John L.

Crude Oil Prices: Bears Will Soon Win Out

The best way to revolt is for all the readers to go out and buy a Toyota Corolla or any car that is dependable and gets over 30 mpg.

This would cut our oil over-dependance dramatically and would cause the price of gas to drop enough such that all that there would be enough for everyone.

Instead we have all the automaker lobbyists pushing for their high margin SUVs and VANs and no development at all on more economical autos. Detroit will go down the tubes unless they now make this huge paradigm shift to economy cares.

Americans are beginning to "get it" now, I just sold my 92 Honda Accord and had about 15 people look at it, most were driving huge SUVs and VANs, they are all looking to save money but don't have a lot to spend since no one wants to buy their old VAN or SUV.

OPEC and the oil producers will see demand continue to drop the longer oil prices remain high and then people like me and those who looked at my care will be encouraged to buy smaller economical cars if we don't have some madman driving an SUV tailgating us all the time.

By the way, I bought a Pontiac Vibe, great car, has the Toyota Corolla engine and transmission, pretty reliable and it gets 34 mpg if you drive 60 mph.

What's the Real Story With the Price of Crude Oil?

Supply will eventually come into balance with demand. When that occurs, a lot of speculative excess will be driven out of the market, this will result in a correction and will burn a lot of the speculators like always happens during a bubble.

Probably, recession fears will trigger this to occur. Recession will be much more likely with higher oil prices, so I would expect we will see a correction in the next 6 months for sure.

What’s Driving Oil Higher? It’s the Dollar, Stupid!

The US dollar has been dropping against all the worlds currencies because of interest rate cuts most recently but also because of lack of confidence by foreigners in the US economy and throw in trade deficit imbalance for good measure also.

This is attributeable mainly to Americans living too much on credit and having no financial intelligence in being able to control their spending.

As the author mentioned, not being on a gold standard results in a fiat currency which again gives the US dollar a foundation of sand.

I really believe that there is strong demand for oil as well, this defies common sense with so many countries coming on line at once.

Multiple factors all playing together.

What will change this? : raising of interest rates, Americans living within their means, lending standards tightening up, in short all the things you and I would do to balance the budget but that need to be done on a national scale by government and individuals.

It would be great if we could go back to a gold standard but there are too many greedy people benefiting from this at the expense of the consumer so I don't see this happening soon.

To fight back, buy some ETFs that invest in gold, silver or oil (oil to avoid tax consequences)

U.S. Recovery Could Push Oil Much Higher

I think many writers make the situation too complicated. Here is a basic recap that summarizes what is going on.

Oil prices are determined by supply/demand and can fluctuate based on perceptions of how this will change near-term. Supply is shrinking, demand is booming in spite of problems in the US economy.

Compounding this of course is the fact that the US dollar has been dropping in real value (the price of gold is the best yardstick) since it went off the gold standard in 1973.

There was a good article in seekingalpha that showed that the price of crude actually hasn't changed for the past 20 years based on how many oz of gold it would take to purchase one barrel. Sorry, I can't find the link