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  • TUESDAY MAY 27 2008 6:00 AM

Enjoying Your Gas Rape?

Submitted by FearTheReaper

Edited by erin_broadley

Tags: Oil, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Bush

Gas prices are now over $4 a gallon. Shocking, isn’t it? Who would have thought having an oil man in the White House would lead to crazy high gas prices? Being a Californian, I never thought something like this would happen, especially after Enron and other energy companies completely raped my state state in 2001, while the president sat back and watched.

Later we learned energy companies had manipulated the market, starting with lobbying for deregulation in the late '90s and ending with using the new rules to anally fuck the entire state of California. Even though it was quite obvious what was happening at the time, the Bush administration did nothing, even as our state government (Democrats) begged for help.

Now the same is happening with oil. This isn’t a supply and demand problem. Anyone who believes that is a fucking moron. We are paying high prices due to speculation. Over the past decade there has been…wait for it...yep, the development of unregulated international derivatives trading in oil futures. That has led the rich to create an oil bubble, so they can make up for all the money they lost during the real estate bubble burst. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer.

Sure, they tell us it’s all due to the dwindling world oil supply. Of course, most of the sources of that information are the same guys who will profit from just such a situation. Much like the manufactured Social Security “crisis,” this is all about a certain group of people who are trying to make more money. And now, they are.


"Millions of new households will suddenly have straws to start sucking at the world's rapidly shrinking oil reserves," wrote CIBC analyst Jeff Rubin.


Oh, scary.


"It's not going to be a one-year blip and go away like the Internet bubble," said Joseph Dancy, who manages the LSGI Venture Fund in Texas. "This is a matter of economics, and it's going to take a decade to work through."


I bet.

See, those two assholes are making shitloads of money driving up the price of oil. They are speculators. They desperately want us to believe that India and China suddenly began sucking up all our sweet oil. But that’s just not true. Sure, oil use is going up, but it does not justify the insane rise in prices we have seen here in the US.

The first culprit is our dollar. What a giant, hideous turd our dollar has become. The Bush plan to fight our economic woes is to drive down the price of the dollar. He’s hoping that will stimulate exports and tourism, which will make everything A-okay. He’s obviously a fucking idiot. The devaluing of the dollar is part of the reason gas prices have been shooting up, which causes the price of everything, food, goods, to shoot up, was well.

On the supply side, we’re doing fine.


In the U.S. alone, stockpiles of oil climbed by 11.9 million barrels in the month preceding the Energy Information Agency's May 7 inventory report; they were up by nearly 33 million barrels since Jan. 1. At the same time, MasterCard's May 7 gasoline report showed that gas demand has fallen by 5.8%, while the government suggested that gasoline consumption might have fallen by slightly over 6%.


And yet, prices keep going up, up, up. I’m not saying prices shouldn’t be going up. They should. A bit. But doubling and tripling, and I get that 2001 California déjà vu feeling. This is rape, all over again.

Congress is going to start looking into this latest rise in prices this week, but I don’t expect much to happen. Our presidential candidates, like Hillary Clinton, are running around blaming OPEC. That shipped sailed a long time ago. Control of oil prices is now in the hands of Wall Street. In 2006, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations issued a report on “The Role of Market Speculation in rising oil and gas prices.” What they found was a giant loophole in the regulation of oil derivatives trading.


"There's a few hedge fund managers out there who are masters at knowing how to exploit the peak [oil] theories and hot buttons of supply and demand, and by making bold predictions of shocking price advancements to come, they only add more fuel to the bullish fire in a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy." (The Role of Market Speculation in Rising Oil and Gas Prices, U.S. Senate, June 27, 2006).


And now those “few hedge fund managers” are taking advantage of that loophole while they can, while Bush is still in office and before Democrats gain a massive advantage in Congress. We’re in the middle of a greedy binge and it’s not going to stop until next year – because the only people who can do something about it don’t care.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is mandated by law to ensure prices reflect supply and demand, rather than market manipulation or speculation. Right now, the CFTC is a no show, just like the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission sat on its ass during the California energy crisis. But you tend to not do anything about a crisis when it's all your fault. That’s how the Bush government works.

In January 2006 the CFTC changed the rules of oil futures speculation – and I know you’re not going to believe this, but the CFTC actually changed the rules so there is no oversight. Crazy, huh? The US government energy futures regulator made sure there would be no regulation. Who would have thought such a thing would happen under Bush? At this point, people within the US trading crude oil, gasoline and heating oil futures can avoid ALL oversight requirements by routing their trades through London instead of New York.


It may just be coincidence that the present CEO of NYMEX, James Newsome, who also sits on the Dubai Exchange, is a former chairman of the US CFTC.


Huh. Shocking. When CFTC changed the rules in January 2006, the price of oil was $60 a barrel. Now it is up to $134 a barrel. There is now no way to actually detect price manipulation because daily reports are no longer required. From the 2006 Senate report:


“The CFTC's ability to detect and deter energy price manipulation is suffering from critical information gaps, because traders on OTC electronic exchanges and the London ICE Futures are currently exempt from CFTC reporting requirements. Large trader reporting is also essential to analyze the effect of speculation on energy prices.”


Basically, you’re getting F’ed in the A, and there is nothing you can do about it. This is the point where I laugh at all the lower income idiots who voted to put an oil man in the White House and thought it would work out great. Fuck you. You deserve this.

It’s gotten worse as of late because now the hedge funds, banks and other investors are jumping in. Now these speculators are driving up the cost of oil. The market does not see a difference between a barrel of oil being purchased by a speculator and a barrel being purchased by a refiner, or some other user of petroleum. Basically, around 50% of the price of oil is due to pure speculation. But no one really knows, because Bush deregulated the whole thing. We have very high supplies of oil and high oil prices. How awesome is that? It’s like the diamond business - only we don't all NEED diamonds.

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Nilloh

Nilloh

Dayton, OH
June 2004

MAY 27, 2008 06:00 PM

I a manager at a gas station for Speedway...and the sad thing of it all are the customers...the throw a bitch whenever we raise the prices on gas....but little do people realize there is a reason why most gas stations have convenient stores...you don't make money off of gas at all, you lose money...the figure can range between .60 cents to about 1.25 dollars. Also i don't know if some of you have noticed but a lot of credit card companies have started to but a cap on how much you can fill up. I think Visa is 50$ and mastercard is 75$....so what does that mean, well if someone needs more gas then the set limit they swipe twice....resulting in the gas station getting charged twice. Which leads to the taping of the gas terminals and the 2.00 dollar extra charge/

SergeantPsycho

SergeantPsycho

USA
January 2007

MAY 27, 2008 06:09 PM

Shiny_Metal_Ass said:

If by "axe to grind" you mean that I'm tired of my wife coming home in tears because of the immaturity, rudeness and downright abusive behavior of the assholes she has to deal with every day, then yeah, I have an axe to grind. When someone is abusive to a family member, you're supposed to get pissed off. I'm talking about shit that is well above and beyond being simply rude. You don't throw shit at someone who is simply doing their job, EVER. You don't call them a cunt, or a greedy bastard, or anything else of that nature. We don't own the fucking place. You're no longer a customer at that point, you're now a trespasser, who can kindly take their "business" elsewhere. So yeah, when people are abusive to my wife or kids I get pissed. Extremely pissed.



Under these particular circumstances, I think you have every right to be pissed off, and you and your wife have my sympathy and understanding.

Cattie

Cattie

Coquitlam, BC
July 2007

MAY 27, 2008 06:13 PM

I wish I was only paying $4 a gallon frown Here in Canada we pay $1.34 a litre and since our dollar is equal now to US dollars I'm paying much more than $4 a gallon. I think its also stupid that most of it is really taxes that I'm paying for. Such bullshit! mad

mcduff253944

mcduff253944

I'm lost
May 2008

MAY 27, 2008 07:06 PM

OK, honestly? Your numbers don't work.

On the supply side, we're doing fine.


In the U.S. alone, stockpiles of oil climbed by 11.9 million barrels in the month preceding the Energy Information Agency's May 7 inventory report; they were up by nearly 33 million barrels since Jan. 1


11.9 million barrels is around 25-26 hours of oil consumption in the USA. If all the oil stopped being pumped tomorrow, the oil in the US strategic reserve would last slightly more than 45 days. I don't know where you go from these numbers to extrapolating that "the supply side is doing fine." In terms of overall energy consumption, numbers like this are a rounding error.

There's a lot of oversimplification here. Crude production capacity is not refinery capacity is not pump capacity. We are operating at close to 100% of global refinery capacity, so unless you're forecasting zero growth you're going to see a crunch in capacity as demand grows, and crunches can cause price spikes all by their lonesome.

Other things you write don't make sense either. The president of the USA is not an economic magician. The dollar is down, yeah, but the dollar's been silly strong beforehand. A "weak" dollar is not a bad thing if you had a massive trade deficit, which you did. Your export market is much more attractive now because a euro buys you more American goods than it used to, so the deficit you built up importing a bunch of cheap shit from China gets knocked back down. Swings and roundabouts. Not to defend Bush, because he has been a jerk, but economic policy is pretty much as reactive as foreign policy - you're riding a bucking stallion, not guiding a gentle pony around a clover-filled paddock. The fact that he's chosen to pretty much wander off and leave the horse to its own devices doesn't mean it would have been a decade made of roses and lollipops if we'd had two Gore terms.

I understand the drive to not see this as a supply issue, because if it's not then you can fix it, but it is, so you can't. Even if speculation is bringing in a bubble, it's dissimilar to the housing one because it's grounded in genuine uncertainty. Supply-wise, US peak oil is over, global peak cheap oil is pretty much here, and peak total hydrocarbons is maybe 70 years away, which seems like a long time but we're feeling the shocks now. The higher oil prices rise the more hydrocarbon sources become economically viable, but hey, that involves the price of oil going up. Everyone's been waiting for the next oil spike so they can cash in, it's been a matter of when, not if. The cost of oil is going to rise and speculators are going to find ways of taking advantage, regulation or not. The US economy is more dependent on hydrocarbons, and more exposed to price fluctuations, than any other developed economy in the world. The spikes are a function of your exposure. Yes, they're also a function of greed and market capitalism, but it's a global market, which means any attempt at regulation is pissing into the wind, so anarcho-capitalism is pretty much like plate tectonics as far as economic policy is concerned. It's there and there's fuck all you can do about it.

You want to avoid the sting of rising oil prices? I suggest you travel back in time 30 years and start weaning the US economy off its massive and distorting dependence on hydrocarbon fuel sources. Because guess what, this price bubble may come down a bit but gas is never going below $3 a gallon at the pump again. If anything oil has been low since the 70s. It's a runaway right now because the reins are loose, but so what? If this hadn't happened now it would have happened in another couple of years. The most you could have expected to do was eased your economy into it. But since anyone saying that gas taxes were going to rise would have been committing electoral suicide, well, sooner or later the crisis was going to hit and you were going to get it in the ass. Your voters would not countenance the reality - this is the result.

It's not the people who voted for Bush who brought it on themselves. It's the people who voted for Reagan, and then kept voting for people who promised to protect the USA from the world. Damn near 30 years since the first oil crisis that should have been a wake up call, but people preferred to believe the fantasy that oil was an infinite resource.

Seriously, what do you think's going to happen when Barack Obama rides into DC on the Magical Change Pony? One wave of the regulation wand's going to put global oil prices back in the sub $60 per barrel range? He's not, but even if he does, it's still not going to help. The only thing that will do is lull people back into a false sense of security, spur another glut in consumption and hasten the next spike in prices. The time to act was way back around Nixon, you've missed that boat good and hard.

Oil, like any finite resource, is going to run out. And before it runs out it's going to get scarcer, and there are going to be runs, spikes, famines and panics. The smart thing to do is to make sure you're not entirely dependent on it before it gets to that stage. Shame nobody was that smart.

abbazappa

abbazappa

Sacramento, CA
June 2006

MAY 27, 2008 07:07 PM

PRockGirlScout said:
What they should be doing is simply raising the minimums for using a debit card. Most convenience stores and gas stations have long had a tradition of not allowing credit/debit transactions for amounts under $5.00. If the business model is changing (and it's very astute of you to note that average transaction amounts are likely declining), then up the minimum to compensate. It's just ridiculous to alienate customers by charging them extra to use the most common form of payment.


Last I heard (the person that told me about this mother worked for a credit card agency) stores are not supposed to set limits on how much a person must spend to be able to use a credit card. So the stores that make you have a $5.00 limit to use a credit card are braking the credit card companies agreement and could be fined or have a penalty. Of course most places get away with this since no one bothers to report them.

Also if you have a Visa Card, you are not required to show ID and can refuse. That is a rule that Visa has with its stores. Sounds odd but when I worked at Circuit City I found out that is true (although I never followed it since most people like it when you ask for id).

strndniowa

strndniowa

Grimes, IA
May 2007

MAY 27, 2008 07:23 PM

The prices at the pump are getting to the point where people are finally paying attention to what they drive, and how they drive- Great.... smile smile smile
That this is being done at the cost? of record profits for oil companies and execs puke
I'd rather see gas prices being driven up by road use taxes then to line the pocket of someone who makes 100,000 times that of the average family in this country, if not more...(far far more in my OPINION)
This is beating up people on the bottom more...once again- in about three different ways- just at the pump...
1:lower income people are likely to have older, less efficient cars (and less likely to shell out for a new hybrid tongue
2:lower income people probably don't have a perfectly maintained car..they can't afford that after the $80.00 tank of gas
3:I'd guess that the average length of commute does not vary much by income...a thirty or forty dollar a week increase, percentage wise, is a much greater burden on a family that earns $30,000 a year then a family earning 3 times that...
Have you looked at your gas bill for your house? The same thing has happened...Natural gas is going way up too...
Of course, less heat is like driving less...poor people don't need a warm house either...or can make sacrifices....

Cockzombie

Cockzombie

Japan
July 2006

MAY 27, 2008 07:32 PM

that edit would result in a black comment. refresh the page and try again


I was feeding the trolls and tried to make it go away but SG wont let me

PRockGirlScout

PRockGirlScout

Portland, OR
October 2005

MAY 27, 2008 07:37 PM

Shiny_Metal_Ass said:
A little note here. My wife works at a gas station / convenience store. She isn't making one more dime than a year ago. Or two. No raise for two years.

Please don't take out your anger at high gas prices on the fucking cashier, you classless assholes. News Flash....The fucking cashier doesn't set the fucking price of gas, or make any "extra" money from it. Taking shit out on a fucking cashier is lower than being a playground bully, and makes you look like a total scumbag. You're all licensed drivers over the age of 16, act like a fucking adults. My wife doesn't make anywhere near enough money to put up with your abusive behavior.

Guess what else, Einstein? She pays the same price you do for gas! There's no "employee discount" at the gas station. Guess what else? I'm in construction in S Florida, so I'm making a lot less too!

And remember, you're on camera, douche bag, so go ahead and throw something. You're stressing out my wife and seriously fucking up our sex life, which pisses her off even more. Do not piss her off further. She will kick your ass.

[/rant]



People are such assholes on a daily basis to people who work jobs like that. I can't imagine how much worse it is now that people actually have something to be upset about.

That really sucks. In other news, I am getting laid more because of the gas prices. It's too expensive to go anywhere and do anything else. tongue

Kindle

Kindle

Houston, TX
March 2006

MAY 27, 2008 07:42 PM

abbazappa said:
Last I heard (the person that told me about this mother worked for a credit card agency) stores are not supposed to set limits on how much a person must spend to be able to use a credit card. So the stores that make you have a $5.00 limit to use a credit card are braking the credit card companies agreement and could be fined or have a penalty. Of course most places get away with this since no one bothers to report them.


True.


And more.

Nolan_Void

Nolan_Void

Salisbury, NC
July 2004

MAY 27, 2008 08:39 PM

mcduff253944 said:

SPOILERS! (Click to view)
OK, honestly? Your numbers don't work.

On the supply side, we're doing fine.


In the U.S. alone, stockpiles of oil climbed by 11.9 million barrels in the month preceding the Energy Information Agency's May 7 inventory report; they were up by nearly 33 million barrels since Jan. 1


11.9 million barrels is around 25-26 hours of oil consumption in the USA. If all the oil stopped being pumped tomorrow, the oil in the US strategic reserve would last slightly more than 45 days. I don't know where you go from these numbers to extrapolating that "the supply side is doing fine." In terms of overall energy consumption, numbers like this are a rounding error.

There's a lot of oversimplification here. Crude production capacity is not refinery capacity is not pump capacity. We are operating at close to 100% of global refinery capacity, so unless you're forecasting zero growth you're going to see a crunch in capacity as demand grows, and crunches can cause price spikes all by their lonesome.

Other things you write don't make sense either. The president of the USA is not an economic magician. The dollar is down, yeah, but the dollar's been silly strong beforehand. A "weak" dollar is not a bad thing if you had a massive trade deficit, which you did. Your export market is much more attractive now because a euro buys you more American goods than it used to, so the deficit you built up importing a bunch of cheap shit from China gets knocked back down. Swings and roundabouts. Not to defend Bush, because he has been a jerk, but economic policy is pretty much as reactive as foreign policy - you're riding a bucking stallion, not guiding a gentle pony around a clover-filled paddock. The fact that he's chosen to pretty much wander off and leave the horse to its own devices doesn't mean it would have been a decade made of roses and lollipops if we'd had two Gore terms.

I understand the drive to not see this as a supply issue, because if it's not then you can fix it, but it is, so you can't. Even if speculation is bringing in a bubble, it's dissimilar to the housing one because it's grounded in genuine uncertainty. Supply-wise, US peak oil is over, global peak cheap oil is pretty much here, and peak total hydrocarbons is maybe 70 years away, which seems like a long time but we're feeling the shocks now. The higher oil prices rise the more hydrocarbon sources become economically viable, but hey, that involves the price of oil going up. Everyone's been waiting for the next oil spike so they can cash in, it's been a matter of when, not if. The cost of oil is going to rise and speculators are going to find ways of taking advantage, regulation or not. The US economy is more dependent on hydrocarbons, and more exposed to price fluctuations, than any other developed economy in the world. The spikes are a function of your exposure. Yes, they're also a function of greed and market capitalism, but it's a global market, which means any attempt at regulation is pissing into the wind, so anarcho-capitalism is pretty much like plate tectonics as far as economic policy is concerned. It's there and there's fuck all you can do about it.

You want to avoid the sting of rising oil prices? I suggest you travel back in time 30 years and start weaning the US economy off its massive and distorting dependence on hydrocarbon fuel sources. Because guess what, this price bubble may come down a bit but gas is never going below $3 a gallon at the pump again. If anything oil has been low since the 70s. It's a runaway right now because the reins are loose, but so what? If this hadn't happened now it would have happened in another couple of years. The most you could have expected to do was eased your economy into it. But since anyone saying that gas taxes were going to rise would have been committing electoral suicide, well, sooner or later the crisis was going to hit and you were going to get it in the ass. Your voters would not countenance the reality - this is the result.

It's not the people who voted for Bush who brought it on themselves. It's the people who voted for Reagan, and then kept voting for people who promised to protect the USA from the world. Damn near 30 years since the first oil crisis that should have been a wake up call, but people preferred to believe the fantasy that oil was an infinite resource.

Seriously, what do you think's going to happen when Barack Obama rides into DC on the Magical Change Pony? One wave of the regulation wand's going to put global oil prices back in the sub $60 per barrel range? He's not, but even if he does, it's still not going to help. The only thing that will do is lull people back into a false sense of security, spur another glut in consumption and hasten the next spike in prices. The time to act was way back around Nixon, you've missed that boat good and hard.

Oil, like any finite resource, is going to run out. And before it runs out it's going to get scarcer, and there are going to be runs, spikes, famines and panics. The smart thing to do is to make sure you're not entirely dependent on it before it gets to that stage. Shame nobody was that smart.




I'm honestly kind of thrilled by the kind of temporary, apocalyptic dark age that will follow oil running out. I wonder if it will happen in my lifetime... and how long it will take people to find alternatives.

Nolan_Void

Nolan_Void

Salisbury, NC
July 2004

MAY 27, 2008 08:43 PM

SergeantPsycho said:
A lot of "poor" people, by historical standards are pretty well off. I'm sure if maybe they cut back on some of their expenses (maybe hold off buying a new cell phone or something), they could scrap enough money together to start investing.

And failing that, they might be able to get help in the form of microlending. Capitalism FTW!



I officially no longer believe that you are an actual person. As far as I'm concerned, you are a character that someone made up just to rile people up on the internet. My worldview simply does not permit me to believe that there are people who can actually, honestly think the things that you are saying.

Good joke. You really pulled a fast one on us all. It's actually kind of genius in the weird, Andy Kaufman kind of way...

gdarklighter

gdarklighter

San Diego, CA
August 2005

MAY 27, 2008 09:04 PM

Fixer said:

RudieCantFail said:

Horrorflick said:
Just the other day, I stopped at a gas station I don't normally use to fill up. All of the card-reader things on the pumps are taped over. Annoying? Yeah, sure. I walk up to the counter to use my debit card to fill up. "You know, there's a two-dollar charge to use your card, right?" "No, I didn't know that, asshole. Give me my card back and I'll go somewhere else." I hear this is becoming a common practice in a lot of stations...



To be fair; as someone who has worked in a small business, the credit/debit card companies charge a fee, sometimes a flat rate, sometimes a percentage of the sale, to the business owner. Sometimes the owners of the business will swallow this cost as a courtesy to the customers..



Not a courtesy, it's a requirement of their Merchant Agreement.

http://www.bustachange.com/charging-you-to-use-your-credit-card-is-illegal/
http://consumerist.com/consumer/csr/mega-update-requiring-minimum-credit-card-purchases-is-a-violation-168646.php


abbazappa said:

PRockGirlScout said:
What they should be doing is simply raising the minimums for using a debit card. Most convenience stores and gas stations have long had a tradition of not allowing credit/debit transactions for amounts under $5.00. If the business model is changing (and it's very astute of you to note that average transaction amounts are likely declining), then up the minimum to compensate. It's just ridiculous to alienate customers by charging them extra to use the most common form of payment.


Last I heard (the person that told me about this mother worked for a credit card agency) stores are not supposed to set limits on how much a person must spend to be able to use a credit card. So the stores that make you have a $5.00 limit to use a credit card are braking the credit card companies agreement and could be fined or have a penalty. Of course most places get away with this since no one bothers to report them.

Also if you have a Visa Card, you are not required to show ID and can refuse. That is a rule that Visa has with its stores. Sounds odd but when I worked at Circuit City I found out that is true (although I never followed it since most people like it when you ask for id).


Debit cards are not credit cards, and are not governed by Visa/MC/Discover/Amex merchant agreements. Why do you think you get charged ATM fees if you use another bank's ATM? If you use a check card and your transaction is processed as credit, then it is governed by the aforementioned merchant agreements.

lavenir said:
There's a chain on the west coast called Arco/AMPM that typically has lower prices than other gas stations, but they don't accept credit cards and charge you to use your debit card, so if you don't happen to have nearly 50 bucks cash on you to fill up your tank, it doesn't really save you any money.

Yes. That's some dirty shit.


I find that if I fill up from near-empty (about 10 gallons), Arco is cheaper than most of the surrounding stations, even with the $0.45 debit card fee.

OhSoOrdinary

OhSoOrdinary

New York, NY
July 2006

MAY 27, 2008 09:15 PM

SergeantPsycho said:
A lot of "poor" people, by historical standards are pretty well off. I'm sure if maybe they cut back on some of their expenses (maybe hold off buying a new cell phone or something), they could scrap enough money together to start investing.



surreal

attn_ho

attn_ho

Brooklyn, NY
February 2004

MAY 27, 2008 09:25 PM

OhSoOrdinary said:

SergeantPsycho said:
A lot of "poor" people, by historical standards are pretty well off. I'm sure if maybe they cut back on some of their expenses (maybe hold off buying a new cell phone or something), they could scrap enough money together to start investing.



surreal



hes such a tool no?

otaku

otaku

USA
January 2004

MAY 27, 2008 09:55 PM

scylis said:

OpticNerve said:
When does Captain America appear to give Bush a solid right cross to his jaw?



the REAL Cap is dead.

while Bucky might show up in his stead, it won't be nearly soon enough. he might kneecap the Shrub, actually, as Bucky packs heat.



I'd say the Shrub's been replaced by a Skrull, but even they probably couldn't come up with something as fiendish as this.

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