Are gas prices manipulated to go down prior to a Presidential election?  My research led me to look at the national level because the data for states is difficult to ascertain, and probably irrelevant.  According to the EIA, in particular their Oil Market Basics publication, the largest variance in gas prices would occur at the regional level, largely due to supply issues.  Looking at the breakdown of what makes up the price of gas, we get the following:

Distribution and marketing are mostly the profit the local station makes.  Taxes, then, are the only portion of cost over which a state has control.  Taxes are relatively steady and typically don’t change month-to-month.  So what made sense was to look at the national level, to see if there were trends there (select the image to see it bigger):

Gas Prices and Presidential Elections, 1992 - 2007

No smoking gun here.  If anything, there seems to be a trend in recent non-Presidential election years for gas to drop prior to November (2001, 2003, 2005, and 2006).  But in contrast, gas prices in the Presidential election years have remained relatively flat or, in the case of 2004, have increased prior to Election Day.  If there were some manipulation going on, I would have expected to see a stark contrast in the trends of election and non-election years.

I have to admit, I wasn’t sure how this one would turn out; but it appears that this myth is busted.

Source: Energy Information Administration

Note: I edited this 9/29, to add the # of seconds and equate it all with $.  Amazing how much better my brain works in the morning vs. the evening.

I recently got an email forwarded to me titled The Economic Plan I Endorse, which argued that the $85B buyout of AIG should instead be given back to us taxpayers, because it would equate to $425,000 for each adult American (the email estimates 200 million adult Americans).  The argument was that, with that much money, many could payoff our mortgages and thus ease the mortgage crisis by putting actual money back into the financial system.

It’s a great thought, but the numbers don’t add up.  It would take 85 trillion –not billion–dollars ($85,000,000,000,000) to get us each a payment of $425,000.  Using the 200M US adult estimate in the email would net each of us only $425 before taxes.  A better number to use for the number of taxpayers is 130M (based on the IRS 2008 tax rebates).  That nets us each a whopping $654.

But that got me thinking…what about the $700 Billion for the economic bailout plan that just almost got passed?  Well, it works out to $5385 per taxpayer (using the 130M number).  It’s a more substancial amount of money, but not enough to pay off a large percentage of mortgages.

So, how much IS $700B?  Well, according to CNN (and thanks to the Daily Show), we now know it would buy 2000 McDonalds Apple Pies for each American.  I find that nauseating.  What about other comparisons?  How about breaths we take in a lifetime?  Not even close (nearly 615 million).  How about heartbeats in a lifetime?  Surely that must be close to or more than 700B, right?