The state of Hawaii has set caps on the wholesale price of gas. Uh oh.
This is such a bad idea I can't imagine caps will be adopted anywhere else but if there are price caps instituted elsewhere it would cause me to change my near term, positive outlook and take a little defensive action right away.
To be clear I am saying take a little defensive action not go 60% cash.
Tinkering with market forces like this is a scary thing and I hope Hawaii reverses this quickly.
In the mean time, this is a picture from Hanalei Bay from our last trip to Kauai in 2003.
6 comments:
The article seems to say that Hawaii pays a lot more than mainland prices. I think the limits are reasonable, if the oil companies are taking advantage of a localized supply and demand situation, kind of like the energy companies did in CA. Thoughts?
While we are at it, let's put caps on TV prices, beer prices, and....oh...oh....lets put caps on home prices. Duh!
For Mike_writes_it....
What do imagine the local response would be if an oil company proposed a new refinery (there's only 2 small ones in Hawaii) to help out with the local supply/demand situation?
Me thinks they want to have their cake and eat it too. Just like Californians that will not allow construction of those big ugly electric transmission lines.
To Anonymous re Refinery,
I have a couple of good friends who live on Oahu and when I was visiting them last year they were complainig about the high cost of electricity. I mentioned that I thought Hawaii was ideal for nuclear power and they went ballistic. Seems some locals had brought that up in the past and it was shot down. It's a wonderful place to visit but not to live.
Jim in LV
PS Gas in Las Vegas is almost as expensive as what I read the controlled prices in HI are going to be.
Roger, you are absolutely right on this one. The price controls tried by Nixon got us in the big energy mess in the 70's. The credit card controls tried by Jimmy Carter were an even worse fiasco. Mike has responded that the limits are reasonable; phooey! He should move to Cuba. Free markets work. Controlled markets always come back to bite you; hard.
Aloha, or as we say on Guam, Hafa Adai, or as we say on that other large island, G'day, Mate! Everyone has jumped on Hawaii for the price fixing thing from great, distant heights, without appreciating that things happen in distant places like that for reasons entirely their own and, within that context, entirely logical. Hawaii is in the middle of a civil war, of sorts, ( http://guambatstew.blogspot.com/2005/08/52nd-state.html ) and what does any government ever do when faced with an intractable issue?: it changes the subject in a dramatic way. Remember, the actual effect of the regulations haven't affected the pump price one cent, and they can continue to manipulate the "fixed" prices so that they never run too far foul of world prices, so this is really only a diversion and not the great economic travesty everyone wants to rant about. Everyone should have a cold shower and a mai tai and calm down (or as they say here in Sydney, "have a Bex and a good lie down"). By the bye, this is a picture of me on my last trip to Kauaii last year: http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4895/1378/200/IMG_1088.jpg Enjoy your trip to NZ. Your correspondent in the Pacific. John Thos. Brown aka Guambat Stew
Post a Comment