This makes a lot of sense~ read to the end!!
A man eats two eggs each morning for breakfast. When he goes to the grocery store he pays .60 cents a dozen. Since a dozen eggs won't last a week he normally buys two dozens at ! a time

One day while buying eggs he notices that the price has risen to 72 cents. The next time he buys groceries, eggs are .76 cents a dozen. When asked to explain the price of eggs the store owner says, "the price has gone up and I have to raise my price accordingly".

This store buys 100 dozen eggs a day. I checked around for a better price and all the distributors have raised their prices. The distributors have begun to buy from the huge egg farms. The small egg farms have been driven out of business.

The huge egg farms sells 100,000 dozen eggs a day to distributors. Wit! h no competition, they can set the price as they see fit. The distributors then have to raise their prices to the grocery stores. And on and on and on. As the man kept buying eggs the price kept going up. He saw the big egg trucks delivering 100 dozen eggs each day. Nothing changed there.

He checked out the huge egg farms and found they were selling 100,000 dozen eggs to the distributors daily. Nothing had changed but the price of eggs.

The week before Thanksgiving the price of eggs shot up to $1.00 a d ozen. Again he asked the grocery owner why and was told, "cakes and baking for the holiday". The huge egg farmers know there will be a lot of baking going on and m ore eggs will be used. Hence, the price of eggs goes up. Expect the same thing at Christmas and other times when family cooking, baking, etc. happen.
This pattern continues until the price of eggs is 2.00 a dozen. The man says,"there must be something we can do about the price of eggs".
He starts talking to all the people in his town and they decide to stop buying eggs. This didn't work because everyone needed eggs. Finally, the man suggested only buying what you need.

He ate 2 eggs a day. On the way home from work he would stop at the grocery and buy two eggs. Everyone in town started buying 2 or 3 eggs a day.

The grocery store owner began complaining that he had too many eggs in his cooler. He told the distributor that he didn't need any eggs. Maybe would n't need any all week.
The distributor had eggs piling up at his warehouse. He told the huge egg farms that he didn't have any room for eggs would not need any for at least two weeks.

At the egg farm, the chickens just kept on laying eggs.

To relieve the pressure, the huge egg farm told the distributor that they could buy the eggs at a lower price. The distributor said, " I don't have the room for the %$&^*&% eggs even if they were free" .

The distributor told the grocery store owner that he would lower the price of the eggs if the store would start buying again. The grocery store owner said, "I don't have room for more eggs. The customers are only buy 2 or 3 eggs at a time". "Now if you were to drop the price of eggs back down to the original price, the customers would start buying by the dozen again".
The distributors sent that proposal to the huge egg farmers. They liked the price they were getting for their eggs but, them chickens just kept on

Finally, the egg farmers lowered the price of their eggs. But only a few cents. The customers still bought 2 or 3 eggs at a time. They said, "when the price of eggs gets down to where it was before, we will start buying by the dozen. "
Slowly the price of eggs started dro pping. The distributors had to slash their prices to make room for the eggs coming from the egg farmers. The egg farmers cut their prices because the distributors wouldn't buy at a higher price than they were selling eggs for.

Anyway, they had full warehouses and wouldn't need eggs for quite a while.

And them chickens kept on laying.

Eventually, the egg farmers cut their prices b! ecause they were throwing away eggs they couldn't sell. The distributors started buying again because the eggs were priced to where the stores could afford to sell them at the lower price.

And the customers starting buying by the dozen again.

Now, transpose this analogy to the gasoline industry.

What if everyone only bought $10.00 worth of gas each time they pulled to the pump. The dealers tanks would stay semi full all the time. The dealers wouldn't have room for the gas coming from the huge tank farms. The tank farms wouldn't have room for the gas coming from the refining plants. And the refining plants wouldn't have room for the oil being off loaded from the huge tankers coming from the Middle East.

Just $10.00 each time you buy gas. Don't fill it up. You may have to stop for gas twice a week but, the price should come down.

Think about it.

As an added note..! .When I buy $10.00 worth of gas,that leaves my tank a little under half full. The way prices are jumping around, you can buy gas for $2.65 a gallon and then the next morning it can be $2.15. If you have your tank full of $2.65 gas you don't have room for the $2.15 gas. You might not understand the economics of only buying two eggs at a time but, you can't buy cheaper gas if your tank is full of the high priced stuff.

Also, don't buy anything else at the gas station, don't give them any more of your hard earned money than what you spend on gas, until the prices come down..

** Everyone should read this and send it on!

Competiton:a defunct cornerstone of capitalism(See Corporation).
I pledge allegiance to money and to the monopoly for which it stands. One corporation, managed by God, invisible, with voodoo economics for all.

Did you guys even read the FTC report? It completely exhonerates the oil industry. Your so called secret pricing scheme "zone pricing" has been a public issue for almost two decades. Did you check the price of real estate in Greeenwich, Conn? Any business owner would sell his property if he can't charge more to cover the higher investment sunk into the property.

Direct summary quote from FTC investigation "Our investigation revealed no evidence of price manipulation at the refining level. No single refiner has a large enough market share to manipulate prices unilaterally through either underinvestment in capacity or reduction of refinery output, and the investigation revealed no evidence that any unilateral manipulation was occurring. The investigation also revealed no evidence that coordination to manipulate prices has occurred"

"No single refiner has a large enough market share to manipulate prices unilaterally..."

That's why it's called "collusion," because they all get together and determine what the prices will be. Certainly, singularly, these companies cannot control the market, but by teaming up they, in essence, become one all-powerful company--which can easily determine pricing unilaterally because they have no competition.

The only issue is finding proof of collusion.

Tom, the FTC report was done by political hacks appointed by the CEO president.

Oh, yeah -- I REALLY believe anything this bunch tells me, especially anything to do with the oil business!

Sorry, Tom. Nothing this administration has done to date would lead to believing anything they say or do now.

BTW, the post with the egg story really hit home with me. I'm willing to give it a try, all the more since $$ are increasingly short supply around my house.

But remember the FTC also found that Enron did nothing wrong and found no price manipulation in the way they nearly bankrupted California with electricity and natrual gas pricing schemes. We all know what happened there. I have little faith in anything the FTC says about price gouging.

I am glad to see you liberals are now opposed to taxing the rich.

To the egg guy,
People put gas in their cars because they drive their cars! They would have to drive less for them to buy less gas. If they fill up 10 dollars worth of gas three times as often as they previously filled up, all it would do would cause lines at the pump as people are refueling more often. What sensible person would wait in line and then partially fill their tank? People choose not to or are unable to drive less, your scenario doesnt address that.

If "No single refiner has a large enough market share to manipulate prices unilaterally through either underinvestment in capacity or reduction of refinery output," then how do you explain nationwide price hikes as a result of a Gulf of Mexico hurricane?

The egg story makes some sense, and I agree with it to a limit. The problem is that the chickens couldn't stop laying the eggs. Unlike the chickens the oil industry can stop the output of gasoline. Egg manufacturing is by nature, gasoline manufacturing is not and therefore is a controllable item. The "big egg farm" could have reduced the egg output by killing the chickens and selling them as parts. Gasoline manufactures could shutdown the plants and send everyone home.
Lets face it, we all know it is a supply and demand situation. We demand gasoline to continue driving our gas ineffecent vehicles, gasoline manufactures see the need we have and are willing to sell it to us, but not at a price we want to pay.

I currently get right at 25 MPG, not as good as some better than others. I'm more than willing to only put $10.00 in at a time. Don't know how much it will help in the "grand scheme" of things, but enough people ACTUALLY do it, who knows.

BTW I fully support free enterprise and makeing a profit, but really 9+
Billion profit in a quarter. And the public isn't on the short end of the stick.....Right!

I enjoyed the above egg story. The truth is the huge chicken farmer will start shooting chickens in an effort not to have to feed excess mouths as well as throw away bulging inventory........ welcome to "LEAN 101".

I do believe that we can keep gas pump prices in check if we take things a step farther than 'buy just what you need' theory. If everyone will park "All" their vehicles for just one day per week, we could create an immediate +10% increase in the available inventory volume, then the buy what you need theory would keep it in check.

Get over it. Gasoline is a great deal - try pushing a car at 70 mph for 20 miles. Three bucks, even six bucks is a deal.

above the 49th we here wish we had gas prices like you.
those big corporations play on fear and tactics similar to psy ops ( i wonder who invented the term first - sometimes). no price gouging or collusion, please. the only thing current about your quote tom is that they are aright about "not one company is involved" it is all of them working together as a tight unit. the gas prices change quicker than the weather and why because of the all might dollar and what it does to people. if only we could be our own sheperds and not sheep all the flocking off to the gas station to buy groceries and gas. they unfortunately have us well trained unless we brake the cycle. $10 per fill up i am for it- the real question is "who else will lead by example?".

It's a good time to write a film script about a secret group of patriotic Americans who set out to make oil tycoons scalping Americans dissapear.

Hey, has anyone asked why we cannot get the same fuel-efficient vehicles you can get in Europe? The EU pollution standards are more strict that here in the US, so that's not the reason. In Europe, most people drive diesel cars and diesel (which costs less to refine) is cheaper than unleaded fuel. Even Canada got the Smart Car, but we can't have it hear because it hasn't been approved for our roads??? That's interesting, since they are manufactured by Mercedes and have an excellent crash rating. Could it be that you can get around 70 mpg? Hmmm. And let's not forget folks that FORD is in Europe and is producing diesel cars, so we already have the technology - they simply aren't using it here. Could it be that the oil companies are paying off our government to keep fuel-efficient cars out of the US? And, let's not buy the crap about diesel freezing up. It doesn't freeze up in Sweden and Russia! They have additives for that in the fuel! We drove a Ford diesel Estate- (just like the Taurus) in the UK and got over 600 miles to a tank of fuel! The only diesel you can easily find here is the big gas-sucking billy bob trucks! AND, lastly, let's not forget that when the oil companies knew Katrina was coming, they shipped a LOAD of oil out of the country. This was to force up the prices by us having less supply! They are not innocent and neither is this government (democrats OR republicans). They are all bought and sold every day.

we got anoilman in office, dont ya know hes buddies with the arab"s.and the vice resigned as ceo of haliburton.the whole white house needs to be firedget rid of thetrash lets start a new.and watchem like hawks.we been sold out and someone needs to pay

This looks like a good time and place to post this idea: If every driver were to save at least one full trip to run an errand, the same thing would happen as demand would drop and there would end up being a surplus. I used to run into town twice on a Saturday and now I run all of my errands, in the most efficient route, and then I don't drive any more that day. If every driver would do this, I believe it would send a strong message, ALONG WITH only buying $10 worth of gas at a time. I already do that, and sometimes I only buy $5 at a stop. We all have to try everything at our disposal to stop the current practices. However, I don't think I have ever been able to buy only 2 eggs, since they come in a carton of 12. Great idea though. Thanks for allowing me to post these comments. * > *

Just recently I read a report about the consumtion of gasoline by the US government. Did you know that an Abrams Tank consumes more than a gallon/mile and that an F-14 consumes 28 gallons / minute with its afterburners on. How many jets do we have in the air today?

The "egg theory" is creative, but it suffers from the same fatal flaw as all the other non-workable schemes I've seen - it doesn't call for anyone to sacrifice anything, or change driving habits in any meaningful way. It doesn't call for anyone to use less gas, just to buy it in smaller amounts.

This will inconvenience drivers, but it won't make any sort of impression on the gas suppliers. While we suffer long lines and other delays, the gas guys will be laughing on their way to the bank, because they know that we're still buying the same amount of fuel!

Wake up, people. The only way you can hope to make an impression is to use less gas! No one day boycott, no single car-less day, no "egg math" -- just walk or take the bus, EVERY day. That would actually lead to less gas being sold, which in turn might make your point.