Posted on 07/06/2009 2:00:51 AM PDT by RobinMasters
The extreme volatility that has gripped oil markets for the last 18 months has shown no signs of slowing down, with oil prices more than doubling since the beginning of the year despite an exceptionally weak economy.
The instability of oil and gas prices is puzzling government officials and policy analysts, who fear it could jeopardize a global recovery. It is also hobbling businesses and consumers, who are already facing the effects of a stinging recession, as they try in vain to guess where prices will be a year from now — or even next month.
A wild run on the oil markets has occurred in the last 12 months. Last summer, prices surged to a record high above $145 a barrel, driving up gasoline prices to well over $4 a gallon. As the global economy faltered, oil tumbled to $33 a barrel in December. But oil has risen 55 percent since the beginning of the year, to $70 a barrel, pushing gas prices up again to $2.60 a gallon, according to AAA, the automobile club.
“To call this extreme volatility might be an understatement,” said Laura Wright, the chief financial officer at Southwest Airlines, a company that has sought to insure itself against volatile prices by buying long-term oil contracts. “Over the past 15 to 18 months, this has been unprecedented. I don’t think it can be easily rationalized.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Markets get whacked tomorrow. Not looking good.
commods getting smoked, too.
http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/commodities/cfutures.html
one word -> manipulation
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/588tpmuu.asp
6. The house should pass every conceivable energy measure such as drilling in Anwar, drilling offshore and around Florida etc. providing for refineries, providing for nuclear power plants and let the Democrats and the Rinos oppose them and create a climate in which the people can direct their rage about gas prices at the Democrats.
[img]http://www.dallasdrivers.org/gallery/d/28112-2/IMG_4211.JPG[/img]
1998 Honda Pacific Coast PC800 motorcycle.
Fixed it.
We should be drilling and building refineries, Instead we are not drilling and we are closing refineries.
I suppose that makes sense to Democrts, but it’s end result will raise energy costs. Which appears to be their goal.
Gee, I guess it’s time to take over the oil companies Mr. Chave...er...I mean, Mr Obama.
True, but we didn’t exactly force a change when we had the chance!
The system is being fed uppers and downers. It’s in cardiac arrest.
vs. < > on FR.
...or do you mean EVERYONE ELSE uses the square brackets, and FR is the odd one out? I usually don't examine the page source anywhere else...
Cheers!
Even if you change from square brackets to the HTML type brackets, it still won’t parse properly. Try it. You have to do the full HTML code for embedding
Damn near every other forum, BBS, or related site on the internet uses the VBB-type code - where you stick a tag in square brackets before and after the URL and it parses it automatically. FR is the only major site (that allows object embedding) I’ve run across in years that *doesn’t* do this.
In addition, FR is the only major site that allows includes that doesn’t use VBB tags for text formatting. Or smilies. Or anything else.
For an example of how they work, go on over to FinalGear.com and enter their forums. Check out how much easier it is to embed a pic, or add a URL, or format text there.
Now, here’s the Wikipedia page on the BBcode system, which is almost identical and is free for anyone to implement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBCode
Which then makes one wonder why we have never done it here.
Most importantly, adding BBcode items to the middle of a post, unlike on FR, doesn’t mean that in order to preserve your paragraph structure you have to go back through your entire post and add paragraph or line breaks.
LLS
Dude, for that price, its hot or broke. Which is it?
Would you like some cheese for that whine? ;^)
Don’t worry, cap and trade should fix everything. Soon there will be rainbows and unicorns crapping colorful skittles again.
Honda's drop protection system (the stub "wings" and breakaway mirrors) did their jobs. It comes with all the broken parts and most of the replacements needed. Damage is confined to the plastics, headlight bracket and drop protect parts - bike still runs and rides just fine with no frame damage.
On a slightly more disturbing note, the PO dropped it, survived with little injury, put the bike away in his garage and gave up riding for a while, perhaps due to spousal pressure. Then he killed himself a year later. The wife sold it to me (at the price the PO had mentioned to her prior to his death as what he thought it was worth if any of the neighbors had wanted it). This supports a theory I've had for a while: Once you have been a rider for a long time, you better not stop for any reason short of disabling injury or age because you are addicted to it and it will cause mental problems.
Oh yea, that and Goobermint Health rationing. And they also said that Food Stamps and Welfare is what will REEEEeeely get this "E"-conomy going again. We'll all be RICH beyond our wildest dreams!
Question: Since we are consuming more oil this year than we did last year why aren’t prices at the pump over $4.00 a gallon? Answer...this is not an election year.
Question: Why is the NY Times trying to blame this recession on the rise in oil prices instead of the government. Answer...because Bush is no longer in office and it is getting harder and harder for them to blame him for this recession so oil is the next thing on their list.
The decade between the 1973-74 Arab oil embargoes and the inevitable worldwide oil glut by 1982 seemed like one continuous recession. The physicist Edward Teller predicted that if nuclear power wasn't developed in a big way the U.S. would eventually go to war in the Mideast over oil. The embargo taught the Arabs that production cuts wouldn't hurt their revenue because lower supply increased prices. Ultimately higher prices led to the opening of new fields in Alaska, the North Sea and Mexico. It became profitable to uncap old stripper wells in Oklahoma and Texas. That same market mechanism kicked in this last time and there was a glut for months.
When gas gets up to $4 a gallon the news media will not be able to ignore the war Obama and Congress are waging on oil. Consumers won't ignore it either.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.