Market Got It Right

There's nothing much to add to this. For 30 years, the left has made us totally dependent on foreign sources of energy by barring any new drilling and exploration in this country in the name of "environmental protection". Then, even though they've achieved what they set out to do, create barriers to wealth because of high energy prices, they need to create the straw man to demonize because the very people that naively put them in power are pissed off. Will American voters ever wake up to what's going on, or do we continue to give the fox the keys to the hen house?

From IBD:
Posted 5/23/2006

Energy: Washington has just finished another probe of gasoline price-gouging and found — surprise! — no evidence of wrongdoing. But the blamemongers aren't satisfied. They never are. They never will be.

As it turns out, the Federal Trade Commission found no industry manipulation of gas prices following Hurricane Katrina.

The agency did note 15 examples of "price-gouging" after Katrina by seven refiners, two wholesalers and six retailers. But the price spiked in 14 of those 15 instances due to reasons other than trying to take advantage of consumers.

That left a single case where a local retailer — not a company — was, according to the FTC, trying to use the situation for gain. But one can make a sober argument that even in that one instance the post-disaster market was working.

The FTC was first directed by an energy law passed last August — before Katrina — to investigate whether oil companies manipulated the price of gasoline in any way, including whether they intentionally held back refining capacity or inventories to keep supplies artificially tight. This part of the agency's probe, which analyzed market trends dating back to the early 1990s, found "no instances of illegal market manipulation."

After Katrina, Congress demanded a separate investigation into the industry's pricing activities — as well as its enormous profits.

The FTC probe brings to nearly 30 the number of times over the last three decades that state and federal authorities have looked into alleged price-gouging — which cannot possibly be objectively defined — in energy markets. And once more, the old bugaboo of oil company collusion has been put back in the box.

The results always disappoint those who desperately want investigators to find a problem for which they can fix blame (political opponents and the energy industry make the fattest targets) and offer their own "solution."

Rather than finally admitting that prices are set by markets, not by greedy executives behind locked doors in smoky rooms, those who want to do their own manipulating of energy prices shamelessly try to keep this nonissue alive — as if enough public money has not already been wasted on probes.

"If (the) FTC report proves anything, it's that federal investigators don't have the tools they need to protect the American people from gas price-gouging," Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said Monday in a statement following release of the FTC's findings.

Reid is representative of elected officials who screech about gasoline prices but refuse to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or increased development of the oil and gas reserves of America's outer continental shelf. This group was on vivid display Tuesday as the Senate held a food-fight of a hearing to determine how the FTC probes reports of price gasoline gouging.

Reid is, of course, free to draw his own conclusion — though he should not be free to impose his solutions on a private market. But the only honest lesson that can be taken from the FTC probe is that the market works.