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Thursday, July 10

The Myth, in Hardcover?

On April 26 2004, my blog was three days and five posts old. On that very same day, an anonymous waiter in an upscale NYC-area restaurant started dishing dirt on a blog called Waiter Rant.

The same day I leave for Hawaii, The Waiter is publishing a book!

It would appear that he is writing about more interesting things than I am...

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posted by Brad at 7/10/2008 12:27:00 PM | permalink | 0 comments

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Wednesday, July 9

Stop Oil Speculation Now

I just got an e-mail from AirTran, which is something I normally would have deleted instantly. But for some reason, I read it - and boy am I glad. It was an open letter to all airline customers called "You Can Help Keep Travel Affordable"

Did you know that $30 to $60 of the price of a barrel of oil is due to speculators selling it back and forth to each other before it is consumed? At current prices, that's nearly half of the total cost! I know it's not fair to directly correlate crude oil prices with the refined fuel you fill up your car with - but wouldn't you be surprised to wake up and see two dollar gas?

I'm sure that speculation is very common in many commodities, but I'm not sure of the economic benefit. I'll have to read up and share what I learn - maybe after the honeymoon?

Check out stopoilspeculationnow.com for more information.

posted by Brad at 7/09/2008 03:00:00 PM | permalink | 4 comments

4 Comments:

  • This website is a cheap political trick. You should be ashamed for supporting it. Next time get your info from a real source and not from industry.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 7/09/2008 7:40 PM 

  • Consider this link http://biz.yahoo.com/usnews/080627/27_6_myths_about_oil_speculators.html
    as a check & balance to the email you received from the 'airline'.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 7/09/2008 8:35 PM 

  • Not sure who left the angry comments above but there's a valid point in there.

    There's little conrete evidence that the speculators are causing the run-up in the price of crude. Every day supply and demand are meeting in the market place and setting the price at $140/bbl. That's REAL barrels not the "paper" barrels that are blamed for the super-spike. The Economist ventured an opinion on this very topic in a recent issue.

    By Blogger Unknown, at 7/09/2008 9:24 PM 

  • I suspected that I should do more research before posting that, but didn't have (or take) the time. After reading the articles linked by my commenters, I realize that it's too complicated of a problem to be solved by identifying speculators as a scapegoat.

    If you haven't read it already, I highly recommend reading the Economist article that Dmitry linked to.

    Thanks for reading (and commenting)!

    By Blogger Brad, at 7/10/2008 12:27 PM 

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