Back in February, a short-term spike in oil prices managed to find itself into the cacophony of stupidity that is right-wing cable and television programming. The sentiments expressed ranged from Obama being a failure because he cannot control oil prices to Obama conspiring to raise oil prices to serve his environmentalist agenda. I had a look at crude prices today, and — surprise! — they are way down:
Retail gasoline prices have also leveled off and are on their way down:
It is amazing to consider just how fevered that whole oil price hysteria got, especially given how vacuous and absurd it all was. With these kinds of issues, it is always a mystery to me whether the commentators who push them are just really ignorant or do not actually believe what they are saying. At this point, I am not even sure which answer would be more comforting.
h/t Richard Thaler