BernieHund: The Political Watchdog

Gas prices locally are around $3.68.  That’s the best price I could find today when I took my $20.00 bill to the purchase gas.  We aren’t talking about a fill up.  We are talking about a little less that five and a half gallons of gas.  I haven’t added to my weekly gas expenditure.  Instead, I have cut the miles I drive.  And, so far, with a little planning I’m still able to get to all the places I need to go during the week.

But, today it was reported that we can expect prices to reach $5.00 a gallon by the end of summer.  And, on Capitol Hill the questions were asked of the five largest oil companies.

The same day, U.S. oil company executivestold the Senate Judiciary Committee that oil prices would be between $35 and $90 a barrel if they were based on production costs and supply and demand. Representatives of Shell (RDS-B), BP (BP), ConocoPhillips (COP), Chevron (CVX) and ExxonMobil (XOM) testified at the hearing, called “Exploring the Skyrocketing Price of Oil,” and will do so again before the House Judiciary Committee May 22.

The testimony doesn’t really bear repeating.  Serious questioning brought to light that the oil companies are enjoying record profits and insisted that the profits are necessary for reinvesting in research and development.  It would be nice if we believed it, but….

As the price of oil has reached an all time high, the Federal Reserve indicated that we haven’t seen the worst of it.  According to the central bank’s economic forecast, we should look ahead to inflation and unemployment.  What happened to those statements a few weeks ago?  Remember the ones where everyone was saying that “the worst is over?” 

Maybe the worst is over for the big banks on Wall Street, but sitting a couple of blocks off Main Street it looks as if most of America is sitting on the edge of a black hole.