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Technology Stocks : The *NEW* Frank Coluccio Technology Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (36027)	10/3/2010 9:20:32 PM
From: pltodms	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 46821

Hi Frank, My comment was based on experience of past gasoline spikes, primarily in the late 70’s/early 80’s and recently in 2008. When the price hit about $4/gal (constant dollars) consumers start looking seriously at alternatives. Around 1980 I recall many people looking at diesel autos due to the spike in price. I few people I knew bought diesel autos at that time. In 2008 the market for the most profitable area in the auto industry, the SUV, dried up at about $4/gal. Subsequent to your post, I looked up gas price and came up with this, zfacts.com. The chart shows the price of gas from 1973 through Aug. 2010, in constant dollars. The thrust of my argument was not necessarily how we can understand the mechanism to be used, which may be impossible to do, to encourage energy efficient technologies but to set polices where the market will move us in that direction. However, setting polices that will benefit the citizen is almost impossible in his political climate. The chart raises some attention-grabbing points though. Has the free market been at play in the price of gasoline over the years or has it been manipulated by those in power? At the same time, energy independence on foreign oil has been touted, for security reasons, as the main concern of the ruling parties and the threat of GW has been steadily reinforced with new evidence. Furthermore, if security of its citizens is the main concern of our government, it is interesting to see that the huge military spending over this time period (circa 80’s and 00s in particular) has been its main focus while a laissez-faire “free market”, aka pro big business/oligopolies, policy has been the norm. I strayed a bit form your original question after looking at the chart, sorry for that. I hope that I did answered your question.