Your Weekend Reading

   by Art Woolf

Sometimes, what gets a lot of publicity does not turn out to be the truth.  Remember all the concern about deformed, legless frogs?   And the cause was most likely chemical pollutants in the air, or maybe ultraviolet radiation, or possibly something else?  Well it was something else.  Like predatory dragonflies. Funny how 10 years ago I remember seeing lots of articles in the newspaper about the frogs, but nothing today about the dragonflies.

And sometimes, our concern about future prices, like oil prices,  is too one sided.  Here's one argument,  by a respected energy economist, why "speculators" may lose their shirt, and why government policies may be the ultimate cause of  the recent runup in oil prices.  Oh, and prices may, just may, plummet to $20 a barrel.  Stay tuned.

(h/t Craig Newmark) 

Comments

[Bob Zeliff]

This is interesting but confusing to me. When Bernie was demigoging Oil speculators you claimed that speculators were a "stablizing" force and a beneficial part of the free economic process. Now they seems to be bad?? The article you ref imply that the speculators are using Gov money TALF and doing this at our expense. The CNN link i checked says TALF is limited to lend for "consumer loan back securities to revive the securitization of loans like consumer credit cards". This does not sound like buying oil on spec! Are these speculator miss using TALF funds? Breaking the law? All seems to me just another case where speculators are putting the screws to the rest of us, maybe themselves, but if their money is lost and they did get Gov money it is not likely comming back. Clearly I do not fully understand this. Any clarity would help, but right now it sounds to me like Bernie trying to rein in speculators could be on the right track.

[Ed G. Mann]

The market, when left alone, will ruthlessly burn speculators. Some will make money, but most will lose and that levels the market. (Look at the housing and dot.com bubbles)

What Bernie knows about markets and business is best left to economic wizards like Castro and Chavez.

Check how stabilized the onion market is with no speculation.

Lucky dairy farmers reap fat profits with the hand of government intervention, don't they. They must, look at the price of milk on the shelf.

More regulation must be the answer, instead of looking at how companies are integrated. That would step on somebody's toe or cut off a donation.