Four Dollar Gas? Not Too Far Around the Corner

At the current time March 3, 2008 10:01AM the price for a barrel of oil is trading at $103.65. This could equate to approximately $3.50 for a gallon of gas! Listen I am not that old and even I can remember paying .90 cents per gallon. It would cost me approximately $22-$25 dollars to fill up my 3/4 ton truck. Now this same truck (although no longer owned by me) would cost over $90.00 to fill.

After doing some research on oil prices I found some very unusual data. First, after 9/11 we experienced a cost of $20.83 for a barrel. The early 80' s experienced a significant rise in oil prices with a high of $95.50 in 1980 followed by retreats all the way to $26.45 by 1988. However, today's environment is not so lucky with continued price increases year over year since 2003' when a barrel was $31.62. That's right we are currently at $103.65 with no threshold to keep us from going any further. We have experience over a 320% increase in just over 4.5 years! What are we to do?

I have been an avid endorser of government "price fixing" of gasoline. What does this mean? It simply means the government would "eat" the cost for a gallon of gas for anything above a certain threshold for instance in this example say $80.00 and that equated to $2.25 a gallon. Any price changes above that amount the government would have to bare the expense, thus essentially fixing the price of gas so the average consumer could afford it. Now I do realize this is wishful thinking but imagine if this were the case. What if the U.S. government spent dollars on making this a reality instead of interviewing professional athletes, spending billions on shooting down a faulty satellite, or even a war overseas.

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