MGB: Gas Mystery cont........

So yeaterday I filled up at QuickTrip here in Atlanta at 3.97.

This morning I drive by 2 of them and the prices have been raised to 4.05....overnight....coincidentally on the Holiday?

Pardon me, but, who's getting screwed here? and by whom?

Gas jumped another few dollars a barrel in the last two days. The price jump was expected. Gas has actually been the same price in my area for almost two weeks which is amazing considering what the last few months have been like. The speculators are all on vacation now so we all get a break till Monday. :eyeroll:

Gas in Anchorage was 4.39 per Gal. for reg. last night.
Not sure what it is today.

Dwight

$3.60 at two stations in Lenoir... $4.06 in Boone... $4.10 in Blowing Rock.

Have to leave for Atlanta on Tuesday AM pulling a 7X6X16 foot enclosed trailer. Usually takes two and half tanks round trip including the running around down there.

27 + 27 +13 = 67 gallons times $4.00 = Over $250 or twice what it will cost for food and over half what it will cost for the hotel.

Good grief !!!

I think that I'll fill up just enough to get to South Carolina. It is usually about forty cents less a gallon there because their taxes are so much lower.

Jack

Sorry... but this is a can of worms, and I'm going to risk opening it more....

With gas prices well over four bucks here in Chicago, you hear folks complaining about price-gouging by the oil companies. But why shouldn't the oil companies gouge away? I mean, sure it cramps my own style, but if I don't accept my role in the equation, I feel like I deserve to be gouged.

Aside from gas prices, two things Americans never tire of kvetching about are global warming and the war in Iraq, both of which are connected to petroleum consumption, fueled by our chosen modes of transport, and, incidentally, our hobby here on this board.

The irony of anti-war bumper stickers seems to be lost on a good many liberals around town, I've noticed. I'm a good liberal, but refrain from waving that L flag too gratuitiously and ironically.

The Fourth has long been a time when we are supposed to fill up and drive. If the media says "get in your car and drive a couple hundred miles on the Fourth" then we get in the car and drive a couple hundred miles. Can't really blame the oil companies for opportunism here. And we really cannot blame the gas station owners, who are barely scraping by on sales of cigs and Red Bull -- they are being gouged along with us.

At some point we'll reach that old tipping point, where people really can't afford to travel, but we're obviously not there quite yet. At $4.67 a gallon, I am beginning to tip. People don't change because they want to, they change because they have to, because they can't afford not to.

Until we get there, I say, happy trails, and gouge away! And if you're on the gouging end, look on the bright side: the oil companies may actually be doing us all a big favor in the end (by forcing us to take a hard look at conserving resources), and reaping huge profits in the process. And that's as American as foreign wars and road trips on Indepedence Day Weekend.

I hope I can still get help with the MG from you kind people after that little rant.

I love fireworks on the Fourth Robert! LOL

Everyone has read about all of the different sides on the issue but I keep falling back on one or two.

First the oil companies make LESS as a percentage of gross than LOTS of other outfits. Bill gates and his team have the world cornered and completely helpless and his profits are MUCH higher than the oil companies. Similarly, the pharmaceutical industry, the legal outfits anyway, are right in there behind Bill.

I was way down on the speculators, but I am easing off on them for now.

The real culprits are the folks over in the middle east IMHO. They take, take take of our blood and treasure and return the favor with an ever tightening grip on our short hairs.

If the open secret about Israel stomping the crap out of Almondjoy in a preemptive strike soon is true we will see global chaos like we have never seen it before and the rest of the OPEC guys will have a field day ruining EVERYONE'S economy. You talk about a mad dash to open all of those little wells in Kansas! Good grief, I want the ptomaine truck concession for half of them!

On the other hand if the Israelis don't do something and just sit there like a bump on a log Almondjoy will turn the Holy Land into glass and laugh all the way to his closet full of leisure suits.

Jack

I neglected to say that I plan to take a good long drive today in the B. If gasoline is at $4.67 (at last check, last week), then it only seems fair to drain some while driving instead of while puttering with the carbs while the car idles in the garage.

:)

I don't like $4 gas anymore than the next person. However, when you get past all the hype and political crap and do some real research the numbers look bad. We tend to look at the US and think it all about us. This is not the perspective the rest of the world shares. In less than 10 years China will have more cars on the road than the US. India will be not far behind. Other third world countries are expanding and adding more demand for oil. The most optimistic outlook for increasing production would not close the gap. I am looking for prices to continue upward for the next ten years. This is having a affect on what I will buy for a car and where I will live and work. My personal answer is to reduce my driving to near zero. Since I live in a city with great transit and I work in the same city that I live, I can do this. I know that is not possible for everyone. Look at it this way, every gallon I don't buy is one that is available for you.

Count yourselves lucky, its €130 her for petrol and €1.40 for diesel, which works you by my rough calculations at $7.71 for petrol and $8.31 for diesel, the only one in my house id the gf who is driving a one litre micra

Jack,

Are you hauling anything in that trailer which you might need to drop off here in my driveway for a while? ; )

Sometimes I can't force myself to shut up. So, even though it's a holiday, I'm putting on my Professor's hat to explain who the culprit is - and it's not the oil companies.

Forever, the oil-rich nations have wanted to be paid in US dollars for their product. We had to pay in dollars, the Euros had to pay in dollars, the Asians had to pay in dollars... Well the dollar is an extremely weak currency right now. If you benchmark it against another commodity like gold, oil is still cheap. Gold hovered between $350 and $400 an ounce for years. Yesterday, gold prices closed at $932 an ounce and it hit $946 on Tuesday. Oil has gone from about $60 a barrel to $144 a barrel in the same time. Corn is trading at an all-time high - not because of demand but because the dollar is weak. Commodity-by-commodity, one can see the effect of the weak dollar.

So, why is the dollar weak? Two causes - neither pretty. First, the greed of the American consumer is the biggest reason. People have accumulated so much debt that everyone in the world knows that Americans have spent a huge portion of their future income. So, they know that the American consumer is unable to continue to consume at their historic rate - sooner or later they run out of avenues to get more debt. So the rest of the world knows that the consumer spending in the US has to go down - soon. So they know that the American economy has to contract and that makes the dollar weak - no one has confidence in the US economy. The other cause is that there's an election this year. The best thing the US government could do to strengthen the dollar is to raise interest rates. That would be a sign to the rest of the world that the US government is trying to halt the run-up in consumer debt (by making borrowed money more expensive) and that the government was rewarding those that have saved money. But because it's an election year and because both parties want to try to buy the votes of those people who are over their heads in debt, the government lowered rates when they should have been doing the opposite - it's purely political. So now, the people that caused the problem are lulled into thinking they can afford more debt and the people who have saved money get lower interest rates on their savings - that's another way of getting the prudent saver to underwrite the irresponsibility of others. And don't forget that economic stimulus check. The government is encouraging people to go buy stuff with it too make the economy look good for a few months (until the election) and no one is reminding the general public that your stimulus check is taxable next year.

So, there you have it, Americans have bought third cars and two iPods for every kid, and multiple big-screen TVs and other fleeting pleasures by hocking their future income. The time is here to pay the piper. High gas prices are just the beginning. Inflation is on the way unless interest rates get raised - for a long time. American businesses have to raise prices to cover fuel and other commodity costs and higher prices for the same goods and services is the definition of inflation. Grab a helmet, hunker down, it's going to be an ugly ride.

PS, for those of you in the Bay Area that didn't take my International Economics class at Notre Dame which ended yesterday, there's still time to sign up for my Microeconomics course which starts 7/10 :-)

We should have annexed Arabia a long time ago & I'm way beyond tired of hearing about global warming.

I have a third reason why the dollar is weak. Its because of greed of the sub-prime lenders. All these loans were repackaged and eventually sold to overseas investors. The housing market collapses and the dollar is worth much less. Gas becomes a deal for the investors to come in and make it expensive. Demand goes up on the Holiday so every station gets the daily phone call to adjust pricing and they raise the cost. Supply is lower and demand is higher.

Yet another reason the dollar is weak. An important one...

We have borrowed about one trillion dollars from China alone because we went to war for the first time in US history without raising taxes. Fiscally, that's a no-no.

In other words, China now owns nearly 1 Trillion dollars of US Treasury notes that pay a dividend. So we owe them the principal and the interest payment on 1 Trillion that we've borrowed from them, and it is unlikely 1 trillion will be the zenith. That's a large chunk of change to owe... a couple more bucks & we're talking real money.

As others note, the economic woes are felt beyond the US, but we might infer that is because the US has been such a dominant force in the global economy. When we sag, others will too. Not China, though.

But the problem here is much worse because of the effect all this borrowed money has in weakening the US dollar. An important cause for the dollar's collapse is this astronomical accumulation of debt. Weakened dollar equals inflation. Inflation equals more dollars to buy the same amount of oil fewer stronger dollars did buy; same with bread, coffee, etc.

Anywho... we've had a fun time, at least. Haven't we???

One factor on gas prices most never mention, is the government levies lots of fines on the oil companies every year, and they change the rules often, leading to ... more fines. that cost gets passed on, and id at least partly why the oil companies profits aren't higher than they are.
And when comparing American gas prices with other countries. like.. say England, it is not apples to apples, because we pay way less per gallon in taxes than those countries that are paying a calculated $7.71 per gal.

That's a lot of explanation there, and I'm every bit of it is correct.

But more to the point, the state of Georgia just "adjusted" its gas tax July 1. Any station that did not go up in price is eating the difference, and you should go thank them for it.

Another inconvenient truth?