You throw up a straw man too. Bring up a point that the other person never made but somehow pretend that he did, and slam that down. Its a common tactic of someone who is either confused or beaten. I NEVER said why the dollar was stronger, only THAT it was stronger and that as it has strengthened, oil has come down in cost. And I proved it. President Bush was unfairly chastised for allowing oil to rise so high so its only fair he get credit for getting gas lower than it has been in years. However my point is not even that. He should not have been criticized b/4 or praised now. He had nothing to do with it.
This is a key point of understanding why things are the way they are. Much of our problems are due to monetary errors made by the Fed. That is not the domain of the Pres. President elect Obama will have the same issues. OIl will sky rocket in a few months or years and he will be blamed but it won't be his fault. He will be treated quite unfairly for things out of his control.
President Bush needs to shoulder the blame for lots of things that went wrong but oil was not his fault.
I don't think I slammed anything ? Confused, beaten, if anything, only over the accusations of confusion or being beaten ? So by your graph and theory, the dollar will not get any stronger than .77 ? Because if it did gasoline prices would drop further ? And oil will sky rocket again and be Obama's to absorb the blame ? I believe gas will go up, but it has come down to keep the economy going. When people cut back, the one's with the oil/gas have 2 choices, raise the price to sell as little of it and make more profit to cover the decrease in demand. Or they can drop the price and encourage increased consumption. I think oil/gas will correct itself for the demand as alternatives are chosen by consumers. There's going to be those that go with gasoline, those that go with a hybrid and still others going electric. Those selling any of them are going to figure out what they want to make, keep the rest of us in the dark on what it's costing them and in the end, whatever power source will cost the same over the life of a vehicle regardless of what any of us goes with. The only difference is which one of them we wind up paying.
BTW, Bush's policies and even his vocal efforts influenced anything that happened with the economy, be it war, interest rates and inflation. Bush owns what he had to do to turn this economy around after the dot com bust, 9/11/2001, war on terrorism. He owns it, it's his legacy. I don't know what/how you feel about Jimmy Carter, but if "W" Bush gets a pass, Carter does too or any of them for that matter ?
Who knows, oil/gas may have gone down partly because Bush's reign of terror is done ? As an American voter/taxpayer, I feel exhausted from the last 8 years, relieved that Bush is out. There's a feeling of "what next", but seeing the inflation erode from the last 8 years, I will say I'm against bailouts simply because they'll fail like any other bailout has. It only delays the inevitable. Perhaps they'll soften the recession for some, but for those that lost their jobs already, it has to mean very little. I might even understand a bitterness from those if it goes prolonged. I was in that category as Bush took office, I even felt low-balled coming back into whatever prosperity occurred under Bush. I think those controlling this, should have seen it and lowered prices a long time before now. Greed was their issue.
