It might be June '09, as Snax has predicted. Or it might not be until June '19. Or June '29. Hard to say.

Point is, using any fossil fuel is like living off your savings. If you've got enough, you can do it for a while. Eventually you have to live off your income...

Tell you what . . . living in Newport RI where weekends are crazy with visitors . . . it has been a really quiet summer until last Sunday when all the streets were jammed with cars for the first time really bad all summer. Worse than when the Folk and Jazz festivals were here. I think gas prices have really affected how much people are driving.

The answer to the question is: DRILL BABY DRILL

Remember that while they may be related, there is difference between global warming and pollution. I'm not convinced humans are the cause of gw but it's impossible to deny that we pollute.

In 2 years, you'll be be filling up your tank with with E85 and biodiesel for less than $1.50 per gallon. You heard it here first.

Only if they can get cellulose ethanol up and running full scale. There's no way we can have corn based ethanol bring down prices like that.

-Jay

I've heard that there is nearly 20 times the ethanol per acre potential from ALGAE vs. Corn and it can be harvested every two weeks.

Currently in Portland OR at the Chevron where I fill up Regular is $3.589

Well, the price for a gallon of regular in my area is now $3.03 at several stations. I guess we're going to see sub $3 very soon. The world economy is in the tank like I figured it would be. Like I said in May, the rise happened too quickly. Without a major conflict in an oil producing country it looks like $2.50 isn't out of the question now.

Kevin

yup! so much for the the thought that supply and demand has no bearing on price. granted, the price of crude is down as well.

Yeah, I'm psyched, $3.14 here. Hasn't been a solid sub $3 since Jan '07 here.

Anyway, and most people won't like this, but I feel we should increase the federal tax on gasoline. Clearly France has the right idea, we need to make it high enough that people stop being so wasteful and high enough that if they do decide to be wasteful at least they're keeping most of the money they're spending inside the country. Although I guess the same amount will be going to the middle east either way. And it'd definately increase cost of food which is the real pain. Maybe this can be offset with less income or property tax proportionate to the gasoline tax they bring in. Some incentive so that using less gasoline will benefit others. It's either that or a quota, quota would be really hard because our communities are so spread out and people have a lot of commuting and we don't want to cause people to take less vacations or that will kill vacation communities dependant on the summer tourism income.

It all takes much more thought and planning than any of us can truly 'solve' though we definately don't want oil execs and lobbyists at the reins. I know the CDTA board here is pushing for a plan to expand public transportation and incentives to build/live closer to together. They projected maps of house placement/building based on 30 years of current sprawl trend and 30 years of their planned growth method. Very interesting! With more sprawl we need more super highways while we should be focusing on better commuter management and public transportation.

I saw one guy once say that the gas prices are only a problem because everyone sees the numbers flying by and what we need is just a monthly expense bill. That's ludicrous, for me it IS the monthly expense that is hurting. At the pump I just use the credit card and fill, at the end of the month is when I hurt. 3 years ago I struggled to use $100 of gasoline/month. Now with a growing family we easily use almost $400/month. That's a big change. Worse is the price of food. I don't have any trending data but I know 2-3 years ago a gallon of milk was under $3, I feel like it was $2.65 or something. Now I regularly see $4.35 or higher and if you want organic I've seen an organic gallon for $7! in Target!. The food prices are crazy, we're trying to cut back but our food budget for 2 adults and one toddler are still easily over $300/month. Everything is just so expensive.

With economy and all coming issues we can't keep sending so much money to the middle east. What's worst is I feel most people use credit like crazy to the point of breaking point. We already have much more debt than GDP and I could easily see al that debt being pure income to Middle East, so not only are we negative exporting but we're exporting income we don't even have as a country! Very bad news. I almost think it's major crunch time where we have to really think and plan and find some alternative or way to at least stem the tide and keep money in the US. I honestly don't think the electric car is the answer (and it's CERTAINLY not H2 fuel cell, grr!), but I could be convinced we need to strengthen and improve our electrical grid and transmission lines and would be all for electric tram and trains all over the place. A perfect segway to turning some particular state into a giant solar array. Any volounteers? We don't need North Dakota anyway :D

gas taxes
 

this pic is kind of hard to see but I was pumping gas and saw this (seen it many times before) but thought to snap a quick pic of it.

the quality sucks because it was from my phone. notice, in NC we pay over 30 cent a gallon for the gas tax (road tax, whatever)

looking back at it, it's a really sucky picture. at least I tried.

Increasing the Federal tax on gas would be a great way to slow down our economy even more than it already is.

France is much closer to socialism than the US and I for one do not want to get closer to socialism. I prefer we do not try to imitate that country's government, especially when it comes to tax law.

Kevin

Cool map. That explains why I never buy gas in North Carolina. I usually buy gas on the north side of Richmond VA, Florence SC, and Brunswick, GA when going to Florida. (You don't show it, but Florida's fuel tax is pretty steep too.) On my next trip I think I may keep a 1 gallon can of gas in the back of the truck and see if I can hypermile enough mileage out of the beast to make it from Richmond to Brunswick without stopping for fuel.

-Jay

not really sure why they put these little maps on the gas pumps. usually just ticks me off. that one was a little dated, I think it was good in 2006 but little has changed since then as far as the amounts I think.

I wish the quality was better but I was pumping gas the other day and thought it would be cool to post. didn't want to start a thread about just that and since I had talked about it here already I figured why not.

I think our usage has already fallen off. I just read an article from msn.com's homepage that said Americans have been curbing their usage. People are traveling less and the new more efficient cars being bought all over are helping.

Also, I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think we owe the middle east nearly as much as the far east.

I can't see that the population of new efficient cars being bought all over are actually helping. First, auto sales are in a slump, second the non brand new existing cars substantially out number new sales, and my old crummy Sentra still got better mileage than most of the new efficient cars being sold.

Where will gas prices go from here? I don't think there is a good way to know. Oil futures are down along with the dollar going up a bit. Good combination.

While FE car sales may not matter, I bet FE cars (including those old ones) are getting utilized for far more of the miles driven.

True to form and past price cycles "it" has taken a drop in recent weeks as it has in past years even though the refineries shut down for the storm in Texas. Does anyone think that mortages were not paid because more of peoples income was spent on gas and people ran out to pay for their homes?

I believe that uneducated people were told by real estate agents and mortgage brokers that they could afford these homes and were given sub prime loans that they should have never qualified for. A couple of years later when the interest rate and the payment jacked up they all of a sudden find that they could no longer afford it. Even if fuel prices did not rise we still would have the mortgage crisis. Higher fuel prices and a weak dollar just made it worse on the economy. With the flood of forclosure properties on the market the real estate market crashed. At that point anyone who had purchased a home within the past 5 or 6 years probably owed more on their homes than they were worth. And don't get me started on the federal program that encouraged these mortgage companies to make these people homeowners that really could not afford it.



-Jay

Sorry, but I have to get you started a little. The problem is not in the federal programs themselves, but rather in brokers flat out lying about income to the banks, and misleading borrowers at closing. Very few of the actual banks carrying the paper on these loans wrote the loans directly. Instead, they purchased them on the open market under the guise of it being good paper. But they either didn't know just how much the brokers (totally independent sales people) were fudging things, or they saw opportunity to profit off of a game of hot potato.

So blaming the federal government for this crisis is simply falacious. The government never mandated that ANY mortgage lender make bad loans. The brokers simply discovered that they could cheat the system and did so very handily. The banks on the other hand ran their mortgage purchasing business very irresponsibly by not conducting their own due dilligence to determine the real value of the mortgages they were being sold. In essence, they were gambling with stockholder funds on the word of people with no financial interest in long term solvency of the notes.

Deregulation is what got us here, not lending to minorities.

I never said it was lending to minorities. It doesn't matter where someone's family came from, or the color of their skin. If they don't have enough income to make the payments once the interest rate and payments jacked up, they should have never qualified for those loans.

Snax,

I'm having trouble following your logic. Maybe you can try to clarify it for me.

First you blame the brokers and say it's not the federal government.

Then you say "Deregulation is what got us here" Who deregulated anything? The brokers? Forgive me, I'm not an expert on this subject.

Then, out of the blue, you bring up minorities? What's that got to do with anything? BTW, my wife is a minority.

I don't get it.

Kevin

Kuripot,

beware of Snax, he'll put a curse on you such that you'll only be able to say "democrat, democrat, democrat!"

seriously tho, it's a matter of view. back even to the Carter administration i believe, democrats tried for "equal housing ownership opportunity."

then Clinton put a spin making it worse while republicans tried to warn of coming disaster. then came Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the "rescue." and the rest is history.

along the way the democracks and republicants filled their pockets and banks and investment firms made dirty money as well. and do not forget Mae and Mac executives. certainly even the home buyes are at fault.

BTW, people of many ethnicities were compromised financially as a result.

I've read that 1 in 6 people with mortgages owe more than the house is worth. That's a recipe for disaster.

As far as who is to blame, I blame the consumer. Whether it's totally their fault or not, I'm not sure. I don't own a house and am not totally sure on all the details of these mortgage brokers and everything. But Americans have become very materialistic and buy-happy. Everybody watches reality shows of the rich and reads fashion magazines and wants to be like them, or buy a great house to impress people. I was watching a homebuying show a few weeks ago and the couple were wanting this house a little out of their budget and they concluded that they could afford the extra $100 per month if they ate out one less time per week and she only got her nails done every month instead of every 2 weeks, or something like that. That's utter BS. If you have to crimp on your lifestyle to pay the mortgage, it's never going to work. You know as well as I do that they may cut back for the first month or two, but then they'll fall back in the old routine and start coming up short for their mortgage payments every month. And you know as well as I do that these two people were not the only ones to do this.

So I blame the consumer who stretches them self way too thin when making purchases just as much if not more than lenders or the government, or whoever. Ultimately, it's up to the homebuyer to say "what if the rates go up, we won't be able to afford it. We should look at something cheaper."

Well the other side of that story is the people who went into sub-prime mortgages fully aware of what they were getting into - and counting on the fact that their home value wouldn't plummet as much as 40% soon thereafter, or that they would get laid off, or that the cost of food would go up more than 10% in a year, or that they would not be able to even get refinanced due to the drop in property value despite improving both their credit rating and debt to income ratios to the point of being prime loan eligible.

Those are the folks who have been sold a dream. They were sold historical appreciation info for their home's value. They were sold the myth of being able to refinance into a fixed rate. They were sold into the idea that their mortgage was an 'investment' for the future, not a sink-hole for every last dime due to rising interest rates.

I'm not saying everybody got that kind of treatment, but many people did. (We did, but knew better.) And now they are floundering in what to do about it, and many of them are making the choice to let the banks sort it out.

I still think that it is fair to blame the consumer in that respect however, but to imply that the brokers and banks reselling the notes on the open market were not also responsible is ridiculous. They were all in a dreamland IMO, and now the crap has hit the fan. Regardless, it is still all just a symptom of the larger issue of trouble in our economy, where very little real wealth is actually being created anymore. Instead, we continue to provide tax breaks to corporations who outsource production jobs and export raw materials only to buy it all back at a markup. We continue to look the other way in massive ways when it comes to companies that knowingly employ illegal aliens at relatively low wages.

Our economy is broken by deregulation, pushed and enacted primarily by Republicans, that has allowed banks to gamble, and the mortgage mess is such a tiny slice of the pie.

Has anybody noticed the huge rebound in the stock market since the bailout bill was signed into law? As if.

Yea, but people also make like 20 cents an hour there...

It's kinda funny that you rag on the Republicans and then rag on the bailout bill, which was supported more by Democrats. But anyways, I heard it will take a few weeks for any effects of the bill to be felt.

Who said both parties weren't heavily responsible for different facets of the ****storm coming upon us?

I didn't. I don't care about either one. Which maybe snax doesn't either, I guess I don't know.

Personally I feel that a bank should not be allowed to immediately sell a loan they issued. There should be a period of time, maybe as long as 5 years before they are allowed to sell it. If a bank knew they would have to hold a note for at least 5 years they'd be a little more careful as to who they loan money to.

-Jay

:thumbup:

Good point.

Agreed. And as far as the bailout is concerned, both parties get an epic fail rating in my opinion, but it never should have come to that to begin with.

Local price for regular = $2.82/ US Gal.

Lowest I've seen is $2.76 here. My mom says she pumped gas at $2.53 back home.

$3.09 in beautiful Merrill Wisconsin this morning.

I think you're right since gas hit $3.50-$4.00 a gallon I've saw more older (80's-90's) FE cars on the road in my area. I think some people just had them parked and have put them back on the road to save money on gas.

I find it interesting that you hold the home owners innocent, and suggest that they're "uneducated".

The fact is, most of these sub-prime buyers went in knowing exactly what they were getting into. It is so human nature to blame someone else once trouble appears.

I really think it unwise to "victimize" most of the subprime idiots that went for those type of loans...sure the loan brokers are often crooked, but lets not place 100% of the blame on them. It's an insult to the millions that were careful enough NOT to take the bate of low ball adjustable loans....

My Hat in the Ring.
 

4 dollar gas was our breaking point, some thought it would be closer to 5, but after 4 America started driving less, it still hasn't returned to what it was. Gas in Baltimore finally broke at $2.99, I have 3/4 of a tank left and I wanted to fill up like gas was free. I can say that since I drive for a iving, at my most busiest time, I paid the most, but also completely reinvented my business driving strategy to only leave the house when I have a full list of clients to visit. Trips to Philladelphia are planed much more cautiously than before. I managed to trim over 100 dollars a month off my expenses by just planning my commutes. My choice of cars has also changed, I'm shopping for a Prius now, the cost of the car payment would be less than the gas I pay for a car that get's 18 city versus 52 city. I don't go to the grocery store unless Im passing by or planning to buy a number of items and with that I include gas, food, and shopping.

As far as big company's go, some trucks and SUV's havent sold a single unit in over 4 months, i.e. Nissan and Toyota. Were looking at GM-Dodge-Chrysler a new merged company and Hummer and Viper are being sold off. All of the manufacturers were so geared for SUV's, they can't get us new economy cars until 2010.

I used to work for 3 loan companies in 05 and 06, we had thousands of leads and many applications filled out, but when it came down to it, no one qualified. One of the companies I worked for literally locked the doors one morning. Now the aftermath to this is some company took the risk, I remember all the true qualified customers were farmed out, getting a loan approved took months.

I bought my house in 07 and after 4 months of paperwork, we were approved. Right after that in July of 07, my credit rating was no longer of a high enough number to be approved for getting a loan. I had perfect credit, so after July of 07, I don't think anyone could get a loan and if no one is getting loans, banks are not making money, hense launching us into this current mess.

The simple price of gas is a major influence in the American life and with the latest stock market plunge, America effects the rest of the world too. But don't worry, enjoy the party now and pack up the family and take one last drive, reguardless of the stock market, someone out there is buying a little more gas, because now OPEC is cutting production to drive our price up again.

Osama Binladen wanted oil to go to 100 dollars a barrell, it peaked at 140+ and is now below 100, it will spring back. This is not to say Binladen is solely to blame, but I think is a reflection of the opinion of the Middle East's desire for profit. Also don't forget, the American dollar was at an all time low, that's what drove the barrell price over 100.

Now diffuse the future into gas prices, China is on the rise to equall our consumption of goods and oil in less than 10 years. Russia is strangly rattling their sabre's, they have a differnt problem from China, Russia has few exports. Russia does export oil and alcohol, but what else? Do we have any cars from Russia? Are our plastic toys, a pair of shoes, a pair of jeans, or any kind of food coming out of Russia, no.

The future will have a reduction in available oil, now in the less than 10 years we have left, we have to take the internal combustion engine to it's most efficient, make hybrid everything, get houses off heating oil and get them into natural gas, insulate, etc.

Just to give you another jolt, the world has a 20 year supply of lead and tin left. Time to develpoe better batteries and figure out how to put computers together without solder.

Doom and gloom, hell no, adaptation, preparation for change, chance favors the prepared. So enjoy sub 3 dollar gas while it lasts. I don't want to upset anyone, I try to look hard into the future and calculate the best I can on the way the world will change.

would anyone care to speculate as to where gas will bottom out? will it get down to $2/gal? less?