Friday, September 19, 2008

Ah, panic

Nonrational behavior cleans out the gasoline supply in Nashville. No reasonable reason, of course, but panic takes out the gas supply of an American city. A minor problem with the US gasoline supply is that it is unable to handle panic buying or hoarding of gasoline. We've relied on the fact that most Americans haven't freaked out at any particular moment.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nothing will stop us from shifting from oil to other sources of energy. Pretty soon the oil will be as worthy as Lehman's stocks; which is ZERO. WE will never need to use it anymore. You'll see OPEC countries begging for food.

Anonymous said...

We have gigantic sources to produce synthetic oil. The big money companies (like General Motors etc.) can't stop us anymore, while they are broke now.

Anonymous said...

Actually it isn't nonrational behaviour the past day or two causing the issue as CNN made it read. Nashville and alot of the areas around it have been out of gas pretty much since Ike made landfall. Today was the worst day , but supply has been a constant issue for a week now at many area stations meaning it probably didn't take much to panic people since if they were like me, spent quite abit of time the past week searching for gas every day.

Dean W. Armstrong said...

Here's a quote from the Tennessean on the issue:

"Even after gas station operators raised prices to more than $4 a gallon and supplies ran low, Middle Tennessee drivers have bought twice as much gasoline as normal in the past week, the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency said, citing data compiled by the Tennessee Oil Marketers Association."