From the AP:
With gas prices climbing and little relief in sight, President Barack Obama is scrambling to get ahead of the latest potential obstacle to his re-election bid, even as Republicans are making plans to exploit the issue…
That is our MSM – only about 8 weeks behind the curve on this. While I’ve been stating that Obama and Federal Reserve policies have been bound to create inflation since March of 2009, it was on February 21st where I noted that this current spike was going to cause a lot of problems. Ever since gas prices started their remorseless rise in January all the talk of economic recovery and Obama having an easy path to re-election were complete and utter nonsense. And yet, all you get in the MSM is story after story of economic recovery and how Obama’s got in made in 2012. Sheer idiocy – its like they don’t remember what happened just three years ago.
Let me be absolutely clear about this – the gasoline price rise we have seen thus far ensures that there will be a major hit to the United States economy. There is absolutely no way to avoid this. The only question is how bad a hit – and that is dependent upon how much higher gasoline prices go. The effect we’ll see is either growth reduced to nominal amounts (a lot of analysts are down-grading their GDP growth forecasts, already…1.5% growth for later this year seems to be the emerging consensus), or all the way in to full-blown recession.
How much higher will gasoline prices go? Given that the Federal Reserve shows no sign of an early end to “quantitative easing” (ie, printing money) and given that our government continues to borrow massive amounts of money, there is no way to stop the rise in oil prices (and, indeed, in the rise of all commodities) short of a economic downturn caused by demand destruction via high prices. Even a sudden increase in oil supplies will only slow the rise. A sudden dawning of peace and freedom in the Middle East will be welcome – but would, once again, only slow the rise. The price is high because we’re printing gigantic sums of fake money…and people want more of it in return for things of tangible value, like oil.
We’ve got a government not fiddling while Rome is burning, but throwing gasoline on the fire. Obama is trying to get us to blame oil companies, as if they are responsible when someone offers them a higher price for their goods. There is a bad news/good news aspect to this – the bad news is that Obama either will not or cannot take the steps necessary to soften the blow; the good news is that his idiocy puts his re-election in great jeopardy.
Blogs For Victory 