About those low gas prices when Obama took office

[hfojvt]

I will repeat what I put in my journal a few months ago, hopefully to a wider audience. This seems to be a common RNC meme about how cheap gas was when Obama took office.

from here http://205.254.135.24/petroleum/gasdiesel/

On Aug 18, 2008 it was $3.71 and Sep. 29, 2008 it was $3.64 then it started falling as the economy crashed. 3.11 by Oct 13, 2.34 by Nov. 3, and 1.79 by December 1, 2008. Bottomed out at 1.59 on December 29. 2008. By Feb. 2, it was $1.87 and by March 30, $2.03.

That's kind of an outlier though, because from Dec. 31, 2007 to Oct. 13, 2008 gas was over $2.95, peaking at a price of $4.05 on July 14, 2008.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/hfojvt/170


The price of gas was low when Obama took office because Bush had wrecked the economy. Actually the depressed world economy simply wasn't using as much petroleum then.

I guess if we elect Romney, Gingrich or Santorum, they will wreck the economy again and we can have lower gas prices.

That seems like a fair trade, no?

[Politicalboi]

1. Yeah that $1.80 price

Didn't last long, and I remember paying almost $4.00 by the summer of 08. You would think oil guys Bush/Cheney would have had really low prices for us. My guess was that the oil companies were taking advantage of the last days of Bush and were raking in the bucks just for greed.

[hfojvt]

4. truthfully, it was so brief that I did not even remember it

Hence my need to look it up and put it in context.

[underpants]

11. They dropped the price to NOT let Obama get elected

no question

[russspeakeasy]

2. So, when Ike was in office, gas was .15/gallon.

and bread was .10 a loaf.
If anyone wants to go back to the "good old days", vote for Ron Paul.
Caves will rent for $5 a month, there will be no bread and you won't need gas. Shoes on the other hand will be $400 a pair. And you can trade a chicken for your health care and your kids can share a book on their way to work.
False economic comparisons are just that; false.

[Angry Dragon]

3. 1969 gas = .35 cents

[hfojvt]

5. Which is $2.15 in today's money

according to the inflation calculator http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=.35&year1=1969&year2=2011

[Spider Jerusalem]

7. The absolute all time low, adjusted for inflation, was in 1998.

Sixty-three cents a gallon is the lowest I recall paying at the time. Adjusted for inflation, that's eighty-three cents in current dollars, fourteen cents at 1969 values, and ten cents in 1955 (for comparison purposes, the average pump price per gallon in 1955 was twenty-nine cents).

[hfojvt]

19. 63 cents?

Are you in Texas or Alaska?

Lowest I remember is 89.9 for a couple of months. And Iowa was typically lower than neighboring states.

[Spider Jerusalem]

22. At the time, Georgia

which had some of the lowest fuel taxes in the country (26 cents per gallon in state and federal taxes, I think). But even accounting for state-by-state differences in fuel prices, the price per barrel of oil hit an all-time low, adjusted for inflation, in 1998 ($10 a barrel in June of '98, in part because of the then-current Asian economic crisis depressing demand).

[Gman]

6. The world economy was on the brink of collapse

Even China wasn't using near as much energy. There was suddenly a glut of fuel. Even globally, it all can be traced to Bush wrecking the economy.

I am lying in waiting for any RW'er to come at me with this. I've a ton that I will unload on them about how this happened.

To claim Obama is responsible for higher fuel prices is the absolute height of deceit and dishonesty.

[hfojvt]

23. I don't know about dishonesty

after all, some have been deceived and pass it on without knowing it is false.

[spanone]

8. k&r...

[onehandle]

9. $1.46 when Bill Clinton left office. nt

[safeinOhio]

10. If any of the current republicans win and as

promised they bomb, bomb, bomb Iran, those gas prices will top $6.00/gallon. It's ok because it'd be God's will.

[TexasPaganDem]

12. If memory serves...

the dramatic price drop for gasoline was seen at the time as a "bribe" by the gas companies to get a Republican back in office. It bottomed in 2004, 2006 and 2008 so the Republicans could say to their short memory constituents (or potential voters) that things are getting better. As soon as the elections were over the gas prices went right back up, to punish the voters or at least for them to thumb their noses at us. (In Texas, the gas price dropped from an all time high of $4.40 to $1.60ish in a matter of two months. And went right back up afterwards)

[hughee99]

14. It was the same in 2000, except instead of the gas companies dropping prices,

the president opened the strategic petroleum reserve shortly before the election to temporarily lower prices.

[hfojvt]

18. at my age, I cannot rely on memory

too much CRE.

Fortunately, with the internet, I do not need to.

My link shows

gas prices rising steadily through the 2002 elections (althout Sep. 11 actually caused a big drop in prices with its shock to the economy). Prices were 1.50 in January, 1.50 in June of 2001 and fell to 1.15 by Christmas 2001. Stayed there for about two months before edging up to 1.44 by election day. About back to the pre-911 normal, but they kept going up as Bush pushed for the Iraq invasion, going up to 1.75 by March 2003 but quickly back down to 1.55 by April, staying there until January 2004, when they started climbing up to 1.62 by March, 1.72 by May, 1.87 by September and 2.21 by November! And still the SOB got re-selected!

Then they fell, to 2.07 by December and the 1.90s in January 2005. Up to 3.15 by September 2005 then down to 2.43 by December. Up to 3.06 by August 2006, then down slightly to 2.97 by September and down to 2.51 by November. Then, yes, up to 2.62 by December, but down to 2.44 by February 2007 back up to 2.63 by March and 2.79 by April and 3.30 by November 2007.

Anyway, I do not see a drop before elections followed by a steady rise after elections. Sometimes quite the opposite and other times it bounces up and down.

Ah, hell, I was looking at diesel and not even Vin. Let's try that again.


1.42 in Jan 2001 when Bush took office, up to 1.70 by May, then down to 1.12 in December, thanks to 911. Stayed in the 110s until 3-11-2002 when it jumps to 1.23 and then climbs to 1.47 by November 2002. Fell to 1.36 by December, but then rose to 1.68 by March. Then down to 1.47 by Jun, up to 1.72 by September, "down" to 1.55 by October, up to 2.02 by May 17,2004 down to 1.85 by September, but back up to 2.02 by 10-18-2004.

But then down to 1.79 by January 2005, back up to 2.01 by March, up to 2.24 by April and 3.08 (!!!) by September 2005. Back down, all the way to 2.17 by December 2005, back up to 2.61 by April and up to 3.05 by August, down to 2.31 by October and 2.23 by November. But down to 2.19 by Feb, and up to 2.50 by March, 2.68 by April and 3.04 by May 2007.

So pretty much the same conclusion as with diesel.

[jmowreader]

21. I don't think it was punishment/nose thumbing

The oil companies budgeted for a few months of below-cost gas pricing as a way to try to bribe people to vote Republican, but it was always intended to be a temporary measure. After each election, the budgeted reduction ended and they went back to making money.

If anything, the money they lost in the process should have been counted as an in-kind soft-money contribution to the RNC and reported accordingly.

[Morning Dew]

13. There was a real spike in gas prices during the last year of Shrubco

They gouged us for all they could just in case they wouldn't be able to after the '08 election.

Just my .02

[hughee99]

15. As it turns out, they had nothing to fear from that election. n/t

[taught_me_patience]

16. It's because we were in the midst of a terrible recession

Rising gas prices is a sign that the economy is picking up.

[coalition_unwilling]

17. 'wrecked the economy" is putting it mildly, imo. The international

credit markets had completely frozen up, i.e., banks were not even lending to one another because they could not trust one another's balance sheets. I remember wondering during those days whether the entire machine was just going to grind to a halt and cities start going feral, as food supplies dried up. (Average American city has something like a 7-day food supply.) Wife and I actually started discussing evacuation plans from Los Angeles if we detected any panic buying or other signs of approaching cataclysm. It did not come to pass, but the world was teetering on the brink of complete and utter collapse of supply and demand.

That's what Obama inherited.

[hfojvt]

24. oddly enough it was the pessimism of DU

that helped me to anticipate it. I went from full time to part time work in 2006 because I was afraid that saving money might prove to be futile. No sense working full time and saving if a banking collapse will wipe it all out. Instead take the extra free time.

[coalition_unwilling]

26. My wife and I were also keying off the pessimism on DU and other

left-leaning sites to pay down our debt and, as the crisis grew acute, to stockpile dried and canned goods in anticipation of a possible breakdown in the food supply chain.

I remember during one particularly acute time visiting an Army surplus store that was almost completely deserted and wondering if I were losing my mind or if LA collectively had its head completely up its ass. Since the cataclysm never came to pass, I suppose I will never know for sure. I'm actually glad the cataclysm never occurred, as it would have necessarily meant the suffering of large numbers of the working classes. Except for the egg on my face at my unwarranted alarmism. But that's just bruised vanity speaking.

[B Calm]

20. Looking for the oil speculators to jack

up the price of oil this summer just so they can wreck the economic recovery and install another republican sock puppet in November.

[ErikJ]

25. Gasoline is US biggest export now!

They are exporting as much as possible to keep the prices up, because demand is soft in the US. That's why theyre building Keystone Pipeline. To export gasoline to China.