More On Pre-Election US Economics

Reading Paul Craig Roberts reminds me that I forgot to mention another feature of Bush's fraudulent 'job creation':

Of September's 96,000 new jobs, 73% are accounted for by two categories: government jobs and temporary help! There were only 59,000 private sector jobs created in September, and 33,000 of those--56%--are temps!

(To recap, a circumstance ignored in most mainstream press and economists' accounts is that 140,000 news jobs a month are needed just to keep up with current population growth, and when accounting for it, Bush is 6.3 million short of the employment level just after his inauguration.)

In a similar vein, I note that not only are federal agencies hiring to secure Bush's first election, oil companies are giving up profits by holding down petrol prices while crude oil soars (now more than $1.25 per gallon). View the saved graph below, and column D onthis xls table, both from EIA DoE.


Gasoline Prices 

For crude oil prices relevant to the USA, best see the charts at BBC, which I saved in the image below. Upon comparison, the bigger picture is: US crude oil and gasoline prices clearly became uncoupled with the massive gasoline price spike in May, followed by a decline while crude oil prices spiked in August, that is: oil companies earned in May what they expected to lose until the elections.


Crude Oil Prices 

Even last three weeks' uptick after the long decline from 26 May, a rise from 1.846 to 1.938 $/gal., falls short of the crude oil price increase over this period. For, even if crude oil could be fully converted to gasoline (that is one barrel into 42 gallons), consumers only paid for a crude oil price rise of $3.864 - while inreality it grew $6 in the same period, and also $6 in the three-week period ending 27 September (if we allow for a one-week lag).

I should follow this story.