{"id":962,"date":"2008-06-07T08:48:09","date_gmt":"2008-06-07T07:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=962"},"modified":"2008-06-07T08:48:09","modified_gmt":"2008-06-07T07:48:09","slug":"why-are-oil-prices-rising-so-fast-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=962","title":{"rendered":"Why are oil prices rising so fast? (1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The BBC web site has a short piece<\/a> which manages to suggest no less than seven reasons:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Rising demand from China, the Middle East and Latin America – but we’ve known this for months and even years\n
  2. Doubts about future demand – which seems to contradict the first reason\n
  3. Israeli threats to strike on Iran over its nuclear programme – but that’s not new either\n
  4. A report by Morgan Stanley analyst Ole Slorer\n
  5. Investors hedging oil against the weak dollar\n
  6. Fears that workers at Chevron Corporation in Nigeria may go on strike\n
  7. A cut in subsidies by the Indian and Malaysian governments<\/ol>\n

    In short, media commentators have no clue why oil prices have risen so dramatically and so quickly day by day by day. But I can offer two suggestions<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Panic\n
    2. Speculation<\/ol>\n

      Free markets are supposed to be rational, but the people who run them are both scared and greedy. Meanwhile we all suffer as prices at the pump – not to mention prices of all goods which are transported – go up and we and our governments can neither understand nor control the vagaries of the so-called free market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      The BBC web site has a short piece which manages to suggest no less than seven reasons: Rising demand from China, the Middle East and Latin America – but we’ve known this for months and even years Doubts about future demand – which seems to contradict the first reason Israeli threats to strike on Iran […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}