Global Oil Reserves Tapped in Effort to Cut Cost at Pump

What Ragu said. Get back to me in a week.

 

I agree with this in the long-term, but no current economy in the world can sustain gas prices at a $4 per gallon clip, so that demand is not going to dramatically increase in the near future. Worldwide, high-priced oil will always serve as a brake to economic recovery, so demand won't drive prices up much beyond what it was in early May. Its the cycle we've been in since the collapse in '08.

Emerging though their economies are (and there's some question to whether either can sustain their current growth without their own correction), China and India can't afford $140 per barrel gas in the near future either. No way.

Emerging nations elsewhere? High oil has major ramifications beyond economic health. Since many import food, etc., high oil is a matter of survival. There's been food riots anew in Africa this year already. That puts political pressure on the price of oil worldwide, not just here.

There's a breaking point to where oil prices cannot be sustained and we keep hitting it and then falling back to a sustainable level ... only to have speculatory nonsense drive it back up.

In this way, the so-called "invisible hand of the market" is doing its work in its own cruel way.

On the other hand, gas spiked to $4 per gallon for reasons that had nothing to do with fundamental supply-and-demand reasons -- it primarily had to do with Chicken Little, sky-is-falling doomsday scenarios about getting cutoff from Middle East oil due to unrest, closing of the Suez Canal, etc.

I would be interested to see what crude was before and after the Egyptian turmoil. Oil-producing nations ought to send a thank you note to the protesters in Cairo for driving up the price of oil for no good discernible reason other than the fact that speculators pissed down their leg.

It was pure fear-based nonsense. There was no way any of those nations were going to slit their economic throats and cut off the supply of oil, not willingly anyway. They depend on us arguably more than we depend on them.

Speculation thrives on fear ... and it would be nice if traders could, you know, look at the big picture for once instead of always reacting to the economic flavor of that particular day. Of course, with electronic and algorithimic trading, we've taken that brake out of our hands. Perspective in trading has disappeared.

There were no supply-and-demand dynamics at work in the economy when oil began to rise that should have led to the spike at all, other than a weaker dollar, but that's not what drove it to the breaking point. There was no sudden zip in growth ... it was speculatory supply-and-demand guesses that led to the zoom in oil. And it was and is bullshit.

The only place where supply-and-demand fears jived with reality was in Europe where they get more of their oil from Libya than the pittance that we get here. I can understand Brent crude rising, but there was no real reason our crude prices should have risen with them.

Which is why this has never completely been a supply-and-demand problem and largely a problem of rampant speculation.

 

It's a gutless move because it does nothing to the investment market.

 

But, as the Dems have been telling us for 10 years or more, they will not be ready to go on-line for 10 years!

 

I don't know or care what the impact of this move will be. All I know for sure is that I believe this is an issue of speculation and I hope--no, I pray--that each and every man and woman that makes their living in this way, essentially playing with other people's money in the hopes that they'll hit it big, dies in a very, very painful way on Christmas morning in front of their children, who are just old enough to understand what happened.

And I don't want it to be immediate either. I want there to be some serious pain. Like six weeks of unending pain that is so bad morphine can't stop it.

And then, in their final moments, I want them to see the price of oil go down three cents as a great f**k you.

This is my dream for America.

 

Man, don't you think that is a little over the top? Hmmm....I wonder what Dooley thinks.

 

Since it was coordinated with Europe and US officials gave Saudi Arabia a heads up - I'm thinking this might have more to do with screwing with Libya than anything else.
You drop the price of oil, it messes with their economy, and probably a few other countries in the region that haven't been playing nice.

 

I assume by this you actually mean gas prices at the clip that equates to $4 per gallon in the U.S. Because most of the rest of the world already pays far more than that. FAR more than that.

 

Gas is around $9 a gallon in Germany. Their economy is relatively robust.

 

Roughly $8.25 in the U.K. And the economy is ... well, it's not twice as bad as the American economy, anyway.