Britain is poised to cooperate with the United States on a release of strategic oil stocks that is expected within months, two British sources said, in a bid to prevent fuel prices choking economic growth in a U.S. election year.Surely a nice tactic on President Obama's part. Here is evidence that such a strategy might work. From Bloomberg Businessweek:
“The market took a massive tumble on the rumors of a SPR release,” said Stephen Schork, president of the Schork Group in Villanova, Pennsylvania. Crude oil for April delivery declined 32 cents to $105.11 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It was the lowest settlement since March 6.So is this the administration's energy plan: cancel the Keystone Pipeline, prohibit new drilling projects, and then tap into our emergency fuel reserves?
President Obama denies the rumors of a coming SPR release. But we will see whether he changes his mind during the upcoming election season. People in the financial world are expecting him to. Again from Bloomberg:
“A global release, not just U.S. action, will be needed to calm markets,” said John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital LLC, a New York-based hedge fund that focuses on energy. “This is a sign that we will be seeing coordinated releases.”
For the purposes of reelection, the president will most likely order tapping into the reserves in order to avert an even steeper slide in the polls. Everything is political to him.
ReplyDeleteSuppose he is reelected, higher gas prices would mean more Americans feeling the pressure to try to make ends meet, which would mean more people looking for assistance, which results in more people turning to the government for help, which of course, means a larger and more robust dependency class that will forever vote for more government entitlements, and of course Democrats. This is the truly sinister side of modern day liberals. They are perfectly okay watching a free economy tank and private wealth evaporate, since they will use the modus operandi of the "crisis moment" to justify their overreach and power grab. Do Democrats/liberals genuinely want to see a thriving and growing middle class, with no need of government handouts? Of course not. Their lifeblood relies on constantly increasing the pool of the dependent class, which can only come about via the exacerbation of economic hardships that force more people onto the government dole. Higher gas prices achieve this.
It goes back to the Thatcher Rule: Socialists despise independent wealth and so, in order to undermine it, they are content to see the poor poorer, so long as the rich are made less rich. As she said, "You do not create wealth and opportunity that way."