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Cool Graph Friday
H/T Craig Depken H/T W$J/Josee Valcourt H/T Russell Roberts H/T James...
Fueling food riots
Peter Gordon observed the other day that "politicians are better at creating problems than addressing them. Schools, housing, health care, transportation and others suffer from too much political attention." Echoing that idea, Clear Thinkers favorite James Hamilton writes about...
Checking in on the oil patch
I've been meaning to pass along a couple of interesting items regarding oil production and prices. First, several of the bloggers over at the Oil Drum have launched an intriguing new project -- a Wikipedia project in which they and...
How to correct what went wrong in subprime
Clear Thinkers favorite James Hamilton provides this interesting post on Princeton professor Alan Blinder's NY Times Sunday op-ed in which Blinder makes the common sense observation that we first have to figure out what went wrong in the subprime mortgage...
James Hamilton on Saudi oil production
Clear Thinkers favorite James Hamilton is thinking about Saudi Arabia's oil production and that always makes for interesting reading: Saudi oil production is now down more than 10% from its peak level in 2005; . . . this decline in...
Milton Friedman's introduction to economics
James Hamilton passes along Stanford University Professor John Taylor's touching tribute to Milton Friedman, which includes this anecdote about Friedman's participation in an entry level economics class: [Professor Friedman] was always willing to be a guest lecturer in my Economics...
And about those declining oil markets
Crude oil fell to $50 a barrel earlier this week, the lowest price since early 2005 and a continuation of a steady decline in price since the market hit $80 a barrel last year. Why those greedy oil companies would...
Why don't you tell us what you really think?
The NRO Corner's John Podhoretz in this NY Daily News op-ed makes clear that he is not buying into that whole "elder statesman" thing that the NY Times reported last week regarding James Baker, III's co-chairmanship of the Iraq Study...
Scarcity rents and oil prices
Clear Thinkers favorite James Hamilton is thinking about oil prices again, and that's always a good thing. This time, Professor Hamilton examines the impact that scarcity rents are having on oil prices as the markets increasingly adjust for the risk...
More on that energy price conspiracy
A couple of weeks ago, this post noted the news stories about some pundits were floating the theory that the recent slide in energy prices was a dark conspiracy of powerful political forces that were attempting to ensure the victory...
The art of predicting energy prices
Oil prices continued a steady slide last week, ending the week at a five-month low as concerns about possible shortages that fueled this summer's rally ebbed. The October crude contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange settled at $66.25, the...
Big news from the oil patch
Chevron Corp. and partners Devon Energy Corp. and Norway's Statoil ASA are expected to announce today (WSJ ($) article here and NYT article here) the first successful oil production from a deep-water region in the Gulf of Mexico called the...
So, what's the problem again?
This Norm Alstar/NY Sunday Times article notes a recent analyst report suggesting that a stampede of institutional investors, mainly pension funds, into the commodities futures markets is actually the chief cause of the rise in oil prices, which the report...
Thinking about those Saudi oil reserves
This Bhushan Bahree-Russell Gold/WSJ ($) article reports on Chevron Corp's pilot project in Saudi Arabia in which it is using its steam injection technique to to loosen up sludge-like heavy-oil reserves in Wafra, the huge field in the so-called neutral...
The end of the confounding contango?
This post from a couple of weeks ago noted the rise of crude oil prices to over $70 per barrel, and this subsequent post examined the unusually long contango period that has existed in the oil trading markets during the...
Confounding contango
This post from last week noted the seeming contradiction between rising oil prices at a time of rising inventories and the current longstanding "contango" in the oil trading market -- i.e., futures contracts for a given product are priced substantially...
Oil settles at over $70 per barrel
Crude oil closed above $70 a barrel yesterday for the first time despite the fact that U.S. oil inventories are at their highest levels in nearly eight years. Thus, this current price spike appears to be a reflection of a...
On federal deficits and debt ceilings
Clear Thinkers favorite James Hamilton points out in this post the seemingly non-partisan point that it is hypocritical for politicians in Washington to vote, on one hand, for spending and tax measures that generate the federal deficit while voting, on...
Meanwhile, over in the natural gas markets . . .
As oil prices reversed a downward trend and rose over the weekend on the news of more Nigerian political problems (James Hamilton explains why this is important), the roller coaster of emotions that is the natural gas market continued unabated....
Checking in on oil prices
While the price for natural gas has receded quickly from the post-hurricane highs of last summer, oil prices have been a different story. Crude-oil future contracts on the New York Mercantile Exchange climbed about a dollar yesterday, settling at a...
Remember those high prices for natural gas?
Wasn't it just a few weeks ago that we were enduring demagogues' calls for governmental intervention in regard to increasing oil and gas prices? Well, continuing a trend noted in this post from a week ago, the natural-gas contract for...
Business tidbits
I pass along the following tidbits of business information that caught my eye this morning: The auto industry just recorded its worst October for U.S. sales in 13 years; For most of October, the nearby price of a natural gas...
Economic waves of Rita
With the eastern shift of the projected path of Hurricane Rita directly into the part of the Houston metro area that contains a huge number of some of the nation's largest oil refineries and petrochemical facilities, Rita's economic ripples have...
Economic ripples of Rita
Crude-oil prices surged on Monday as it became clear that Tropical Storm Rita would threaten the Gulf Coast, then prices fell on Tuesday morning when the National Hurricane Center forecast a more southerly path for Rita that might spare the...
Markets at work
A funny thing happened in response to the recent run-up in gasoline prices resulting from Hurricane Katrina -- demand for gasoline dropped dramatically. Clear Thinkers favorite James Hamilton puts it all into perspective....
More on Katrina's economic ripples
As noted in this earlier post, the closing of the credit-card issuer Capital One Financial Corp.'s purchase of New Orleans-based Hibernia Corp. had been delayed by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Today, the parties to that transaction announced that Hibernia...
Updating Katrina's economic ripples
Six days after Hurricane Katrina hammered a main conduit of the U.S. energy and shipping industries, much of the crucial infrastructure on the energy industry in the Gulf Coast region those remains shut down. Although a full assessment of the...
A remarkable city responds as Katrina's economic ripples ease a bit
In the chaos of the worst natural disaster of our time, the remarkable Houston community provided extraordinary relief for tens of thousands of New Orleans area evacuees and, in so doing, provided a substantial part of the calming effect that...
Houston takes in New Orleans' weary
As the effects of the worst natural disaster of our time continued to become more apparent with each passing hour, Houston opened its arms to tens of thousands of New Orleans citizens who lost virtually everything but their lives. Houston's...
Further assessment of Katrina's economic impact
As companies involved in the U.S. oil and gas industry continue to assess the damage that Hurricane Katrina has caused to Gulf of Mexico and Gulf Coast production facilities, Royal Dutch Shell PLC announced on Tuesday that its Mars floating...
Evaluating Katrina's damage to oil and gas production facilities
Officials of oil and gas companies and refineries with facilities in the path of Hurricane Katrina were scurrying around yesterday somewhat helplessly attempting to evaluate the extent of the storm's damage on key oil and natural-gas production facilities that rattled...
Evaluating the true risk of Vioxx
At the start of the recent Merck/Vioxx trial, this post noted the dearth of clinical evidence that Vioxx was a particularly risky drug. In light of last week's big verdict in the case, long-time Clear Thinkers favorite James D. Hamilton...
A great dialogue on energy prices
Clear Thinkers favorite James D. Hamilton and Robert K. Kaufmann, professor in the Center for Energy & Environmental Studies at Boston University, are the participants this week in the Wall Street Journal's excellent Econoblog series (it's free!). The topic is...
City Hall, San Diego style
A couple of former City of Houston aides have had a rough spot lately, but frankly our corruption is blase' compared to what's going on at City Hall in San Diego recently. First, the San Diego mayor resigned a couple...
Professor Hamilton reviews the week in oil prices
Even before he started his smart blog recently, Professor James D. Hamilton of the University of California at San Diego was one of my favorite experts on the economics of energy prices (previous posts here). In this post, Professor Hamilton...
The risk of rising U.S. debt
Awhile back, this post made the point that, rather than focusing on CNOOC's bid to overpay for a second tier U.S. oil & gas company such as Unocal, the real issue that needs to be addressed is that American society...
Will oil prices top $100 a barrel?
Prior posts here and here have highlighted the work of University of California at San Diego profeesor James D. Hamilton, who is one of the country's foremost experts on the economics of energy prices. In this recent post, Professor Hamilton...
Let's see, how can we blame Enron for this?
One of the enduring myths of this era of criminalizing business practices is that Enron's energy trading policies were one of the primary causes of California's power crisis during the early part of this decade. Well, with Enron gone, that...
$60 a barrel oil
Oil prices surged almost 10% last week and are widely expected to top $60 a barrel this week. The recent price gains show a sharp turn in the short term market since only a month ago, when reports of steady...
Primer on higher oil prices
This Wall Street Journal ($) article provides a timely overview of the economic and political forces that have caused the increased energy prices over the past two years and how this price hike differs from previous ones: As oil prices...
Excellent overview of the current spike in energy prices
James D. Hamilton is an economics professor at Cal-San Diego who specializes in the economics of energy. In this excellent piece, Professor Sullivan summarizes the recent spike in energy prices and compares it to similar spikes of the past. The...
Great Quotes
From Ryan Lizza's campaign journal at The New Republic, on the difference between the Howard Dean and John Edwards' campaigns: "If Dean's events sometimes look like the bar scene from Star Wars, Edwards's traveling show has the feel of an...
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