ADMINISTRATION PREDICTS THREE MORE YEARS OF RAPE AT THE PUMP
Senior Wall Street analysts, citing the growing international crisis over Iran’s nuclear program, the ethnic and tribal disputes in Nigeria, and the worsening situation in Iraq, are predicting that the price of crude could surpass the $100.00 per barrel mark in the not too distant future. This, according to Adam Sieminski, the senior energy economist at Deutsche Bank, New York.
What that means for you and I at the pump is still unknown, but I would bet that we will be paying between $4.00 and $5.00 per gallon, perhaps as soon as this summer. One thing is certain, such an increase will devastate the in-country tourism industry as higher fuel prices would force many families to stay closer to home rather than set out on their traditional summer trek.
But, the news in Sieminski’s report is not all doom and gloom. The analyst believes that the triple digit prices would only be temporary, and that prices would eventually fall to between $30 and $60 per barrel as increased infrastructure investment brings new production and refining capacity on line. But as to when that would be, the analyst is not saying.
Who is talking, however, is Bush administration Energy Secretary, Samuel Bodman, who in an appearance on yesterday’s “Meet the Press”, predicted that the inflated gas prices could persist up to three more years.
For his part, Bodman blamed “increased demand from China and India, reduced refining capacity after Hurricane Katrina, and inadequate planning for shifts to cleaner fuels like ethanol and low-sulfur diesel”, for causing the rising prices. He did, however, opine that the shortfall “was a sign of a stronger economy under President Bush.”
How he drew that conclusion, and not the more relevant one that George Bush’s inept foreign policy is the cause of most of the situations being cited for the increase price of crude, is beyond me. I guess it’s the Kool Aide.
Not to be outdone by the experts, the smirking chimp, himself, George Dubya Bush called for another one of his famous investigations that go nowhere, this one into possible price manipulation by the major oil companies.
To think that he would do anything, if there was anything he could do, that would jeopardize Big Oil’s profits, no matter how illegally they were obtained, is unrealistic.
Equally unrealistic is thinking that this rape at the pump was not part of Cheney’s famous energy plan from day one. You know the plan, the one that he and the oil guys drew up in secret early in the first term, the very same one that was later labeled as classified.
Once again, America is screwed by the Republicans. If this is not a reason to deny them public office for the next fifty years or so, I don’t know what is.
LIB – Editor
