The only signal here is Bush flipping off America by throwing a monkey wrench into the united effort to repair all the damage he has done to what was once a pretty decent place to live. This has absolutely nothing to do with oil prices, fixing the economy, achieving oil independence... It's just a big F-you from Bush to all of us.
Ah, the old "I know I am, but what are you?" line. Genius. I'll allow you to wallow in your own ignorance. You seem to enjoy that end of the pool.
As for the ridiculous notion promoted by Repugnicans that we are somehow at the mercy of Middle-East oil barons, anyone want to take a guess at how much of our oil we get from them? Here’s the regional breakdown for 2007 in thousands of barrels: North America 1,648,765 33.56% Africa 980,231 19.95% Middle East 837,841 17.05% South America 784,999 15.98% Europe 567,152 11.54% Asia 91,236 1.86% Oceania 2,774 0.06% And why do we buy any at all from them? It's not due to any economic reason, nor is it due to lack of availability elsewhere. It's simply a piece to be played in the plan for American domination of the world, nothing more. Just an excuse to keep our military foot in the door over there so to speak.
What the graph too hard to bear? Maris is right, and you to a point are as well. We do send enormous amounts of money to the middle east, but them keeping us hostage by it? No, that's the public's fault, as we buy the gas to drive our big-ass hummers. Military is over there to protect our interests, and the oil is our interest for sure, because of the importance of driving and how it relates to our economy. See gas prices go up, see economy tank. It's not the main reason, but its no coincidence that they are related. However, saying that the offshore drilling lift impacted the market is a stretch. The biggest reason the gas prices went down are because of the economic hardships the American people were facing when gas was 5.00 a gallon, thus forcing the price down. Finally because of conservation of fuel from the American people and the investigations into the illegal trade practices on wall street, we have ourselves the real price of crude oil now. It's just a complete mind fuck to understand how the Bush administration let these companies get away with it..
Call me crazy, but rising interest rates on adjustable mortgages had much more impact on pocketbooks than an extra $20 every time you filled up, right? And it seemed that the subprime housing market "tanking" and the Chicken Little response by the banks to it caused much more hardship than an extra dollar or two per gallon.
Possibly, but that extra 20 you filled up, turns into 80+ a month for most americans, because A) most people arent driving fuel efficient cars, and B) you fill multiple times a month When a gallon of gas costs almost more than you make an hour (minimum wage) you have problems. I'm not saying gas prices were solely the ONLY contributing factor, I do insist that it was more of a major one than most people think.
Good point. Mine hasn't responded to me in a while. But then again, it was a lot about the Sonics and why I couldn't get to vote on it. So did your congressman/woman explain why he/she was unable to curtail the Bush administration running rampant over the will of the people? Why Nancy Pelosi campaigned about getting troops out of Iraq, was buddies with Cindy Sheehan for a while, then once in office turned her back on the constituency that voted her in so that she could do...what is it the last couple of congresses have accomplished? I would have much more respect for some of these politicians if they voted their constituency, or attempted to do more than just stay in office. Sorry to hijack the thread. I return you now to OPEC
Way more people use gas than have ARMs that have come to term in the last year, so actually, more pocketbooks are affected by gas prices. Throw in that many hourly workers don't have mortgages and an extra $80/month for gas has a big impact.
For the most part I'm with you, but you saw gas consumption go down when prices went up. It was economics in effect. But a raise from 6% interest on my home to 7% would be a few HUNDRED dollars a month that's going out of my wallet. From 6 to 7 to 8 to 9 (which, from what I understand, has happened to many on "creative loans") adds almost 50% to the original mortgage payment. . I'm not convinced that the minimum-wage workers were the ones hit hardest by the recession right now. Maybe that's middle-class me talking out of my hat, but the problems seemed to stem from 1) mortgage costs going up while housing values plummeted, 2) banks freezing loan output and dropping credit lines, 3) higher gas prices which caused higher commodity pricing, and 4) layoffs of middle and upper-middle class workers from decent jobs.
I agree, but the markets didn't crash because the minimum-wage workers were having a hard time paying for gas. I'm not saying they didn't, I'm saying the "recession" wasn't caused by it. IIRC (and I wish I could find the link--to be honest it may have been Fox News, which I know doesn't carry a ton of weight in here), of the increases in unemployment nationwide, very small % was minimum-wage work. Most was in middle- and upper-middle class jobs. Minimum wage workers aren't the ones stopping spending at retail stores. In fact, they're probably the ones who are keeping places like WalMart and Costco at average levels. It's places like Macy's, Nordstroms, Car Dealerships, etc that are really hurting.
BTW, we had people from the Seattle City Team Mission come to our church in the last couple of weeks. We took a special offering b/c they said without $1M in funding that they had pulled for the upcoming year, they would have to close their doors. I'm pretty sure it's not gas prices which are driving less charitable spending.
You can't correlate that as a direct result of ARMs going into default. There are many, many factors, both domestically and internationally, that factor in any economy. My only point was that more people had their pocketbooks directly affected by higher gas prices than by ARMs, but that doesn't mean that your point isn't correct as well.
I see, and agree. If you say "pocketbooks directly affected", I'll concede you are right. But as far as the recession goes, I still maintain that gas prices are like #4 or so on the priority list.
