Have fun making sense of yesterday's White House press briefing...
Q Has President Bush been told that $4 a gallon is now the new normal? Does he expect prices to fall below --MR. FRATTO: We heard it's not the new normal. He hasn't heard -- no one has --
Q Start -- with a cup in your --
MR. FRATTO: Sorry, Ann --
Q We can hear you better without a cup of water. (Laughter.)
MR. FRATTO: I don't think anyone would have told the President that $4 a gallon is the new normal, and we certainly hope it's not the new normal. It is very, very difficult to try to predict gasoline prices as to where they're going in the future. No one was predicting that we would continue to see gasoline prices increase beyond where they are today.
Q So does President Bush believe that gasoline prices may fall below $4 or go back to $3 or back to $2?
MR. FRATTO: No, no, the President isn't making those kinds of predictions. What he's saying is that we have a situation where we have rapidly increasing and increasing for, you know, pretty much as far as we can see, global demand for oil. And right now as long as we keep the sources of oil off the market, we're not going to see increases in supply. And as anyone who has taken an Econ 101 course knows, that if you don't increase supply and you only increase demand, prices are going to rise.
Q Does the President believe the price of gas -- there is a chance it would drop below $4 a gallon?
MR. FRATTO: All I could say is that we would be hopeful that it could, but the best way to ensure that it does is that we take some of these necessary measures and send a signal to the market that we intend to bring supply on and that we intend to continue as we've done on the conservation side through increased fuel economy standards and through the increased use of alternative fuels, so that we can try to lower the demand on oil as we're increasing supply.
Nice textbook example for sounding clueless and trying to BS a non-answer.
The best way to make prices plummet is to tell the world we are going to make available ALL forms of alternative energy as well as domestic drilling in our country. This tells the world, Hey, we ain't gonna be buying your frigging oil anymore. The price will come down when they see PROOF that we are doing what we say. Speculators will lose money. But the worst pressure on oil prices is the fact that Iran has it bad against Israel and is threatening the rest of the world it will close the main shipping route of 40% of the worlds' oil needs down if anyone attempts to stop their progress toward getting nuclear weapontry that can destroy Israel...and then the US. That means less oil for all the worlds' hungry needs. That means possible war in the Middle East. This throws a nasty wrench into the equation that no one wants to see. This will make oil prices sky rocket because availability will be lessened. (Remember when everyone wanted a Playstation for Christmas and there wasn't enough to go around? The prices when sky high.)
Congress can't do much and are afraid to tell us so because we will destroy their "careers". This problem started 30 years ago and no one, NO ONE prepared for this eventuality because oil was cheap and available. WE ALL DROPPED THE BALL. Stop depending on your government to fix the problems that ail us..THEY NEVER DO. The PEOPLE of the US figure it out every time. We are in for some rough seas but our technology is coming up fast to save us from this mess. In the short run, we're gonna hurt but inside of 5 years, we will be out of this mess. Even if more oil takes 10 years to get here, I will still be here to use it (if I choose to.)
Road and highway system - government.
Military - government.
NASA - government.
Postal service - and yes, it's a good thing - government.
It's just WAY TOO SIMPLISTIC to blame government for failing. Take responsibility for your government, and your choices.