stop the speculation, which is driven by the oil companies, and gas prices will normalize.

It's not speculation. It's gambling.

Gambling is as much internal as external. Internally, it produces endorphins which, like keys, fit into a tumbler and - voila - you have Pleasure.

Capitalism is a casino.
Trylon

I live in the urban South, in a working-class neighborhood, and I can tell you that concerns with the environment or fuel economy are absolutely foreign concepts to many people around here, including Democrats.

Muscle cars like the Charger and the new Camaro have replaced Lincoln Navigators and Cadillac Escalades as status symbols, and since most people who drive them don't care about the environment or appreciate the natural world, they would almost certainly support (or at least accept without criticism) any policy that would keep gas prices down, whether it was violence against Iran or drilling off the North Carolina and Florida coasts.

While I can understand that some environmentalism can seem like an issue only for the privileged, my point is that Obama's success rests in part on a demographic whose attitudes undermine any hopes of progressive change in our energy policies.

Drive less. When possible buy local foods. Reduce your trash. Scare economists.

1. Prices reported for crude oil are for the relatively low volume "spot market", typically for delivery in 30-90 days. Major oil companies insure their big supplies with with much longer term contracts and production from their own fields which insulates them from erratic short term market pricing. Nevertheless, retail pump prices quickly jump in response to any speculative increases in the spot market, long before the higher priced crude could reach the end buyer. Cha-ching.

2. Massive mergers of the past 15 years have reconsolidated control of the U.S. retail gasoline market among a few giant oil companies. Nowhere is the effect of this more obvious than the way pump prices go up simultaneously among all brands, all over town. This occurs much faster (within hours) than the resupply cycle to the stations. Cha-ching.

3. Of course reciprocal collusion extends to our friends in government. Recall 2008 when Exxon and others reported record profits for the 2nd quarter as the pump price went over $4/gallon, followed that August by a $14billion tax break given those deserving folks in the oil industry by congress. And now we've got super PACs to return the favor. Cha-ching.

4. Let us not forget National City Lines, a consortium by GM, Firestone, Esso (now Exxon) and others that purchased street car companies throughout the U.S. and replaced the highly efficient electric rail lines with buses to build the market for motor vehicles, tires and petroleum fuels.Look it up to see how, despite Federal indictments, the plot worked and virtually eliminated street cars by 1960. Cha-ching.

To all those who are worried about the political consequences of rising gas prices for Obama: A few months of $5 a gallon gasoline will exact a huge price on Obama's reelecton possibilities. Didn't petroleum executives make the threat that Obama would pay a political price for opposing him. They can control the price through speculative mechanisms and market control of supply. My contention is not what Reich seems to think: that the market will clear the price since this present rise is just a small speculative bubble. My view is that they will jack the price up and hold it through the election. In that case even a candidate as outrageous as Santorum will look like a good vehicle to express the rage and resentment which the public will have. In a way Obama deserves it because he has not done what is needed to regulate the commodities market and to protect the public interest.

Reich missed the most obvious reason for increasing gasoline prices: The closing of a number of refineries no longer able to make a profit in the US Northeast, the US Virgin Islands, Trinidad, the UK, and EU. Thus the excess gasoline that was produced by European refineries and exported to the US and the return stream of diesel going from the US to Europe is about to dry up. And all that is rather old news.

Reason 4:

The insatiable drive to destroy the planet looking for more of the worst and dirtiest sources of energy while excluding any innovative way of controlling energy which cannot be created or destroyed, only manipulated for reuse. If it ain't coal, natural gas, nuclear, oil, then it isn't a money maker like those are.

But isn't it a great life.

Max Keiser interviews a man, Charles Hugh Smith, who reports that gas sales have gone off a cliff!

Keiser Report: KR251

www.maxkeiser.com

Reich, the consumate insider offers:

"The American economy is showing faint signs of a recovery. Europe’s debt crisis appears to be easing. Greece’s pending bailout deal is calming financial nerves on both sides of the Atlantic, and the Bank of England and European Central Bank are keeping rates low. At the same time, China has decided to boost its money supply to spur growth there."

To endorse the deceptive art of printing money, a/k/a "easements" with an economic improvement is pretty sickening. One should re-read Ellen Brown's article (published yesterday) for a far more incisive accounting of the likely implosion of the current house of cards posing as a sane global economy.

Reich does his part to keep the circus tent inflated...

The causal factors i.e. supply issues etc, are all within the control of Big Oil as presently constituted. Mr. Obama seeks to broaden energy options with natural gas et al. and the response is predictable, Big Oil raises the price of gasoline. Mr. Reich knows how the game is played.

Repost:
In the President's State of the Union Speech, he told big oil he would be taking on a new partner, natural gas. Market forces are not driving the price of gasoline, political forces are. The President declared his allegiance to new energy sources and rising gas prices is Big Oil's response. Big Oil now wields a double edged sword, raise prices, get even richer at the public's expense, use the money to fund the opposition and use public anger over rising prices to defeat Mr. Obama. All's well that ends well. Make no mistake about the strategy. Can they pull it off? Politics is, "the art of the possible".

Why not just subsidize lower pump prices by taking the funding from Israel's 3 billion dollar a year foreign aid tab, since they're using it to threaten attacks anyway?

" Europe’s debt crisis appears to be easing"

Robert Reich, distilling into one little lie, the criminal heist by international hoodlums (bankers) and their subsequent attack on the people's of the world, through that same corrupt banking system's forcing so-called "austerity" measures.

That kind of deceptive short hand, is why I don't read much of Reich.

How about our oil production here in US being exported instead of using it here to lower prices? One reason is because the demand is still down, usually when demand is down price goes down?

Big Oil raises prices at the pump simply because they can.There is no oversight. American consumption is down yet prices climb. It has almost nothing to do with supply and demand. They always raise prices for the summer driving season. And it is possible they are raising prices prior to the election to favor Republicans who are more compliant with Big Oil than Democrats and take in much more in campaign donations than Demos. However, both parties are Big Oil puppets and a significant number of members of Congress hold oil stocks as well as MIC stocks. It is no wonder Congress approves illegal "wars" to further the global interests of American oil corporations.

"I can hire one half of the the working-class to kill the other half."
-- Jay Gould, Gilded Age rail tycoon and real estate speculator

I wish to God people on CD would quit reading the half-truthful screeds of the diminutive neo-liberal disaster, Professor Robert Reich. He is a Bill Clintonite neo-liberal, "absolute advantage free trade" loving charlatan and dissembling backstabber of the middle-class and working-poor.

It is a million times better to read anything by Professor Michael Hudson of the University of Missouri, John Atcheson, Paul Craig Roberts, Mike Whitney or even Joseph Stiglitz than anything written or verbally uttered by neo-liberals and neo-liberal coddlers like Robert Reich, Paul Krugman and Dean Baker--all of whom curry favor with the reigning corporatist, militarist political and media establishment to improve their own careers and finances.

These people are NEO-LIBERAL WHORES out to bamboozle you with their mock compassionate smoke and mirrors. Baker used to be worth a damn but has slid down into the co-opted career climber reptile pit with Reich and Krugman over the last several years. You won't hear him publicly talk about basic legal structural reform of corporations as legal fictions to make them more accountable to the public anymore. He gave that up during Shrublette's 2nd term.

Corporate takeover of the Nation States is almost complete. Globalists like Brzezinski describe the takeover as a giant chess game. One ploy used is to maneuver your opponent into a situation that any action they take is can be used to your advantage. The progressive environmental movement has been co-opted by the globalists to suit their own purposes, Al gore is an example. He's an environmental hypocrite of the highest order. He gives a great presentation while his stretch limo idles out front waiting to take him to his private jet and fly him back to his huge mansion. So the environmental movement says high gas prices are what we need to save the Earth. The oil companies agree yes they rejoice higher oil prices are good. Higher prices mean more profits for the energy corporations. What do you think these corporations are going to do with these swelling profits, save the environment? Yes environmentalists higher oil prices are good for the Earth and Exon and the 1% and the corporate state. Good Move!