Gas prices continue upward climb

2009-Jan	01/05	173.7	01/12	183.5	01/19	189.8	01/26	189.0
2009-Feb	02/02	194.4	02/09	197.8	02/16	201.6	02/23	196.3
2009-Mar	03/02	198.8	03/09	199.3	03/16	196.4	03/23	201.4
2009-Apr	04/06	209.0	04/13	210.4	04/20	211.2	04/27	210.2
2009-May	05/04	212.9	05/11	229.0	05/18	236.0	05/25	248.5
2009-Jun	06/01	257.2	06/08	267.3

source

You may notice that the average retail price of gas that President Obama inherited was around $1.89.

Five months into the Obama presidency, the price has increased by 41%.

The price spikes of 2008 brought calls for nationalization of the oil industry by a handful of Democrats, but at the time nobody took those calls seriously.  It would have been simply unimaginable.

But then, who would have imagined government ownership of GM, AIG, and Citi?

Is this the “change” America voted for? So far, Obama he has managed to apologize to terrorists and give them Miranda rights, run up the largest budget deficit in the history of the Republic, propose nationalization of health care, call the United States “a muslim nation,” appoint a record number of tax cheats to his Cabinet, bring an affirmative action appointee to the Supreme Court, and invent the creative phrase “create or save” with respect to jobs …

Obama’s been busy.

The GOP had better sharpen up their rhetoric, and fast, or this country will collapse under the weight of Obama’s hubris.

Citi nationalized

from the Times …

In its most daring bid yet to stabilize Citigroup, one of the nation’s largest and most troubled financial institutions, the Treasury Department announced on Friday that it would vastly increase its ownership of the struggling company.

After two multibillion-dollar lifelines failed to shore up Citigroup, the government will increase its stake in the company to 36 percent from 8 percent.

As part of the deal, Citi will shake up its board so that it has a majority of independent directors, Richard Parsons, the bank’s chairman, said in a statement.

Under the deal, Citibank said that it would offer to exchange common stock for up to $27.5 billion of its existing preferred securities and trust preferred securities at a conversion price of $3.25 a share, a 32 percent premium over Thursday’s closing price.

Investors are voting with their dollars. Pre-market price is around $1.40.

The great deleveraging continues unabated.