This article is from Cramer...........he had the same reaction I did when I went to gas up this weekend. First I checked the prices on Thursday.....and then I waited til Monday evening to gas up. First no change in prices....after the long weekend. Secondly, I am paying the same amount for gas when NYMEX was at $110. What the hell gives?
The government's doing a lot of investigating these days. It's investigating the banks for the mortgage fraud era, trotting out the usual suspects and shooting them indiscriminately. It's investigating the natural gas companies for overstating their reserves. It's investigating the mortgage real estate investment trusts, to see what damage they could cause to the economy.
Hey, knock yourself out, government. But what we really need is an investigation into why gasoline costs so darned much. I paid $3.98 this weekend for premium unleaded -- cash, please -- and I swear that's the same price I paid when oil traded at $100, even though oil's plummeted to $84 on the back of the newfound weakness in the economy. I want to know why. Why is it that I'm still paying top dollar even as our benchmark West Texas Intermediate has nosedived?
Oh, I hear a lot of chatter about how that benchmark is now irrelevant and we are priced off of Brent, which is about $25 more than the oil we've got here. We are told to ignore that Texas pricing as the refiners use the Brent price.
To which I say two things: First, why? Why do they use the European benchmark when about half of our oil is produced here? Why do they use the European price when we are awash in oil in our own storage terminals? Second, why the heck is Brent so high despite all of the chatter about a gigantic European slowdown? Sure, Libya's been taken offline, and that's about 1.7 million barrels a day. But we've added about that much in the last year -- and let's be honest, demand's down big in a lot of European countries.
This infuriating disconnect begs investigation. Are hedge funds and brokerage houses tying up Brent crude, as we have heard of late? Are they using low margin rates to accumulate oil and keep it off the market? Is that the difference between Brent and West Texas? How about ETFs? Are they distorting prices? How the heck is Brent calculated and controlled, as it is all a pretty big secret?
And what right do the refineries have to price everything off Brent if they aren't getting all of their oil from that price?
I think we need answers to these questions. I think we have to find out what the heck is going on. Maybe margin requirements should be raised on Brent. Maybe the refiners shouldn't be able to get away with only using the Brent benchmark. Maybe the price is controlled by financial interests and the price is causing a gigantic wave of inflation, when it should be causing deflation.
Government, you want to investigate something? Investigate why I paid $3.98. That's something Americans are angry about, and they have every right to find out the answer. |
