[kjo]

There is one reason Obama is POTUS today: last summer’s gas prices...they were run up in the future’s market to #190/barrel...it led to $4.50 gas...and McCain’s defeat.

It also did not hurt The One that McCain is an idiot.

[Moseley]

I agree except that I am not quite sure I am ready to say it was deliberate (a conspiracy). However, I am not ready to rule it out, either.

HOW the BLEEP could world oil pries drop from $145 per barrel to $40 per barrel in the space of about 6 months?

There is no way that demand for oil changed that dramatically. Some, yes. But not that much.

I am quite convinced that although there were many things wrong with the economy, it was the $4.00 gas prices -- and sucking $700 billion out of the economy sent overseas -- that started the smowball rolling downhill, that knocked over the fragile house of cards.

Of course it did not help when Bush got up on international television and declared the end of the world, Armaggedon, the Four Horses of the Apocalypse, the sky was falling. National leaders should know better, that their eery word can scare the markets half to death with a scowl. Bush declared that we were falling off the edge of the Earth into the abyss, and every other national leader stood up and did the same thing. It's enough to make even a normal person start to wonder about coordianted conspiracies.