McClatchy just had issued a well-researched story about the cause of high gas prices. Their judgment? Speculation, especially by banks and hedge funds who buy gas/oil futures with no plan to take delivery but only to sell on the price hikes they and their cohorts create (along with the help of cynical Western governments rattling sabers at Iran).
Here is a different theory: the price of gas has become unmoored from the supply of oil and is now free to fly into orbit.
Suspiciously this event happens at a time when gas in the US should be at all time lows. There is a lot of oil around today. Demand is down due to joblessness. A mild winter in the US would also help to keep down the price per barrel.
But none of that has brought down prices, which for gas, are at record prices. Note it is the byproduct, gas, that has reached a peak price not oil.
Clear rupture between signified and signifier or between representation and what is represented is classic postmodernism.
To blame speculation by banks or hedge funds is to say the same thing. Except it implies that such specultors can be brought to heed in order to bring gas prices 'in line' or 'into correspondence' with oil supply.
Postmodernism says no.
Why? Because the referent has become unclear. Threats on Persia, less refining capacity, the true spare capacity of Saudi, etc.
The only thing that is clear is that the price can and will rise, without limit. That is the tendency now not correspondence, not supply and demand.
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