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Slowing down
As gasoline has risen in price, I’ve been trying to lighten my foot on the accelerator of the old heap I drive around.
It doesn’t seem to me that many others are doing the same.
As I creep along in the right lane at the speed limit, large SUVs and other snazzy looking newer vehicles roll up on my rear end and tailgate, waiting for me to pull over into the old folks home I guess.
Seems like everyone else on the road is still in a hurry to get where they’re going, no matter how much it costs.
For those of us who subscribe to the laws of supply and demand, it appears the demand for speed is still outweighing the cost of the supply of gasoline.
Or maybe the folks riding my bumper are just making a lot more dough than me, and haven’t felt the impact of $3.50 a gallon gas yet.
But I’m not too worried. Why last week I heard a commentary on my favorite taxpayer supported radio network, National Public Radio, wherein some energy analysts said that there was more gasoline in reserve in this country than ever before, and more refining capacity too.
This report attributed a large portion of the recent run up in gasoline prices to commodity speculation and the fall in the value of the dollar, concluding that a correction was in store sometime in the future.
The same thinking was evident in a Wall Street Journal article I read a week or so earlier, which said that $120 oil futures contract prices were speculation and that a rational price, based on supply and demand, would be more like $70-$80.
All this reminded me of the dot.com phenomenon of the late 90s, when folks who should have known better sank their bucks into worthless stocks under the assumption that they could unload them on some other sucker later on after they had risen even further.
Now I’m not saying oil is worthless, but the impulse seems to be the same.
Trying to make the fast buck never seems to go out of style, as we see now with individuals and financial institutions dealing with the unsustainable rise in housing prices of the last few years, and the crash that followed.
Meanwhile, I’ll just creep along in the slow lane, squeezing as many miles as I can out of the overpriced precious fluid, until the bubble bursts.
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