Quote:
Originally Posted by azraelswrd
Gas price spikes have a lot of factors, predominantly geography and distance from refineries and take into account local or regional price additives (as those in California). Once upon a time, Alaska was the most expensive but I guess that's out the door with the panic pricing. Nothing new there -- I see it as a free market system in effect.
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Up in Ontario our prices went up about 10% but I found it interesting that Esso stations went up the most and the quickest while others didn't budge for a couple days. A couple stations have only gone up 5% as of this morning.
I'm no economist but I think the same type of geniuses that came up the sub-prime mortage idea, or the others that invested heavily in it, are fiddling around with energy prices. I've read that its so easy to move billions around that it bounces prices all over the place. It maybe the free market but its being affected by a few big players instead of many little ones and it's too easy for the market to be manipulated. Personally I'd rather not enrich these guys with my gas money but I haven't found a way around it yet. At home, heating with wood keeps my money away from them but a wood burning car is a project a bit beyond my capabilities. Also as shown by the sub-prime fiasco the public pays eventually anyways for the investors shinanigans...
An idea I had is offer gasoline contracts like natural gas contracts for homeowners, get a price for the next couple years, if a big portion of drivers had fixed prices then maybe the price would be stabilized a bit more.
Ian