Why are oil prices rising so fast? (6)
Three months ago, I did my first posting on the dramatic rise in oil prices and challenged the conventional view that prices had risen so far and so fast because of an increase in demand.
In my second posting on the subject, I suggested that the markets were wrong and that oil prices would fall back. Now, in early July, the price of oil peaked at $147 a barrel, but yesterday it hit $106 – a fall of almost 30% in two months.
I wouldn’t want the price of oil to be determined by a Soviet-style politburo; neither do I want it settled by a cartel such as OPEC; but the market too can – and has – got it very wrong. The market has betrayed billions of consumers and knocked off course national economies. There should be a better way.