My wife called me today and left an exited voice mail exclaiming that she had just found a gas station selling regular unleaded for $1.98 per gallon!  WOW!  I swear, 6 months ago, I never would have believed that this could be possible!  The latest reports are showing oil at $56 a barrel!  Here it comes, our economic saving grace.  Forget about brain damaged stimulus packages, Nancy Pelosi; these lower energy costs will represent a  M A S S I V E  infusion of actual, real, honest to goodness, earned capital (not financed through taxes and debt) into everyone’s personal economy!  Will it be enough to save Wall Street from it’s seemingly endless downward spiral?  The one that shifted into high gear when the house passed the Bailout Bill, and floored the trottle when Obama won the presidency?  I don’t know.  Wall street investors aren’t stupid.  CEO’s and successfull business people didn’t get where they are by being clueless about the future. Investors aren’t in the business of trying to loose money.  The markets are responding to real threats.   Unfortunately, many of these threats are from our own government, and the American people who are making some astonishingly stupid decisions lately.  We just elected a radical, constitution hating, socialist to be our next president.  This represents a huge threat to capitalism, and could possibly signal the end of wealth and productivity in America.

I’m optimistic, though. I think that oil prices will stay low for a while. The reason I think so, is that many of the big oil producing countries have become accustomed to lucrative crude oil revenues.  They’re losing huge amounds of money over these price drops.  As demand slacks, and prices fall, they’re hurting for revenue.  While OPEC considers cutting production to boost prices, countries like Russia–despirate to maintain their budgets–will happily step in to sell their own oil to keep the money flowing in.  That having been said, things will eventually stabilize, but I think it will be a while before prices make any big gains.  A lot of oil-futures investors have lost their shirts, and will likely be timid about buying up overpriced futures contracts again for some time.

So maybe there’s hope for our economy.  If low energy prices are maintained, eventually the prices of other things like commodities, and food will fall also.  It all depends on how much damage the Obama administration is able to do to capitalism and business during the next 4 years.  If he’s successfull in bringing about the change he desires, he will likely offset the benifits of having affordable energy available to us again.  I hope that he won’t have that kind of power, but only time will tell.  The truth is, while I feel happy about affordable energy, and want to kiss the pump-handle at the gas station when I see the new prices, the threat of Obaminable Government scares me.  Man, what a killjoy!  I just wish I weren’t so uncomfortable about finding out what it was like to live in the old Soviet Union.  The history books don’t make it sound very good, but I guess America has voted, and communism is what the majority wants.  So who am I to complain?  Good luck with that.

I recently learned about a company called Nanosolar that has developed a new process for manufacturing photovoltaic solar cells (used to create electricity from sunlight), that is so inexpensive that these new solar cells are a cheaper source for electricity than coal!  Nanosolar  claims a manufacturing cost of around 30 cents per watt!  They are currently selling their solar cells profitably at around $1 per watt!  So in theory, a 1,800 megawatt coal fired power plant could be replaced by $1.8 billion worth of solar cells, which is less than the cost of building the coal-fired plant!  WOW!  Of course, it would only be operable during the day, so that’s a consideration, but no fuel is required for operation, either!  Nanosolar uses a unique, proprietary, nanoparticle ink which is literally printed onto an aluminum substrate to produce the cells which are thin, flexible, and durable, and can be manufactured at an astonishing rate.  Nanosolar recently created a machine which they say is capable of producing up to a gigawatt (1,000 megawatts, or 1 billion watts) worth of  solar cells anually!

Simply amazing!  As skeptical as I have a been about the idea of solar energy being a useful alternative to burning fossil fuels for electricity, I have to admit that Nanosolar appears to taking a big step towards possibly making solar power a viable alternative in the future.

Remember Hurricane Katrina? Remember how oil prices spiked dramatically afterward? Fast forward to today… Oil prices dropped below $100-a-barrel for the first time since April 2, more than 5 months ago. Interestingly, this low coincides with some rather interesting news events.

• The recent Russian invasion of Georgia (Russia is a major producer of oil), causing strained U.S. relations, and threats of war.
• Hurricane Gustav which caused the shut-down and evacuation of oil-rigs and refining operations in the Gulf of Mexico and surrounding areas.
• Hurricane Ike which is today pounding the Texas coast, and has once again, caused the shut-down and evacuation of oil drilling and refining operations in the Gulf.

And yet, oil prices are falling. Say what?! How is this happening?

Well, one thing is for certain. High gasoline prices have resulted in a drop in gasoline sales.  If you couple this with optimism over increasing future supplies, you’ll have a price drop.

Okay, I’ll get to my point.  John McCain has recieved a huge popularity boost as a result of selecting Alaska Governer, Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate.  Both Governer Palin, and Senator McCain are in favor of expanding domestic oil and natural gas exploration and production.  At the same time, presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama wants to focus on taxing oil companies, and bribing Americans with free money in the form of Energy Rebates while he scrambles to achieve energy independence through alternative green energy technology.

Okay, so McCain/Palin is for increasing oil supplies, and Barack/Biden is against it.  McCain/Palin is ahead in the polls, and might end up being the next presidential administration, while Barack repeatedly shoots himself in the political foot every time he opens his mouth.  (I saw him on TV and it looked like he was wearing lipstick!  What’s up with that?)

For those who might not know, oil prices nationwide are set on the futures market.  Suppliers and distributors buy and sell contracts for given quantities of oil.  The prices are negotiated according to what they believe they will be able to sell that oil for at some point in the future.  If it is believed that oil will be readily available, and inventories high, the price of those contracts (sold today) will have to be lower.

Could the prospect of cheap future oil be driving down the oil futures market prices today?  Absolutely!  Now, given all that’s been going on, what reason would oil futures traders have for being optimistic about oil prices in the future?

Could it possibly be the success of McCain/Pailin?

I wonder.