Apologize and do it now, Barack Obama, John McCain and all you members of Congress who ranted about Big Oil's price-gouging and the way future-markets speculators were abusing the wallets of consumers at the gas pump.

Those prices have come down to the lowest level in almost four years, something like $2 a gallon on the average, and you know why — slackening demand caused chiefly by a worldwide economic downturn.

By the same token, you know or should have known why prices were recently as high as $4 a gallon — a vastly increasing demand caused by the phenomenal growth in China and India on top of the then-bustling economies of the United States and Europe and the fact that supply could not easily keep up with all of that.

But, President-elect Obama, that simple piece of everyday economic analysis didn't stop you as a candidate from blaming speculators and U.S. oil companies for the prices and even pledging a windfall-profits tax to finance $1,000 giveaway checks to working families.

And, McCain, you shouldn't look smug, for you called for an investigation of the speculators, even if you weren't nearly as obnoxious as other members of Congress pompously interrogating oil executives about their devilish conspiracies, or the ones introducing bills to kick speculators in the head.

The obvious fact is that American oil companies couldn't budge prices more than an inch if they tried with all their might — they're just too small a piece of the whole — and that their profit margins were relatively small.

They were, of course, making large amounts of money in gross because of business volume, but they don't always fare nearly so well and needed those gains of the moment to stay operationally fit and help produce more. Taxing them extra would have been about as stupid as shooting a cow because it's not giving as much milk as you want. Now that prices are falling, these companies are scrambling to figure how to manage cash in such a way that they can best do a job this country very much needs them to do. Everyone should wish them well.

As for speculators, it might help if you political critics read the experts enough to have at least some vague notion of what they do and how they do it — how they themselves take great risk as they carefully try to predict what prices might be, make contracts enormously useful to various purchasers and stand to lose big time if they get things consistently wrong. Economists note they can affect prices slightly for a short period of time, but can't begin to overcome the mechanics of supply and demand. They were not the culprits in high prices and never will be or could be. Period.

In addition to the declining economy, high prices themselves have helped to bring prices down — in defense of their wallets, people have been driving less and switching to smaller cars, for instance. And, interestingly, the lower prices could help buck up the declining economy — all kinds of businesses will be helped and consumers will have more cash to spend on other things. It's kind of like getting regular giveaway checks.