Of you don't have to be a psychic to know prices rise. It's called inflation, but you would have to have been psychic to know how fast they would have risen over the course of the past two years and to know at what point that was going to happen so you could suddenly have a boat load of fuel efficient vehicles hit the market at the exact time the market started demanding them. The point is that vehicle sales are market driven and here in the US gas was, and has now returned, to being dirt cheap. When you have dirt cheap gas and serious tax incentives to drive SUV's it doesn't take a genius to figure out there is going to be a serious market for SUV's. Had US auto makers ignored that market somebody else would have stepped in and done it. That's how free markets work. If there is a demand for something, somebody is going to fill it.

If the US government had a brain it would have been slowly raising gasoline taxes to curb usage over a period of several years starting about a year and a half after 9/11 (when the partially 9/11 induced recession hit). That would have eased consumers out of their bad habits. Instead the Bush Administration did nothing. You can't blame US car companies for building vehicles that consumers want to buy. It's basic supply and demand. It's the government's responsibility to either raise taxes to affect that market or to pass laws that force fuel efficiency on all vehicles sold or driven in the US. Time will tell if the US has learned it's lesson and I'm skeptical. Our government would be insane to raise taxes on fuel now that we're in the throws of a major recession but in about a year when this thing has subsided it would be insane not to announce that there will be national gas tax that will raise the cost of gasoline to $6.00 a gallon over the course of 5 or 6 years (with 100% of the revenue generated being put into research into alternative energy and upgrading our energy infrastructure). That will create the market for fuel efficient vehicles and lower fuel usage over time without the economic shock of the recent spike. $6.00 a gallon gas is a great incentive to decrease our dependence on oil and will create a serious demand for fuel efficient vehicles and vehicles powered by alternative sources but it's got to be done over time so consumers can prepare themselves for it.

There is no need to posts facts as an AC. The facts are the facts. Just because these fools can't handle the truth doesn't mean that reasonable people like you and I should hide from them. Damn the facts, these tools are in college so damn the real word. They've studied it so they know better than we do.

Kudos for speaking truth to the idiots who believe they are enlightened. Hey, let's rip on Detroit. It's their fault that there are all of these SUVs and damn them for the fact that consumers ate them up like crack. That clearly had nothing to do with it. The car companies are clearly at fault for making products people actually wanted to buy. Damn them!!!!!

Do those same rednecks know how to capitalize letters that begin sentences? For someone claiming intellectual superiority over these "rednecks" your failing.

Thank you for introducing a little truth into the Detroit bashing. As someone who doesn't work in the auto industry but who lives with many who do and as someone who is sick and tired of all of the crap that's gets tossed around as "facts" your comments are greatly appreciated.

You are correct sir. We should pass a law preventing any company from trying to do something as dastardly as "satisfying the market". What a horrible, horrible thing to do. How dare a company build something that people actually want to buy. Instead, let's pass laws where we force companies to build things that people have no interest in buying. Then we can all sit back and scratch our heads and try and figure out where these companies went wrong. How removed from reality does one have to be to post something as completely and utterly stupid as you've just posted? Do you not understand the basics of economics? Were US car companies too slow to build fuel efficient vehicles? Yes. Do you think that had anything to do with the fact that until about a year and half ago no US consumer could imagine $4.00 a gallon gas? Get real. There is a reason more fuel efficient vehicles have been being built on the other side of the pond for a long, long time and they haven't been being built here. The US government, in it's infinite wisdom, choose not to tax fuel and make the price more expensive to reduce demand like the European countries did and the result was that when prices finally shot up high enough in such a quick fashion nobody here was prepared. Feel free to go ahead and blame the US automakers all you like though. It's clearly there fault they didn't employ enough psychics to see that coming. If only Miss Cleo would have been left out of jail she could have warned them. Oh, the shame!!!!!!