What isn't?
The price of oil.
Clive Crook has the explanation, quoting James Hamilton. Still, Crook clarifies the issue a bit, and in his hands it can be expressed in about four short paragraphs. Even someone on the right could understand it.
However, I get the feeling the right would rather nuke the White House and Saudi Arabia than read or absorb, in any other way, the hard truth expressed by one commenter at Crook's column.
... We're at plateau oil - all oil that can be extracted for even a tiny profit at around $110-120/bbl is being produced. There is no reserve capacity to pump.
But then the rest of the arguments come barreling down the oil-streaked highway. Including this embrace of the manipulation theory, suggested by another commenter:
"...As a former head of regulation of a global energy exchange I have no hesitation in saying that the result has been a complete perversion of the oil market, which has become, for maybe as long as ten years, in every sense a ‘False Market’. The sheer scale of this oil market manipulation, and the staggering sums involved, make Yasuo Hamanaka’s ten year $ multi billion copper market manipulation for Sumitomo look like a car boot sale." ...Chris Cook, former compliance and market supervision director of the International Petroleum Exchange
How about "all of the above"? Does that work? Read all the literature, explore all possibilities, drill everywhere, invest heavily in alternative energy sources? One aspect of the discussion troubles me. We should be more aware of who uses oil and (we don't often talk about this) what products we would have to give up if we didn't have oil? In other words, is being lazy and slow about developing better sources of energy for transportation putting whole industries at risk because they can't get petroleum resources they need to use in products they produce?
