I thought it was an honor and a privilege paying over $3 gallon for gas to pad the pockets of the oil companies.

http://www.newsmax.com/money/archives/a ... 0.cfm?mn=1

Greenspan: Oil Costs Pinching Economy

MoneyNews
Wednesday, June 7, 2006


Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan Wednesday said higher crude costs should eventually ease U.S. dependence on oil but warned that high-priced energy was starting to affect the U.S. economy.

"The United States, especially, has been able to absorb the huge implicit tax of rising oil prices so far," Greenspan told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in his first congressional testimony since leaving the U.S. central bank at the end of January. "However, recent data indicate we may finally be experiencing some impact."

He said while U.S. businesses had so far been able to improve productivity to compensate for costly energy, households were suffering from higher gasoline prices.

"Current oil prices over time should lower to some extent our worrisome dependence on petroleum," said Greenspan, who now runs a private consultancy.

"Still higher oil prices will inevitably move vehicle transportation to hybrids, and despite the inconvenience, plug-in hybrids," he added.

Greenspan warned that the buffer between supply and demand was extraordinarily thin and price spikes remain a risk.

"The balance of world oil supply and demand has become so precarious that even small acts of sabotage or local insurrection have a significant impact on oil prices," he said, adding that global refining capacity was still too limited.

Demand for oil from investors and speculators was "hastening the adjustment process" and had driven up oil prices faster than they would have risen otherwise, which in turn was spurring production and curbing consumption, he said.

However, he said it was tough to gauge the firmness of the OPEC cartel's recent commitments to expand capacity.