Why have evil oil company executives decided to stop punishing Americans?

Oil and gasoline prices have collapsed since the summer, when oil was well over $150 and gas north of $4 per gallon. There are some people who think this collapse is due to supply / demand factors in the marketplace, but that is obviously not the case. The obvious reason is that greedy, fat cat oil executives simply decided that they no longer wanted to be greedy and punish American consumers. Why did they decide to stop being so greedy?Why have evil oil company executives decided to stop punishing Americans?
Amazing how you rationalize the obvious into this irrational rant. It is supply and demand plain and simple.





If it was the evil supply executives, all the oil producing nations would simply reduce their production. These low oil prices are not in their financial interest.Why have evil oil company executives decided to stop punishing Americans?
Gas is a commidity like everything else !! Remeber when coffee prices and orange prices went through the roof becasue of bad harvests? What did people do ? they switched to tea or apples etc! Same with gas ! Price went up we stopped driving so much and the price and demand went down! capitalism is not greed its the free market at work ! I wonder how much gas prices would be if Congress and their environmental masters would have allowed new refineries and drilling over a decade ago or nuke power for that matter ! Dont blame an industry because someone else is strangling the suppy.
I think they were testing us to see how much they could raise the prices before we reacted. I don't think they are done toying with us by any means. Their little ';test'; told them what they wanted to know.





During the price gouging that was going on, I saw a front page article in the Houston Chronicle that announced ';NOTHING Has Driven the Price of Oil to a New High'; - I thought to myself ';yea, look at this, our media actually telling us the truth, for a change, and we're STILL buying the BS the oil cartel is shoveling at us and no one seems to care.';





Count on it, they'll be baaaaccckkkk.
They have no choice. A barrel of Oil is now like 50 dollars or something like that. The demand for gas is lower, because people arent going to buy 4 dollar gas. Hence, to make profit, and get people to buy thier gas, they lower the price. They want people to start driving again, and then gas will go back up. Continue to car pool or whatever, and gas will go under a dollar.






The investors drove the price up and the investors have let it fall. If you graph the stock market and the price of a barrel of oil you will see an amazing similarity.
Hm, well I thought you had applied the sarcasm pretty heavily...





It's the holidays! They decided to give us a break! :P





Nah, really, it is a decline in demand... Everyone's cutting back. :)
The world does not revolve around your country. Also, many 'greedy fat cat oil executives' ARE American.
In hopes that everyone go lazily go back to their old habits and stop the aggressive search for alternative sources. OOOOPPPSSS. Too late.
LOL





That was a fairy tale created to get Obama and Pelosi votes
Because when Cheney and Bush aren't around to help fund their masquerade, they need to make new friends!
Hint: I still have my oil stocks, and if you think the greed has stopped, wait awhile
because they found out that people know how to conserve when the time comes
The goose ain't laying any more golden eggs.
Come on... it isn't that they decided to stop punishing us, it is that we stood up for ourselves by changing our habits. More unemployed people also drops demand as they don't have to drive to work anymore. And of course, don't forget about the 2008 farm bill that undermined the speculative trading of oil futures.





With the Democratic interest in windfall profits tax and Congressional investigations into the impacts of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, the speculators and producers that saw quite fantastic profits for several years decided it was time to loosen the noose.... kind of a like a child with his hand in the cookie jar hearing his mother come down the stairs.





The CFMA, passed by the Republican House and Senate in 2000 WITHOUT ANY DEBATE, created a separate trading board that did not have regulation under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. This was strongly advocated by the now bankrupt Enron as a method and means to manipulate energy prices. As a result, tremendous volatility was introduced into the market, which allowed prices to spiral upwards for several years due to a self-fulfilling cycle of greater profits and concerns about punditry beating the drum of $5/gallon gas and $200 per barrel oil.





Perhaps coincidentally, the maximum price in oil occurred: at the same point where the maximum volume occurred in this non-regulated board; and it was the point when trading on the non-regulated board surpassed the trading on the CFTC regulated board.





The so-called ';Enron Loophole'; was closed in June 2008 with the passage of the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008. This bill was passed by Congress, vetoed by President Bush, and then over-ridden by Congress. The bill received Republican support because the writing was on the wall that several of the deregulations pushed through in 2000 and 2001 were causing serious problems in the US economy... and they wanted to get re-elected (my take). The Bill went into effect in mid-July 2008 and since that point, gas prices have dropped over $1.40 per gallon.