Supply and Demand or Manipulation?

I always thought that what regulated prices for the most part was supply and demand. If the demand for oil goes down, then the supply goes up and the price goes down, right? Well that's the way it works for most things. Seems not with oil prices though.

Since the price has been steadily increasing, with no increase in demand I might add, people have started to decrease their usage. Every pole I see says people are changing their driving habits. More and more people are getting rid of their gas guzzlers and the sales of hybrids and economy cars are increasing at record rates. The sales of scooters have increased about 25% this year. People are carpooling, riding bikes, and using public transportation more than ever before. There are businesses that are going to 4 day workweeks to cut down on commuting.

Our demand HAS to be dropping. People are using less gas. So why is the price still going up? It's very simple. We are being ripped off by OPEC, big oil companies and Wall Street. I don't see how they could be any more blatant about it.

It may just end up coming back to bite them though. By pushing the price so high so fast, it pushed people over the edge. They started a trend and now people are actively looking for ways to save gas. I think that people are going to get used to using less and even consider it a challenge and they're going to meet that challenge. The resentment and anger over this price gouging is growing fast and it's going to be the motivation to make people fight back.

That's exactly what we need to do too. Get angry and motivated to do something about it. Fight back.

I love it.

Thanks for nothin’ Saudi Arabia

I want to know something. What does the United States do when there are people in need anywhere in the world? I mean, when there is a natural disaster, an earthquake, cyclone, famine causing drought, etc, etc…

What does America do? We offer aid of course. We offer to help and provide money, medical supplies, food or whatever is needed to lend a hand to those who are in dire need. Even when we can’t really afford it, like now when our economy is in the tank, we offer to do what we can.

So I’m curious, did any other government or people anywhere offer to help us when the devastating hurricane Katrina hit a couple of years back? I don’t really remember if the rest of the world offered to give us any help. Not that we asked or anything.

But now, today, our President asked for a little help from Saudi Arabia. He asked that they increase oil production temporarily to help ease the cost of gas in our country to help our economy a bit. It sounded like a reasonable request to me. Not too much to ask from the people that are getting filthy rich from the sale of oil to the rest of the world, right?

You know what they said? They said no. They said they’re not going to do that. Not we’ll look at it or we’ll consider it, just no. They pretty much told our President and our country to take a hike.

Now this is a country that is supposed to be friendly to the United States. Some friends… I guess we know how much we can count on them when we need them. I guess we know what we get if we ask for help. Gee thanks Saudi Arabia. I wish we had more friends like you.

One day soon, we are going to come up with an alternate energy source that is going to make that oil you ration out so carefully to keep the price high, totally worthless.

I can’t wait for that day.

Unbelievable...

I saw in the news today that the U.N. is blaming the United States for a downturn in the WORLD economy. As a matter of fact, they said the U.S. will "continue to be a major drag for the world economy extending into 2009."

For crying out loud, is there anything else that rest of the world can blame us for???

I've about had it with being held responsible for everything that's wrong in the world. I swear, no matter what the U.S. does in any situation, we get flack.

If there's injustice and tyranny in some third world country and we ignore it we're cold and heartless and don't have any compassion. If we get involved with our military we're accused of being "war mongers" or trying to "impose" democracy on them. If there's a natural disaster somewhere and we send aid, we're accused of trying to exert our "influence" and establish a "presence" in their country.

Well, enough is enough. I think we need to start a movement in this country to insist our government remove our military presence and our "influence" from every other country on the globe.

We can start by withdrawing our influence in Myanmar. Everything that is getting sent in there is being stolen by their military government anyway so it's a waste of our tax dollars. Let our detractors lend a hand.

We should have never offered help to China either. They're not a poor country; they don't want or need our help. Why should we bother? Let the rest of world help them out.

I think we should withdraw from the Middle East totally. Bring our troops home. Let the religious fanatics have their way and butcher each other. We'll just leave the whole situation for the U.N. to handle. They'll be able to take care of it.

We can use the military to strengthen our own borders and stop the illegal immigrants from invading OUR country.

We can use all the money we're spending trying to keep the world’s dictators, tyrants and terrorists in check to pay down our debt and get our economy back on track.

We'll stop spending our hard earned dollars importing lead laced crap from China and overpriced, poorly made clothing from third world sweat shops just because some Hollywood type slaps their name on it to make it this week's "in" thing. Next month it will be a shop rag in a garage somewhere.

Start wising up America. Let's keep our dollars at home. Let the rest of the world buy this garbage. We don't need it.

Does this sound like a rant? Do I sound like I'm pissed off? Well, that's because I am and I think it's time the rest of the country got pissed off as well.

Let's make some noise.

Let's do something about it.

Let's start that movement.