Is Glenn Beck raising your gasoline prices?

For you many independents and fiscal conservatives with hopelessly short memories, it was lack of rules and lack of enforcement that allowed the price of oil to rise to nearly $150 a barrel in 2008, with gasoline at the pump over $4 a gallon

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By Rocky Boschert
Financial Editor

OK, so it’s not all Armageddon expert Glenn Beck’s fault that you’re paying $3.40 or $3.70 or even $4.00 a gallon at the pump. But his fear-based take on democracy movements in the Middle East gives weird cover to the speculative traders who jack up oil and gasoline prices without a trace of a supply and demand reason.

The speculators are happy to repeat baseless predictions by Beck that the Suez Canal could be taken over by Iran or that Libyan oilfields are endangered (even though the anti-al Gadhafi forces are working now to get them running as usual). Every dollar of fear-based speculation raises the take of the guys already in the oil futures market who profit from all of Beck’s apocalyptic chatter.

And there’s reason to think Beck knows exactly what he's doing. He both pushes and profits from the rising price of gold – which is as tight as a pea in a pod with the price of petroleum. Maybe that’s why Beck is considering leaving Fox. He is making too much money scaring his supplicants into pushing up gold prices – a commodity he should own given his tales of Muslim rape and pillage.

So Beck puts a “disinfotainment” face on during the speculation that is once again driving oil markets – even as Congress aims to cut, even eliminate, funding for the agency that enforces any regulation of the speculators. While the White House tries to bolster the Commodity Futures Trading Commission with at least the show of Democratic values, the new “tax is un-American” Congress and House Republican Majority Leader John Boehner are proposing cuts that would cripple, er, make sane again, speculative trader enforcement.

For you many independents and fiscal conservatives with hopelessly short memories, it was lack of rules and lack of enforcement that allowed the price of oil to rise to nearly $150 a barrel in 2008, with gasoline at the pump over $4 a gallon. As of the past Tuesday gasoline was at a record price for this time of year – at least $3.50 a gallon - in a week that is usually a low price point for gasoline.

But the Congressional free marketeers whose political campaigns are financed by Goldman Sachs, Exxon, and the Koch boys, et al. don’t see that as a problem. They’d rather get rid of the rules and let the economy fall as it may. Hey, wasn’t that the reason Barack Obama was voted in the last time? Well, “déjà vu all over again.”

And fall the economy will if this keeps up. Here’s a comment from a recent post in the Wall Street Journal on the effect of a highly possible return to $4.00 gasoline: Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s economy.com, said U.S. consumers could handle prices of near $3.25 a gallon, but will get “severe indigestion if oil rises to $125 per barrel and regular unleaded is going for closer to $4 a gallon.

“Consumers will choke and the economy will enter a double-dip recession if oil surges to $150 a gallon or $4.50 a gallon for more than a few weeks. Nothing has a more pernicious impact on the economy than higher oil prices. They act very much like a tax increase, although the money goes mostly to big oil producers.”

Using Beck’s brilliant forecasting, are we headed for the end of the world? Well, using a culinary allegory, not for the rich who can easily afford high gasoline prices with their deliciously low tax rates served up by the Rich Persons’ Supper Club that now controls a majority of the governorships and the House – along with their band of anti-regulatory lobby sous chefs in Washington DC.

And let’s not forget the Head Maître'd, Compromiser-in-Chief Barack Obama, who is constantly conjuring up new political recipes to make himself more “tender” while serving the selective tastes of the country club members at the dinner party.

In the end, though, would they let Glenn Beck sit with them at the dinner party? Not a chance, unless he can provide the elite diners with many more low level American worker servants who will patriotically allow their wages, benefits and economic control to be barbecued American style.

On the other hand, what do I know? I was born in Hawaii 11 years before Barack Obama. And my father was a Missouri-born Caucasian. Does that still allow me to be an American citizen?