1452 Oiled

Back when it happened, I said there was an overlooked trigger to our economic cratering. The summer before it all hit the fan, gasoline prices went out of sight. Back then, most Americans were treating their budget like their job. But instead of rising to their level of incompetency they were rising to their level of insolvency.
Living as they did, one step beyond their means, the trigger of soaring gas prices put them over the edge. Mortgages defaulted, bankers panicked, good-bye real estate bubble and hello economic disaster.
Thanks oil companies.
But it makes you wonder. Last year oil was gushing out of an exploded well in the Gulf. A kajillion gallons of crude being wasted in the ocean, entering the life cycles of who knows how many organisms.
30-weight shrimp anyone?
Not only that, BP faced the prospect of paying incredibly massive fines for their malfeasance. And what happened to gas prices at the pump? They barely went up a nickel.
But throw in a couple of Mideast democracy movements and suddenly we’re bent over, in dismay, at the pump. Does this mean oil companies hate democracy? Or that they were more scared of angering us by raising prices while they were actually covering our local beaches with it, and figure we’re too dumb to notice no oil supplies have been seriously disturbed in the far off Middle East.
Or are they just amoral opportunists? Exxon earned more than $9 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010, a 53% increase over 2009.
That’s before gas prices went up.
Maybe that’s why Ben Bernanke said he didn’t expect oil prices to hamper the recovery. I suppose not, if any of us had 401Ks left, and if any of those contained Exxon stock.
At least their recovery is doing well.
America, ya gotta love it.