the dollar has contributed to the increasing cost of oil.
I suspect the answer is “more than a little bit.” Quite likely it is more than the increase due to speculation and/or fraud. But of course no one is likely to do that analysis because the blame can be laid directly at the feet of Obarbie and the Fed.
Here’s a nice bit on the silly “Oil Speculators are t3h evil!” idea:
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2011/04/the-silly-oil-speculation-meme.html
President Asshat doesn’t want lower prices; he never did. Didn’t he say back when prices spiked one summer under Bush that he thinks we need to have high gas prices, but he only wished it didn’t happen so quickly?
This cynical SOB is only doing this for 2012, ginning up the crowd that automatically villifies “big oil” as a pack of greedy dogs who relish gouging Joe and Jane Six Pack. It’s classic Dem Envy Politics. He’s trying to appear as the American Robin Hood.
He is clearly the most disgusting, dispicable, rotten, petulant, sorry account of a man to EVER hold this office. He really is a bad guy. He brings nothing of value to his job. He devalues everything he touches.
And I’m taking it easy on him because it’s Good Friday.
The US dollar and commodity prices are being driven by the SAME problem. The Federal Reserves infinite free money policies or ZIRP. It rewards out of control crack addict spending (Congress) and Wall Street speculation into commodities (Oil, gold, silver…)
End the spending and PRINTING madness before we all wind up Zimbabwe, another mismanaged country run by a despot.