Unless you haven’t noticed, the price of gasoline has been going up at a pace of a few cents a week since after the election. Beginning in September, oil was going down so fast, many experts thought it would reach $15 a barrel within a year. They implied $1.35 a gallon gasoline was just around the corner.
Earlier in the year, when the prices were high, Bush said there is nothing he could do, after all, he said, “it’s a free market.” But all of a sudden, just before the election, something happened. OPEC, one of the tools of global free enterprise announced it will be cutting production by 800,000 barrels of oil a day. Not because of a hurricane, broken pipelines or a shortage of crude. No sir, they announced the cut in production with only one objective in mind; to stop the price from sliding any further. Immediately afterwards, several prominent economists and market watchers said the announcement doesn’t carry much weight, that OPEC lacks the discipline to carry out its own threats/goals. Make no mistake, whether or not OPEC actually cut production, the announcement did what it was intended to do. It put the brakes on the declining prices. Around election time, oil prices flattened out, and ever since have been climbing steadily upwards. I can hear people crying foul already, saying Bush has nothing to do with the global price of oil. I would argue that his decisions regarding the middle-east does, but more importantly, mister energy task force himself, VP Dick Cheney held secret meetings years ago with Big Oil in the White House and it can be safe to assume that Big Oil has been given free rein to do whatever it takes to ensure a steady supply of gasoline at the pump. If you have to raise prices to accomplish some level of control over consumption, then by all means, do it. The Bush Administration could care less about high prices, that's “free market” in their view, just don’t repeat the energy crisis the nation experienced in the 70’s with widespread shortages, long lines and rationing. It would doom his presidency. But we'll never know for sure because, the meetings were "secret."
By keeping the meetings secret, the Bush Administration appeared to exercise the idea that energy is a free market untouched by outside forces. There can be no doubt that energy executives see their own interests as bound up with a Republican victory. Certainly they have invested more heavily in buying off Republican legislators than they have their Democratic counterparts.
There is nothing like the good ol'boy free market capitalism espoused by the President and many, many of my fellow Americans. But it is in words only.
JG letter excerpt:Although I believe Big Oil manipulates gasoline supply, demand and prices at will, I did not believe prices would jolt upwards after the election. Regardless, nearly everybody thought this would happen and so far, no apologies are necessary. The prediction was as good if not better than the accuracy of tomorrows weather forecast.
The writer asks the question: So where are the apologies to President Bush and Big Oil from those who loudly advocated these theories?
Related: Read The coming oil wars, a special report of a three part series by the Chicago Tribune.
3 comments:
Sweet Crude Oil is below $55 a barrel. What's the lefts conspiracy theory on this?
Actually its not so much that prices are going down to where they belong, It was the timing. They still need to get down to the -$40 range. It was always the reasons given why they were at $75+ that was supicious.
Its too early to call, give it a little more time.
Big Oil raped the consumers to death with the help of the GOP.
But with the Democrats in power, suddenly the prices fall and the GOP and their friends on Wall Street will start econospinning the "real" reasons that happened.
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