Congress Misses the Mark On “Price Gouging Legislation
Tom Dennis of the Grand Forks Herald has a great column up covering the recent action by the United States Congress to outlaw “price gouging” on gasoline sales.
When experts appear before Congress, they usually measure their words. Not Paul Sankey. Last week, the lead oil analyst and managing director at Deutsche Bank spoke on gas prices to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, and he began his testimony this way:
“Gouging is an idiotic explanation. Anybody who blames record high U.S. gasoline prices on ‘gouging’ at the pump simply reveals their total ignorance of global oil supply and demand fundamentals.”
But he must have testified before the wrong branch of Congress, because the House voted Thursday to outlaw gasoline price gouging.
What a useless gesture, a sound-and-fury piece of lawmaking that signifies nothing.
You can tell the House wasn’t serious just from the law’s language. The bill makes it illegal during an energy emergency to sell gasoline at a price that is “unconscionably excessive,” and that suggests the seller is trying “to increase prices unreasonably.”
Unconscionably? Unreasonably? Laws swing on the hinges of such words, and the great door of this law is held to its hinges by only a few loops of string. How is a court supposed to fairly assess such subjective terms?
Yep, Tom hit the nail on the head. Read the entire column, it’s well worth the time.












