A New Mother Market Taking Over...
A new splendid lady come to call..
- The meteoric rise of nearly $11 for the day piled atop an increase of almost $5.50 the day before, taking oil futures more than 13 percent higher in just two days, easily a record on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Oil prices made their biggest single-day leap ever Friday—clearing $139, dragging the Dow Jones industrials down nearly 400 points and raising the once-unthinkable prospect of $150 oil and even higher gas prices by the Fourth of July.
We may look back in a couple of years with fond memories of paying only $4/gallon. I remember 3 summers ago being irked at paying $2.25. We lived in a fantasy world in the '80's and '90's with deregulated oi and expansion of world production. It was nice that the increased production reduced
OPEC's power, but we Americans bought back into the muscle era of
automobiles instead of preventing another energy crisis. Fortunately, today's industry can react faster and start pumping out hybrids and electric cars, research new designs and fuels, etc. The best way to see change really happen is to see high gasoline prices. They hurt now, but they are the sort of "system perturbation" (
Tom Barnett's term) is often what is needed to kick needed change into a higher gear. Clouds have silver linings.
