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Comment by propogandist | Hacker News Reader

once the SPR cannot be drained to manipulate gasoline costs, things will get interesting.

Seeing as oil is now around $70 a barrel, they can refill it for a profit.

what do you mean “profit”? The prices won’t stay suppressed once the SPR drain stops, OPEC has no interest in keeping prices low and the current admin has been cutting US output.

US output has increased since the current admin took over https://www.macrotrends.net/2562/us-crude-oil-production-his...

this is comparable to the admin trying to take credit for all the jobs that were furloughed and lost due to covid shutdowns coming back. This is supply returning to a pre-pandemic state.

The admin has been against net new output and using many tools to push their ‘green new deal’ agenda.

Refill it with oil where from where?

Refilling it buying oil from the market, which they issued rules to do with the drawdown, with a specific price trigger which has just been reached.

Given your confident tone, I'm curious how you are hedging against this in the market?

booking travel while flights are inexpensive

Indeed, we have seen a ~35% reduction is SPR this year and are not far from 1980s level. I'm also not sure how the US is planning to restore these values given our refinery capacity and poor relationships with other top suppliers.

Not the mention, CPI is one thing, and how the average American feels is another. If you poll random people on the street, this "slowdown" in inflation is not perceived by individuals' wallets. This means consumer behavior is not necessarily reflected in CPI prints.

Actually, inflation expectations as polled by the New York Fed [1] is down in the short, medium, and long (1-year, 3-year, 5-year) term.

[1] https://www.newyorkfed.org/newsevents/news/research/2022/202...

Expectations are not the same as consumer behavior which is reflected in sales revenue.

On average, wages have not kept up with inflation.

This means the average person will either cut back, or they will make the sub-optimal decision to not change their spending habits.

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