A time capsule of the greatest financial mania in the history of mankind, told in real-time by regular folks and patriots. May future generations better understand the madness of crowds, and how power and money corrupt.
Will $10-a-gallon gas be a good or bad thing for America and the world?
Bonus: What will the impact be on urban planning, transport and housing?
Posted by
blogger
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5/30/2008
Labels: thank you alan greenspan, thank you ben bernanke, thank you casey serin, thank you Dick Cheney, thank you george bush, thank you gm, thank you hummers, thank you iran, thank you wal-mart
100 comments:
hopefully it will be the end of toll roads, and non off road SUVs
Wage inflation for those that have jobs, high unemployment for everyone else.
Sure!!!! Food Riots are next!!! Who's the Genuis who will devise the dumbA$$ increase??? Store up on food & invest in precious metals (i.e MuthaFukin Bullets)
All the stuff people were predicting in the 60s and 70s is here.
The Soviets fell in 1990. America a mere 20 years later?
Folks, I know it is hard for us Americans to comprehend, but...
20 YEARS IS NOTHING IN THE GRAND SCHEME OF HISTORY!
History will record not that "we won" the Cold War but that their MIC collapsed first (in Afghanistan of all places) our MIC collapsed second (in Afghansitan and Iraq) a mere 20 years later.
Whoop-de-doo! USA number 1! Yeah! Football! Walmart! Pick-ups!
Shameful.
Check out "The Long Emergency" by James Howard Kunstler. While far too pessimistic, he does a good job of explaining how the coming oil scarcity will change everything about the way we live. In a nutshell: suburban sprawl will wither and Americans will relocate to walkable cities and towns. Globalism will end as shipping goods long distances becomes expensive again. Airline travel will become something that only the rich can afford. Big-box retailers like Walmart will no longer be able to function without a steady flow of cheap Chinese products across land and sea. And ultimately America will get back to its agrarian roots as growing food (and every other socioeconomic activity) goes local again. We'll see.
High gas prices are good for the environment. But not if it makes us desperate enough to drill in wildlife preserves like ANWAR.
How this will effect urban planning is a more interesting question. I've always preferred higher density development but there are obstacles. In a place like Boston where downtown neighbourhoods are well-established and staunchly protected there is little hope of population density increasing rapidly.
A peripheral town on the commuter rail with vision could potentially join forces with an enlightened developer. Brockton, MA is an example of a pit of a town that is on a commuter rail into Boston that could raze its entire town center and build a higher-density replica of Commonwealth Avenue. As long as you include plenty of communal greenspace then you have my ideal community.
Burbs like Framingham are already being hit by lots of foreclosures and we can expect many others to experience the same.
Dunno, but $20 a loaf for bread will sure suck.
A good thing --
but all the urban planners will have to read a new text book because the development in the US assumes everyone drives everywhere more than 50 meters away.
The economy will take it in the shorts though, so some discomfort may be experienced.
In case you haven't noticed oil is down $7 in the past couple of days. I made a ton of money riding oil up. Now I am buying USO puts and will make a killing on the way down.
Oil is in a bigger bubble than housing ever was and it has started to burst. Your talk of $10 oil is reminiscent of 'buy now or be priced out forever' talk of 2005.
By May 2009 gas will be well under $3 - maybe even hovering around $2.25- and everyone who traded in the safe, comfortable SUV for a shitbox Yaris will look like a fool. I'm digging this man panic to small cars myself. I bought a Yukon Denali for practically nothing recently. My wife is looking at getting a slightly used Range Rover and it's the same story. Dealers can't give them away. Combined we will have saved at least $25K compared to buying the same two trucks only a year ago.
And what the hell happened to the contrarians out there? The posts and comments on HP these days might as well be on MSN.COM. You're all parroting the same tired MSM crap of boo hoo gas is so expensive, wahh wahh wahh, I need the government to send me gas money. Oh right I forgot this is a pro-Obama site, never mind.
Hello $5 loaf of bread.
the price of a bbl of oil does not translate into the price of a gallon of gas
the refiners and marketers have onlz begun to pass on the high costs of oil
just wait
trust me
meanwhile, I expect the price of a bbl to fall to $100 or so soon
especially with the election coming up. gotta appease the sheep
Good or Bad?
Long term: fewer cars on the road which means faster commutes & much safer ones.
Short term: Every SUV & Dodge Ram 1500 owner will be stuck watching them rust in the drive.
Local Govts will have to accept the fact that rail systems are necessary and urban sprawl is a result of developer greed.
Nothing will happen because no matter how high gas prices go fat, overwieght, lazy Americans will do anything they can to keep driving their oversized pickups and SUV's to Wal-Mart
'Urban planning?!' LOL - is there such a thing anymore in the USA? I thought it was just build, build, build....and build some more.
What will happen are that far flung 'communities' will become ghost towns. I mean, WHO will be able to commute from such neighborhoods?
Its not just that, but what about the cost of transporting goods and produce to these people? And pumping water? How do you think this is done? Magic?
People forget that CHEAP energy contributes to many things, not just our beloved SUVs. OIL is like the Force from Star Wars...as Kenobi said, 'It surrounds us and it binds us...'
For example, I love the coal argument. Use coal, its abundant and CHEAP! Yeah...well...how do you think that coal gets to the electrical station? Oh noes...by DIESEL train (usually). That'll get expensive soon as well. And lest we forget that the MACHINERY to extract the coal also runs on...gasp! DIESEL!
Folks...oil seeps out of every pore in this nation's economy. The eco-nuts think that 'alternative' energies are the answer...unfortunately, no they are not for the machinery and technologies that are the components of these 'alternative energy technologies' also have their roots in...oil.
Think beyond transportation folks...and then you will start seeing the full spectrum of the nightmare scenario.
I can believe that oil will drop, but can't believe the US will ever see 'cheap' oil again. Demand in the US is down, but world demand is up and continues to grow. Production is down across all producing countries. Just a couple hundred thousand barrels here and there but it's adding up. Factor in the devaluing dollar and the picture isn't rosy.
All the oil guys I talk to don't think the current price is sustainable and say the price will plummet because it always does. I don't believe that's true this time.
One thing that really pisses me off is the government. They're taking in all this extra money (while, hilariously calling Exxon on the carpet for making too much) where is this extra money going?
I'm fine with higher gas prices, but Europe has much better public transportation and most of the countries there are much smaller than the US, and can be traversed without a car (for the most part, though rural areas are cutting rail service, see UK so those places are up the creek).
$10 gas is good.
The impact on urban planning is 90% of planners are without a job as they cannot comprehend a world with less driving. The current school of planning does not teach for walkable, livable communities, which will be a requirement of higher $10/gallon gas.
We start building subways and rail. Bicyclists and pedestrians are no longer as rare as wild turkeys.
This current price spike, is the first cycle of price spikes and crashes continuing into the next decade. Higher oil prices are met with higher extraction rates. Higher prices encourage more rapid development. This continues to a point. As all the easy oil is extracted and the pool of oil shrinks, production rates start their decline.
That’s when the fun begins. Spot shortages around the world are followed by economic convulsions, dramatically reshaping our economy and way of life. The impact on urban planning, transport and housing are significant.
$10 gas is bad from the standpoint that it is a product of supply and demand of dollars, not just supply and demand of oil. (Though as Keith noted, the two are not perfectly correlated.) Anon 11:09 is correct that this will also mean a higher price for everything else. It's just money being diluted from our savings and transferred to banks that made bad bets.
It's also too bad that anonytard 11:20 is too wussy to make up a name and stand behind his post so we can rub his idiocy in his face a year from now. Say what you want about DOPES!. At least he signed his posts. (Sort of.)
the price of a bbl of oil does not translate into the price of a gallon of gas
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and let me guess it's all Bush's fault too.
you conspiracy nuts get loopier by the day. Now crude prices have have no effect on gas prices. Awesome, really.
10 dollars a gallon would be fantastic for the U.S. It would finally get us to invest it new energy sources in amounts that will make them happen. I mean a true Modern day Manhattan project to get Nuclear FUSSION (not fission) up and running (let say a Trillion dollars over 5 years, about the cost of the Iraq War). Then we can all drive 100 miles a day to work if we want in electric cars and heat our homes with electric heat for pennies.
My point is that crude oil only makes up around 70% of the price of a gallon of gas. And the refiners and marketers haven´t yet been able to pass on the 100% increase in crude to the end consumer
But oh, they will. Trust me, they will. And then when they do, those new retail prices will stick like glue, even when the price of a bbl tumbles. Prices are slow to rise on the way up and then real, real sticky on the way down.
Refiners like Valero are getting killed right now, but they´ll be printing money soon enough
And get ready for $4, $5, $8 and finally $10 gas
And good luck with those homes in Maricopa Arizona
naz up yet again today...enjoy those 1.8% CDs
DOPES
DOLTS
FOOLS
TOOLS
The oil bubble will burst like all bubbles burst.
Funny how a blog that talks about housing bubbles can't see the commodities bubble staring it right in the face.
If you think oil going from $10 to $130 in 10 years is sustainable, you're an idiot.
The price of gas, or anything for that matter, is irrelevant. Things cost what they cost, they're worth what they're worth.
Debasing a currency and manipulating costs, particularly the cost of money - that is the interest rate, is the problem that leads to misallocation of resources.
So what if someone thinks that someone else shouldn't be driving "big" cars. Suburbs aren't "bad", or "good" for that matter. True pricing allows people to allocate their resources to maximize their resources.
Self righteous preaching is simply out of line. One might as well be against folks going past page 117 in the Joy of Sex book.
We need sound money and no bailouts - not preaching.
I bought a Yukon Denali for practically nothing recently. My wife is looking at getting a slightly used Range Rover and it's the same story. Dealers can't give them away. Combined we will have saved at least $25K compared to buying the same two trucks only a year ago.
---------------------------------
f'in yeah man! i have been scanning craigslist for an H2 or an original hummer for cheap.
I think oil is in the grips of a wild hot-money speculative bubble, unsupported by the fundamentals.
The price of a bbl will fall 30%, before the election I´d guess. But remember, bubbles last much, much longer than people usually think
Does that help?
Meanwhile, your gas prices on the street will keep going up and up and up and up
Oil execs are the new realtors. They´re gonna be hated. Watch for talks of a windfall tax too. Which of course won´t happen since Big Oil bought off your congressman. And Cheney and Bush too.
Well, I'd have neither something like a Yaris or a big pig of an SUV. Both are ridiculous extremes. I'd choose a nice midsize car like a Buick LaCrosse.
$10 gas is good.
The impact on urban planning is 90% of planners are without a job as they cannot comprehend a world with less driving. The current school of planning does not teach for walkable, livable communities, which will be a requirement of higher $10/gallon gas.
----------------------------------------
I sure hope so.
my commute is about 12 minutes by car. There are 2 grocery stores that are 10 min away by walking.
But yet the closest bus stop is 10 minutes. I have to transfer once to get to work and then walk for 15 min to get to my office. all this to commute 5 miles one way! how is that for mass trans planing? i do not live far out. Intel has offices for hundreds across the street from my office.
Is total collapse of the U.S. economy a good thing?
What a dumbass question Keith -- of course it would be bad. If diesel hits $10 shipments by truck will become sporadic and that would lead to widespread shortages, riots in cities, and pockets of starvation. The economic contraction would be worse than the 1930s because agriculture is a much smaller fraction of the economy now.
Collapse of the US economy would be a great thing. Then the US would be FORCED to stop bombing the world and acting like the savior of the world and spreading "democracy" at the tip of a bunker buster.
It's the only way the population of America will wake up from their credit fueled consumption binge to start paying attention to what is happening to their once great country.
Whatever it takes to get us away from depending on fossil fuel as our main source of energy.
So, if $10 a gal gas forces us to be creative then it’s a great thing.
I am not a tree hugger and I don’t believe the globe is warming, but every time I fill my car it pains me that my money is going to those who want to hurt my own family.
I’ll gladly pay more at the pump if it supports US energy independence.
Oil is a bigger bubble than real estate was. It will pop, too.
Maybe we will see $5 gas before then - but prices will come back down to around the $2.50 range or less.
Let's put this in perspective: gas was $2.20 a gallon LAST YEAR. Oil was around $50 a barrel. It is now $130 a barrel.
It has been proven that the oil price spike is due to speculators - not real demand. The investors just keep rolling over their futures. More barrels of oil were bought by speculators over the last year than the entire country of China bought.
Anyone talking about $10/gallon gas is no different than the "you'll be priced out forever" idiots talking about real estate in 2005.
Yes oil is a scarce resource. And yes, it will rise in price over time. But a spike from $50 to $130 in less than a year can only be explained by one thing: speculators! Same goes for other commodities. To think otherwise is ridiculous.
Jeez - people never learn. It's another bubble, idiots. We had the dot com bubble, then the real estate bubble, now the commodities bubble. All bubbles pop - this is no different.
“Then the US would be FORCED to stop bombing the world and acting like the savior of the world and spreading "democracy" at the tip of a bunker buster.”
America is the great destroyer of cities given the chance, if not our own cities then ones around the world. Ever since Thomas Jefferson, we have been a nation that disdains density and urbanism. Since the 50’s we have been trashing our own cities.
If you were to take someone learning about WWII and show them American cities and European or Asian cities, they would think WWII happened in the US. Utica, Binghamton, Rochester, Newark, Detroit all fine cities at their time had their own battles with planners and the suburbs and lost.
Expensive gasoline/diesel and oil will be a terrible thing, even for the environment:
1. Electricity generation will switch to coal burning. That produces much more sulfer oxide (SO2) than oil burning plants. That means more acid rain. Coal burning produces more CO2 as well, if you are concerned about that.
2. Expensive fuel won't lead to urbanization. On the contrary, when it becomes expensive to move food and supply around, urban density will decline because people will need to move to places where they can grow food or at least be close enough to someone who can grow food, and that is not in the densly packed cities with metros. Sure, they won't be driving around in SUV's as much, but they won't be driving much in cars or riding much metro either; look at the economies where fuel cost is high relative to per capita GDP: they have much higher truck-to-car ratio than we do. Trucks can do real work that cars can't.
Also, higher oil prices will result in drilling in all the "sacred cow" places, not to mention making profitable enormously polluting oil-producing methods like coal liquification, tar sand and oil shale strip-mining/ground-heating, etc..
There is no shortage of oil but it will be more expensive as the cheap oil has already been drilled and pumped. Now we have extra heavy crude in Venezuela and the tarsands in Canada. We have the oil miles underneath solid rock formations deep under the ocean. It will cost alot of money to get to this oil and drive prices up to $200/brl.
Li Sufer,
You are not making any sense. If there's so much electricity so cheaply that we can heat our homes for pennies, why would gasoline be $10/gal at all? $10/gal means massive inflation has taken place and there is no energy alternative.
Oil execs are the new realtors. They´re gonna be hated. Watch for talks of a windfall tax too. Which of course won´t happen since Big Oil bought off your congressman. And Cheney and Bush too.
We'll shut down Exxon and Chevron and buy our oil and gas from PetroChina and Saudi Aramco. They will give us a huge discount and we will love the Chinese and Saudis for supplying us with cheap energy. Get real, dude.
Exxon and Chevron provide tens of billions in tax revenues to the government. They create tens of thousands of high-paying jobs for engineers and blue collar workers. They provide great returns for mutual funds and pensions. If you want cheapers oil, then start drilling. We do not have the right to demand cheap oil from other countries. If we want their oil, we pay what they demand.
With the impending food shortage Colista Flockhart will suddenly look normal.
$10 gas will not matter to the world.
Whether it will matter to people is a whole different story.
America would be a third world country without oil and it's going to hit this country very, very hard.
To the people that drive an H2, pickup or suv and only use it as a daily driver (and I mean you folks that don't use it for it's intended purpose) ... your screwed.
Good luck trading it for a Civic ... your vehicle is not worth nearly what you think it is.
What are the fundamentals of oil that would tell us that this is a bubble? I mean, we knew housing was a bubble because of price/rent and price/income - what is comparable for commodities?
Lets just be logical now, look whos in office BushCO, Cheneys Energy Policy, THEY ALL REPRESENT OIL AND ENERGY INDUSTRY Now lets look at 2 factors OIL PROFITS AND THERE RAPID ACCERATION AS THE BUSH ADMIN IS GETTING TOWARDS THE END
& THE IRAQ/AFGHAN WARS PUTTING A HUGE DEMAND ON OIL.
Did you sheeple think they would have just started gouging right away????
It does matter whos representing who in America.
Did suddenly after Bush's last year in office the world suddenly decided to use way more oil then before???? Connect the godamn dots!!!!
My prediction is if we dont become a dictatorship and we get a Democratic executive Branch WHO ISNT IN BED WITH THE OIL COMPANIES we will see a return to normal supply and demand in oil prices.
"naz up yet again today...enjoy those 1.8% CDs
DOPES
DOLTS
FOOLS
TOOLS"
Yeah, it's up 16 at 1:40. Where's the rally?
Didn't Hugo Chavez offer to sell USA oil at $50 a barrel in I think 2006 but Bushco refused the offer.
http://tinyurl.com/5tzgu2
-HB Slacker
RE: The ever increasing price of gasoline...
What's this I hear about Peak Oil?
Ha! Skyrocketing oil prices are caused by the greedy manipulation of oil companies. We will never run out of oil.
The truth is that there are trillions and trillions of barrels of untapped oil in all parts of the world. In addition to this, the Earth is currently brewing up additional trillions and trillions of barrels of light sweet crude oil from the vast reservoirs of primordial ooze which blanket the Earth's surface. The Earth is creating new oil faster than we can use it.
Anyone who would believe that we are running out of oil would believe that 9/11 was an inside job.
Or that the Bush Administration is comprised of criminals, thieves and racketeers.
Get real.
V.L.
In florida the republi-shitstain dominated congress and state senate are talking about subsidizing the huge and increasing revenue shortfalls by selling stateroads to the private sector thereby making many many more toll roads for us all. Oh goodie. 10$ a gallon gas and tolls at every corner to boot!
And in november the same batch of shitstains will most asuredly get re-elected and the voting masses with their heads stuck up their asses will complain out loud again what is going on? And the hoodwinking and back patting will go on as usuall behing closed doors for no-one to see.
Qweefie,
Exxon makes 10 cents profit for every $1 of sales. On a $4 gallon of gas that's 40 cents.
Compare that to the combined state and federal taxes. In California it is 66 cents per gallon. In NY 59 cents. US average is 47 cents.
But it's a lot easier to bitch like a little girl about the boogie man oil companies than look for the real problems. And it's easier for Nancy Pelosi and Diane Feinstein to hold hearings with oil company CEOs than ask why the hell California needs 66 cents for every gallon of gas sold.
And unfortunately gullible sheep like and your followers fall for this scam.
"California needs 66 cents for every gallon of gas sold."
Or about 15% of the cost of gas currently. Most of this money ends up funding roads to drive on, which to me is fair since the ones using the roads should be paying for them.
18.0 cents of that ends up going to the Federal government. Currently this goes into a road improvement budget, which is already scheduled for a budget shortfall due to repairs to our aging infrastructure.
As for the oil companies, their profit margin on a gallon of gas is around 7%. Their record profits are driven by the record cost of gas, and the record use of gas. Even if we eliminate all the profits oil companies receive, it's only 8 cents off of $4 a gallon.
Service stations are currently charging 9 cents per gallon, but that's due to the volatile prices. With non-volatile prices it's somewhere around 14 cents a gallon.
So in short, if we eliminate profits for oil companies, service stations and taxes we'll save about $1 a gallon. The rest of the cost is how much money it takes to get the gas from oil fields into your car.
As a Maircan, it is my right to buy cheap oil and gas from other countries. I don't want to ruin Maircan land by drilling for oil on it so I want the Saudis and Canaduns to ruin their land by drilling for oil and then sell it to me for the price I say is fair.
I wonder why Keef never compains about British Petroleum and Total Fina? Don't they also make lots of money off high oil and gas prices in Europe? Are the $9/gal gas in Europe Bushco and Cheney's fault too? Yes, America is the center of the universe. LMAO
World consumption of a limited resource is rising - oil prices
have no choice but to keep climbing.
Anonymous said...
I can believe that oil will drop, but can't believe the US will ever see 'cheap' oil again. Demand in the US is down, but world demand is up and continues to grow. Production is down across all producing countries. Just a couple hundred thousand barrels here and there but it's adding up. Factor in the devaluing dollar and the picture isn't rosy.
All the oil guys I talk to don't think the current price is sustainable and say the price will plummet because it always does. I don't believe that's true this time.
Veronica -
Are you really that blind and
niave as to what's really going on in our world today?
Perhaps you're not impacted yet, so "no problem".
'Peak Oil' is a scientific fact,
which we've been told over and over about by expert researchers in the field for years; we've done nothing about it because there is just too much self-interest/greed.
The remaining oil is becoming harder and harder to extract, which acclerates price increases for this limited resource.
Everyone is now fighting for a smaller and smaller pot of oil.
So far as 911, it might as well have been an inside job, because Bushco used it as a "green light" for all his war mongering associates to cash in big, while our young solders lose their lives over a war that should never have happened, and economic conditions here at home get worse for the majority of tax paying citizens.
One thing you are correct about this is that the Bush Administration is comprised of criminals, thieves and racketeers.
Veronica Lodge said...
RE: The ever increasing price of gasoline...
What's this I hear about Peak Oil?
Ha! Skyrocketing oil prices are caused by the greedy manipulation of oil companies. We will never run out of oil.
The truth is that there are trillions and trillions of barrels of untapped oil in all parts of the world. In addition to this, the Earth is currently brewing up additional trillions and trillions of barrels of light sweet crude oil from the vast reservoirs of primordial ooze which blanket the Earth's surface. The Earth is creating new oil faster than we can use it.
Anyone who would believe that we are running out of oil would believe that 9/11 was an inside job.
Or that the Bush Administration is comprised of criminals, thieves and racketeers.
Get real.
V.L.
America would be a third world country without oil and it's going to hit this country very, very hard.
--------------------------------
and other countries won't be hit hard?
in your scenario i think most third world countries will die out because the aid they current receive via fossil fuel burning transportation will stop arriving.
If you think oil going from $10 to $130 in 10 years is sustainable, you're an idiot.
------------------------------
actually, yea, 130 is sustainable. perhaps not if you live 50 miles away from work. inflation adjusted, 130 is not all that "high"
also, oil, unlike other commodities, can not be "renewed". a bushel of corn can be produced year after year. once a barrel of oil is consumed it is gone. If we are not at peak oil then 130 will cause a bunch of new exploration and discoveries thereby increasing production. the incentive is there at 130. my gut tells me that at best production will be flat over the next 3-5 years.
Expensive fuel won't lead to urbanization. On the contrary, when it becomes expensive to move food and supply around, urban density will decline because people will need to move to places where they can grow food or at least be close enough to someone who can grow food, and that is not in the densly packed cities with metros.
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yea, i have never understood how the scarcity of oil will cause denser urban areas???? always seemed to me that it would lead to smaller cities but more of them distributed apart from each other with farm land in between.
back before oil and automobiles were cities "denser"? sure seems like there are a lot of smaller towns that became even small as the use of automobiles increased.
It will be wonderful and I can't wait. Maybe some of the fat ignorant slobs that make up the majority of this country will finally wake up.
This country has gone to sh*t and we deserve everything that is going to happen to us.
Most people are in their own little "lifebubble" and I can't wait till it goes POP!!!!
Maybe you should start another blog called "LifePANIC"? I think that is going to be the big bubble to break. Wheeeeeeeeee
-FutureShock-
Every cycle ends with commodities going through the roof... it's simple, growth continues until you've got a stranglehold in the system, which means finding new energy and mines. We're hitting that point.
The economy will tank. Demand will come down, new supply will come on and a new cycle will begin.
I have been expecting this and have built up my finances to weather these cycles. That's what financially responsible households do. That's what saving for the bad times means
Energy going through the roof is a good thing. It's part of the cycle. The next phase is the cleansing.
A good thing.
It gets all those damn stupid SUV, F-250, and Hummer driver the f*ck out of my way on the roads.
Signed,
Smug 2006 Prius Driver
May 30 (Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve Board Vice Chairman Donald Kohn raised the possibility of giving Wall Street securities firms permanent access to loans from the central bank, as long as regulators tighten oversight of the companies.
Reality said...
‘Expensive gasoline/diesel and oil will be a terrible thing, even for the environment:
1. Electricity generation will switch to coal burning. That produces much more sulfer oxide (SO2) than oil burning plants. That means more acid rain. Coal burning produces more CO2 as well, if you are concerned about that.’
You are the reason gas is expensive.
You fool..
Here is another REALITY.
Fill a bucket with, half water (Recycled from your potty) and half LSD, then poor it over your head with your mouth wide open and you’ll experience REAL acid rain.
DOPE
I laugh at all the SUV comments on here. I have an old 93 SUV. I paid $3k for it and expect it to last another 10 years. I live a mile from work and fill it up less than once a month. How smart would it be for me to junk it and get a 30K hybrid to get 10 more mpg? What about even if gas goes to $10 tomorrow?
Before you tell me to go get a hybrid do some math and show me the numbers or stfu.
The rest of the cost is how much money it takes to get the gas from oil fields into your car.
I wonder how Venezuela can sell gas for $0.12 to their citizens. If costs so much to get the oil, the way you're telling us, how can Venezuela, a Third World Country, make the magic of selling gas for $0.12?
See how the numbers don't lie?
OILPanic
Some truely amazing comments here:
"Oil is in a bigger bubble than housing ever was and it has started to burst. Your talk of $10 oil is reminiscent of 'buy now or be priced out forever' talk of 2005"
A bubble is when prices are not justified by the underlying supply and demand picture. Many countries are completely out of oil (demand destruction). I know that's not headline news but most 3rd world coutries can not afford to buy oil (products) any longer. They have been priced out of the market. They day will come when YOU are priced out of the market.
"In addition to this, the Earth is currently brewing up additional trillions and trillions of barrels of light sweet crude oil from the vast reservoirs of primordial ooze which blanket the Earth's surface. The Earth is creating new oil faster than we can use it."
It is a little known scientific fact that the earth's core actually consists of a creamy Nougat-Hazlenut filling and not as wrongly assumed of magma and molten metal. ...and yes, the abiotic-oil theory has been disproven.
" it's simple, growth continues until you've got a stranglehold in the system, which means finding new energy and mines."
Find new energy? Like through meditation? What the hell are you talking about? Find new energy and mines...hallelujah! Well, you better start looking, maybe you 'll find some mines in your own backyard or maybe some are hiding under your bed. Good luck!
$10/gal of gas = good thing. I already see "improvements" in my commute. A LOT less SUVs on the roads, a lot more people in buses. If the price hike is due to Gov't taxes, and those taxes are used for transportation infrastructure improvements I'll sign any petition to have it approved.
If, on the other hand, $10/gal is a result of supply/demand, boy we are screwed.
Oil was $40 in 1980 and is $130 in 2008. Is that really a bubble? Unlike houses, they're not making anymore oil.
we are in a commodities bubble.
the money "lost" from the housing meltdown had to be "made" somewhere else.
It's an illusion. Welcome to the stock market folks.
Every society needs a comeupance once in a while. Food and fuel prices should rise to real levels.
If it gets the fat ass soccer moms driving less and eating less
If it gets the fat ass kids walking more (to school maybe?)
If it gets more kids rding school buses ( ridership is pitifully low)
If it cuts out opportunist realty investors and wanabes and returns real estate to homes not investments
If it reduces energy consumption
If it reduce emissions
If it improves the efficiency of business (like getting rid of karate or ballet schools in the middle of nowhere for instance)
Then I'm for the increases
After the 2 oilmen you elected TWICE get out of the White House, oil prices will collapse. Watch in November how oil prices will be nosediving.
Anonymous gutless and lazy gives'm hell said...
A good thing.
It gets all those damn stupid SUV, F-250, and Hummer driver the f*ck out of my way on the roads.
Signed,
Smug 2006 Prius Driver
May 30, 2008 10:28 PM<<<
if i ran into your prius with my hummer, who would win?
We need to reduce and produce. China is going to continue to buy up the world's excess oil production. They are rich, we are debtors. We will never see cheap gas again.
Can't make a wish and re-arrange America.... "poof" mass transit is practical for everyone.
Anyone else notice that highway miles traveled has gone way down, yet gas is still going up?
Go sign the petition:
www.AmericansForJobsAndEnergy.org
Good Time Charlie
How's that life in the burbs doing for you? How's that 4-hour commute everyday? It's going to get worse. Your Messiah was giving an interview to an Hispanic channel yesterday, telling them that he's ready to give amnesty to 20 million illegals as soon as he becomes president. Keep in mind that those 20 million will bring their entire family from Mexico to get amnesty again and then breed like flies. They'll flood the freeways with more cars, trucks, and the usual POS van. Then you wonder why the Colorado river is drying up. The main issue in this country isn't Iraq, Oil, etc...it's illegal immigration, bunch of geniuses!
According to IBM Corp's Institute for Electronic Government commuter pain survey released Friday, daily drivers suffer increased stress and anger, along with sleep deprivation and loss of productivity at work.
More than 4-thousand people were polled in 10 major cities. Nearly half said traffic congestion is the worst offender and causes their stress levels to rise. Another 28-percent said their anger levels rise during their daily commute. Almost one in five said commuting problems cut down on their productivity at work and in school and 12-percent said they were sleep deprived.
Here's the Commuter Pain Index:
1. Los Angeles
2. Atlanta
3. Miami
4. Dallas-FW
5. Chicago
6. San Francisco
7. New York
8. Washington D.C.
9. Boston
10. Minneapolis-St. Paul
The study also found that nearly two-thirds of poll respondents believe traffic has worsened over the last three years, especially in Los Angeles and Atlanta but in Miami, it's a different story. Fifteen percent of respondents in Miami said traffic here has actually improved.
$10 = SUV = rusted hulk sold for scrap.
Can't wait for this to happen.
Watching this thing collapse will be sweet.
The Russians don't seem to be running out of oil. They were the ones who first developed the abiotic theory of oil production. This theory says that the earth as well as all other planets create petroleum continuously (check Wikipedia for more info). Even though I have read quite a few of Kunstler's books and blogs and listened to his speeches, I don't agree with the peak oil scenario. I do agree with his opinions on urban planning though. The oil is there on U.S. territory, we just have to drill for it in different ways than we have in the past.
Interesting that Glenn Beck had the genius Raymond Kurzweil
http://tinyurl.com/ancsx
as a guest and he said that within 5 years, we'll probably have enough solar power/mirrors in American deserts to power the entire country. He mentioned that many projects that are underway funded by Google and other major companies. So I'm not really concerned about Peak Oil that much.
Read the Wikipedia link above re: Ray, before you come throwing rocks.
Realist,
What's your problem? Did you read the "if you are concerned with that" conditional in my sentence? Personally, I'm not into the CO2-GlobalWarming myth, but those who praise the high gas price might be.
Anon 11:15,
Venezuela does it by robbing the oil companies through "natinalization." Oil industry is capital intensive to get the well started, then relatively low cost for pumping alone. Charvez is cooking the proverbial goose that lays the eggs down there . . . a great meal for the time being, but will be hungry tomorrow.
While Kurzweil was instrumental in inventing some of the OCR and speech recognition software and devices, his futurist predictions mark him as a typical statist engineer, who doesn't understand how the market place and human interaction work.
I'm not a big believer in peak oil either. However, to think that just because energy source becomes domestic would make it affordable is quite laughable. The US is the leading food exporter in the world, yet that fact has not prevented food price tripling in the last couple years. The fundamental issue is the debasement of the legal tender. Anything that gets drafted by the investment community into taking up the role of money as store of value is guaranteed to go up in price dramaticly, be they stocks, real estate or commodity.
Does anyone remember invention? We will eventually move away from oil and toward renewable energy,nuclear, etc. Electric cars will have the range and performance comparable to today's gas engines. The suburbs will continue to exist.
if i ran into your prius with my hummer, who would win?
I'll win dumbass because I'll sue you
The perfect solution to the old crisis:
The Americano should start farm-raising a whole darn lot of the good old snapper turtle. The Americano will then be ensured of a steady supply of natural food from now until the fat-ass Americano cow comes home !!!
Imagine this: What is better than a grilled snapper turtle being skewered from mouth to ass on a green Chinese bamboo stick all sizzling, sputtering, roasting nicely, juices dripping, fat popping over a bed of white hot charcoal grill ???
### Furthermore:
Gasoline is now at its lowest level in the history of the Americano. It is only $135.00 a barrel of oil and it will head to $200 Americano dollar currency in a blink. Cheap and ready to be burned in a shiny, big-ass monster freaking Ford 350 truck, ain't it ?
So, tell me, does the average Americano, Joe6Pack and JaneZinfandel take it enough in the rear orifice yet by the forceful penetration of "Little Boy" + "Fat Man", or do you want more "Enter The Dragon" ?
Americano = Being Entered By The Dragon up the Kazook
"BORKAFATTY" AKA The Pig is swallowing, roosting, snouting, chomping at the maggot feed trough.
Heeeee... Haaaaa... Arrrrr...
And all of you retards, ass-head that voted for SHRUB and worshipped his ASS over the last 8 years, guess what, the chicken are coming home to roost on your head-ass. The ancient snapper turtle probably have more brain cell than you and your children combined together. Are you sorry yet ? Do you feel ashamed and stupid about your shallow thinking, narrow-minded love and blind, ignorant worshipping for DUBYA ? Do you, do you, do you ???
Anonymous Anonymous said...
After the 2 oilmen you elected TWICE get out of the White House, oil prices will collapse. Watch in November how oil prices will be nosediving.
May 31, 2008 1:27 AM<<<
keep dreaming. all discussion of oil in a speculative bubble and other such nonsense is a bit premature. hear me and hear me good. the oil per barrel price will be closing in on $200/barrel, just like the analyst are predicting. oil is a commodity. right now it is in correction. but time and time again, experts warn that the oil prices will continue to go up. one day soon, we will look back on 130/barrel oil and wish it was that cheap again. we complain about 4.00/gallon gas. heck how much is it in england? case closed. the united states does not have public transportation or electric trains. we are in deep doo doo. so many here commute to work. this will end. and so will the concept of large trucks. all of our trucks will soon look like japanese commercial trucks...
Anonymous HB Slacker said...
if i ran into your prius with my hummer, who would win?
I'll win dumbass because I'll sue you
May 31, 2008 7:48 AM<<<
what if i ran over your lawyer with my hummer?
hb slacker,
"I'll win dumbass because I'll sue you"
Well, I wouldn't make too much noise about it ahead of time. Sueing someone successfullly requires at least two things:
(1) that you are alive after the accident;
(2) that you do not suffer amnesia or blackout, so that the police report is not entirely written according to the guy in the Hummer.
Both conditions are somewhat dependent on how much braking the Hummer driver applies before impact. In some parts of the world, drivers are known for backing up and running over their pedestrian victims intentionally to kill them just so that there wouldn't be a live witness to offer a differing account of what happened. Such is the sad reality of human nature :-(
Senate votes to not explore the ANWR, and Maxine Waters threatens to take over companies and have the gubbermint run them.
Where is Lee Harvey Oswald when you need him???
You people are bizarre. We have a ton of ongoing innovative projects to mine half of American deserts with solar panels, that will power the entire country in less than 10 years, and you keep talking about Peak Oil and how oil prices will continue to shoot up forever. And I'm not even considering all the other alternative energy technologies. That's the problem with America, idiots never read about the science being developed or applied as we speak. Watch for the price of oil to start declining after Bush/Cheney are out. We're going through exciting times in America, another one in which revolutionary solutions are being demanded. Everything is collapsing around us for a reason: to come up with solutions.
While Kurzweil was instrumental in inventing some of the OCR and speech recognition software and devices, his futurist predictions mark him as a typical statist engineer, who doesn't understand how the market place and human interaction work.
I disagree; here's why:
In 1968, during Kurzweil's sophomore year at MIT, Kurzweil started a company that used a computer program to match high school students with colleges. The program, called the Select College Consulting Program, was designed by him and compared thousands of different criteria about each college with questionnaire answers submitted by each student applicant. When he was 20, he sold the company to Harcourt, Brace & World for $100,000 (roughly $500,000 in 2006 dollars) plus royalties.[citation needed] He earned a BS in Computer Science and Literature in 1970 from MIT.
In 1999, Kurzweil created a hedge fund called "FatKat" (Financial Accelerating Transactions from Kurzweil Adaptive Technologies), which began trading in 2006. He has stated that the ultimate aim is to improve the performance of FatKat's A.I. investment software program, enhancing its ability to recognize patterns in "currency fluctuations and stock-ownership trends."
1) Trains - As far as shipping commodities, I've read where they are exponentially more efficient than semi-trucks.
2) Electric cars - I am an investor of Dynegy and read the the postings of some very smart power generator folks and they say generating plants can not reduce their output during the night, which makes it the perfect time to juice up the ole electric car, with very little additional costs.
I think we Yanks can decrease our gasoline usage by 50% by planning our trips wisely and walking a bit more, which would upset Andrew, as there would be less fat on us to sizzle in the charcoal pit.
First, Oil is going to drop just enough to bankrupt Dubai and cause more fighting in Iraq.
After that, it is going to go to the stratosphere to stay. Bankrupting the maxed out American snapper turtle.
Nobody is safe, everyone is screwed, the market will make sure of that.
Anon 8:16,
I'm a big believer in creative destruction. However, let's not get too carried away by "the next big thing." Desert solar generation requires a whole new electricity distribution network; this time, with trunk lines starting from the no-man's land back to the northeast instead of the other way around with the previous hydro-power. The distribution capacity will also have be significantly greater is electricity has to displace gasoline and diesel. We are not talking about fiberoptics where a new generation of faster switches can dramaticly increase capaicty. It takes good old fashioned metal conductors to carry electricity. Have you priced a mile long two inch thick pure copper or pure silver wire trunk line lately? It's not cheap. Yes, technology has a price deflating effect, and so does imports; however, the domestic monetary authority has proven itself quite capable of causing price inflation and make working people's lives miserable despite technology and import supply improvements.
Anon 8:31,
Your examples illustrated my point. Kurtzweil is bright-eyed engineer in search of "ideal" solutions; he doesn't quite understand that market place is a process: mistakes and corrections are part and parcel of the deal, not some intelligent design by a super smart guy. There is no "ideal" match of candidates and colleges; the matching process itself will influence the institutional environment: monolithic "ideal" candidates fitting a specific set of criteria is not a good insititutional environment. There is no ideal hedge trading method either. What the heck was Kurtzweil's hedge fund doing from 1999 to 2006 before it started trading? 1999 was a great time for hedge funds to start; 2006 was a terrible time to start trading as a hedge fund as the whole hedge fund industry went into a blood bath in 2007 and 2008.
I don't believe in the current peak oil craze. While I'm not entirely convinced of the abiotic oil theory, I'm not sure if we are running out of oil yet. The scientific evidence isn't very strong if you ask me, and as far as energy goes, we certainly aren't running out of that. Fossil fuels furthermore aren't a good source of energy. Also, burning coal as a power source is much worse than nuclear fission, and biofuels can be as destructive as coal is. I can't imagine then making wood burning cars...or a biodiesel space shuttle.
I think the PO movement is tough talk. Suburban cowboys who think they can live off the fat of the land. Even a majority of your bona-fide survivalists have a very hard time out in nature, and most of the survivalist movement is loony tunes to begin with.
There is no "ideal" match of candidates and colleges; the matching process itself will influence the institutional environment: monolithic "ideal" candidates fitting a specific set of criteria is not a good insititutional environment.
So, are you telling me that you don't believe in Multiple Regression Analysis or data mining? Pleazzzz...
"So, are you telling me that you don't believe in Multiple Regression Analysis or data mining? Pleazzzz..."
I use Regression Analysis and data mining in my work and trading on the side all the time. However, I'm keenly aware that regression analysis only works if the observer/participants' action has no effect on the phenomenom/market-place. For example, the Black-Scholtz model behind LTCM, and the loan performance analysis in recent years were both thoroughly back-tested for data going back decades. Yet, they failed miserably because actions by the artitrargers/decision-makers using those models fundamentally changed the market place.
At the college admission office, the decision of the administion officers is literally 100% of the market volume. There is other transaction or counter party. Following an "ideal candidate" model is guaranteed to get a student body that is far different from the ones that constituted the back test data to begin with . . . so projecting anything from that data would be simply invalid.
In the real world and real market place, observer/action- dependent "uncertainty" (akin to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in Quantum Physics) is a common occurence. The strict Newtonian/Cartesian clockwork simply won't work in the long run.
IDIOTS!!!!! Oil MAY go down, but when the Chinese uncouple their currency from the US dollar, it will allow over ONE BILLION people access to cheap oil. In turn this WILL drive the costs up here in America as Shiff and other predict another 40-50% drop in dollar value.
There are over ONE BILLION chinks and dot heads who are salivating at the idea of drag racing and sunday cruising - do not think for one second that this massive enrush of demand will not drive the prices up!!!!
its a big scam to make you think 2.00 buck a gallon is cheap.......................
if one tenth of the prospective science were real and come true...i would live till 500 years and not be concerned about not getting more.........................
Ya gotta wonder though. If the main growth in oil consumption is developing countries and they get their money to buy oil presumably from Americans buying sh-- they don't need. Now the US is in recession. Where does that leave these countries?
Long term yes oil is going to become scarcer but at $100+ a barrel (or $200+) it is going to break a lot of economies.
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