WASHINGTON — Oil consumption has fallen, demand from U.S. motorists for gasoline is flat at best and refiners that turn crude into fuel are operating well below capacity. Yet oil prices keep marching toward $90 a barrel, pushing gasoline toward $3 a gallon in many markets, and prompting American drivers to ask, "What gives?"
Blame it on the same folks who brought you $140 oil and $4 gasoline in 2008: Wall Street speculators.
Experts attribute much of the recent rise in prices to flows of speculative money into oil markets. These bets are fueled by investor expectations that the U.S. and global economies are poised to return to growth and thus spark increased use of oil. Strong growth in China supports the narrative of rising oil consumption and tightening supplies...
What's to lose? They raise the price high enough on the Recession is Over mantra, they guarantee another economic crash, and short sell to ensure it.
Ian Welsh:
Failure to put in place policies to break this bottleneck, as I said at the beginning of the Obama administration, meant that even if their otherwise inadequate policies worked, success would quickly lead to failure.
Failure is part of the plan. How can they be neo feudal overlords without having most people in impoverished serfdom?
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