Stanley Bing: Who's Keeping Score on Gas Prices?

Welcome to another rollicking day in the world of free enterprise.

I have a question for you this morning. Yesterday I gassed up my car and found that, for the first time in a while, the tab came in at under $25. I have become accustomed to the habit of not looking at the price on the pump when I make my occasional visits, any more than I watch the Dow every day now. There no point in rubbing one's nose in the gravity of our situation, don't you think? At any rate, I looked at the pump and it said that the price of a gallon of gasoline was $2.21.

Wow, I thought. That's cheap.

And then I wondered. I mean, we're so conditioned to the price of things spiraling ever-upward that eventually we become totally desensitized to the reality of things. Is $2.21 per gallon really cheap? I just paid $13.34 for some cereal, milk and a banana at Oakland International Airport. Was that cheap? The cab I will take to get from Kennedy Airport to Manhattan will cost me $60. Is THAT cheap?

In the case of gasoline prices, it's clear to me that the market is totally jobbed, and we are hosed. When the economy is flush, the "law of supply and demand" that governs "rational markets" hoists the price of gas to heights that are so ridiculous they don't bear scrutiny. When the economy tanks, whoops, lookie here, the "law of supply and demand" suddenly drives the price of a barrel of oil downward for exactly as long as it will take for us to regenerate our situation. Somewhere, I am convinced, there's a bunch of guys in a room somewhere (with a hard line to conference rooms around the world) playing canasta and toying with the price of a gallon of gas.