[SwampFoxZ71]

This is not much different than the late 70's & early 80's. Gas was an issue then and what did Americans do? Switched to fuel efficient cars, by and large. This caused less actual consumption, which in turn, whether an artificial crisis or not, caused prices to drop as there was too damned much of the stuff being pumped out.

Fast forward to today. Regardless of whether the 'crisis' is fabricated or not, many people across the globe are purchasing more fuel efficient vehicles, Americans included. Once the balance point is hit between Americans dumping inefficient vehicles for efficient ones, then the trend will slowly reverse itself and prices will eventually come back down.

Speculation or not, crisis or not, none of that matters...it all boils down to supply and demand. It's not supply or demand. If supply is somewhat tight and demand is high, speculation has now caused prices to spike. In 3-5 years time if supply is still tight but demand drops, speculation will dip too knowing demand is down and supply will likely begin to increase. Prices will then eventually drop as well and stabalize at a more realistic rate.

Then after years of driving gutless efficient autos, Americans and people around the globe will then again want power and/or size in a future purchase and the whole damned cycle repeats itself.

From the looks of it, this may become a 30 year cycle with 15 years in between ebb and flow. 1977 to 1992 peak to low and 1992 thru 2007 low to peaks again. We'll see if the trend continues but my guess it will be something close as market forces usually take time to affect consumer change and consumer change can in turn take time to impact market forces.

JMO