Mr. Shaman
Senior Member
- May 4, 2010
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Since oil companies operating here in the US do not feed the US demand solely, the only way to keep the oil companies from charging anything they want for their product would be to nationalize it. Do I think this is a good idea? Of course not. However, I find it funny how everyone wants to blame Obama and his policies for the spike in gasoline prices, when in fact, it is simply a seasonal adjustment that we pay each and every year, regardless of who is in the White House.
Except it isn't just a "seasonal spike".
As the dollar drops oil becomes more expensive. Obama's policies encouragin zero interest rates and low dollars directly contribute to higher oil prices--higher asset prices across the board. And other nations have complained specifically about this.
Oil and gas prices were much higher during the 2008 campaign season, while Dubya was still in office. How do you explain this since Obama's policies weren't in place back then?
January 11, 2009
"In a five year period, Masters said the amount of money institutional investors, hedge funds, and the big Wall Street banks had placed in the commodities markets went from $13 billion to $300 billion. Last year, 27 barrels of crude were being traded every day on the New York Mercantile Exchange for every one barrel of oil that was actually being consumed in the United States.
"We talked to the largest physical trader of crude oil. And they told us that compared to the size of the investment inflows - and remember, this is the largest physical crude oil trader in the United States - they said that we are basically a flea on an elephant, that that's how big these flows were," Masters remembered.
Yet when Congress began holding hearings last summer and asked Wall Street banker Lawrence Eagles of J.P. Morgan what role excessive speculation played in rising oil prices, the answer was little to none. "We believe that high energy prices are fundamentally a result of supply and demand," he said in his testimony."