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# Our So-Called Gas Crisis
March 29 2012
Written by Frying Pan Staff.
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GAS PAINS - LA Observed business writer Mark Lacter [\[link\]](http://www.laobserved.com/biz/2012/03/post_229.php) recently added his voice to the steadily rising chorus of sane commentators calling for an end to the panic jabber about high gas prices.
Conservative politicians have been lustily blaming higher pump prices (along with sun spots) on the Obama administration, but Lacter answers them with an inconvenient truth: Prices have actually leveled off and have even crept down a bit lately.
And they’re not all that different from last spring’s: “If you go back to [May, 2011,](http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=EMM_EPMR_PTE_Y05LA_DPG&f=W)” wrote Lacter, “an average gallon of regular in L.A. was running nearly $4.30 a gallon, and . . . \[t\]hat’s not even adjusting for inflation.”
Lacter includes a nifty Washington Post video which posits that part of the panic lies in the psychology of drivers having nothing to do when filling up but stare at those numbers spinning upwards on pumps.
The video also points out how little the president has to do with setting gas prices – 75 percent of which are determined by the world market price of crude oil.
“If the price of bread were in our faces in a similar way,” the WaPo short continues, “we might be grousing about ‘paying at the bakery.’”
*(This article was posted first at [fryingpannews.org](http://fryingpannews.org))* -cw
Tags: Gas prices, gas crisis, President Obama
CityWatch
Vol 10 Issue 26
Pub: Mar 30, 2012
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