How much did you pay for gas today?

OK, so per you there's ample supply and inventory and demand is down, and the threat from Jerkoffistan is trivial. Why aren't you selling crude futures short then? You could make a fortune!

 

I'm putting 6% of every paycheck into a money market fund, in the hope of one day buying a liter of petrol in Oslo.

 

Hydrogen

 

Well yes, I'll just drop everything and become a commodities trader tomorrow.

I bet you also thought Enron was on the up-and-up, too, and the price of electricity in California was just a reflection of the free market because you know, it's umpossible to artifically effect the market.

 

I have purchased futures in the hydrogen market, by which I mean four bottles of hydrogen peroxide I'm hanging on to no matter what.

 

Well actually, no I didn't. I recall people saying that Enron had shown that everything we ever knew about business/economics was wrong. Sorry, I wasn't a buyer there.

And I never said it is impossible to manipulate a market. I argued that it was very, very, very unlikely that today's petroleum prices reflect a manipulated market. Why? Because manipulating a market of that size, scope and reach is, to my thinking, all but impossible. But, hey, if you think it's been manipulated, put your money down. If you're right you'll make a fortune! I'm seriously pulling for you, because if you're right oil prices/gas prices will fall like a rock.

 

Having just returned from the drug store, I have increased my hydrogen holdings by 25%. Scoreboard.

 

The US Energy Information Administration (yes, I know, a bunch of radical socialists) reports that U.S. crude oil stocks are higher now than they were at this time last year; U.S. oil production is at its highest levels since 1998; more gasoline was supplied nationally last week then at any time since July 2011; and overall U.S. gasoline consumption is down.

There was a fire at a Chevron refinery in California recently. Statewide, gasoline production increased by more than 12 percent in the week following the fire as other refineries increased production. Yet, prices went up by about $.40 cents a glalon, even though there was more gas then before the fire.

Around the world, crude oil production is up from this time last year and global consumption is down.

Yet the price mysteriously rises. But of course it's not being manipulated. Just the law of supply and demand, right?

 

Demand doesn't mean what you think it means.

 

France proposes temporary cuts in gas tax.

www.thelocal.fr/page/view/ayrault-french-fuel-tax-to-be-cut-temporarily

 

$9.28 a gallon in Israel. 9 cents a gallon in Venezuela.


www.haaretz.com/business/israel-gas-prices-ranked-third-highest-in-the-world.premium-1.459475

 

Methinks that Venezuela price might be a tad reflective of the local government's machinations.