News Flash:Hardly Anyone Cares About Gas Prices

Polls show that most Americans do not blame President Bush for the recent increases in gasoline prices.  Media reports have informed us that the increased demand for oil in China, OPEC  quotas, and limited refining capacity are to blame.  Other reports assure us that there still is plenty of oil, although of course that only refers to the number of decades that will elapse before oil prices get really high.  (See Cheap-Oil Era Is Far From Over, Analyst Say, from National Geographic News)

Scanning the Blogosphere and US news outlets, there is a lot of commentary about gas prices; but scanning the international news outlets, there are only a few concerns mentioned.  There is a G7 conference  coming up; oil prices will be a topic there.  US diplomats are meeting with OPEC ministers.  Asian stock markets are declining a bit, because of the price of oil.  Why is there a discrepancy between the great expressions of concern in the US, but such muted concern elsewhere?

In this post, I outline the issues that pertain to gasoline prices, then show why we should join the rest of the world in not making a big political issue out of it. 

Read the rest at The Rest of the Story, here.