About those soaring gas prices - according to my husband, the price

[hedgehog]

he paid for gasoline in Europe didn't budge a bit all winter. Is it possible we aren't watching gasoline prices rise so much as watching the dollar fall?

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Some oil-producing countries are not selling their oil in dollars, preferring euros.

That would have an impact somewhere along the line. And yes, the devaluation of the dollar (to the euro in particular) does make the price higher. (If you sold a product and were paid $1.00 the first day, but that dollar was worth $.97 the next day, $.94 the next day, etc., you're losing profit. Therefore you need to increase the price from a dollar to $1.03, $1.06, etc. to receive your profit at value. To paraphrase, it's the currency, stupid!)

[hedgehog]

2. What happens when China decides it prefers euros? Here's a partial list of things we don't make

here any more:

Shoes
clothing
fabric
sheets
towels

[DAGDA56]

3. I'm no expert, but I believe China is holding a large number of dollars...

T-bills and other investments. I would think they would want to prop up the dollar's value. If, on the other hand, they start dumping dollars on world markets...

[agent46]

6. It also looks like

It also looks like a partial lists of things we'll need to retool to make for ourselves - sooner than later, probably. A return to local craftsmanship in our townships and neighborhoods would mean a return to quality as well as a return to the cultural transmission of "know-how", local color and regional identity. Transitions can be hard sometimes, but not so much if progressive people with perspective can help revitalize local economies through community education and activism. I see nothing short of a grassroots cultural "turning of the page" as the right response to these trends. Corporatism has failed - R.I.P.

That is all.
:beer:
Pass the bean dip...

[sinkingfeeling]

4. The US dollar has fallen 60% compared to the Euro since 2001. Of course, that is a big

chunk of the cost of oil to the USA.

[Warpy]

5. That's certainly part of it

as long term contracts have been re negotiated with the weaker dollar. However, we're also seeing a huge bubble in commodities prices across the board that has more to do with hedge fund speculation than with the continued fall in the dollar.

The dollar has remained weak but reasonably stable since January. However, the price of spot market oil futures has nearly doubled. Clearly something besides the weak dollar is at work, and it's not confined to petroleum. Grain and other foodstuff futures as well as metals have also seen huge increases over the last six months.

All of this can be laid at the feet of the current administration, from the insane fiscal policies that led to the doubling of the national debt and the fall in the dollar to the installation of Wolfowitz at the World Bank just in time to torpedo the international effort to regulate hedge funds.

Just make sure everybody you know realizes all this. There is only one place to put the blame for the current economy, the GOP and their failed economics policies, policies that haven't changed since they sent us into the Great Depression.

[DCKit]

13. PBS has been running a documentary/biography on FDR this week.

Being old and patient enough to pay close attention, I was dumbstruck at how similar the Corporate/Political situation to everything that's happening right now. Many of the laws and regulations passed in the 1930's to bring the corporations to heel and revive the economy have been repealed since the beginning of the Regan years or, even worse, subverted by the agencies charged with enforcing them.

Dumbya isn't even totally at fault (though I don't mind his getting the blame). It's his incredibly bad luck that the Corporocrat and neocon plans for the rape of the treasury, the people and the world are finally bearing their rotten fruit.

But hey, if it gets rid of the Corporocrats and Republics, who gives a shit whose fault it is or when it began?

[Warpy]

15. I've said for a long time that Stupid's just seeing the culmination

of what conservative rule from both parties since 1969 have wrought.

He didn't do it alone.

The bulk of the blame belongs to Reagan, who fouled up the tax code and made it into a burden on the poorest so wealth could be transferred to the richest, but even he had help.

Conservatives are always the problem. They can never be part of the solution.

[jedr]

7. DING!!!!!!!!

A large part of what you are paying at the pumps is for the borrowed money for the war.

[underpants]

8. $2.90 in China

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/04/beijing-auto-show-gas-guzzler-popular-china.php

Another culprit is the Chinese government: On one side, it asks automakers to make more efficient vehicles, but on the other it "has tried to shield farmers and the urban poor from high oil prices by freezing pump prices for gasoline and diesel, keeping them among the world's lowest. That takes the sting out of filling up a gas guzzler." Gas costs 5.34 yuan (76 cents US) a liter, or about $2.87 per US gallon

[Zynx]

9. Part of it, not all of it. The recent surge has far exceeded any recent fall in the dollar.

The dollar is down maybe 2-3% in recent weeks while oil is up 20%.

[hedgehog]

10. I'm wondering if we are going through the same kind of thing as

back during Jimmy Carter's administration - the price of gas was held artificially low for years, then allowed to jump to compensate for years of inflation all at one time.

[Zynx]

12. We haven't had 200% inflation over the past decade or even two decades.

[uppityperson]

11. Family in France said diesel has gone up a lot this winter.

[uppityperson]

14. Family says diesel up 40 euro-cents/liter since Dec.

€5.60 /gal diesel= $8.84