Gas to hit $4 a gallon in August

Only really made it through the first page of this thread, but it was typical of the same uniformed BS every time this comes up. Oil is a limited commodity. Supply is fixed. Demand has skyrocked, as more of the world has industrialized--China, prts of Russia, India, etc. are now competing for oil with us. When supply is not increasing and demand does increases, prices rise. Didn't anyone here have to take a survey macroeconomics course at any point in their lives?

From what I understand, the talk of $4 a gallon has started because Iran is threatening to decrease the amount of oil they supply. If that happens, overall supply is decreased, demand stays the same, and guess what, prices go up.

It's stupid to create bogeymen and criticize our government. It's even dumb to criticize the oil refining companies. They are making profits, and actually do profit more from reduced need for capacity, but by and large they are not the ones getting rich off of oil. Everyone forgets. We don't have the oil. Saudi Arabia has the oil. Iran has the oil. They are the ones getting rich.

And even though we don't personally buy directly from Iran, they are feeding so much oil into the world that if they fuck with the balance, we're screwed.

You can argue about the political implications of the fact that we seem hell bent on going to war with Iran--without, if you read Seymour Hersch in the current New Yorker, knowing exactly how close they are to nuclear weapons and where they are enriching uranium if they are. And we have idiots running the show who don't have a good plan and don't understand the military and (shockingly) geopolitical and financial ramifications a rushed turd-ass war might have.

But we are in a fucked up situation no matter how you slice it. Iran is rich with oil money. And that money is in the hands of turd fuck madmen who are financing terrorism with it. This isn't like Iraq, which aside from being run by a brutal dictator, was relatively benign as a threat to the rest of the world. So we are in the crappy situation now that if we do something about Iran--the clowns we have planning it are going to fuck things up and put us into an oil crisis. We will also be putting every soldier and police officer in Iraq in peril. The war will spill over and turn into guerilla warfare. But if we do nothing, we are doing more of the same, which is standing by watching Iran rake in oil money and buy the weapons Hezbollah is launching into Haifa right now. It is untenbale.

Getting back to oil prices, you all need to get a grip. It sucks to high hell. But it isn't a conspiracy and there is no "government fix." If you balance your checkbook every month, you should realize that more money doesn't magically appear in your account whenever you absolutely need something. There is limited supply and huge demand. That makes it expensive. Decrease supply, and like any other thing that people want and need, it makes it even more expensive--perhaps $4 a gallon expensive if the Iranians fuck with us.