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Daily Archives: August 31st, 2008
… SPECULATION!
No, this is not one of those – “Oh, you finally realized it…”, or “Welcome to what the rest of us already figured out…” I’ve long asserted that U.S. gas prices and their crude oil counterpart are heavily influenced by the well-honed art of investor speculation. The problem with his assertion is that it has been hard to illustrate, mainly because the market is good at throwing curveballs and placing decoys that often confuse most of us average folk when it comes to how fuel is actually priced.
Today, the smoke has cleared a bit. With Gustav on a PREDICTED collision course with the Gulf of Mexico and many of our oil producing rigs, investors and analyst alike are betting that consumers will see higher gas prices by Labor Day. While it is typically a historical fact that retail motor fuel prices rise around major holidays where travel tends to spike, such expected occurrences are being fueled by forecasted fear of what Gustav might do to the Gulf states and our nations ability to continue producing energy as well as investor’s drive to profit at the inconvenience of the nation.
In the Northeastern United States, prices rose 3 cents per gallon in Rhode Island; I have not yet passed by a gas station in Massachusetts to assess the damage of all this speculation. Yesterday, the local HESS station had regular at $3.589 and Premium at $3.689; less than 24 hours later those prices are $3.519 and $3.719 respectively. An Associated Press story quotes analysts as saying that if the vulnerable Gulf is hit especially hard – hard enough to disrupt oil production – prices could surge back above $4 a gallon. Naturally, this will drive consumers to gas up early thereby generating profits before the holiday and may even cause a “panic-at-the-pump” scenario if people see too many people waiting to gas up. The common flock mentality is to do as others do, so when people see a lot of people at a gas station whether its for a fill up or to buy a lottery ticket for a huge jackpot, the activity draws us in like flies to you know what.
Last but not least, let us not recognize the impact of our beloved weathermen in all of this. They begin forecasting Gustav while it is still out in the Carribbean Ocean; the saturation of forecasts causes a groundswell of anticipation centered around doom and gloom; now that Gustav is a Category 4 hurricane having swept over Cuba and on course for the Gulf, our imagination runs wild with all sorts of Katrina Part 2 scenarios. In reality, Gustav could hit the Gulf landing anywhere from Texas to Florida, or it could change course cut across Florida and head out back to the Atlantic
The forces of nature are very unpredictable; nonetheless, humans try to predict outcomes all the time. All of this activity only serves the purpose to aid speculation and drive up the prices associated with daily living.
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So I’m a bit confused. Read the following statement from RNC President and CEO Maria Cino, and tell if you can sense any concern for the citizens of the Southern U.S. States which will be most affected.
“Like all Americans, our prayers are with those who will be affected by Hurricane Gustav. We continue to closely monitor the movement of the storm and are considering necessary contingencies. We are in communication with the Gulf state governors to make sure the convention is taking all the appropriate steps as the hurricane progresses. The safety of our affected delegations is our first priority and preparing for Gustav comes before anything else.”
After reading this statement, I was hard-pressed to see anything more than a well-scripted public relations piece aimed at softening the edges of the RNC. Yet, what I read in this statement is concern for the potential disruptive impact to the RNC from Hurricane Gustav in terms of its affect on the RNC’s delegations and not anything about the people who might just lose their lives or find themselves homeless against just three years post Katrina.
Wikipedia defines “delegation” as, among other things, a group of individuals, often called delegates, who represent the interests of a larger organization or body, often from a geographical area.
So Ms. Cino’s statement doesn’t resonate with the reflection that it should over the safety and well-being of the people of Florida, Mississippi, Louisana and Texas, but rather it appears to focus on the safety and well-being of the “delegates” to the RNC, which is not surprising in the least.
Maybe I’m wrong. I hope that I am.
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Gustav’s movement toward the Gulf of Mexico is a painful reminder than just three years ago Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans and wiped out a large swath of the city killing scores and leaving even more homeless and hopeless.
Our government never rose to the occasion. It’s leadership was ineffectual and very much broken.
With New Orleans facing a possible repeat event, Mayor Ray Nagin isn’t taking any chances; he’s ordered a mandatory evacuation. Yet, much of what is happening is being done at the local level with little or no words from the Bush administration.
This time around Secretary Michael Chertoff is also somewhat absent from the picture. His office is clearly reviewing the matter to strategically prevent a repeat disaster as was caused by the ineffectual leadership of Michael Brown, an equestrian who somehow rose to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
It is severely disturbing that three years post Katrina many areas of New Orleans remain as they did following that fateful span of days in 2005. A city only partially rebuilt and levees for which improvements remain incomplete.
How is that we can do so many things in this nation, but we cannot complete repairs to levees over a span of three years? Are we so crippled financially that we simply have to pick and choose which issues to address? Americans keep paying their taxes, yet our bridges collapse, our roads are filled with potholes, our levees are insufficient for the types of storms we are routinely seeing thanks to global warming, and many of our public transit systems are drowning in debt.
Since most middle-class Americans can’t avoid paying their taxes, maybe the problem is all of those big tax breaks for the rich. Our corporate tax code has more holes (loopholes) in it than a quality piece of Swiss cheese; these loopholes allow most of the major corporations we deal with each day to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. Our daily interactions with these corporations are making them rich at the expense of our health and safety. Maybe it’s time to start collecting taxes from the mega-wealthy and U.S. corporations so that government can get back to the business of making this nation what it should be; that includes fixing our bridges, roads and levees. We shouldn’t have to pick one issue over the other, but this is what Republicans do best. They pit Americans against one another over the special interests they align themselves with. It’s a failed philosophy in which someone almost always loses; in terms of health care, public safety, national safety this is an ideology that fails each and every time.
This is a wake up call not only to Bush & Cheney, but to anyone who hopes to be the next President/Vice-President of the United States of America.
Of course, my vote is for Obama/Biden, but that’s another story entirely. Change is on the Way! YES WE CAN.
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