Posts Made By: Mike Strieber

david elosser said:

From today's teleprompter: "The markets, on the other hand, continue to believe our credit status is AAA..."

Meanwhile, the Dow tanks as he talks, currently down below 11,000.

David E

Rod Kaufman said:

When gasoline prices were up around $4.00+ during the Dubya years, conservative posters in this forum defended the profits being reaped by the oil companies as a good thing because they reasoned that people had their 401ks invested in oil stocks. (How they knew what stocks people had their 401ks invested in remains a bit of a mystery but for the sake of argument, let's assume it to be true). However, a funny thing happened when Obama became president and oil and gas prices spiked and oil company profits once again skyrocketed. Some of these same conservative posters either remained silent on how beneficial it is to have higher oil prices and therefore higher gasoline prices and subsequent higher profits for the oil companies and their investors. Instead, they whinned and complained about the high prices of oil and gas and blamed Obama for it!
But given our understanding of the market system, the conservative posters in the Bush years were evidently correct: higher oil prices= higher gas prices=higher oil company profits=higher profits for investors.
So now who's fault is it for faliing oil prices and falling gasoline prices?
Is it:
a. Obama? How could it be his fault when he caused them to go up? I guess we gotta eliminate him.
b. Bachmann? Well, I gotta admit, she scares me and she's threatened to take us back to the days of gasoline prices under $2.00/gallon.
c. Speculators? Naw, they're always driving gas prices in one direction: up!
d. Market forces? Hmm, now there's a thought:
http://money.cnn.com/2011/08/19/news/economy/oil_gas_prices/index.htm?hpt=hp_t2
I don't know, Bachmman stiill scares the BGs out of me just about everytime I see or hear her speak...

Thomas Steinberg said:

5.8 centered SE of Charlottesville, VA. It was a good one. Lasted for a while.