Electricity bills are reasonable? Yes I would like to know why? My electric company happens to be a municipality and it is one of the highest per kw in my state. My water also happens to be a municipality. The water is the cheap part, its the user fee and numerous other sewer and water retention fees that drive the bill up. You can't be serious about land lines. You still use a land line, who is the dinosaur?
First of all, Hi, welcome to ET. I disagree with your statment. Those old enough to remember the gasoline crisis of 1979 may recall sitting in long lines of cars at filling stations, waiting sometimes for hours to reach the pump. This was one of the most common consequences of price control throughout history a shortage. Also in The 1970s also saw spikes in world oil prices as Middle East nations tried to choke off America's economy. Did you noticed that americans haven't been waiting in gasoline lines since Ronald Reagan got rid of the price controls on oil??.. The main reason why the gas prices drop since last summer was due the lack of demand (europe and us are almost broke), The RBOB market and the hole Crude Complex has been in a major Contango since june 2008, In fact, one of the largest contango in history. In the other hand, Some producing countries like mexico for example are having big troubles this days. Cantarell is largest oil fields ever discovered in mexico and which provided 60% of Mexican production at its peak, has declined faster than expected in recent years. This has eroded Mexico's overall crude output and exports. State-run Petroleos Mexicanos is now scrambling to find and develop new pools of oil to compensate. Last year Cantarell output fell by one-third to an average of 1 million barrels a day, dragging down overall Mexican production to a 13-year low of 2.79 million barrels a day (cantarell producing 770,000 out of it), Pemex continues to shut in wells at Cantarell that produce too much natural gas or water. In 2009 Cantarell will produce only between 700,000 and 600,000 barrel per day, and mexico is our third largest partner in crude imports. Venezuela Crude is dirty and hard to refine crude, is a very sour crude, so, yes, we will have some imbalance ( volatibility ) until the governments give some strong incentive to develope some state of the art technology in this industry. the Senate voted in June to mandate a reduction in projected future oil usage of 10 million barrels a day, or 35%, which, since our domestic oil production is declining, means less imports. In other words, Congress wants to block drilling for more American oil while at the same time blocking the importation of oil--not a rational energy policy. BTW: Is not really about how much oil is around, the problem Is about the (technological and political) efficiency to get that oil. Don't Forget that we haven't built a new refinery in America for 30 years, Twenty-five years ago we had 254 oil refineries; today there are just 145.
Here's an article about electricity deregulation and what can happen: http://www.newsbatch.com/electric.htm We could study other countries and their methods of dealing with this since our greedy capitalist corporations will gauge as much as they can. The reason why deregulation works in Pennsylvania is because the public utilities still provide affordable rates and thereby "fixing" the cost amongst the other suppliers. Anyway, a similar system should be enacted for oil and gas to keep the greedy corps from stealing all they can from us.
When the price of gas spirals up to $5 dollars a gallon we'll revisit this thread and see what you have to say then. And if you haven't noticed, the price of gas and oil has been moving with the stock market the past couple years as if there is some correlation.
What's so different in the economy now than 3 months ago when Oil was spiraling lower in a panic? Markets are stupid and manipulated. if you try to make sense of market stupidity you're wasting time. Who cares why the market is moving, ride the gravy train and leave the morality part for whether to wipe your ass with a dollar bill or not. Because sooner than later, the dollar will be worthless and oil will go higher because it is pegged to the dollar. Oh yeah, buy Gold before it breaks 1000. Because if it does, that's 4 short sweet months to 1500
There is a place for regulating people to be honest and keeping the markets transparent to all participants.