"dave" wrote in message
. ..

"gatt" wrote in message Guys who bring
this up on or.politics are usually called socialists,
communists, or America-hating lieberals, and the advice they're given is
to invest in XOM. To me, that's tantamount to investing in organized
crime. At some point we're either going to force them to put the national
interest over record oil prices, or pull a Chavez and nationalize it. I'm
not being a big-government socialist when I say that the federal
bureaucracy could run the oil industry at lower user cost. (Not
necessarily more efficiently, but in ways that are less damaging to the
US economy, transportation industries, etc.)


If the market was truly working, then the oil companies would be
increasing capacity
before any predicted shortage due to summer/winter blends or recurirng
spikes in demand.

They've been begging to do that for 30 years, but a certain group is very
good at intimidating the regulators (and many are EPA regulators themselves.

This way they would try to to get a competitive advantge over one another,
and have more gas on hand to sell at the higher price. Eventually the
recurring, predictable shortage would go away.

The problem is collusion and cartels. This is illegal, and not the way a
free market is supposed to work.

Like OPEC?

Get a freaking clue and can the high-school level conspiracy drivel.