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Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Gas Prices

"Joe,

Just wanted to pass on we bought gas at $2.279 last night in Laurel at the Oasis Truck Stop / Hardees! I almost hate to see the election get here. I feel certain the prices will shoot back up after that!"

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Vote for Obama and you can bet your last dollar they are going to go up!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Enjoy it !! After the election they'll bang it in our butts again!

Anonymous said...

Yes, gas is likely to go up after the election. So what? Are you implying that there is some sort of manipulation of prices going on prior to the election? If you think that then you don't know what you're talking about. Prices generally decline during the fall as demand for oil decreases. They go up every year in November and December, as more people start using home heating oil. It's not a conspiracy or price gouging, folks, it's just the market at work.

Anonymous said...

Hebron has been much cheeper than these for a while now..

today was 2.26

Anonymous said...

Joe, check out "CERBERUS" in relationship with the bid three autos, very disturbing. Snow (former secretary off treasury, paulsons buddy) major player, and the bail out keeps going to paulsons buds, the middle class is drowning. Were neck deep in the big muddy again. This is robbery, what a hiest.

Tim Chaney said...

I heard on the news this morning there is a gas station down south (Alabama or Louisiana) that had $1.91 a gallon today. I agree, every year should be and election year if that is the results. I just don't think I could stomach any more.

Anonymous said...

Tim, In the over-all view lower gas prices right now are not actually a great thing, demand is down this much which means people are not buying as much which is a better realistic middle class economic indicator. Their shittin bricks because the demand for fuel is very low. Somewhere the world forgot that without consumers marketers wither and die. W e already posses all the power we need, to stupid to realize it i quess. Summers over too which adds to those corporate power devils misery. They dont have a soul, principle means nothing to them. Its all about profit. Most things are better in moderation. They dont understand that.

Anonymous said...

$2.25 at Shell Station in Mardela!

It is not even the 5 cent off Thursday yet!

Anonymous said...

Marc,

If you think the prices aren’t used to persuade votes, you’re naive. Businesses and entire Industries use their control over pricing to give the façade that things are better than people thought. It’s all a part of “Marketing”. As for your fall comment, there is an increase in demand for heating oil which means they will use more of the Crude Oil to make heating oil instead of gas. So the production of gas drops at the same time as the demand drops. I don’t see how that would make gas cheaper. How about this one, the price of gas rises sharply when the gas companies know we are going to travel more and we will pay their price. When summer is over, we no longer want to travel and take vacations due to school and such, so they drop the price to try and get us to travel more. Christmas comes and the price goes up, and so on. THAT is Marketing. Charge more when demand will tolerate it, charge less and try to create demand when there isn’t one. And if I’m an Oil Executive and I know people relate gas prices to the economy, I’ll lower my price to make you think things are getting better when it benefits me!

Tim Chaney said...

Didn't OPEC just reduce production lowering supply? It just doesn't add up.

Anonymous said...

Richard, your comments don't really make sense. How are rices manipulated to "persuade votes"? Politicians don't set gas prices. The guy who owns the local gas station does.

When demand goes up, everything else beign equal, price goes up. That's a simple law of economics. Your comments kind of suggest this but you call it "marketing." Yes, when demand falls businesses will cut their prices in order to try and attract more customers. So? Are you saying this is a bad thing? And what does it have to do with politics?

The fact is that gas prices always rise in the winter because there is more demand for oil due to heating oil consumption increasing. Gas prices rise in the spring due to the switch to different gas blends and the increased travel that starts around Memorial Day. It's simple economics.

Anonymous said...

Marc......
Corporations OWN Politicians! Where have you been? Can you say Lobbyist?

Anonymous said...

Richard, if your argument boils down to "corporations own politicians" then I don't think we have much to discuss. For one, I don't agree with it because there is no factual basis for it. Two, even if it were true, it completely contradicts your first post. So the corporations own the politicians, and the corporations set the gas prices (which I presume you think they do so willy-nilly, and raise and lower them at their whim), so why do corporations need to manipulate gas prices to affect politics? After all, if they already own politicians it doesn't matter what the gas prices are, the politicians are already in the bag.

Your assertions don't have factual support either in economics, politics, and history. I know it's nice to think that all politicians are bought by corporations and that a few corporate CEOs just set prices, but that's not how the real world works.

Anonymous said...

And this is an election year, AND they have to get THEIR politician re-elected. But that's in a real world, not The Land of OZ. But I suppose you want me to believe there are no lobbyist, no pac groups, all the politicians are Eagle Scouts first and Politicians second.

What I don't understand, is since Corporations have no control over politicians, and since the People made it very clear they wanted no parts of a "Bail-Out, just who on this earth was controlling the Politicians as they voted against the American People and for the Bailout. That is the kind of evidence you will find. There are no smoking guns around to convince you, because those same guns would convict them!

Those facts are:

Corporations wanted Bail-out.

The American People in GREAT majority said NO!

The Politicians voted yes anyway!

Gee Wiz Toto, we're not in Oz anymore.