Ben Jennings | Bluesky
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Comic by Ben Jennings.
Two guys standing at the pump at a Shell gas station. The guy at pump 2 holds up the gas pump nozzle to his ear and tells the guy at pump 1 “Apparently, if you hold a Shell pump to your ear you can hear the shareholders laughing at you”.
Yes. That’s why gasoline is considered relatively elastic.
The real crisis is diesel. A farmer can’t just not plow the field. A truck driver can’t just not deliver the goods. A plane can’t fly halfway to its destination.
European diesel is up about 40% since June, and U.S. diesel futures jumped 53% in the third quarter. In some markets, diesel is trading around $200+ per barrel equivalent while crude is nowhere near that.
That’s why this matters so much. Diesel touches agriculture, trucking, shipping, construction, and manufacturing.
When diesel gets this expensive, everything, and I mean fucking everything, gets more expensive.