Gasoline could drop 50 cents/gallon by spring

Ah, the good old days. I can recall gas when it was less then fifty cents a gallon. And I'm only 43.

 

I remember when gas was only 19¢ a gallon. Of course, I was only 8 at the time.

 

Arrrggghhh! Unfortunately, we slow learners have found that someone has bought all of the good inventory.

On to a more serious question. What would be your next (motorized) vehicle purchase?

 

17¢ a gallon for me, and I was old enough to drive. That was full service and they gave you a glass as a premium if you filled up.

Tom

 

with 30 pages of responses, i am not going to read thru all this, but have to ask??

has anyone ate crow with malorn yet?

ok... i do it..

u were right, but the prices will go back up again... but hopefully, we have learned SOMETHING... plus with the economy tanking the way it is now, many i see on a daily basis cannot go back to what they were doing even if gas was a 1.50 a gallon...many are already deep in hock from bills that piled up last summer.

couple that with the "no overtime, no matter what" policy that was recently instituted at my work company-wide (about 85,000 employees stateside). this was a HUGE shock especially when in the past, the company BEGGED people to work overtime.

we have probably 10-15% who counted on that overtime to make ends meet monthly.

how long this will go on?? who knows. i guess we should be thankful that layoffs are currently not on the table.

 

Here is a worst-case scenario:

1. A very severe global recession covers all of us
2. The Greenback plummets
3. OPEC decides to ditch the dollar for the Euro
4. Overnight, the US economy collapses
5. Major US corporations, such as GM, go belly up
6. Global demand for petroleum products drop +30%

In such a scenario, gas could drop to $1 a gallon, even lower. Would that be "good" for the economy? Of course not.

By that point, the economy would have already tipped from severe recession to outright depression. Credit would be completely dried up. Nobody will buy a Suburban if they've lost their job, their home, and are living in a shanty town

BTW I suggest you travel the world, especially on business so it doesn't cost you anything. In countries like India, I see the "future" of our country: a handful of folks relatively well-off, the rest living in shanty towns with open sewers

Funnily enough, we have been warned about these scenarios over, and over, and over again. I'm sure you'll agree that "cheap" credit isn't so great an idea. It bankrupts an entire nation, but in the short term a person making 1/10 of what I do can live in a house far nicer than mine

Of course, once the ARM takes off, they lose the home and return to the trailer park. I'm also punished, as not only will I see my savings decline in purchasing power (Already has happened), but the security of my savings is questioned as well.

Good thing I have never trusted the stock market, and accepted a much lower rate of return from bank interest

I think we're in for a very long winter, in the economic sense

 

You can thank the crackpot sinister criminal masterminds that run wall street, the government, and big business, for that one.

I hadn't thought of that, and it is a plausible scenario. However, consider the record number of foreclosures, and the number of folks now living in their RV's at trailer parks. Sort of a glorified shanty town life.

Thanks to generations of the Boob Tube and now the Internet, people have become so brain dead, with such microscopic attention spans, that perhaps civil war wouldn't happen

I think it's a bit illogical to directly compare the Great Depression to what is happening now. First of all, folks from that generation were - for the most part - relatively recent immigrants to the US and Canada.

They had left their countries that were mired in a social and economic mess *far* worse than anything we had during our Great Depression. These folks were from a hardier stock: most of them instinctively saved, purchased within their means, were self-reliant, and used to sacrifice and had a sense of duty

Contrast that to the whiny, piss-and-moan generation we now have. Take away the GameBoy, the Boob Tube, and the computer, they're completely lost. I still very much reflect the tough, self-reliant traits my parents and grandparents had

I hate to say it, as it sounds a bit harsh, but this means I have far less competition in the workforce.

I hope you're right. If not, things could get very ugly

 

i think the reasons, solutions, and destiny is all tied to the subject of this post...

we will either

1)stop sending a quarter trillion to the middle east yearly

or we wont

2) we will either become primarily energy self sufficient

or we wont

and finally,

3) we will recover from this financial crisis, or

we wont

 

there are a lot of people who do take most of what goes on for granted as being "best for America" or "the right thing to do" when its barely disguised self interests primarily at work.

many of us have been raised on the "apple pie and american way" we think that what is going on is unfortunate and we are doing the best we can...

well, lets face it, that 700 billion bailout screwed the general public BIG TIME... we will not benefit from it, we will be worse off because of it, and we would have been better off without it.

without it, sure some big companies would have gone out of business, but hey, that is life. none of those companies were paying out dividends to me when they were raking in billions from us in the 90's and early part of this century, so why should i have to pay for their mistakes now???

the reason it failed the first time is because anyone with an IQ greater than 85 knew it would not work for "the greater good"... it was to bail out a very very small handfull of people who were NOT ANYWHERE NEAR LOSING THEIR HOUSE, CAR OR LIVING IN THE STREETS

the fact that we let ourselves be talked into wanting this is a pretty pathetic commentary on our lack of common sense

 

I'm pretty much set for a while, fortunately. If I can hold out until an "affordable" 250 miles EV is available (Tesla Model S?) then I'll sell the Prius for that car, and will have no gasoline usage. If that doesn't work out, or I need a car sooner, I'd buy a PHEV that had a significant EV range. But that would certainly be a distant second choice. If things get really tight, we'll get rid of the Prius, and just deal with one car (the EV) and our bicycles. That's mostly what we do now anyway.

Have I mentioned how happy I have to have has solar power all these years? Seemed like it was SOO expensive to put in. And now that it is out main automotive "fuel," the price of gas is just academic.

 

Thanks for the answer. Before too long I have to make some unconventional decisions.

 

Yesterday was a watershed event, people around the world were celebrating. Let's hope Obama can ride the goodwill and fix this mess

 

Cheers Malorn. I really hope that we can put the rancor of the past behind us. What we need is pragmatists, not ideologues. I sincerely hope that the republicans learn the right lessons and are reborn, like a phoenix, from the ashes of this election. It's vitally important to have more than one voice in a democracy. A revitalized republican party, grounded in it's true principals, can offer an important second voice to the nation conversation.