"Alan B. Pearce" wrote:
> >But congratulations to the oil cartel; they managed to get
>>the price of oil up to the point where people actually stopped
>>buying so much of it, and now the price has plummeted again.
>
> Is it purely that, or has the rest of the credit crunch made money that
> short for many people that fuel for motoring has had to go down the 
> priority
> of spending, effectively increasing the price of fuel by a ratio, if not
> actual price.

Would that be another way of saying "the price of oil went down because the 
demand for oil is less?"

I'm not sure how much of the drop in demand is caused by people driving 
less, or factories slowing/shutting down all over the world.

Personally, I'm not driving less than I did a year before. Most of my 
driving is to/from work.

IIRC, the reason why the prices shoot up with a slight increase in demand, 
is precisely because the demand for oil is rather inelastic (and the supply 
is tightly controlled). People curse the oil companies, but still fill up 
even when the price of a tank of gas goes from $20 to over $50.

Vitaliy 

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