CNN News:美聯(lián)儲放緩國債購買步伐波及全球
I'm Carl Azuz.
This is CNN STUDENT NEWS.
We're jumping right in today with a milestone youmight have noticed, but a lot of folks aren't too happy about.
In the United States, the average cost of a gallon of gasoline has been at least $3 for 1,000days in a row.
Some folks might be used to it, but you also might remember when gas prices were lower.
Christine Romans looks at some of the driving forces behind the increase.
The last time the average price of a gallon of gas was under $3 a gallon was in December2010.
The trend has been higher for a decade now, but look at this; right here in December, 2010,was the last time you saw it below.
And here, while you have super lowprices here, but that was because of a global financial crisis.
So, why is gas so high? A few reasons here: first, global instability.
No surprise, the Arab Spring began in December 2010, about the same time this oil runstarted.
Syria concerns, more recently have kept oil prices high.
The world wants more oil.
And we're seeing rising demand for gas in the developing world, places like China and India.
We're not seeing that cheap supplies that we're used to, right?
We're getting fuel from fracking and deep water platforms, and that is expensive.
And tightening supply and demand is something that investors are watching.
It keeps prices rising when you see this-this fundamental shifts, investors demanding here-that investor demand also driving up the price of crude oil.
So, is this the new normal?
Well, we asked Tom Kloza, a chief oil analyst for gas, but he says, this is where we are now.
By the end of the new year, by the end of the year and into the new year, you could see maybethree bucks a gallon.
Of course, all that depends on Syria and whether conflict can be peacefully resolved there.
It also depends on the Fed.
If the Fed should begin to taper back its bond purchases, that could mean demand forcommodities would go down, demand for things like oil, investor demand for oil,
and that could mean lower gas prices ahead.
So, watch those two things: Syria and the Fed.
That could matter to how much you're paying for a gallon of gas.
You heard Christine say "the Fed."
She's talking about the U.S. Federal Reserve, the country's central bank.
It's responsible for implementing monetary policies, basically the Fed controls the country'smoney supply.
In recent years, the Fed has bought bonds and other kinds of securities to try to help thestruggling U.S. economy.
It's a practice called quantitative easing.
Christine mentioned the possibility of the Fed backing off that practice.
Yesterday, the Federal Reserve announced it won't.
The Fed said it doesn't see enough improvement in the economy right now, so it's going tokeep buying bonds at the same rate for at least another month.
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