Gas prices: Shafted at the pump

How stupid does the media think we are? I love how the local news talks about high gas prices. Then they cut to some knucklehead reporter at the gas station with “people’s reaction to gas prices”. Do I really need some reporter to tell me what people’s reaction to current gas prices are? How about using some of that “journalistic skill” and find out WHY gas prices have doubled in the last 18 months. Gas averaged just over $2 at the beginning of 2007. Around $3 at the end of 2007 and now it’s at $4, just halfway into 2008 (chart).

What kills me is the “analysts” that get on TV and say “Well, the price of gas can’t be too painful. People are still buying it”. No shit, sherlock. People still have to drive! What are they going to do? Stop going to work? Stop going grocery shopping? That’s just a stupid statement.

The “energy speculators” and other talking heads are all over the various news outlets. All I hear is how “demand is up, supplies are short, so prices go up”. Really genius? That’s it? So demand has nearly doubled in the last year and a half? Granted demand and prices aren’t nearly 1-to-1, but, still. That’s a load of bullshit. There’s limited supply, eh? So the Exxon tankers are being turned away at the oil spigots?

No, what’s happening is that the oil companies are gouging the public. There was protests in England the other day where semi-trucks blocked roads around London. We’re not stupid. We know that the price is artificially inflated. The problem is that the oil companies know there’s not shit we can do about it.

How else can you explain the record profits in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit? How do you ship less product (disrupted because of the storm), yet make more money in that quarter than you ever have before??

Ever notice how prices shoot up because of “fears of a disruption in <insert favorite war-torn country here>”, yet when that disruption fails to materialize, prices never go back down? Or, better yet, why do prices even go up? Because the oil companies say “If there’s a supply disruption, I’m going to get less oil. I better make up that ‘lost’ money now before the disruption”. Then when no disruption actually occurs, they’ve made whatever their normal sales were for that time period PLUS the price that was inflated because of the “disruption fear”. So if they normally make X amount of dollars in a week, they’ve made X plus the percentage that prices spiked up. Brilliant. I’m in the wrong business.