Here's the lede from a post from the Perfesser a couple of weeks ago:
Two nights ago Mrs. S [presumably the Perfesser's wife] started shouting to me down the stairs (where I was in NBA playoff bliss) "we need to buy more gasoline." I realized she meant to bank more gasoline. We keep an account at First Fuel, where we have approximately $1500 socked away, purchased at $2.699. The newspaper blared yesterday morning that we had struck a record. Mrs. S, I've concluded, is a momentum investor.
In other words, the Banaians are gas hoarders.
Perfect. That's just perfect, Spot. The chair of an economics department helping to drive gas prices up.
Yes, grasshopper, but it illustrates one thing.
What's that, Spotty?
It shows that the Invisible Hand, which King worships, doesn't always promote the good of the community. Oftentimes, as King so ably demonstrates, it's just greed that's contrary to the public interest.
This is going on at the national level, too. George Bush has been pushing to increase the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, probably because he wants to Bomb, bomb, bomb; bomb, bomb Iran, and he knows that supplies are going to become a little well, dicey. But it has the effect of keeping supplies even tighter:
Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) has been rallying lawmakers’ support [for a cessation of adding to the reserve at the present time] since March. “All of us feel very strongly that it makes no sense at all for the administration to be taking action to put upward pressure on prices when the SPRO is 90 percent filled,” Dorgan told me [Steve Mufson].
By the way, grasshopper, did you follow the link to the Invisible Hand?
No, Spotty, I didn't.
You might want to have a look.
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