Sad prediction.....

...when Hurricane Dolly strikes the Texas coast gas prices will rise to $7.00/gallon nationally.

Analysis of Dolly's movement here: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov

The powers that be know with current prices, they are at the limit. Americans have changed their lifestyle due to high gas prices, and are cutting back, driving less, buying less. Our economy, such as it is now, would grind to a complete halt within days if gas prices shot up that high. No one wants that to happen. We would all lose in that scenario.

Oil companies still need someone to buy the gas. If it sits in tanks, they make nothing.

...is that at every turn, these bastards have never considered anything but their bottom line.

it will work again.

...how good or bad Admiral McCombover is doing.

If he is doing good, the limit has been reached; if he is doing badly, there is no limit.

LOL - you ain't seen nothin' yet, dude!

Hmm... powerful bad guys behind the curtain, ratcheting up the prices and rubbing their hands with glee...

Or not.

A market is a very stupid animal that doesn't care about what effects it has on the broader economy. It also doesn't care how many or how few people are buying, as long as the total money keeps going into the till. The companies will be able to sell all the gasoline they have at whatever price the market will bear, count on it.

Here's where we find out just how much the market will bear, but guaranteed, at four bucks, it's not even breathing hard. Couple of years, that's going to seem like the good old days. The stubborn fact is, people will shell out for the juice -- fewer and richer people as time goes by, granted, but shell out they will.

We all bought into this car-happy consumer nirvana, and now, as James Kunstler puts it, we're faced with having to "http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/7/">make other arrangements" -- arrangements where the price of gasoline won't be particularly relevant.

the oil companies have talked themselves into a corner: Desperate to convince the public to let them drill in pristine offshore locations, they've fabricated a fantasy world wherein hurricanes and tidal forces have no effect on drilling platforms and refineries. To admit now -- by raising prices in the wake of a hurricane -- that their production can be disrupted by weather and the sea would shine too harsh a light on their convenient lie about platform indestructibility. I believe they'll swallow millions in losses before they willfully put the kibosh to their nefarious plot to steal further offshore drilling areas.

And, hey, I paid less than $3.70 a gallon here in North Texas this weekend.