High Gas Prices

The U.S. stock markets flying still at P/E ratios that defy gravity, while fuel prices soar and consumer interest rates creep higher and higher, is either a New Age financial miracle or the most prolonged fiction of modern time.

For the ordinary citizen, it is hard to swallow the U.S. government’s figures on inflation, which are so low as to be undetectable. The undercurrent of soaring fuel prices is about to come out of the ground like methane gas does every few years, igniting the streets and sidewalks in the Fairfax District. Somebody is not telling us the truth about this economy. We usually all find out the truth at about the same time on some dark day in October. Funny how that happens.

ANTHONY J. SKIRLICK JR.

Valencia

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Michael Ramirez’s Sept. 14 cartoon showing the heat gauge for oil profits and a joyful, capering OPEC at the end of the dial is certainly cute, but as anyone who drives a vehicle knows, pump prices are a reflection of the wholesale price only insofar as they offer a transparent excuse for the multibillion-dollars-in-profit oil companies to jack prices instantly at whatever whim they choose.

As happened, oddly enough, just before Labor Day. An increase of 14 cents per gallon in two days at a local discount station, which the oil companies said was due to “market forces.” Strangely, these market forces seem to occur like clockwork every year at the same time, just prior to holiday periods. Even more peculiarly, there never seem to be any “market forces” turning prices downward. Go figure.

MICHAEL McCONNOHIE

Burbank