july, $4.40 a gallon, december $1.80. justify this please !

[Thomas Rogers]

Jerry G,



I stand by what I said. Blksn8k seems to get it. As I said, I don't think that Americans have cut their consumption "that much"...sure some, probably even considerable, not not nearly enough to account for the dramatic drop in crude the past few months.



I suspect if averaged the annual, per capita miles driven by American's in '08 is only down a modest about from previous years...I'd be very surprised if I heard it was down any more than 10% from past years, going back even as far as '04. Whatever the percentage drop in miles driven the past year, it pales in comparison to the more than 50% drop in crude and gasoline the past few months.



TJR

 

[Richard Kolb]

Are you kidding me about people not cutting back? They've cut back so much that some states are in economic problems because they aren't getting the taxes they used to from gasoline. Massachusetts has raised tolls to cover it. People aren't taking trips for fun, they're consolidating trips when possible and generally driving less.



As for the price of goods? They were never going to go back down, once people are willing to pay one price they'll keep paying it and we get screwed. We have to eat, we don't have to drive.

 

[Bill Barber]

What our leaders are failing to see and do is to move on a once in a lifetime market.

Is tons of crude to bought at rock bottom prices.

Lock in a 40 bux per barrel price, order a gizzilion barrels for future delivery.

Put hundreds of thousands of Jobless to work building huge tank farms to store said crude.

Than when gas go's back up to 5 bux a gal. we can tell the Saudis to go pound sand up there Azz.

We also have to drill on our soil, between Canada and the U.S, we have more oil than the arabs.

 

[Thomas Rogers]

R1ch999 said

Are you kidding me about people not cutting back?

I'm not kidding. I never said "that people did not cut back." What I said was that the cut backs in driving aren't nearly proportional to the recent decreases in fuel costs we have seen.



Prices kept going up and up and up until the summer. If people were cutting back drastically we would have seen increases slowing, not continuing...that is if true supply and demand was the factor for the price.



Yes, people started cutting back in '07 and into '08, and that dropped the demand...but as I said, prices continued to rise. At a certain point the crude and gas prices "leveled out" and that was when gas hovered around $4/gallon for several months. I don't think people continued to cut drastically since that leveling out time when gas was around $4/gal. I suspect most had cut as much as they would. But several months later after everyone had cut driving as much as they did prices dropped like a lead balloon.



That's when the economy hit the skids and the speculators got out and prices went down, big time.



I think an overwhelming majority of the drop in crude and gas has been because of the exit of speculators, NOT the cuts in miles driven by the consumers...those cuts were happening all along while the price continued to climb and climb.



TJR