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International Herald Tribune
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With growth slowing, high energy prices that were once easily absorbed by consumers are now more likely to act as a drag on household budgets, leaving people with less money to spend elsewhere. These costs could exacerbate the nation’s economic woes, piling a fresh energy shock on top of the turmoil in credit and housing.
“The effect of high oil prices today could be the difference between having a recession and not having a recession,” said Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard University economist. The depth of the nation’s economic problems became clearer Tuesday with the release of figures showing that prices at the producer level rose 1 percent in January, driven in large measure by energy costs. Compared with a year ago, prices were up 7.4 percent, the worst producer price inflation in the United States since 1981.
In other news, Exxon has posted another record in profits.
The company reported Friday that it beat its own record for the highest profits ever recorded by any company, with net income rising 3 percent to $40.6 billion, thanks to surging oil prices. The company’s sales, more than $404 billion, exceeded the gross domestic product of 120 countries. The company also had its most profitable quarter ever. It said net income rose 14 percent, to $11.7 billion, or $2.13 a share, in the last three months of the year. The company handily beat analysts’ expectations of $1.95 a share, after missing targets in the last two quarters.
Of course Exxon is just a company that is doing exactly what’s expected of them by their stockholders. Enjoy! And have a great summer everyone!
#30 ogman – Does that mean you are an idiot? I hope that there is only one JPV and that someone will soon take away his capability to post here.
Bring it. My vespa gets 70 Mpg. I’ll have a gas bill of $10 a week.
#31 – SupportBigOil,
Wow!! Still buying that Reaganomics shit? Gush up economics doesn’t work. It just increases income disparity. And, no, rich people do not spend anywhere near the same percentage of their income as someone who can barely get by and must spend all of it on food and rent.
Think about it. They’d have to spend over 100% of their income (and soon be poor) to equal what people spend when they can barely get by and have ever increasing credit card debt.
Instead of complaining fix it. I’m using four vehicles with an average of 50.7mpg. Some people used to make fun of my car but now that I use $10 worth of gas a week verses their $50 to over $100, they’ve stopped laughing.
Oil is high because the US companies deliberately reduce refining capacity to keep supplies down and prices up. Also, they created the myth of Peak Oil. We’re finding oil faster than we could ever harvest it if we were allowed to. One of the problems is that oil appears to not be biological in origin, rather abiotic and self-replenishing.
The Russians know this and we will soon be dependent on them for our fuel. Nice going.
http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/energy/fs/5103.pdf
http://www.gasresources.net/
Get ready for the three day workweek. That’s all an awful lot of people will have gas money for. Unfortunately, they’ll expect me at work 5 days a week because I live close enough to bike. I hate bicycles. Maybe if gas prices do thin out the number of imbeciles on the roads at any moment, I’ll get a small motorcycle again. It ain’t safe to be on a scoot here in Atlanta now, the retard to velocity ratio is way too high.
This is nothing new. Since I’ve worked in a job related to “tax season” for the last 8 years, I’ve noticed something.
The pump price of gas (regardless of the world price of oil) goes up in late February, when we start to get busy. Every year so far. It starts to drop some around the end of June, but never drops back to where it was say, 2 years before.
Oh, and for those in Europe paying $8 a gallon, remember that most of that is tax. Even in the USA, a good $1 or so is taxes of one form or another. One difference is that in Europe and other developed areas of the world, the high tax is used to finance decent public transportation. Here, not so much.
UK, 104.9 a litre, converted to US gallons, and then into US Dollars $7.94 a gallon….
Your being welcomed to the real world…
We’ve gone through the real world and out the other side 🙂
All these European people saying “suck it Americans we pay $7 a gallon here” should realize that we off set the price of gas here with higher income tax then you do, that means people that don’t even own cars and take mass transit end up paying for it as well.
Then you have the people that say “hey we are at peak oil capacity”, no we are at peak oil refining, when all the econazi’s decided to make oil companies stop building new refineries, that made gas refinery capacity shrink so now we can’t keep up with the demand. It’s a win/win for the oil companies and the econazi’s, but we the consumers get hosed.
Like the guy way above me said, oil continues to be produced by the earth, hence abiotic oil.
Don’t believe everything your public school education has brain washed you to think as well as the oil companies, the government, and the econazi’s.
I’m disappointed in America, no thats not right. I’m disappointed in Americans. You all really let your nation down, all because you wanted a so-called christian nation with so-called family values but forgot that you needed to balance the national checkbook too. The siren song of war was music to your ears.
Today I paid $8.35 per gallon in Milan Italy