[fluffy]

There's very little anyone can do about it. You can't force people to stop bidding up oil. There's no conspiracy, no shortage... just a speculator run on oil combined with a weak dollar. Nothing more. When the dollar firms up (if the Fed gets its act together and STOPS CUTTING RATES), and the next hot thing comes around for investors to target, oil will drop again.

And whoever said prices aren't going up in other countries is simply wrong. They haven't doubled or tripled because they were so heavily taxed in the first place, but they're still a hell of a lot higher than they were, and much higher than here in the US.

Granted it would be nice if we could drill in Alaska, Utah, North Dakota and the Gulf... there are billions of barrels just sitting there for us. It would be nice if we could actually build some new refineries to handle our own crude (thank the environmental loonies and the democrats who support them), but in the end if speculators want to bid the price up, up it will go.