THE OBAMANOMICS OF GAS PRICES:  This was the dumbest comment I’ve ever heard out of anybody, anywhere, about our astronomically high gas prices.  When Romney told the second debate audience that gas prices had climbed to over $4/gallon after having been less than $2/gal when Obama was elected, Obama incoherently replied:

Well, think about what the governor — think about what the governor just said. He said when I took office, the price of gasoline was $1.80, $1.86. Why is that? Because the economy was on the verge of collapse, because we were about to go through the worst recession since the Great Depression, as a consequence of some of the same policies that Governor Romney’s now promoting. So, it’s conceivable that Governor Romney could bring down gas prices because with his policies, we might be back in that same mess.

So Obama thinks high gas prices are due to a vigorous, recovering economy that’s supposedly no longer on the “verge of collapse”?   There are so many fundamental errors in basic economics that it almost leaves one speechless.

Gas prices, like anything else, are a function of supply and demand.  A recession or depression reduces demand.  If supply stays constant, gas prices will fall.  But if the supply side of the equation is also negatively affected/reduced– as, for example, the reduction of leases and drilling on federal land, as pointed out by Romney–gas prices should rise (as they have).  The bottom line?  Gas prices should have–probably would have– fallen in our current recession, due to decreased demand.  But since the Obama Administration’s anti-carbon, anti-fossil fuel policies have taken hold, the negative impact on supply has outpaced the reduction in demand, leading to significantly higher prices.

Let’s also take Obama’s illogic straight on:  If he’s right that an improved economy = higher gas prices, then isn’t he telling us that we can never expect to see gas prices fall again (because of course we all know his policies are causing a “huge recovery”)?  That’s comforting– kind of like the statement of his Dep’t of Interior Secretary Steven Chu from Feb, 2012 that the Administration’s goal was   “somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe” (around $8/gal.).

It isn’t so much what President Obama says (though that is bad enough), it is what he doesn’t say that one has to listen very closely to hear.