WALL STREET!!! Causing our high gas prices!

Read the text in Red below. It is the speculators on WALL STREET that are causing us to choose between fuel and feeding our families! AGAIN - WALL STREET!!!

Sal Kalil lives in Pasadena, Calif. But right now he probably wouldn't
mind living in Northeast Ohio, despite the area's much colder winter
weather.


The nation's gas prices are on the rise, and Kalil is hurting. He tells the Christian Science Monitor that
his 1995 truck, which he uses for his work, only gets 10 miles per
gallon. With gas at more than $4 per gallon in parts of California,
keeping a full tank is draining his budget.

"I'm
putting more money into my truck than into anything else in my life,"
he says. ... "I'm not eating like I usually do and am forgoing all kinds
of things because of this." His predicament will be common to more and
more people nationwide in the next few weeks as gas prices surge toward
the $4-per-gallon mark, a psychological threshold at which analysts say
consumers begin to dramatically modify their behavior.

Nothing irritates Americans more quickly than rising gas prices ... and right now a lot of people are irritated. According to Reuters,
gas prices have increased 8.8 percent since the beginning of the year,
and currently average $3.65 per gallon nationally. Gas prices have
jumped in Northeast Ohio, too, but as reported in The Plain Dealer on Tuesday, they're below the national average at $3.46 per gallon:

Day-to-day
prices in Northeast Ohio more closely reflect Chicago spot prices for
gasoline rather than East Coast or Gulf coast prices that you may read
about. Chicago wholesale gasoline prices last week were running 70 cents
per gallon below New York, said Patrick DeHaan, senior petroleum
analyst for GasBuddy. "The reason for the discount is that refineries in
the Great Lakes continue to use Canadian crude for a significant
portion of the oil they use. Ohio can also get oil from the Gulf of
Mexico."

It's nice to be lagging behind nationally when it comes to the cost of gas. But the price is still going to go up.


Why is that?


U.S. demand for oil and gas is down sharply from last year, according to a McClatchy Newspapers
report. The U.S. actually is exporting gasoline because it's not
consuming all that it makes, the report says. Analysts say speculators
on Wall Street are pushing up the costs, using the tensions over Iran to
drive up prices beyond the usual supply-and-demand variables

"Speculation
is now part of the DNA of oil prices. You cannot separate the two
anymore. There is no demarcation," said Fadel Gheit, a 30-year veteran
of energy markets and an analyst at Oppenheimer. "I still remain
convinced oil prices are inflated." Consider that light, sweet crude
trading on the NYMEX changed hands at $79.20 a barrel four months ago
but soared past $105 a barrel Tuesday, partly on news that Iran would
halt shipment of oil to Britain and France. The problem: Those countries
already had stopped buying Iranian oil. And Didier Houssin, the
International Energy Agency's director for energy markets and security,
noted a Wall Street Journal report that "there are alternative supplies
that can make up for any loss of Iranian exports." Still, oil prices
shot up because crude trades in financial markets, where Wall Street
firms and other big financial players dominate trading, even though they
have no intention of taking possession of the oil.

Blaming it on speculators doesn't make for good political theater, though, especially during an election year, and the GOP candidates are wasting no time in blaming President Obama for the spike (just like Democrats blamed President Bush for a $4-per-gallon gas spike during the summer of 2008). From the Fiscal Times:

White
House officials are bracing for a Republican assault to try to exploit
consumer anger and frustration over $4 to $5 per gallon gas and renew
their contentions that Obama's economic and energy policies are not
working. Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania governor, Newt Gingrich,
the former House Speaker from Georgia, and former Massachusetts
governor Mitt Romney all are likely to make those points tonight during
the latest GOP presidential debate in Arizona. "They want higher energy
prices. They want to push their radical agenda on the public," Santorum
said at a campaign event last week, accusing Democrats of pushing
alternatives to oil. "We need a president who is on the side of
affordable energy." ... The White House has good reason to be concerned
about the potential political fallout from rising gas prices. The last
five times that gas prices spiked during a presidential campaign, the
incumbent party lost the election.

President Obama is trying to get ahead of the issue, planning a speech today in regard to rising fuel prices. Reuters reports the Obama administration is hoping to divert blame and also prepare voters for higher costs:

Republicans
see many weaknesses to exploit. They blame Obama for not doing enough
to increase domestic production of fossil fuels and cite his decision to
block a new oil pipeline from Canada as evidence that he is beholden to
environmentalists. ... Analysts and strategists said Obama has few
options to bring down gasoline prices in the short term and said his
energy policies had evolved from focusing on renewable fuels to
promoting nuclear energy and natural gas. "Basically he's come a long
way from the campaign of '08. I think that reflects pragmatism on his
part," said Guy Caruso, a senior adviser on energy at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies.

One option for
Obama to make a quick, if small, impact is to open the nation's
emergency oil reserves, as some Democrats are urging him to consider.
The White House released 30 million barrels last year during the crisis
in Libya, and White House spokesman Jay Carney says the administration
won't rule out tapping the reserve again (The Hill):

"It
is essential that the United States have an aggressive strategy for
releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to combat the
speculators capitalizing on the fear in oil markets and to send a
message to Iran that we are ready, willing, and able to deploy our oil
reserves," the Democrats said in a letter to Obama. "Signaling that the
United States will continue to employ an aggressive SPR policy in the
near term would send a strong signal to oil markets responding to the
unrest in the Middle East." ... The GOP roundly criticized the president
for releasing SPR oil last year, arguing it was a ploy to score
political points amid high gas prices.

Once past the
arguments over why gas prices are increasing, there are concerns about
the effects on the slowly recovering economy. Unlike last year,
economists believe the nation is in better shape to handle the blow (Reuters):

Although
gasoline prices are 41 cents higher than they were at this time last
year, there are no supply-chain problems disrupting factory production
and winter this year has been unseasonably warm, giving the economy a
mild stimulus. "Fortunately the U.S. economy is on an upswing, not
strong but on the way up. It's in a better shape to deal with the oil
prices," said Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at California State
University Channel Island. "We don't have the Japanese tsunami to worry
about, business and consumer confidence have improved, and the job
market is growing nicely."

That's probably a small consolation for people who will see their gas bills increase. Meanwhile, here are some tips on how to save on fuel, including simply slowing down. However, since an Ohio lawmaker currently is proposing increasing the speed limit on interstates to 70 mph, and Wyoming is talking about moving speeds up to 80 mph, slowing down might be asking too much of American motorists, even at $4 to $5 per gallon

It takes gas/desiel to get your eats to ya. Bread 7 bucks a loaf? Milk 7 bucks a gallon, meat untouchable unless you are wealthy! Veggies, hell they won't even haul them, not worth it!

But wait, 5 bucks a gallon. How about 10 bucks a gallon?

There is NO WAY that prices won't keep going up and up and up. Oil supply is running out - Do the MATH! I have seen discussions on this forum about buying local. You better get started doing that now - THIS SUMMER - at your local farmers market. Soon you will have no choice!

Agree

Why is it WALL STREET always comes up when the subject of screwing the working class is mentioned? Wall Street = New Yorkers! They are EVIL and GREEDY!