White House: Gas costs to rise further (Reuters)

34 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House economic adviser Ben Bernanke said on Thursday U.S. gasoline prices will likely go higher because of system disruptions following Hurricane Katrina, but will drop when supply lines return to normal.

"There is a supply problem; there's been a reduction in the amount of gasoline available. People still want to drive, so the price is going to go up," Bernanke, chairman of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, said on C-SPAN television.

"I think the good news is that this is not likely to be a permanent situation as these refineries and these transportation networks are brought back on line," he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050901/bs_nm/economy_energy_bernanke_dc

... armchair quarterback. Not exactly the authoritative, decisive voice one would hope for in this situation.

Makes me wanna go for a long drive in the country.

:silly:

why can't Bush?
any increase in price is profiteering, frankly.

our born-again pResident to lie to us again, would we?

And, Bush* is, after, an oil man of sorts, even though Poppy's friends lost millions of Dollars in a fruitless attempt to help him find oil in Texas.

oath. How gas prices can sky rocket for fuel that has already been purchased is beyond me. The retailers are saying they have gotten the increase demands from the Oil Companies. Most are franchises that must follow the company orders. So how is oil not gouging? Hey, if baseball players can take an oath, oil execs can also.

I won't say what I think should be done to them after the resulting convictions.

yesterday. It's OK with the Administration to raise prices.

GW obviously doesn't care about the American people. WE know that. Now he has the opportunity to let us suffer and he is. There are alot of things that could be done right now to prevent certain situations like this one from getting out of hand,BUt will he? I'm suprised he agreed to open the oil reserves,but hey maybe that will take awhile. I am so angry now that we are left to suffer at the hands of this administration. Especially the people in the South.

A Bush advisor THINKS the gas prices are not LIKELY to stay high permanently. Well I am relieved. :sarcasm:

Sawyer asked him about releasing oil from the strategery reserves and his response was some babble about promoting mixed fuels such as ethanol. WTF? While the corn-states are probably happy to hear this, the purpose of strategery reserves is to _tactically_ release them... like when... hmmm... a few states get wiped out from a natural disaster.

It reminds me of an old Yellow Pages ad where they were trying to get "Bob's Rug" to buy ad space. He was concerned about the ad because somebody might buy his rug, and then he'd have nothing to sell.

"We can't use the strategery reserves... 'cuz if we do, we might not have it when we need it." -- pResident Chimpy

/rant off (for now)

Not possible to raise the price on something your out of.

How about HAVE to drive, halfwit? Any efforts to improve public transit around here get shot down by Repukes who don't want to pay "subsidies" with their tax dollars.

If I had had an alternative to driving right now, I'd take it.

People always say, "Well at least we don't live in Europe" Well European's don't HAVE to drive... they have the most amazing public transit systems around. I live in a city with public transit but it is just not adequate enough to help this situation.

Every time I see or hear words to the effect of "People still want to drive" or "The rise in prices at the pump has had little deterrent to American desire to fill their car" I want to vomit. As if this sytem has evolved to give us much choice in the matter!!!

I'd say that 'forecast' might have added another $0.05 to $0.10 to the price of each gallon. :shrug:

Disaster? That's just opportunity knocking, folks. :grr: