Blaming the Boogie Man for the Possibility of $4 Gasoline

The gist of this article by Kevin Hall of McClatchy is to blame Wall Street for a rise in gas prices.  Of course, he has ZERO support for this claim in his piece.  In fact, just the opposite.

Here is his claim:

Despite weak demand in the U.S. and Europe, oil prices climbed this week to near $90 a barrel and gasoline prices have passed $3 a gallon on the West Coast and parts of the Northeast.


Why? If demand is down and supplies are plentiful — and they are — why would prices be going up?

Because Wall Street speculators are driving up oil and gasoline prices again — just in time to dampen holiday cheer.

But is demand low?  Not according to this bit from later in his piece:

The Energy Information Administration, the statistical arm of the Energy Department, said Wednesday that there is, in fact, increasing demand for oil compared with last year's low demand amid the recession.

Basically, Kevin has no idea what he is talking about...and instead of learning something about what he is writing about, he finds a convenient villain to pin it on and hope for an equally ignorant public to latch on to class warfare.

What really gets me is the dumb line about demand in US and Europe.  As if China and India have absolutely no role whatsoever in the demand for oil.  Europe is a declining, nearly dead, power in the global economy.  And the US isn't the powerhouse we once were.  Ignoring the emerging economies is just fundamentally dishonest reporting.  Again, either Hall is clueless about the subject matter or he is deliberately lying about the genuine cause for the price increase.