Will Ike Spike Another Round of Price Gouging?

With Hurricane Ike headed for South Texas -- some are predicting that greedy businesses will gouge people by charging unfair prices for necessary goods and services.

Yesterday, the Texas AAA issued a press release encouraging people to report any suspected gouging. They noted in past disasters hotels, gas stations and convenience stores have been caught taking advantage of other people's unfortunate situation during a disaster. Goods that frequently have their prices artificially raised include gas, drinking water, batteries and food.

The Texas AAA recommends that if you think you have been gouged to keep your receipts and file a report with the Texas Attorney General. The Texas Attorney General has already warned that gougers will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Reports can be filed by telephone at 1-800-252-8011.

While Texas is the obvious place price gouging might occur, concerns are already being raised in other States about this. News4Jax.com in Florida, WTHR.com in Indiana and WIS10 in South Carolina are all running stories on gas gouging. There is even concern in Canada that Hurricane Ike will spark a round of gouging up there.

Most of these articles recommend contacting your state's Attorney General if you have concerns about gouging. Reports can also be filed with the Department of Energy.

Besides filing a report, there are resources to ensure you are getting the most out of your hard-earned money in your area. GasBuddy.com is a online means of finding the best prices in both the United States and Canada. In Canada, there is an interesting tool from the CCPA (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives) where you can see how much you are being gouged.

As a disclaimer, there are some who will argue that any suspected gouging is merely the result of natural events. Please note the people that argue this will probably be affiliated in some manner with Big Oil. Of course, other's might argue Big Oil has been gouging everybody for a long time. Of course, there is an argument that financial types have been playing around with the prices via speculation, also.

Sadly enough, despite a lot of frustration by the general public, Congress took off on vacation without addressing the public outcry on this issue. I'm not sure how much good reporting price gouging will do, but if enough people do, perhaps all the politicians crying foul about this issue will finally do something about it?

In my opinion, thus far, we've seen a lot of words but little action on this subject!

Does our current economic situation make sense?

Could major companies outsourcing jobs be an enabling factor in oil prices skyrocketing out of control? After all, the oil companies claim that increased demand in Asia (especially China and India) are a major reason prices skyrocket, weekly.

I guess this means we have outsourced so many jobs and manufacturing, they are using more oil?

Of course, some of other reasons used to justify oil prices increasing seem to not make very much sense. Sinister terrorist threats that never surface, or minor attacks have been used to drive the price of a barrel of oil up, also.

The problem is for the average person, it's hard to figure out if someone is telling the truth or offering us a convenient excuse for making an obscene amount of profit.

And if anyone were to blame the people in Asia for this, they would be sadly mistaken. I suspect they are being used for one thing and one thing alone, cheap labor. This cheap labor has some other ugly aspects to it, such as labor practices that wouldn't be tolerated in the West and a constant stream of unsafe and defective products being sold all over the world.

So far as placing blame, we might want to look at the few, who are making a ton of money by reducing their labor costs?

Last time I checked, the out-of-control gas prices and food shortages are impacting people in Asia and Africa pretty severely, also. Some say one of the reasons for this is all the corn being diverted to make ethanol.

While this is still merely a nuisance at the grocery store here in the West, they say it is sending people to bed hungry at night in less fortunate countries.

Sadly enough, experts are now telling us that using corn to produce Ethanol is unlikely to make an impact on the energy crisis, either. They say it uses more energy to produce than we get by using it. Is this just another venue for a few speculators to make a lot of money at the expense of everyone else?

I suppose this revelation is just another inconvenient truth?

Yesterday's sharp increase in the price in oil and the fact that we are seeing the largest loss in jobs in 20 years sparked the following commentary in the New York Times by Peter Goodman:

For tens of millions of Americans struggling to pay bills, the jobs report added an official stamp of authority to a dispiriting reality they already know: A deteriorating labor market is eliminating paychecks just as they are needed to compensate for the soaring cost of food and fuel, and as the fall in house prices hacks away at household wealth and access to credit.

The well-written commentary goes into a lot of specifics, which are pretty gloomy. It also contains quotes from the various presidential candidates, who offer completely different solutions to the problem.

For a long time, we have been hearing there is no fraud in the oil prices going out of control. Despite this the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission is hosting a International energy market manipulation conference. Do they know something we don't?

Of course, in another contributing factor to the overall mess (the mortgage meltdown), the FBI recently announced that they are investigating several major companies. It's going to be interesting to see what becomes of that.

In both these contributing factors to the economic crisis, a lot of taxpayer dollars are being used to protect or bail out both of these industries. I've often wondered why the taxpayer gets to pay to protect oil producing countries and bail out corporations, who were clearly irresponsible in the way they did business?

With all the money they made, or are currently making, shouldn't they be held responsible for at least some of the costs?

If you look at the entire situation, it's hard to make sense or understand the reasons we are being given for why it is occurring.

What does make sense it that our overall perception of the public officials, who swear an oath to the protect it's citizens from enemies (both foreign and domestic)is at it's lowest ebb in history. Part of the reason for this is too many of them are getting caught with their hands in the cookie jar and the general consensus is that special interests seem to influence the way they vote more than anything else.

We are seeing a lot of talk about doing something about this problem, but little to no action being taken to correct it. A little less talk and more action might go a long way in fixing the problem. Otherwise, we might begin to think that all this talk is nothing more than a lot "hot air."

I'm not sure how much longer the voting public is going to put up with the current situation -- but one thing is clear -- politicians running for office are accepting a lot of money from lobbyists, which is a nicer word for "special interests."

As long as the public is getting gouged (my opinion) for no apparent reason, the ties between politicians and lobbyists are going to become more and more questionable.

One good place to keep up on these issues and or voice your opinion (my wife, Ellen is a big fan) is Lou Dobbs' site.

In fact, since I am slightly off my normal topic, I think I'll dedicate this post to her.

Do the record profits in the oil industry make sense?

Gas prices have gone over $3.00 a gallon for most of us, and seem to rise whenever there is an anticipated emergency, whether it actually happens or not. I've long been an advocate of the "does it make sense theory” and prices being raised for emergencies that never actually happened, DOES NOT, at least to me.

Meanwhile, billions of our dollars and human resources (young men and women) are being used to protect the area, where a lot of our oil comes from.

I've never figured out why our tax dollars are being used (seemingly without charge) to protect a few people, who have a lot of money to throw around. All we seem to get in return is higher prices, and dangerous people, we need to protect ourselves from.

Most of the terrorists in the 9-11 attacks were not from Afghanistan, which has little oil. In fact, most of them, including the mastermind still at large; come from one of these countries, using our resources to protect it.

It costs us a lot of money, and our brave young men and women to provide them protection. To me, it would make sense that those, who are enjoying our protection, showed their appreciation a little more.

But all our oil doesn’t necessarily come from these foreign lands we are paying to protect. Is there a common denominator to all this? The oil companies are sharing in the RECORD profit taking, also. These companies are largely owned by Americans, and other Westerners.

If the oil industry is so prone to dangers, it doesn't make sense that they are making more money than anytime in history? Based on their record profits, it doesn't seem to be hitting their bottom lines.

It does seem to be hitting the bottom lines of everyday American households, as well as, other industries, which will have to pass the costs off to everyone in the form of higher prices.

Recently, Walmart announced their sales are going down because people don't have as much disposable income to spend. A lot of everyday Americans shop at Walmart. I'm using Walmart as an example, but they aren't the only large business beginning to see this trend.

Wikipedia mentions this in their analysis of oil price increases in the past few years, here.

Personally, I'm an advocate of getting rid of the industry by exploring alternative energy sources, but until we get there, perhaps the little guy should get a fair deal?

The People's E-Mail network is sponsoring a drive to let our legislators and newspapers know that it's time to conduct an unbiased investigation to determine if their is any foul play connected with the current pricing structure, which is making a few people very rich.

John Edwards, a presidential candidate, has also called for an investigation of the industry. AP story, courtesy of Yahoo News, here.

It would be nice to see him get some support on this, preferably of the bipartisan type. Maybe it's time to make sense of a situation of a phenomenon that DOES NOT to a lot of us?

The way to do that is to investigate the problem, or discover the truth. If there is no fraud, then the oil industry should have nothing to fear.

You can let your elected representatives and local press know how you feel about this, here.