OPEC to Cut 2 Million Barrels a Day

[BrianFromWA]

Good point. Mine hasn't responded to me in a while. But then again, it was a lot about the Sonics and why I couldn't get to vote on it.

So did your congressman/woman explain why he/she was unable to curtail the Bush administration running rampant over the will of the people? Why Nancy Pelosi campaigned about getting troops out of Iraq, was buddies with Cindy Sheehan for a while, then once in office turned her back on the constituency that voted her in so that she could do...what is it the last couple of congresses have accomplished?

I would have much more respect for some of these politicians if they voted their constituency, or attempted to do more than just stay in office.

Sorry to hijack the thread. I return you now to OPEC

 

[PapaG]

Call me crazy, but rising interest rates on adjustable mortgages had much more impact on pocketbooks than an extra $20 every time you filled up, right? And it seemed that the subprime housing market "tanking" and the Chicken Little response by the banks to it caused much more hardship than an extra dollar or two per gallon.

Way more people use gas than have ARMs that have come to term in the last year, so actually, more pocketbooks are affected by gas prices. Throw in that many hourly workers don't have mortgages and an extra $80/month for gas has a big impact.

 

[BrianFromWA]

Possibly, but that extra 20 you filled up, turns into 80+ a month for most americans, because A) most people arent driving fuel efficient cars, and B) you fill multiple times a month

When a gallon of gas costs almost more than you make an hour (minimum wage) you have problems.


I'm not saying gas prices were solely the ONLY contributing factor, I do insist that it was more of a major one than most people think.

For the most part I'm with you, but you saw gas consumption go down when prices went up. It was economics in effect.

But a raise from 6% interest on my home to 7% would be a few HUNDRED dollars a month that's going out of my wallet. From 6 to 7 to 8 to 9 (which, from what I understand, has happened to many on "creative loans") adds almost 50% to the original mortgage payment. .

I'm not convinced that the minimum-wage workers were the ones hit hardest by the recession right now. Maybe that's middle-class me talking out of my hat, but the problems seemed to stem from 1) mortgage costs going up while housing values plummeted, 2) banks freezing loan output and dropping credit lines, 3) higher gas prices which caused higher commodity pricing, and 4) layoffs of middle and upper-middle class workers from decent jobs.

 

[BrianFromWA]

Way more people use gas than have ARMs that have come to term in the last year, so actually, more pocketbooks are affected by gas prices. Throw in that many hourly workers don't have mortgages and an extra $80/month for gas has a big impact.

I agree, but the markets didn't crash because the minimum-wage workers were having a hard time paying for gas. I'm not saying they didn't, I'm saying the "recession" wasn't caused by it.

IIRC (and I wish I could find the link--to be honest it may have been Fox News, which I know doesn't carry a ton of weight in here), of the increases in unemployment nationwide, very small % was minimum-wage work. Most was in middle- and upper-middle class jobs.

Minimum wage workers aren't the ones stopping spending at retail stores. In fact, they're probably the ones who are keeping places like WalMart and Costco at average levels. It's places like Macy's, Nordstroms, Car Dealerships, etc that are really hurting.

 

[BrianFromWA]

BTW, we had people from the Seattle City Team Mission come to our church in the last couple of weeks. We took a special offering b/c they said without $1M in funding that they had pulled for the upcoming year, they would have to close their doors. I'm pretty sure it's not gas prices which are driving less charitable spending.

 

[PapaG]

BTW, we had people from the Seattle City Team Mission come to our church in the last couple of weeks. We took a special offering b/c they said without $1M in funding that they had pulled for the upcoming year, they would have to close their doors. I'm pretty sure it's not gas prices which are driving less charitable spending.

You can't correlate that as a direct result of ARMs going into default. There are many, many factors, both domestically and internationally, that factor in any economy. My only point was that more people had their pocketbooks directly affected by higher gas prices than by ARMs, but that doesn't mean that your point isn't correct as well.

 

[BrianFromWA]

I see, and agree. If you say "pocketbooks directly affected", I'll concede you are right.

But as far as the recession goes, I still maintain that gas prices are like #4 or so on the priority list.

 

[PapaG]

I see, and agree. If you say "pocketbooks directly affected", I'll concede you are right.

But as far as the recession goes, I still maintain that gas prices are like #4 or so on the priority list.

Things were slowing down far before the mortgage meltdown.