Fuelling popularity

With global fuel prices starting to harden, the government now has to take a call on whether or not to free prices. In the run up to the elections, it made sure prices never rose and chose to absorb part of the burden and to pass on the rest to the public sector oil companies.

While fiscal fundamentalists think this is suicidal, a Bloomberg graphic on President Barack Obama’s popularity ratings and retail gasoline prices is worth pondering over (see graphic). Since the early 1980s, the graphic shows, the popularity ratings of US presidents have plummeted each time oil prices have risen, and vice versa. President Obama’s ratings are way up there, but this may change once prices at the pump start rising.