THERE will be no summer driving season this year.
Of course, there will be summer. And people will still get into their cars to go places.
But in the traditional sense, the “peak driving season” that the US has come to love and hate will be another victim of the recession.
The government’s Energy Information Administration thinks gasoline prices will keep rising, but the agency predicts the peak won’t be reached until sometime in September, when it is projecting that the economy will be turning around.
Good luck with that! Normally, gas prices get to their highest level in April or May as speculators in the energy markets bid up prices in anticipation that Americans will squander more on gasoline during the summer.
But the EIA doesn’t think family trips to the beach or anyplace else will be enough to generate a burst of business during the hot months.
And for the first time anyone can remember, macroeconomics — or the big picture — and not the urge to sizzle on the sand, will dictate gas prices.
Don’t tell energy speculators. They still want to believe that demand for motor fuel will bail them out of some very bad trades over the past 18 months.
The average price of regular gasoline is now $2.05 a gallon, according to the EIA. That is up sharply from just $1.68 a gallon during the first week of 2009.
The agency believes prices will top off at $2.31 in September.
Clearly, the increase in prices isn’t due to rising demand.
Americans may love their cars but the bad economy has caused them to cool that affair.
And now there’s an excessive amount of gasoline, as well as oil, sitting around unneeded.
Even with production of both gas and oil being reduced, the oversupply is impressive.
“Gasoline inventories are very high,” said Tancred Lidderdale, an analyst with the EIA, who tells me that consumption of gasoline was down 3.5 percent in 2008 and off another 0.7 percent in the first three months of this year.
Experts say that gasoline refineries haven’t been making much money lately, mainly because speculators have kept crude oil costs high while gasoline prices at the pump have come down a lot.
With profit margins pinched, gasoline producers (the swell folks that they are) have taken it upon themselves to get prices back up.
Gasoline refineries are now operating at just 84 percent of capacity. Back in 2007, refineries were working 88.5 percent of the time; in 1998, 95.5 percent.
Even at 84 percent capacity, the experts say that some refineries may not be profitable because the price of crude oil — although it too is a fraction of its current peak — is still too high.
Can gasoline prices actually reach $2.31 a gallon if drivers keep their cars off the road? The Great Depression — with which today’s economy has been compared — may offer some hints.
According to the book “The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order,” Americans during a three-year period at the start of the Great Depression reduced the use of their cars by 10 percent.
Over the same period, gas prices initially fell before rising to even higher levels.
What’s more, Americans drove an astounding 37 percent fewer miles — helped, of course, by the fact that many people didn’t have jobs they needed to get to.
Even though some people seem to be caught up in the mystique of economic tragedy, we are NOT in a depression. Repeat, we are NOT in a depression.
And 2009 is a lot different from 1929.
We all know about the social safety nets, such as unemployment insurance and the like.
And we understand that today’s predominately white-collar work force isn’t like the manufacturing population that prevailed eight decades ago.
Our dependence on cars also has changed.
Back then, only 2.8 million cars were being sold a year. And the depression took a big bite out of auto sales for three straight years.
Even at the reduced sales levels caused by our recession, Americans today are still buying about 10 million cars a year.
And the total number of vehicles on US roads is estimated to be about 250 million.
Will modern-day Ameri cans cut back on car use as much as they did in the 1930s?
Will the peak driving season that we are going to miss this year turn into a deep valley of re duced car usage?
Nobody really knows. But for all of you who still cover the tolls, Happy Motoring.
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If you are an investor, you have to ask yourself this: What was so different yesterday vs. last Monday? Or two weeks ago? Or six?
There’s an answer to this question, but I’m going to make you read to the end before I give it.
Stock prices have been rising for around six weeks. And the gain has been an extraordinary 25 percent, which woke up the bulls who want you to believe that the stock market is ready for a comeback.
It isn’t.
As I said all the way back at the beginning of the year, there are always signs of economic revival in the spring, mostly due to aberrations in government statistics.
I also predicted that this fake out would be good for the stock market.
But in the middle of this corporate earnings season, the stock market could start paying attention to the reality of a dismal economy.
Investors may not be willing to look the other way when banks report earnings that defy logic through tricky accounting, or accept politicians’ claims that the economy is sprouting again.
What was different yesterday when the Dow Jones industrial average declined 289 points?
For one thing, this isn’t one of those options-expiration periods, like last week, when traders intentionally push stocks up.
For another, traders don’t want to give up the profits they have made over the last month and a half.
They aren’t stupid. And the only thing that has changed about the economy is that the recession is a little older. john.crudele@nypost.com
