How to Tell it’s Election Time (and the GOP is in Trouble)
September 20th, 2006 | by Jersey McJones |How to Tell it’s Election Time (and the GOP is in Trouble)
1: Prices at the pump drop precipitously.
2: Lies about why.
John W. Schoen, over at MSNBC, talks a full self-defeating circle here…
“… there’s no evidence we can find to suggest that anyone in the White House or Congress is manipulating oil or gasoline prices to make for an easier trip on this fall’s campaign trail. …
Simply put, there is no one person, company, group or country that can control the price of a commodity like oil that’s traded on a global market. …
So who, exactly, does set oil prices? If you have to put a face on it — “the market” is the collection of oil traders who buy and sell barrels around the world, all day long. Oil is worth what they — and their customers — are willing to pay at the moment they agree on a trade.”
The White House and Congress don’t have to do anything. Big Oil can do it for itself. It is, of course, in all three of those institutions’ current interests. The obvious prognostication that the White House and Company will not push Big Oil to pump is analogous to predicting that a siamese twin will not tell it’s sibling something new.
And there is one group that can, for at least short periods, open the spigot a little wider - the refineries. We have a very limited number of them, they are controlled by a small group, and they are the nexus of most all of what’s sold at the pumps. If they’re running faster, prices go down.
Says a man who knows…
“The refineries are driving the ship — they’re the ones who really determine how petroleum gets to the market place…”
(Anyone have the line on when they jump back up? I’ll put a ten-spot down on the first Wednesday in November.)
JMJ
