Who's Driving Up the Gas Prices?

So you thought there's a gas shortage and that's why gasoline is hitting $4 a gallon? Guess again, folks.

The United States now exports more gasoline than it imports. Unbelievable, right? But true. Most of the gasoline the U.S. produces is refined in Texas, Louisiana and Alabama, and the pipeline to where most of it is used just doesn't exist. The oil companies find it more profitable to export U.S. refined gasoline to Mexico and the rest of Latin America than to ship it to the north east.

In addition, Americans are using less gasoline. Unemployment has cut the amount of driving we do. Better gasoline mileage has had a dramatic effect too. And the fact that we are buying less goods so that the amount of shipping has been reduced also has brought the amount of fuel used down.

In addition, the northeast, where most of the heating oil and oil to generate electricity occurs, has had a mild winter. We're simply using less and less oil for all purposes. So how come supply and demand isn't working?

Oh, my, it's the same folks who brought on the current recession:  Wall Street. Yup, oil speculators.

As the economist Robert Reich points out, oil speculators on Wall Street now control 70 percent of the oil by buying up oil commodities. Every time you fill up your tank, your dumping dollars into the pockets of the millionaires and billionaires who who brought down the economy in the previous decade. These are the same people backing the Republican candidates.