Interestingly, back when gas prices were hitting the $4.00 per gallon mark, the right-wing was absurdly shouting blame at President Obama for the increase. Now that gas prices have dropped around sixty cents, I don’t think I’ve read or heard a single peep from that same right-wing group thanking the president for lowering prices… or even acknowledging the drop.
It’d be nonsense, either way, since the president has little, if anything, to do with gas prices, but it’s amusingly hypocritical. No doubt, there would be some "explanation" about how Obama was responsible for the increase, but not the decrease.
Dan, the bumping up and down in gas prices a few percentage points on a short time span cannot be attributed to a President. That is the market reacting to current supply and demand. Often it’s a local phenomenon. Where we live for example, prices have gone up in response to curtailed output from a refinery which had a fire late last year.
The long-term trends however, are very decidedly controlled by a president because of (1) supply, which is controlled by federal regulatory pressures and (2) the economy.
So regarding (1) new leases granted by the federal government have dropped to almost zero. That’s a fact. Oil futures trading bases current pricing on future supply. If the market sees a waning supply, it reacts by increasing prices – what we see now. That’s actually a good thing from the perspective of ensuring a consistent supply over a long time span. But the downside is an immediate increase in prices.
Regarding (2), the federal government has been paying off some of its debts by flooding the money supply, euphemistically referred to as “monetizing the debt”. That results in inflation. The price of crude and refined oil is directly affected by this since it is a commodity. Commodities ALWAYS react as a leading indicator to inflationary pressures.
So, in your purview of President Obama vs the hard-right-wing, I guess I have to say that “right-wing” (eg, common-sense crowd) wins out on this argument. The price of gasoline has been on a steady trajectory upwards for President Obama’s entire term in the White House. He owns that 100%. He has nothing to do with the small ups and downs we see over the span of a few weeks up to a couple months.
Nice try…
Wow, Tom. You certainly got pretty verbose in reaction to my minor humorous observation. Congratulations might be in order for possibly coming the closest you’ve ever been to actually understanding what I was talking about and giving a reply that was related… but you still missed the mark.
Putting aside your rather juvenile “explanation” of market forces and commodity futures markets (where you, as usual, cherry pick data to support your ideological viewpoint while ignoring the rest of the data), long-term trends in gas prices have nothing to do with my observation… unless you’re considering a 6-month period to be “long term.”
In December, I was paying about what I’m paying now for gas (I keep records, so I went back and checked, just to be sure). Back then, there was no outcry over gas prices… other than the usual grumbling, but definitely none of the “OMG OBAMA’S DESTROYING THE ECONOMY BY CAUSING HIGH GAS PRICES!!!” outcry. That happened a couple months later as gas popped over $3.80 (in my area) and eventually hit $4.00 at some stations around here. About three months after that peak, prices around here are about what they were in December… and nobody is really bitching about them anymore (again, other than the usual grumbling). So, the reality of the situation shows that it was the right-wing folks (and by no means do I include all Republicans when I use the term “right-wing”) who seem to be reacting to the short-term price fluctuations… but only when they can frame it in a way to blama Obama.
The regulatory/market/trend part of your response doesn’t hold water, either, but since it wasn’t relevant to my post, I’m not going to bother going into it.