The latest scam that I've encountered at a couple of gas stations is

"SORRY, OUT OF REGULAR UNLEADED!"

That means that people that normally use premium gasoline are turning to regular because it's cheaper and therefore the gas stations are running out of it before their next deliviery. But several scumbag stations in the surrounding area, fully knowing that some of these other stations were out of regular, raised the price of THEIR regular to almost as much as the premium! F**king price gouging bastards!

There is absolutey NO REASON for these high gasoline prices accept that the Hedge traders at many of these energy company trading desks, the foreign oil producers as well as these institutional fund traders have taken control over the electronic trading markets. This was allowed to happen because the one time open outcry floor existance of trading is basically gone now. At least when the majority of trading was done through the open outcry markets, there were more factors involved with trading and no one or two conglomorates could corner or monopolize the markets the way that they can now through electronic trading. Now the big boy oil companies and foreign scumbag oil producing countries are in total control of the electronic trading markets and can send the price anywhere they want to.

As good as electronic automation can be for us sometimes, it also can destroy us. In this capacity it's basically crippled our economy big time over the last year or so.