Posted on 10/30/2014 4:47:37 AM PDT by thackney
Gas prices are falling below $3 a gallon across the United States for two big reasons: (1) the world economy is growing slower than we hoped, and (2) global oil production is improving faster than we expected.
"India and China are slowing down,” said Charles K. Ebinger, director of the Energy Security Initiative at Brookings. "The IMF just downgraded Europe’s growth to less than 1 percent, and they're already quite energy efficient. Brazil’s a problem, too. All around the world there is no great growth story, and expectations are that things will stay that way or get worse."
There is also unanticipated supply. A few years ago, political turmoil was taking up to 2 million barrels a day off the market. Now production is roaring back in Libya, southern Sudan, Yemen, Nigeria, and even Iraq, and the global price of crude has fallen about 25 percent in the last five months. It's the same old story: low demand, high supply, etc.
Andrew John Hall, the alleged "God" of oil trading, is predicting $150 barrels within the next five years. But the deeper you dig, the more reasons you find to be down on the price of oil in the near future. "Japan’s announcement that they’re starting two reactors means that there will be less oil import for Japan,” Ebinger said. Second, there are industrial shifts that are reducing oil’s share in the energy market. For example, many U.S. companies are using natural gas rather than petroleum products to power their refineries. Third, hedge funds...
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Yeah, that's the ticket. Magic control of the world's commodity markets. All they had to do was ask. < /sarc>
“Prices WILL rise after the elections.”
Only ignorant “O” supporters would fail to recognize this.
Seriously? Look at the production increases in the USA and Canada. That says it all.
Finally! now I can afford to eat at McDonalds seven times a week!!!
Looks like an election year pattern to me...
And use the drive-through!! (/s)
with 2.50 gas, maybe braindead obama supporters will finally stop calling 911 every time their burger meals are screwed up.
Bingo. Bingo, Bingo.
It’s a DEPRESSION, world-wide in scope, and nobody will call it for what it is.
In a normal boom-or-bust cycle of the whole world of economics, the bust, which evaporates all the excess medium of exchange from the trading markets, leads to more sound fiscal thinking, and despite the promises of Keynesian economics (which call for PUMPING UP the money supply), the reduced money in circulation should lead to a more solid basis of assigning worth to each unit of currency. People have less, of course, but this is balanced by the low and falling commodity prices, and generally the new equilibrium restores the ratios between income and outgo.
Thus resetting the growth patterns back to “normal”, establishing a new era of general prosperity.
Until some runaway notion or fad again bids up prices in an artificially induced scarcity, leading to a more and more false prosperity.
Dropping of petroleum prices at the end of the Bush 43 Presidency did nothing to preserve the White House for the Republicans, or even win back anything in either the House or Senate.
Debt, both internal and international between nations, is the driving factor for this explosion of confidence, as the debt load becomes too onerous to be supported by the various separate economies, and the house of (credit) cards comes tumbling down.
That’s good news. The bad news is that it has to go for my Health insurance increase....thanks to Obamacare.
They’ll drop until about mid-December.
$2.73/gallon in Lakewood, WA!
I paid $2.63 in Pasadena, Texas this morning.
does this mean the cost of a call girl will also drop 30%?
Saw a couple stations on a remote part of I-5 in central CA yesterday. $4.39 to $4.59/gal. Didn’t stop to see if they were wearing guns.
Gas will be $2.50, but the burger will be $19.95
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