Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Democracy, oil, economic recovery…

Prof. Barkley Rosser at Econospeak makes a few observations on the changes in the Middle East as they relate to oil producers. (Dan here…An oil shock in prices of crude oil would be problematic for the economic recovery we all hope for.)

Random Notes toward Progress, Oil, and the post-WW II U.S. Economy

Posted for discussion. First, relating to the discussion in comments to rdan’s TBI post, Annual Change in U.S. output per hour: And, for future discussion, the Relationship between Oil Prices and the Consumer Price Index for the past sixty-plus years.

Why I Don’t Do Market Timing

Starting in September, my income, such as it were, is basically in C$. Stephen Gordon explains, with graphics, why that has been such a bad trade. The scariest part: The 2002-2008 expansion provided significant real income gains, and more than half of those gains were due to the improvement in Canada’s terms of trade. So […]

Report on oil speculation

by Divorced one like Bush Anyone else see this report? The report by Masters Capital Management said investors poured $60 billion into oil futures markets during the first five months of the year as oil prices soared from $95 a barrel in January to $145 a barrel by July. Since then, these investors have withdrawn […]

Daniel Davies’s Three Laws Summarized

Via the sainted and gorgeous Bess Levin at Dealbreaker the erudite Felix Salmon at Portfolio.com, Michael Giberson at Knowledge Problem summarizes why even a Bush Administration initiative that might have had an upside falls victim to Daniel Davies’s Three Laws: In response to disruptions caused by Hurricane Gustav, the DOE has indicated a willingness to […]

Petroleum Speculation Thread N+1

I wrote something about crude oil, inventories and contango below and there were 57 comments including one, from Aaron which refered to this post in the future indicative. A lot of the discussion is Krugman pro and con (mostly con). I think I will review my take on his arguments here as an introduction. I […]

Oil prices VS Storms

By: Divorced one like Bush Being that there is a lot of “authoritative” talking going on about the cause of the up’s and down’s of oil and one cause being suggested is the anticipation of storms, I thought looking at the history of storms and oil price would help toward answering the hypothesis of oil […]

How dry I am…

By: Divorced one like BushNo body knows, how dry I am. I went home, I rang the bell, my wife came out and gave me hell. Juan posted a link to this paper: OPEC Pricing Power, The Need for a New Perspective Besides the issue of how oil is priced, and the relationship of the […]

The Price of Gas will soon be $1.50, right?

This will teach them, right? H.R. 6377 directs CFTC to use all its authority, including its emergency powers, immediately to curb the role of excessive speculation in the energy and swaps futures markets and take other corrective actions as necessary to eliminate any market disturbance that prevents energy markets from accurately reflecting the forces of […]