Precio de la gasolina.. El por que de la alza...

por **Charlie319** Jue Ago 30, 2012 10:34 am

PArece que nos van a meter la "vampirita" petrolera...

Gasoline To Hit Labor Day Record Price
August 29, 2012
Hurricane Isaac and a deadly blast at Venezuela's Amuay refinery pushed gasoline to an almost four- month high and threatened to revive a debate about energy costs in the run-up to the presidential election in November.

Futures jumped yesterday in New York as Isaac forced closures of Gulf Coast refineries and reduced rates at others. That market is also reeling from an Aug. 25 explosion in Venezuela that killed at least 48 people and closed the country's largest fuel-making plant. Futures are up 23 percent since their 2012 settlement low of $2.5501 a gallon on June 21.

Prices at the pump will be the highest ever for the U.S. Labor Day holiday, AAA said yesterday. The surge reignites an issue that has pitted President Barack Obama, who has called for the elimination of billions of dollars of subsidies enjoyed by the oil and gas industry, against the presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney. It also spurs speculation that Obama will release supplies from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to ease prices for consumers.

"Given this administration's belligerent rhetoric against the oil industry, it's going to be very easy for Romney to pin the blame on Obama," said Stephen Schork, president of Schork Group Inc., a consulting firm in Villanova, Pennsylvania. "The White House will be on the defensive. It makes an SPR release likely sooner rather than later."

Gasoline for September delivery advanced 7.68 cents, or 2.5 percent, to $3.1548 a gallon yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the highest level since April 30. Futures fell 2.87 cents, or 0.9 percent, to settle at $3.1261 today.

Retail Prices
Retail prices for regular grade increased 0.6 cent to $3.756 a gallon yesterday, the highest level since May 7, according to AAA, the largest U.S. motoring group. Gasoline at the pump cost $4.138 in California yesterday, $4.008 in Connecticut and $3.973 in New York.

The nationwide average fuel cost rose to $3.75 a gallon on Aug. 26, the highest price ever for that day, Michael Green, a spokesman for AAA in Washington, said in an e-mail.

"We expect the national average price of gasoline for Labor Day this year to be the highest ever for the holiday," he said.

Drivers could be paying $4 a gallon by the end of September, Schork said. The first presidential debate is scheduled for Oct. 3

por **Charlie319** Vie Sep 14, 2012 10:05 am

Dos notiicas de hoy que probablemente son compartidas por muchos...
Consumer inflation rises by most in three years
Mark Bugnaski / AP

Driving prices higher. Rising gas prices are behind the biggest increase in consumer inflation in three years. Minus fuel, inflation is pretty tame.
By NBC News wire reports
More expensive gas drove up consumer prices in August by the most in three years. Aside from energy, inflation was tame.

The Labor Department says consumer prices rose a seasonally adjusted 0.6 percent last month, the first increase since March. Higher gas prices accounted for 80 percent of the increase. Food prices rose 0.2 percent.

In the past 12 months, prices have increased 1.7 percent. That's down from a peak of 3.9 percent in September 2011.

Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices edged up 0.1 percent for the second straight month. Rents, medical care and new cars got more expensive, while clothing, furniture and airline fares fell in price.

Advertise | AdChoicesCore consumer prices rose 1.9 percent in the past 12 months, the smallest annual increase in a year and still below the Federal Reserve's 2 percent target.

The Fed on Thursday launched a third round of bond purchases and extended its pledge to hold interest rates near zero to at least through mid-2015 from late 2014, in an effort to tackle stubbornly high unemployment.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said he believed inflation would remain close to the Fed's target, noting that longer-term inflation expectations were quite stable.

Last month, overall inflation was boosted by a 9.0 percent surge in gasoline prices after a 0.3 percent rise in July. Gasoline prices at the pump increased 28 cents in August and could squeeze household budgets.

Women face stubborn wage gap as wages fall for everyone
Census Bureau

By Allison Linn, TODAY
The gap between women’s and men’s pay remained about the same for the fourth straight year in 2011, as both genders got slammed by lower wages.

Women earned 77 cents for every dollar a man earned in 2011, the Census Bureau said this week as part of its extensive annual report on income and poverty.

The female-to-male earnings ratio for full-time workers has been little changed for four years, after hitting a record high of 78 percent in 2007.

Experts say the latest figures show that women aren’t making significant gains in terms of earning power – but men aren’t either.

"It’s not that gap is not closing,” said Katherine Gallagher Robbins, senior policy analyst with the National Women’s Law Center. “It’s that wages are sort of flattening.”

For men who work full-time and year-round, inflation-adjusted median earnings fell about 2.5 percent between 2010 and 2011, to $48,202, according to the Census Bureau. For women working full-time, the median, or midpoint, of annual earnings also fell by about 2.5 percent, to $37,118.

Experts say that there are other factors at work besides the lousy job market. The wage gap narrowed slowly and in fits and starts through the 1980s and 1990s, but further gains have been tough to come by.

“As a broad trend, I think we have plateaued in a way, or we may have plateaued,” said Ariane Hegewisch, study director with the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

Women still face some big hurdles, especially those who want to have children and still advance in their careers, she said. Child care can be quite expensive, and some women may not be willing to put in the long hours required to make it to the top when their children are young.

The wage gap has persisted even though women have made huge inroads in traditionally male-dominated fields and positions. There have been several high-profile examples of that phenomenon, including Yahoo Inc.’s decision to appoint a pregnant Marissa Mayer to the role of chief executive.

Despite such gains, research shows that women generally take home less money each week even when they are doing the same job.

Women also now get postsecondary degrees at higher rates than men, and more education generally translates into higher earnings over the course of a lifetime. But experts note that what people study, and the fields they go into, matters as well.

“There’s a huge gender segregation there,” Hegewisch said. “Men get more technical (degrees) and women are in education and social work and the kind of softer sciences, and they pay less.”

The recession of 2007-09 was so hard on male-dominated fields such as construction that some referred to it as the mancession. With men hit so hard, 38 percent of women outearned their husbands in 2009, a 3 percentage point increase from 2008.

But as the economy began recovering in 2009, it was women who fared worse in the job market.

The situation has since become more of a mixed bag. In August, the unemployment rate for men was 8.3 percent. For women, it was 7.8 percent.

“I think the story right now is that everyone is struggling,” Robbins said. “Often when people think about the wage gap they think about it as women as compared to men. A lot of (families) have both women and men who are working. We think of it as a family security issue.” Precio de la gasolina.. El por que de la alza... Imagesizer?file=allison-linnmsnbcFE1DDC8A-3CFB-E7B3-F4F8-A5A09C9C7B4A

Precio de la gasolina.. El por que de la alza... Imagesizer?file=allison-linnmsnbcFE1DDC8A-3CFB-E7B3-F4F8-A5A09C9C7B4A

por **Charlie319** Lun Oct 29, 2012 4:48 pm

Paul Craig Roberts es una lumbrera de la administracion de Reagan...

The Virtual Recovery
Paul Craig Roberts
Infowars.com
Oct 29, 2012
Since mid-2009 the US has been enjoying a virtual recovery courtesy of a rigged inflation measure that understates inflation. The financial Presstitutes spoon out the government’s propaganda that prices are rising less than 2%. But anyone who purchases food, fuel, medical care or anything else knows that low inflation is no more real that Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction or Gadhafi’s alleged attacks on Libyan protesters or Iran’s nuclear weapons. Everything is a lie to serve the power-brokers.

During the Clinton administration, Republican economists pushed through a change in the way the CPI is measured in order to save money by depriving Social Security retirees of their cost-of-living adjustment. Previously, the CPI measured the change in the cost of a constant standard of living. The new measure assumes that consumers adjust to price increases by lowering their standard of living by substituting lower quality, lower priced items. If the price, for example, of New York strip steak goes up, consumers are assumed to substitute the lower quality round steak. In other words, the new measure of inflation keeps inflation down by reflecting a lowered standard of living.

Statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com), who closely follows the collecting and reporting of official US economic statistics, reports that consumer inflation, as measured by the 1990 official government methodology has been running at about 5%. If the 1980 official methodology for measuring the CPI is used, John Williams reports that the current rate of US inflation is about 9%.
The 9% figure is more consistent with people’s experience in grocery stores.
Officially the recession that began in 2007 ended in June 2009 after 18 months, making the Bush Recession the longest recession since World War II. However, John Williams says that the recession has not ended. He says that only the GDP reporting, distorted by an erroneous measurement of inflation, shows a recovery. Other, more reliable measures of economic activity, show no recovery.
Williams reports that the economy began turning down in 2006, falling lower in 2008 and 2009, and bottom-bouncing ever since. Not only is there no sign of any recovery, but “the economic downturn now is intensifying once again.” The absence of an economic recovery “is evident in the [official] reporting of nearly all major economic series. Not one of these series shows a pattern of activity that confirms the recovery [shown] in the GDP series.”
Williams concludes that “the official recovery simply is a statistical illusion created by the government’s use of understated inflation in deflating the GDP.” In other words, the reported gains in GDP are accounted for by price increases, not increases in real output.
The result of the US government’s economic deception is the same as the deception Washington has used to start wars all over the Middle East. The government propaganda produces a make-believe virtual reality that bears no relationship to real reality. In history there have been many governments who have prevailed by deceiving the people, but Washington has moved this success to a new peak. As long as Americans believe anything Washington says, they are doomed.
It is easy to see why there is no economic recovery and cannot be an economic recovery. Look at the chart below (courtesy of John Williams, shadowstats.com).
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Shadow1-2.jpghttp://www.paulcraigroberts.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Shadow1-2.jpg
Real median household income at the end of 2011 is back where it was in 1967-68. Moreover, Williams has deflated household income to get its real value by using the official inflation measure, which substantially understates inflation. If Williams had used the 1990 or 1980 official government methodology for calculating the consumer price index, the real median incomes of households would show a larger decline.
Moreover, the low 2011 real median household income is the summation, in most cases, of two household earners, whereas in 1967-68 one earner could produce the same real income. As Nobel economist Gary Becker, my former colleague as Business Week columnist, pointed out, when both husband and wife have to work in order to maintain the same purchasing power, household income from the wife’s in-kind household services is eliminated. Therefore, the monetary measure of the dual household income overstates income, because it is not adjusted for the lost benefits formerly provided by the wife who at home managed the household.
Americans are far more oppressed by the power brokers in Washington than statistics display. Moreover, the young are born into the oppressive, exploitative American system and do not know any different. They are fed by the Presstitute media with endless propaganda about how fortunate they are and how indispensable their wonderful country is. Americans are kept in a constant state of amusement, and many never grasp the loss of their civil liberties, job and career opportunities, and respect that the US won during the decades-long cold war with Soviet Communism.
On September 13, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben “Helicopter” Bernanke announced Quantitative Easing 3. Bernanke said that the recovery is weak and needs more Fed stimulus. He said the Fed will purchase $40 billion of mortgage bonds per month in order to drive interest rates further below the rate of inflation and help to sell more houses.
But how do you sell houses to households who are getting by with 1967-68 levels of real income and who have absolutely no job security? Their company can be taken over and offshored tomorrow or they can be replaced by foreign workers on H-1B visas. Housing prices have dropped, but not to 1967-68 levels.
Bernanke’s announcement that the Fed’s purchase of mortgage bonds is to spur housing and the economy is disinformation. Bernanke is purchasing the bonds in order to boost the values of the derivatives and debt instruments in the banks’ portfolios. Lower interest rates raise the value of the debt instruments on the banks’ balance sheets. By depriving American savers of a real interest rate on their savings, Bernanke makes the busted banks look solvent.
This is what is happening in “freedom and democracy” America. The vast majority of Americans, especially the retired, are forced to consume their savings and draw down their capital because they can get no real interest on their savings. The beneficiaries are the banksters, who can borrow at near zero interest rates, charge consumers 16% on their credit cards, and use the Federal Reserve’s largess to speculate on interest rate swaps and credit default swaps. The American taxpayers hold the bag for the banksters’ uncovered gambles.
Would you not gamble if the American taxpayers had to cover your bets, but your winnings were yours alone?
The future of the American political order is in doubt. The Bush and Obama regimes have so badly abused the Constitution and statutory law, that the America that Ronald Reagan left to us no longer exists. America is on the path to collapse or tyranny.
Suppose that a miracle produces an economic recovery. What becomes of the enormous excess bank reserves that the Federal Reserve has provided the banks?
If these bank reserves are used for expanding loans, the money supply will outstrip the production of goods and services, and inflation will rise.
If the Fed tries to take the excess reserves out of the banking system by selling bonds, interest rates will rise, thus destroying the wealth of bond holders and draining liquidity from the stock market. In other words, another depression that wipes out the remaining American wealth.
The Federal Reserve’s announcement of QE3 shows that the Fed will continue to create new money in order to protect the values of the insolvent banks’ questionable assets. The Federal Reserve represents the banksters, not the American public. Like every other American government institution, the Federal Reserve is far removed from concerns about American citizens.
In my opinion, the Federal Reserve’s purchase of bonds in order to drive down interest rates has produced a bond market bubble that is larger than the real estate and derivative bubbles. Economically, it is nonsensical for a bond to carry a negative real interest rate, especially when the government issuing the bond is running large budget deficits that it seems unable to reduce and when the central bank is monetizing the debt.
The bubble has been protected by the euro “crisis,” which possibly is more of a virtual crisis than a real one. The euro crisis has caused money to seek refuge in dollars, thus supporting the dollar’s value even while the Federal Reserve prints money with which to purchase the never-ending flow of the governments’ bonds to finance trillion dollar plus annual budget deficits–about 5 times the “Reagan deficits” that Wall Street alleged would wreck the US economy.
Indeed, the US dollar’s exchange value is itself a bubble waiting to pop. The sharp rise in the dollar price of gold and silver since 2003 indicates a flight from the US dollar. (The chart is courtesy of John Williams, shadowstats.com.)
The bond market bubble will pop if the dollar bubble pops. The Federal Reserve can sustain the bond market bubble by purchasing bonds, and there are no limits on the Federal Reserve’s ability to purchase bonds. However, the endless monetization of debt, even if the new money is stuck in the banks and does not find its way into the economy, can spook foreign holders of dollar-denominated assets.
Foreign central banks can decide that they want to hold fewer dollars and more precious metals as their reserves. Other countries, sensing the US dollar’s demise,
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Shadow2.jpghttp://www.paulcraigroberts.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Shadow2.jpg
are organizing to conduct their trade without the use of the world’s reserve currency. Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa intend to conduct their trade with one another in their own currencies. China and Japan have also negotiated to settle their trade balances with one another in their own currencies.
These agreements substantially reduce the use of the US dollar in international trade and, thus, the demand for dollars. When demand falls, so does price, unless the supply shrinks. But the Federal Reserve has announced, essentially, unlimited supply of US dollars. So we are faced with a paradox. The US dollar is supposed to remain valuable despite its enormous increase in supply.
In addition, China, America’s largest creditor and in the past a reliable purchaser of US Treasury bonds, holds some two trillion in dollar-denominated assets, primarily Treasury bonds. How is Washington treating its largest foreign creditor? Not with appreciation or deference. Washington is surrounding China with naval and air bases, interfering in China’s disputes with other countries, and bringing contrived actions against China in the World Trade Organization. Washington claims that US corporations are deserting the US not because of the lower cost of labor in China, but because of Chinese “subsidies” to the relocated US firms.
In my April 30 column, “Brewing a Conflict with China,” I wrote that Washington would like to substitute a cold war with China for the hot wars in the Middle East. The problem with the hot wars is the loss of superpower face from Washington’s inability to prevail after eleven years, and although the hot wars are profitable for the military/security complex, the wars don’t generate the level of profits that would flow from a high-tech arms race with China. Moreover, Washington believes that diverting Chinese investment from the economy into a military buildup would slow the rate at which the Chinese economy is overtaking the US economy.
What if instead of taking the bait from Washington, China targets Washington’s Archilles heel–the dollar’s role as reserve currency–and decides it is cheaper to dump one trillion dollars of US Treasury debt on the bond market than to commit to a 30 year arms race? To keep the price of Treasuries from collapsing, the Federal Reserve could print the money to buy the bonds. But if China then dumps the printed one trillion dollars in the foreign exchange markets, Washington cannot print euros, British pounds, Russian rubles, Swiss francs, and other currencies in order to buy up the dollars.
Frantic, Washington would try to arrange currency swaps with foreign countries in order to acquire the foreign exchange with which to buy up the dollars that, otherwise, will drive down the dollar exchange rate and destroy the Federal Reserve’s control over interest rates.
But if the Chinese don’t want the dollars, will other countries want to swap their currencies for the abandoned US dollar?Some of Washington’s puppet states will comply, but the wider world will rejoice in the termination of Washington’s financial hegemony and refuse the offer.
Sooner or later the dollar will collapse from Washington’s abuse of the dollar’s role as reserve currency, and the dollar will lose its “safe haven” status. US inflation will rise, and US political stability, along with America’s hegemonic power, will wane.
The rest of the world will sigh with relief. And China will have defeated the superpower without an arms race or firing a shot.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the father of Reaganomics and the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury. He is a columnist and was previously the editor of the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, “How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds,” details why America is disintegrating.

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Precio de la gasolina.. El por que de la alza...

Precio de la gasolina.. El por que de la alza...

Bueno, hoy pague $3.899 por el galon en KS

Esto cabe mejor aqui que en otros temas, aunque puede considerarse politico...

Re: Precio de la gasolina.. El por que de la alza...