President Bush and Gasoline...

You assume that it's a good thing that Chrysler was bailed out, but who knows? Maybe American Motors would have had a chance to live. Maybe the industry as a whole would have been better off. No one knows.

I do know that Chrysler went on to make some awful cars. My dad had one of those K-cars and it was a piece of garbage. And lets not even talk about the Neon. Chrysler never managed to become a first-class automaker even to this day. Maybe the Germans will change that.

It's always a crapshoot when government intervenes in industry, especially when they champion one brand over others.

Jimmy Carter had back in the 1970s was an attempt to mold a comprehensive energy policy along with developing alternative energy sources. He was a nuclear engineer after all so one has to assume he knew something about energy systems.

I count the CAFE roll backs in the same category as the current political pandering. I find it dismaying that current market analysts are already predicting that oil prices will go back down in a year or two with the resulting false sense of security that easy energy provides. The bottom line is current prices are a result of an arbitrary value placed on oil futures by speculation combined with disingenuous explanations of how expensive it is to reformulate gasolines. It's only expensive the first time you change the formulas. Retooling production line costs were supposed to be offset by the recent energy bill credits yet we will be paying for the full capital investments for as long as the energy companies can justify it.

The long and the short is that these prices have been coming for a long time and we have known about it all along.

The thing that amazes me most when oil is discussed is the view that we are only talking about energy and gasoline. The truth is that a large portion of our household material goods are made from oil products. Once the oil is gone much of the plastics and other products will be gone as well. Then lets see how loud the complaints get.

grim

are set by FUTURES TRADERS who are, by definition, speculators who anticipate an arbitrary price set by anticipated market demand. While demand may go up in certain areas of the globe they are somewhat offset by the downward economy of other portions of the world.

Gasoline prices in our country were accounted for last year by the damage to oil refineries. This year they say it is due in part to new reformulation (wasn't ethanol supposed to make gasoline cheaper?) along with the fact that current US refineries were reported only working at 85% of capacity. Mid east oil producers are reportedly not producing to capacity either.

In my area we have seen a jump of

Dave, you said "at the expense of the enviroment, you'll note."
Grim's Representative is Alan B. Mollohan the rankng Democrat, who recently made the news (and a Forum discussion) in relation to ethics.
I took a look at his Congressional web page and found:
"Mollohan also advocates a "common-sense" approach to environmental regulations that impact coal. He opposes politically driven air requirements that place undue burden on Ohio and Monongahela Valley coal and utility industries, arguing that these additional rules steal scores of jobs while yielding only marginal benefits.".

and you don't blame a politician for being a politician. Mollohan is looking out for local industry as all politicians do.

Doesn't mean you have to like or agree with everything they do.