Re: Cost of Oil

Wow, you guys are really sold on the Ron Paul rhetoric over there, aren't you? There is a fear premium built into the price of oil, but the larger factors for today's high prices are vastly increased demands from huge markets like India and China and the continuing effect of cartel control over Middle Eastern supplies, Chris. And the roadblocks the U.S. government throws up against the exploration and procurement of our own oil resources doesn't help. This whole foreign intervention as the explanation for high oil prices is alluring but way more simplified than the reality.

This logic seems to imply that if we'd have just curled up into ourselves like we did in the 1930's, none of the world's problems would be here today. Saddam, in control of Iraq and Kuwait's oil fields, would have kept oil dirt cheap despite the fact that he'd have the market cornered on a very large percentage oil production. Is that what were supposed to believe? I admire your in depth look at economics over there, but I think maybe you guys should brush up on what happens when competition, even in a corrupt cartel like OPEC, is decreased.