WonderfulPessimist.com

Prediction: Oil $500 per barrel, gas $22.50 per gallon

Since editorialists everywhere are competing with each other to make the most outrageous price predictions on the cost of oil and the cost of gas at the pump, I figured I may as well join in the fun. So, WonderfulPessimist.com hereby predicts that oil will rise to $500 per barrel, with an at-the-pump price of $22.50 per gallon for regular unleaded.

Maybe. Someday. Certainly not anytime soon, though.

But still, if newspapers and TV stations across the country can get attention by treating the price of gas story like it’s an auction to be won by the highest bidder, I figure why not get really outrageous and really go for broke?

The current mess is cyclical and rather disturbing. OPEC are a bunch of greedy jerks, liberal media elites this we’re still not paying enough for gas for pure political reasons because a gallon of Starbucks coffee is still higher, and Democrats are looking for any excuse to make the mess worse by increasing the gas tax.

(It’s been a continual cry of liberal Dems ever since Paul “Tax On Gas” Tsongas ran for the White House. And Minnesota Dems demagogued the 35W bridge collapse enough to actually push a gas-tax increase through even in the midst of the worst pump-price spike in years. This in spite of the fact that a gas tax is one of the most regressive forms of taxation in our economy; guess the Dems don’t fight THAT hard for the poor, eh? So don’t tell me I’m making this up out of whole cloth.)

Also, let me be the first to predict this: prices will eventually ease again. Maybe not in 2008 yet, but certainly by next year. Too much of the current spike is not about supply and demand, but on baseless price speculation in the futures market. And like the irrational Internet economy of 2000, a bust will eventually take the air out of this oil boom.

Till then? I’m closing my wood shutters and not vacationing ANYWHERE this year.