will high gas prices renew our economy? Options

[tim]

was watching fox news a few days ago and they were saying that opec is talking 200$ a barrrel by year end.

thats about 7$ per gallon. I sure cannot afford that. (I believe europe pays 8$ and sierra leone(sp) is paying 18$

here is an odd thought.

will this douse the overseas markets? the cost of shipping imports would out weigh domestic products.
will it give more americans jobs in their hoe community? (bringing back the mom and pop stores?)
it should spur the economy inthe long run, killing off the walmarts (an all import store) and the major corperations that feel that superstores in the burbs (and make you drive 20 minutes, which costs gas) will stumble seeing as the populations of our country reside in major cities? in buffalo we have not one store in our inner cities. (seriously even food markets reside in the burbs)

if gas goes above 8$ a gallon I could see a revolt. Maybe not a violent revolt but a revolt.

I could see the mass transit becoming very popular (compared to now) increasing jobs and reducing traffic.
i can see the small stores in your neighbor hood becoming very popular.
I can see factories moving back to local communities to save on shipping and new factories looking for low income areas that they can employ people in.

the major car companies, will feel the worst effects from mass transit and a new evolution of a euro feel. people biking and riding mopeds. (not that i fit on a moped, i would have my knees in the damn handle bars)
but motorcycles will be much more popular.

I see a huge economic down turn in the near future.

I also see the self healing process in the distant future. what do you all think of this?

the basis of the thought comes from the industry of the 1800's and early 1900's being applied to modern day economic trends but with the loss of national trasportation.

[Robert]

SnowMan hit a grand slam.
Everyone is up in arms over the reported record profits form the oil companins but they fail to put those numbers in context. I think it's to fluff the story.

For exmaple, Exxon Mobil's profit margin has remained right below 10%, this is by no means a great profit margin.
The only reason they record billions in profits in because of the vast volume of sales.
It easily does 100Billion+ in sales per quater and that number will only go up as consumption increases.
If you go strickly by revenue, Exxon Mobil's would be one of the biggest if not the biggest comapny in America, easily beating out the previous king Wal-Mart.
Yet it's not even in the top 100 based on profit margin.
If you want to talk about price gouging and record profits, you would be looking at Banking and Pharmaceuticals. Both of those industries on average have a profit margin anywhere from double to triple the oil industry ( 24-35% profit margins ).