Consumers Provide Their Own Price Relief

While the Feds and presidential candidates are looking who to blame for high gas prices, the American consumers enacted their own relief package – we used less gas. In our capitalist society, where the laws of supply and demand rule, we used less gas and prices softened. Whether it be conservation, taking fewer trips, trading in low MPG vehicles for higher ones, we used less gas last week.

This is good news as we enter the ‘summer driving season’, and none too soon. It doesn’t seem like congress or President Bush will be lifting any drilling moratoriums anytime before they saunter off to their summer hideaways for vacation. I can almost hear the press conference where Senator __________ (fill in your favorite) is at a local marina where he/she moors their boat demanding that something be done to punish the oil companies for $5+ marine fuel.

So, while we may be stuck with $4 gas for the summer, you can be sure that the presidential candidates will be racheting up the rhetoric as we approach Labor Day and the end of the summer. In the meantime, Americans will do what we have always done – find a way on our own to fix this petroleum mess.

Bloomberg: Gasoline Demand Falls 2.7% Amid Record Prices, MasterCard Says