Gas Prices Going Up, But President Obama Is Standing Still

Mike Brownfield / April 20, 2011

The gas price headlines aren’t looking so good for Americans. Honolulu is a penny away from record gas prices. Chicago gas nears $5 a gallon. Nationally, $4 a gallon average gas may be only be a month away. There’s something that President Obama could do to help solve the problem but, instead, he’s spending his time laying blame.

In a speech today in suburban Virginia, he said there’s plenty of supply to meet the world’s demand for oil, placing the blame for the high prices on speculators:

The problem is … speculators and people make various bets, and they say, you know what, we think that maybe there’s a 20 percent chance that something might happen in the Middle East that might disrupt oil supply, so we’re going to bet that oil is going to go up real high. And that spikes up prices significantly.

Blaming speculators, though, is a costly diversion to real solutions. (more…)