Has anybody taken notice that in Presidential election years, there is always a run-up of gas prices preceding the election? They then drop right before election day, then go up dramatically right after elections are over, regardless of who wins. Far be it for me to be a conspiracy monger, but I do remember that 4 years ago, during the last Presidential election, there was an exponential rise in gas prices running up to the election, then they dropped, then went right back up again after Election Day. Gas prices have gone up a full dollar a gallon just since the primary season began back in January, and of course, the excuse is supply and demand, but as gas prices have continued their meteoric rise, people are driving less and less and less, meaning that demand here in the US has sharply dropped as people are dumping their gas hog cars in favor of smaller, more fuel sipping vehicles. They are also turning more to mass transit and other alternative sources of transportation, so I find it hard to believe the excuse of supply and demand when so many people are forgoing their usual routines and driving so much less and buying more fuel sipping cars. Sure, China and India are becoming the new industrial powers in the world, and thus demanding far more oil as a result, and the US has only itself to blame for that, as rampant outsourcing of jobs for cheap labor to those two countries for the past 8 years has created that perfect storm. Still, I find it hard to believe the need to raise gas prices so high so quickly in response to supply and demand situations when I think that it's partly an election year ploy of some sort. What the motive here is, I don't know, other than to get McCain elected or something. I don't really know, but I remember this same thing happening four years ago. The price hikes weren't as dramatic as they are now, but there was still a run-up on gas prices before the election that made me begin to wonder why.
There's a definite Wall Street-Washington link that seems to be contributing to squeezing what little life there is left out of the middle class, and what better way than via oil prices? First you get 'em where they live (the bursting of the housing bubble), then you get 'em where it hurts, the pocketbook (oil prices). Conquest complete. What better way to completely disspirit those who would vote Democrat then to depress them so badly that they'll just become too jaded to vote and stay home in November? Mission Accomplished. I smell a rotten fish in all of this, and I know that something's up that is meant to wreak as much damage as possible in as short a time as possible before Bush retreats back to his ranchette in Crawford in January. Fasten your seatbelts, because if you think it's bad now.....just you wait. I think that the worst is yet to come. Unless something changes soon, I foresee a major economic collapse coming that will make the Depression look like child's play. This year's perfect storm of the collapse of the housing bubble, the credit crunch and the creation of an oil bubble are just the beginning. The stock market has been pretty unstable of late, either making huge gains or huge losses, but already this year, it has lost a great deal of its value and may well lose more as nervous investors figure out that something's rotten in Denmark, so to speak. I keep hearing that the bottom hasn't fallen out of the bursting of the housing bubble yet, and this is part and parcel of the run-up on oil prices as well, as investors scramble to make up their huge losses from that fiasco. What's going to happen when the bottom does finally fall out? I think we'll see such a run-up on gas prices as we haven't seen yet. And when that happens, it may well bring things to a screeching halt and spiral us into a Depression the likes of which we haven't seen in almost 80 years. Hang on, folks, it's gonna get ugly. I just hope that I have a Depression-proof job that will see me through to my retirement in five years. For now, though, all we can do is to collectively sit back and wait for the bottom to fall out and hope that we can somehow come through it all and survive as a nation. We did once. I'm sure we can do it again. Time and perseverance will be the judge of that.
There's a definite Wall Street-Washington link that seems to be contributing to squeezing what little life there is left out of the middle class, and what better way than via oil prices? First you get 'em where they live (the bursting of the housing bubble), then you get 'em where it hurts, the pocketbook (oil prices). Conquest complete. What better way to completely disspirit those who would vote Democrat then to depress them so badly that they'll just become too jaded to vote and stay home in November? Mission Accomplished. I smell a rotten fish in all of this, and I know that something's up that is meant to wreak as much damage as possible in as short a time as possible before Bush retreats back to his ranchette in Crawford in January. Fasten your seatbelts, because if you think it's bad now.....just you wait. I think that the worst is yet to come. Unless something changes soon, I foresee a major economic collapse coming that will make the Depression look like child's play. This year's perfect storm of the collapse of the housing bubble, the credit crunch and the creation of an oil bubble are just the beginning. The stock market has been pretty unstable of late, either making huge gains or huge losses, but already this year, it has lost a great deal of its value and may well lose more as nervous investors figure out that something's rotten in Denmark, so to speak. I keep hearing that the bottom hasn't fallen out of the bursting of the housing bubble yet, and this is part and parcel of the run-up on oil prices as well, as investors scramble to make up their huge losses from that fiasco. What's going to happen when the bottom does finally fall out? I think we'll see such a run-up on gas prices as we haven't seen yet. And when that happens, it may well bring things to a screeching halt and spiral us into a Depression the likes of which we haven't seen in almost 80 years. Hang on, folks, it's gonna get ugly. I just hope that I have a Depression-proof job that will see me through to my retirement in five years. For now, though, all we can do is to collectively sit back and wait for the bottom to fall out and hope that we can somehow come through it all and survive as a nation. We did once. I'm sure we can do it again. Time and perseverance will be the judge of that.
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