Friday, August 22, 2008

Oil! Oil!

I know we are all very preoccupied with Bolt's 9.69 sec 100m, and how many chicken sandwiches Phelps eats for breakfast and other trivia that makes a whole lot of difference in our lives. So, i am almost feeling guilty about posting this link for you to read and well..think.

6 comments:

raj said...

well...thats wierd..! coz I am more concerned about filling my BMW than how many medals Phelps won so far! I know,I know.. I am selfish..! I guess! :)

Eastertide said...

Just one question - You have a BMW?

raj said...

Yep..in Black!my fav color...:)

Anonymous said...

while i absolootely love conspiracy theories ('Today's headlines: Barack Obama is actually Elvis in disguise'), this one i don't buy..

for one, if prices were artificially inflated, shouldn't that show up in decreasing consumption? i.e oil inventories should be higher because people start buying less oil.. that doesn't seem to be happening.

also the common view among a lot of people in the 'know' (by this i mean the extremely erudite cabdrivers in singapore who advise me on everything from property investments to whether or not to support Chiru's new party)is that oil price rise is mostly due to the loss in dollar value. Simply, it just costs a lot more dollars now to buy oil.

things go bad, everyone blames wall st. things are good, everyone blames wall st. bah!

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Although it sounds plausible, I can't agree with him at all as he didn't touch on one crucial question "why now?" which might have given credibility to his argument.
Thus, I now have to believe the other theory that says significant part of the increase can be attributed to the downturn in US economy (led by mortgage crisis) which led fed to take steps that lowered the dollar value.
I guess the democratic primary contenders contributed significantly to this theory with their objective of sounding pro-poor, they never seemed to have talked on how much (according to their theory) would the oil prices come down if those speculators can be reined in. Also, the oil producers goal is to maximize the profit from the oil, it happens at optimal price, a price higher than this would lower demand significant enough resulting in lower overall profit.