I hope. CHAIRMAN BERNANKE: So first of all, gasoline prices obviously have risen quite significantly. And we of course are watching that carefully. Higher gas prices are absolutely creating a great deal of financial hardship for a lot of people. And gas, of course, is a necessity. People need to drive to work. So it's obviously a bad development to see gas prices rise so much. Higher gas prices, higher oil prices also make economic developments less favorable. On the one hand obviously the higher gas prices add to inflation. On the other hand, by draining purchasing power from households, higher gas prices are also bad for the recovery. They cause growth to decline as well. It's a double wham my coming from higher gasoline prices. Our interpretation of the increase in gas prices is the economist basic mantra of supply and demand. On the one hand we have a rapidly growing global economy, emerging market economies are growing very quickly. Their demand for commodities including oil is very, very strong. Indeed, essentially all of the increase in the demand for oil in the last couple of years, in the last decade has come from emerging market economies. In the United States our demand for oil, our imports have been actually going down over time. The demand is coming from a growing economy where we have seen about a 25 percent increase in emerging market output since before the crisis. On the supply side, as everybody knows who watches television, we have seen disruptions in the Middle East and North Africa, Libya and other places that have constrained supply. That supply is not made up and that has in turn driven up gas prices significantly. This is an adverse development. It accounts in the short-term for the increase, all of the increase in our inflation forecast at least in the very near term. ....and in other news Obama is a citizen. Conspiracy theories crushed today.
This is complete bullshit. Oil is rising because the dollar is falling. The dollar is the reserve currency so when it falls significantly commodities will rise. There is a very strong correlation between the dollar and the price of Oil. Bernanke is blowing hot air up the public's asses. Stop the printing presses and the devaluation of the dollar and Oil, along with Silver and Gold, will come down quite quickly.
The Bernanke need to smarten up and understand the difference between demand for physical oil and demand for futures contracts.
he gets it. he's hoping obama doesn't. let's be frank here. speculation IS driving up the price of oil. it's certainly not being driven by supply and demand. however, you can't blame the speculators. they have to do what they can to protect themselves from inflation. if you're going to destroy the dollar, and speculators have assets in the dollar, you're giving them no choice but to move their money into something that won't erode. so is there speculation? yeah, of course. but who is to blame for that? the group most responsible for destroying the dollar - the Fed.
Do you speculator-haters in this thread at least admit the fact that emerging economies are growing rapidly, and therefore their demand for oil is also increasing?
I don't have any money in oil. Do you? If you and I don't have money in oil, who are these speculators that you speak of?