Consumer spending rises, income lags

This is an interesting article on how consumers were spending more even though inflation has caused income after taxes to not increase in a similar fashion. You would think that these two things would go hand in hand and that when income is increasing at a certain rate, spending would also increase but in this case income did not increase too much but spending did increase considerably, even though gas prices are high. I believe the reason for this is that people are more optimistic about the economy and as more and more jobs are added and unemployment rates are lowering people are more confident and happy with their situation. I think that this has caused an increase in consumer spending, and as the article states this trend might stop as gas prices are rising and people are going to be making cuts on their spending of other goods to afford these prices.

http://www.npr.org/2012/03/30/149680235/consumer-spending-rose-last-month-but-income-lagged

Gas Prices Are Out of Any President's control

This is an interesting article from the NY times about peoples perceptions on how presidents can control the price of gas. The article states that the price of gas is not set by people but by the price of oil and what suppliers do. Therefore presidents cannot set prices because the price of gasoline is dependent on supply and demand and unless you suspend the theory of supply and demand like the article states, presidents cannot set gas prices. The U.S. is more of a consumer than a producer of oil and even though oil production has increased the U.S. still does not hold enough of the market to have any effect on global prices. The article states that gas prices cannot be set but we can do things to help out oil prices such as using it more efficiently.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/business/gas-prices-are-out-of-any-presidents-control.html?_r=1&ref=unitedstateseconomy