WTF? MSNBC says gas prices are "blunting" a "ROBUST economy?"

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8929432/

At $65 a barrel, oil prices could begin to sting
Economy has been resilient so far, growing at strong and steady pace

By Martin Wolk
MSNBC
Updated: 7:26 p.m. ET Aug. 12, 2005

Talk about a conundrum. Over the past year oil prices have blasted through the $40 barrier to $50 a barrel, then $60 and now $65, yet the economy continues to hum along, with growth outpacing expectations, driven largely by strong consumer spending.

With gas pump prices heading closer to $3 a gallon, there are growing signs the rising cost of energy is about to take a bigger bite out of economic growth. But so far consumers, businesses and the economy in general have remained surprisingly resilient.

So far rising oil prices have been largely offset by growing employment and rising wages. The global bond market also has been accommodating, keeping long-term interest rates relatively low despite rising short-term rates, leading to what Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan labeled a “conundrum” earlier this year.

“The economy’s resilience, given the relatively high level of prices through July before the latest upswing, has been very impressive,” said Lynn Reaser, chief economist at Banc of America Capital Management. “It speaks to the improving efficiency of the U.S. economy over the past two or three decades, and also the move more toward a service-oriented economy.”

[Skink]

1. Ya think

[hobbit709]

2. Just what exactly

does "Robust" mean in OUR world? When both parents have to work to maintain a standard of living that isn't even equal to what our parents had 40 years ago on one income. No one I know is experiencing any "Robust"

[Uncle Joe]

15. It means that when your parent company G.E.,

which is part of the military/industrial complex could otherwise make a killing on eternal war if those damn high gas prices would not keep getting in the way of even more profits for them.

[Massacure]

3. Wait until Christmas, it will be a different tune.

Even if crude doesn't go up until then, gas will spike because refineries have to start producing heating oil.

[Skink]

5. I'm living on 7 gallons a week..

I just moved closer to work and that is about all the driving I do now.

[Imagevision]

36. Ultimately won't the US. demand for gas shrink due to the people who

simply can only afford to use there cars for work-food shopping etc.
car-pooling, take a bike or buy one? 3 1\2 more years with this maniacal Prez for war and big business!

[fishnfla]

4. Krugman nailed it

we are buying and selling US homes with borrowed Chinese money. When that market dries up, it'll be a real robust blunt in the ass

[pretzel4gore]

6. oooh! pigmedia goes 'oinky oinky bang-bang!'

and they all stinky and the greasy fat running down into the muckyuck! omg! how can this be happening! Just their thong underwear alone cost $10 thousand dollars! yet they just going 'gruhgrut, oinkoink!...and only little pigs understand them! and the fox eats pigs!'

[leesa]

7. It means stocks are going down. These idiots think the stock market

is indicative of the economy.

[MadisonProgressive]

11. Not so fast, Sherlock!

I just saw a nice graph on freerepublic.com that shows we are doing better now than in the Clinton years! :sarcasm:

[Uncle Joe]

16. Well at least we don't have to worry about

Monica screwing up our household budgets.:sarcasm:

[barb162]

22. A lot of people are like that. If the NYSE is up

they think everything is fine

[Vickers]

8. "driven largely by strong consumer spending"

Translation: people are still spending like mad, putting everything on their credit cards or paying for it with home equity loans, not saving a fucking thing,, and the people in charge would like for you to think this is somehow indicative of a strong economy, when in reality many people are about to lose every goddam thing they "own."

[Delphinus]

40. I think you nailed it, Vickers.

Was talking to my sister Friday - without going into all the details, my sister, who I used to think was pretty sharp financially, is falling into that very trap.

[Porcupine]

9. Yeah and grain harvests are up this year.

Mainstream media is more and more like the pronouncements of Pravda and Tass in the Soviet era.

Did you work an hour this week? You're employed!!
Can you afford an asprin? That's access to medical care.
Prescription Drug Benefit? That means we cut off your access to cheaper Canadian meds.

Lies, lies, lies.

[Nay]

18. "And the choco ration will be increased by 10 grams! "

Like Tass and like 1984.

[Bryn]

10. Yes it is true, but for the Corporation Only

It doesn't apply to us The People

We probably can strike back by going "Amish" - Life without cars, electricity, grow own food, Solar energy, Pony Express, etc. Then the Corporation and the Oil Barons would have nothing

[MadisonProgressive]

12. The Amish must be splitting a gut right now...

[AntiCoup2K4]

25. Well they might be, except...... How the Hell would they know about it?

:shrug:

[MadisonProgressive]

30. Damn good point!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[kenny blankenship]

13. Yeah it's true and it's also true that

we had a robust economy in the 1970s! It just didn't seem that way to some because of rising oil prices and the inflationary spiral they touched off. And along these lines, Ronald Reagan was a smart man with a photographic memory, it just didn't seem that way because of the Alzheimer's disease which had eaten his brain away. It's also true--but you never hear liberals admit this--that Newt Gingrich is a sexy, sexy man--it just doesn't seem that way to some because he is short, gray, squinty-eyed and pudgy with a head shaped like a pumpkin, and has a face like a catcher's mitt.

[Bumblebee]

14. they are aping the equally wrong AP story

[Lefty48197]

17. Gas is still below it's "historical high" when adjusted for inflation

so therefore everything is hunky-dory. Didn't MSNBC get the WH memo? They're going to lose their press credentials if they don't go back to toeing the party line.

[OneTwentyoNine]

19. And if there is ANY truth to that statement....

It would be because Clinton raised Minimum Wage two or three times. If Repukes would have run the country for those eight years minimum wage would still be about $3.65 per hour.

[kenny blankenship]

20. Oh i see, so the fact that we aren't actually lined up for miles yet

waiting for gas to appear at the pumps, like Americans once did means that there's nothing wrong. Thanks Mainstream Media, I would have never figured things out if not for you!

I guess things will be officially peachy right up to the point when Americans start burning their furniture to keep warm in winter, hitching their car bumpers to water buffalo to get around or move to ALaska to keep cool in summer.

And we're still not as bad as the Nazis!

[Porcupine]

37. Um, Americans are burning their furniture NOW!!

Or somebodies furniture at least. I work in property management; I'm in a LOT of houses. Poor people with woodstoves will burn absolutely anything to keep warm in the winter. Pallets, scrap wood, corn, newspapers and yep, furniture.

The key is that they will burn whatever is cheapest and at hand when the temperature drops. If they can sell it at a yard sale they will do that, but they will burn it before they try and fix a broken piece.

[PurityOfEssence]

21. and it's all the Democrats' fault for not passing an energy bill

even though Republicans control both Houses of Congress. I'm not sure how it's Clinton's fault, but they'll probably be happy to clue me in on that, too.

[area51]

23. Robust economy?

In what alternate universe is this robust economy? Try asking anyone who's unemployed or underemployed if we're in a "robust economy". Then you'll have your answer. The surest measure of an economy is job availability & salaries.

[gokar]

24. Record price for oil was reached in 1980, $95/barrel in current dollars

and with our present energy policy, the record will soon be
shattered. Too many SUV's and other gas guzzlers are responsible,
and so are the lack of new refinery's. My understanding is that
very few (or none) have been built in 10 years. The existing ones
are getting old and break down more and more frequently causing
gasoline to spike.

I heard the Saudi foreign minister say the other day they can ship us
more oil but it won't do any good since we can't refine it into
gasoline. Does someone know if this is true or is it another lie?

[high density]

28. I keep hearing about the refinery limitiations, too

But nobody seems to want to build another refinery in the USA. It also seems that they blame the high prices on the refineries during every seasonal "blend" change as well.

[jbuist]

32. Erh, no and yes.

Too many SUV's and other gas guzzlers are responsible,
and so are the lack of new refinery's.

Are you even remotely aware of what cars before 1980 sucked up for gas? Trucks with nice big V8 engines got about 8 miles to the gallon and nobody cared! Hell, I drove one! My four cylinder 1986 Buick got about 2/3rds the miles to the gallon as my 2000 Jetta. A co-worker has a big Suburban with a V8 in it and he gets about 20mpg highway. Contrast that with my old Blazer from 1977 that got 8mpg!

The "family car" of the 70's and 80's was a station wagon! They're nothing but an SUV with smaller tires for crying out loud. Loaded with inefficient engines to boot. Growing up a buddy had one with a nice V8 in it. That sucker had some pick-up on it! Sucked gas pretty good, though.

Fuel inefficent cars are the problem? Baahahaha!

I heard the Saudi foreign minister say the other day they can ship us
more oil but it won't do any good since we can't refine it into
gasoline. Does someone know if this is true or is it another lie?

Very true. It's also not helping that that some states (California) require a special "summer" blend which slows down production rates, which lowers the supply, which increases the price because demand stays that same. If we were able to build more refineries we'd lower gas prices, but if we did that then we'd be polutting the environment more. However, if we got our asses off COAL for electricity and moved to hydro-electric or nuclear we'd cut down on pollution and then open up a slot for the oil refineries to operate with no net increase in pollution.

If you don't think that the price of gasoline is growing because of supply/demand reasons at the refinery level I'd urge you to go look up, and graph, the growth rate of crude oil vs. gasoline. They are NOT hand-in hand. We got an 8% increase in crude oil but saw a 25% increase in gasoline prices. Roughtly... just math off my had thinking $60-65 for crude and $2.00 to $2.50 for gasoline... and gas around here is even higher than that. Of course, one must also take into sales tax, which means in my area that 6% of my end-game price increase was from that, so I suppose an 8% increase in crude only caused a 19% increase in gasoline costs.

You want to fuck Haliburton over? Go nuclear for electric power and let a couple more companies go build some refineries.

[Hidden Stillness]

26. Media: People Who Drive to Work Aren't "Groovy" Anymore

This makes you realize the huge gulf between us and the rich corporate media, which they usually try to keep covered up by pretending that they are "middle-class" and obsessed with celebs, "just like us," etc. This is a class of people that makes its main profit from invested money, not from new work, and whose members never have to drive anywhere necessarily, certainly not counting their pennies and driving on pothole-laden roads. They do not know, or care, what the unemployment rate is, probably thinking of layoffs as a corporate money-saver and nothing else; but they all know how their stocks are doing.

Just remember, behind all those grinning faces on camera is an organized corporation feeding you propaganda, slandering anyone who objects, working to rip apart every law this citizens' democracy used to have, and censoring the entire history of the world up until this "totally new" moment of product purchases.

[high density]

27. Heard the same thing on PBS' Nightly Business Report last night

They were interviewing some dolt that said everything was fine and peachy. Wages are going way up, blah blah blah. Yeah, whatever.

[kodi]

29. short version: lower paying jobs balance corporate energy cost increases

the alleged "resilience" is that working folks are forced to tighten their belts even more and work harder for less return.

of course, this is not pertinent to the folks who earn their living via investments, since corporations are still producing the same profit margins by reducing their labor costs even as energy prices rise.

[McCamy Taylor]

31. Translation: * Will Invade Iran Over MSNBC's Dead Body.

[mandomom]

33. MSM ignoring record profits

by U.S. oil companies (up 50%) and Saudi oil concerns (up 67%)in the past year. What is wrong with a "news" report that whines about high gas prices and ignores the profiteering of our own oil companies? Where is Bush's famous "common sense" now?

[Imagevision]

35. Mando, you nailed it, Chevron said 3 months ago that in their

130 years in business they've never realized such profit lines.
(3 months ago!)

[Mr Rabble]

34. msRNC. What else do you need to know?

[depakid]

38. What do you expect from thes folks?

Truth? Integrity?

Come on now- the senior news editors are liars and corrupt to the core- how they sleep at night has long been beyond me.

My guess is that they're sociopaths and simply lack any vestige of a conscience.

[ngGale]

39. It's the war pumping up the economy ...

corporate military complex taken to a whole new degree. The market has nothing to do with every day people. They need to come take a look at my state, and it's red.