[V8] Fuel at $3 + per gallon

[Ingo Rautenberg]

Roger,

Good insights as always.  I must include some observations of my own.  The
Premium vs Regular spread is the same rough amount, which means that instead
of the prior 13% price differential it is now closer to 6.5%.  That's the
good news.

The breaking point?  I'm guessing $4/ gallon in the U.S.  Unless you live in
a big city with great mass transit (unlikley on this list), you're screwed
by our horrendous lack of mass transit.  By law I can't ride my bike to work
if I wanted to.  Bikes aren't allowed on many roads I'd need to take to get
to work -- and even if they were -- it'd be too dangerous to do so :-(

So we'll likely see more telecommuting, more ride-sharing (already doing so)
and (maybe) a better mass transit system.  We may even see an exodus from
the suburbs and countryside back to the cities  -- but don't hold your
breath.

As to the current price spike -- unless something bad happens soon, it will
drop close to previous levels (like from a week ago) shortly after Labor Day
weekend -- big surprise there and then slowly edge upward again...

But putting this in perspective, as Mike Flynn pointed out, is that we are
much more fortunate than those people on the Gulf in Mississippi or New
Orleans, who have lost their homes, jobs and in some cases family.  I'm not
a religious person by any stretch of the imagination, but I pray for these
people.

Ingo