Where did the energy crisis go?
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
Today, you can buy regular unleaded gasoline in Madera for $2.69 or so a gallon, which ought to make your socks roll up and down, seeing as how we were paying at least $2 a gallon more than that three months ago at the height of the summer driving season.
Back then, people were dumping their SUVs and other gas guzzlers and buying gas misers instead because they didn’t think gasoline prices ever would go down again.
Democrats were going around blaming the high gas prices on President Bush, and carrying torches and pitchforks into the streets demanding windfall taxes on oil company profits.
Using that same logic, let’s hold a ticker tape parade and congratulatory dinner for President Bush now that he obviously has brought oil prices down, and let’s organize bailouts for oil companies and commodities speculators who will start to go broke because the price of oil is suddenly in the tank. Let’s set up charities for Pemex, the Mexican oil monopoly, and other producers of crude who can barely afford to pump oil out of the ground at today’s prices.
Sure. Who do they think they are? Wall Street banks?
I remember congressional hearings during the summer in which Democrat members of Congress shook their fists at oil company executives and threatened to nationalize their firms. How wrong they were. Nevertheless, they were ready to nationalize something. It’s probably a good thing Wall Street showed up when it did so they could get it out of their systems. And of course, many Republicans went right along.
Which might turn out to be all right. Who knows? In a few months, Wall Street will be more or less back to normal, and the people in Manhattan who make livings selling $250 ties and scarves will be breathing sighs of relief.
Will we learn anything from all this? Probably not.
