$3.57 A Gallon And Rising

Oil prices continue to soar and along with it, the price of gasoline in the great state of Oklahoma spikes as well.  Today, your humble Gorilla spent $3.57/gallon to fill up and all indications are that there will be no relief in sight.  Previous administrations took seriously the impact of transportation fuel on the economy, but once again, this administration seems to have little concern or is even apathetic about it.  Perhaps the fears of a looming government shut-down in Washington has distracted the President.

Oil peaked today at $123/bbl, the greatest Brent price seen since 2008.  

Why?  In my humble opinion, we're seeing a repeat of the post-9/11 disaster where speculators are taking control of Wall Street and the eyes of the SEC are apparently elsewhere and Congress is too busy gearing up for the 2012 elections to give a damn.  This statement in the above linked story speaks volumes:

The ECB is expected to raise interest rates by 0.25 percent on Thursday in the first hike since the 2008 financial crisis. The expectations have propelled the euro to a 14-month high while the dollar index (^DXY - News) was down 0.34 percent at 1450 GMT.

"Central bankers will always claim that they have no influence on oil prices but recent history has repetitively shown that in the new world, where commodities are a global asset, central bankers can have a greater influence on oil prices than OPEC," said Olivier Jakob from Petromatrix.

Are you following along?  Call your Congressman today and if they aren't out of the office on a vacation, ask them to wake the hell up and get the speculators under control.