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Saturday, February 18, 2012

Who needs impeachment when they have the gas pump?
Posted by Jill | 7:34 PM
It shouldn't be news to anyone that the Republicans' primary order of business over the last three years has been to make sure that Barack Obama is not a successful president. I'm quite sure that a good part of the reason they're going off the deep end about contraception (and I'll have more on that as soon as I can organize my thoughts on their motivatin and mindset and what it all means) is because the money guys are looking at their candidates, realizing that they're going to have to draft Jeb Bush, and wondering what they're going to do if he won't consent to such a draft.

Last night I filled up the Civic. I paid $3.63. A few weeks ago, at the same station, I was paying just over $3.00. I know the guy who runs the place. He works on my car, and he's as honest as you'll find anywhere. It's not just him. Look at the posted price of gasoline anywhere in the country. It's ridiculous. (And let's not even TALK about heating oil....)

Perhaps some of it is attributable to fears over what is going to happen with Iran. Oil to rise in price if anyone in the Fertile Crescent twitches an eyelash. But Rick Ungar thinks there's more to it than that:
I’ve never been much of a conspiracy theorist as it is not my inclination to see evil lurking behind every bush (no pun intended.) More times than not, things are—for the most part—pretty much as they appear to be.

However, there is a strange anomaly occurring on the highways of America and in the boardrooms of some of our largest investment institutions that has caused me to consider whether a plan is afoot that, if successful, could represent the best possible strategy for ending the presidency of Barack Obama.

According to the Automobile Club of America, gasoline prices have risen, on average, 13.1 cents in the past month—despite the fact that gas prices traditionally fall in the month of February as people drive fewer miles during the wintery month.

What’s more, virtually every projection out there suggests that gas prices are about to make a dramatic rise to, potentially, record levels with some suggesting that $5.00 a gallon gas or more —double the prices of just a few months ago—could very well be in our future.

This becomes a particularly odd statistic when one considers that Americans are using less gasoline than it has at any time in the last fifteen years. Currently, we burn up 8 percent less gas than we did during the peak year of 2006 while most experts expect the trend to continue to where we will be using 20 percent less gasoline by 2030.

[snip]

While Wall Street’s ‘priority one’ is to make money, it is clear that, for this year, priority two is the destruction of Barack Obama’s presidency. Accordingly, from a Wall Street point of view, it certainly is a happy coincidence that that priority one, making big money on oil speculation, could directly lead to accomplishing their second highest mission.

I am left to wonder whether this is a happy Wall Street coincidence or a clever strategy that could pay off big-time come November.

Gasoline prices have a ‘real time’ impact on middle-class voters. Can you imagine a better way to make voters good and angry than to insure that they are paying five bucks a gallon for the gasoline that will be powering them to the voting booth in November? And if you subscribe to the theory that the President’s opponents would like to keep economic growth down until the election is over, what better way to accomplish such a goal than to force a precipitous rise in gas prices?

Rick, I'll take your Wall Street and raise you two Koch brothers.

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Anonymous Anonymous said...
Suggest you read Matt Taibbi's "Griftopia" about this. It's called "commodities speculation" (and guess who were up to their ears in it? Why, Goldman Sachs, of course).

But you'll never hear anything about it from our politicians and the MSM about this (I wonder why). Instead, they'll just tell you it's an Act of God, American wastefulness, or a complete mystery as to why gas prices rise like that.

Just another way Wall Street fucks you over. But we don't want to hear about that....
2/21/12, 5:40 PM  
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