Posted on 09/26/2006 6:51:56 AM PDT by Graybeard58
WASHINGTON -- There is no mystery or manipulation behind the recent fall in gasoline prices, analysts say.
Try telling that to many U.S. motorists. Almost half of all Americans believe the November elections have more influence than market forces. For them, the plunge at the pump is about politics, not economics.
Retired farmer Jim Mohr of Lexington, Ill., rattled off a tankful of reasons why pump prices may be falling, including the end of the summer travel season and the fact that no major hurricanes have disrupted Gulf of Mexico output.
"But I think the big important reason is Republicans want to get elected," Mohr, 66, said while filling up for $2.17 a gallon. "They think getting the prices down is going to help get some more incumbents re-elected."
According to a new Gallup poll, 42 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that the Bush administration "deliberately manipulated the price of gasoline so that it would decrease before this fall's elections."
Fifty-three percent of those surveyed did not believe in this conspiracy theory, while 5 percent said they had no opinion.
Almost two-thirds of those who suspect President Bush intervened to bring down energy prices before Election Day are registered Democrats, according to Gallup.
White House spokesman Tony Snow addressed the issue Monday, telling reporters "the one thing I have been amused by is the attempt by some people to say that the president has been rigging gas prices, which would give him the kind of magisterial clout unknown to any other human being."
"It also raises the question: if we're dropping gas prices now, why on earth did we raise them to $3.50 before?" Snow said.
The excitement -- and suspicion -- among U.S. motorists follows a post-summer decline in gasoline prices that even veteran analysts and gas station owners concede has been steeper than usual.
The retail price of gasoline has plunged by 50 cents, or 17 percent, over the past month to average $2.38 a gallon nationwide, according to Energy Department statistics. That is 42.5 cents lower than a year ago, when the energy industry was still reeling from the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which damaged petroleum platforms, pipelines and refineries across the Gulf Coast.
Industry officials said the competition among gas station owners to sell the cheapest fuel on the block is fierce.
"They want to gain market share," said John Eichberger, director of motor fuels at the National Association of Convenience Stores.
Jay Ricker, president of Ricker Oil Co. in Anderson, Ind., which owns about 30 gas stations and supplies fuel to 30 more, said he's thrilled to see pump prices sinking as fast as they are.
With prices falling, more customers are buying mid-grade and premium gasoline, Ricker said, and they're spending more cash inside his convenience stores, where profit margins are higher.
"I'd much rather sell them a donut or a fountain drink," said Ricker, whose stations are selling regular unleaded for a few pennies above $2.
Fimat USA oil analyst Antoine Halff said there is no doubt that "the downturn in prices is welcome news from an electoral standpoint for the ruling party." But he scoffed at the notion that the U.S. president had the power to muscle around a global market.
The plunge in prices, Halff said, is the result of growing domestic inventories of fuel, slowing economic growth and toned-down rhetoric between Iran and the United States, which has been critical of Tehran's uranium enrichment program.
That said, "the sky is not falling," said Halff, who believes oil prices will likely head higher again this winter and average more than $65 a barrel throughout 2007.
If they truely believe that than almost half of all Americans are imbeciles.
The lack of teaching Economics 101 from a Capitalist perspective in our public schools shows it's ugly head on a daily basis.
And what was Kerry's percentage of the popular vote? Just about that.
Nah. If you believed the Bush administration rigged the Twin Towers with explosives on 9-11, it is easy to believe they manipulated gas prices. Of course, that question of "why did they reise them so high kinda kills the theory, but conspiracy freaks never bother with details like that.
yup
yeah
What we've got here is the Dems are freaking out on polling data showing the Repubs are surging.. Their only hope is to spin the market decrease of gas prices into a political witch hunt.
Which just goes to prove that you can reach the age of 66 and still be dumb as a bucket of rocks and twice as ignorant.
53% of those surveyed said they didn't believe this kook conspiracy yet this story focuses on the 42% that do. Typical of the Lamestream press to try and manufacture news, rather than report the news.
Almost 2/3 of those 42% are DemocRATs. No surprise there. They whine about the gas prices being too high then when they start to come down, they don't rejoice; they whine that there is some conspiracy going on! Pathetic. There's no pleasing these "rain-on-the-parade" types.
ANY good news that occurs is greeted with skepticism and is inconsistent with the DUmmies' "bash Bush" mentality.
Lack of common sense is a requisite trait of a Democrat.
I wonder how many of these "conspiracy theorists" understand enough about economics to draw a simple supply vs. demand graph.
Just how does the President manipulate the price the pump? Oh, yeah--he and his daddy, aided and abetted by Dick Cheney--call up their "oil buddies" and get them to adjust prices according to political necessity.
Okay, fine. But how did a few American oil moguls manage to get the price of a barrel of oil, produced primarily outside of America, to fall from close to eighty bucks a barrel to under sixty, in just a few months? Do the "conspiracy theorists" understand the direct relationship between the price of oil, the commodity, and that of gasoline, the refined product? Or, are they too busy waiting for Elvis Presley to re-emerge onstage in Vegas?
That stands for Rove, You Magnificent Bastard!
The killer for me is that Bush could rig 9/11, yet couldn't manage to plant any WMDs in Iraq?
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