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Craig Pirrong, Streetwise Professor says energy is scarce, but stupidity is abundant.
It is difficult to figure out which commodity induces more mass stupidity-gold or oil. Upon reflection, it seems that the stupidity is price dependent, and given the rise in gasoline prices the oil-related stupidity is taking the lead.
Glibfinder wrote a comment and friend R told me about a particularly distilled example of oil induced insanity-the Bill O’Reilly-Lou Dobbs discussion last Friday. I am well familiar with O’Reilly’s cluelessness on energy. Whenever prices are high, he asserts that oil companies can charge whatever they want for oil, and are overcharging: which always raises the question of why they would let prices fall to around $30/bbl (2008-2009) or $10/bbl (1998).
Being a glutton for punishment, I watched. Or tried to, anyways. I could take it for only about 3 minutes. O’Reilly spewed his usual story, this time with a bit of a new spin: Prices are “subjective” so companies can charge whatever they want. Believe me: he wasn’t making a subtle, Austrian-economics based point. Then he and Dobbs went on crude Mercantilist rants that would have been an embarrassment in 1775.
O’Reilly, while denying he was a socialist, claimed that the government has a legitimate right to control oil prices because it is “our oil.” I was waiting for him to channel Woody Guthrie, and break out singing “This oil is your oil, this oil is my oil.”
But O’Reilly and Dobbs are just talking (empty) heads. Barack Obama is president of the United States, but he is as idiotic about energy (and economics generally) as they are. He’s just idiotic in a different way.
He has repeatedly ridiculed increased production of hydrocarbons, saying that it is impossible to drill our way out of dependence. In Saturday’s radio address, he said that drilling isn’t a plan, “it’s a bumper sticker.” …
Andrew Malcolm comments on Obama’s algae alchemy.
Speaking, perhaps. But political optics have never been Barack Obama’s strong suit.
He talks, by golly, about ending special tax breaks so that every American pays their fair share, while 36 of his own aides owe the IRS more than $833,000 in back taxes.
He urges Americans to vacation on the beleaguered Gulf Coast while his wife flies with pals to a luxury hotel in Spain. He promises the most open government in history and VP Joe Biden meets with the chief of administration transparency — in a closed meeting. Twice.
To underline his commitment to green energy and conservation, Obama travels to an electric car photo op – in a 17-vehicle motorcade of SUVs.
So, Thursday the president of the United States climbed into his government jet and flew two hours down to Florida to talk at University of Miami student engineers about energy conservation and innovation.
It was, of course, a phony event, an early afternoon official presidential visit tacked on to cover three political fundraisers that evening, two in Miami and one in Orlando, raking in around $4 million. (At the same time Michelle Obama collected more money from two Midwestern fundraisers and Biden did another in New England.)
If the president can claim he’s doing some “official” work on these trips, then his campaign need reimburse less for travel on a government plane. (And don’t worry, Obama did get to watch the Knicks-Heat game on satellite TV in flight.) …
Wait a minute, says David Harsanyi, haven’t the Dems wanted gas prices to rise?
… So why aren’t Democrats making the case that the spike in prices is a good thing? Isn’t this basically our energy policy these days? How we “win the future”? If high energy prices were to damage President Barack Obama’s re-election prospects, it would be ironic, considering the left has been telling us to set aside our “dependency” — or, as our most recent Republican president put it, “addiction” — for a long time.
If Democrats had their way, after all, we would be enjoying the economic results of cap-and-trade policy these days — a program designed to increase the cost of energy by creating false demand in a fabricated market. As the theory goes, if you inflate the price of fossil fuels, the barbarians might finally start putting thought into how peat moss might be able to power a toaster.
In 2008, Steven Chu, Obama’s (and, sadly, our own) future secretary of energy (sic) lamented, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” The president, when asked whether he thought $4-a-gallon gas prices were good for the American economy, said, “I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment.”
How gradual? Like, what, four years? Or is it eight? …
Arthur Brooks says the president’s budget appeals to the lowest common denominator.
The president’s proposed new budget has three noteworthy characteristics: continuing unfunded entitlements to the middle class, runaway deficits to be repaid in the undefined future, and immense tax increases on the entrepreneurial class. Many commentators have complained about the damage this budget would do to our national prosperity. Less has been said about the effect it will have on something far more important: our national character.
There is a tremendous amount of research on the links among success, character and the ability to sacrifice. It all reaches the same conclusion: People who cannot defer current gratification tend to fail, and sacrifice itself is part of entrepreneurial success.
In one famous study from 1972, Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel concocted an ingenious experiment involving young children and a bag of marshmallows. He put a marshmallow on the table and told each child that if he (or she) could wait 15 minutes to eat it, he would get a second one as a reward.
About two-thirds of the kids failed the experiment. Some gave in immediately and gobbled up the marshmallow; videotape shows others in agony, trying to discipline themselves—some even banging their little heads on the table.
But the most interesting results from that study came years later. … (The marshmallow eaters vote for democrats. – Pckrhd)
Speaking of instant gratification, scientists managed to teach monkeys the value of money. Soon after, one of the females started to turn tricks. The story comes from ZME Science.
You may have thought things like currency or money are concepts known solely to man. Some might have a sense of ownership, besides of course territory, but trading and the likes haven’t been observed in any other species besides homo sapiens. An economist/psychologist duo from Yale back in 2005, however, managed to train seven capuchin monkeys how to use money, and I’m pretty sure from here on some of you might be able to guess what happened from there on.
‘The capuchin has a small brain, and it’s pretty much focused on food and sex,” said Keith Chen, a Yale economist who along with Laurie Santos, a psychologist, are the two researchers who have had made the study. ”You should really think of a capuchin as a bottomless stomach of want,” Chen says. ”You can feed them marshmallows all day, they’ll throw up and then come back for more.”
It’s exactly this selfish desires that they tried to exploit and experiment with great success after teaching capuchins to buy grapes, apples and Jell-O. The economist wanted to study the incentives that motivated specimens to behave in a way, while the psychologist analyzed the behavior itself. …
Andrew Malcolm has late night humor.
Letterman: The North Korean news agency reports that birds and pandas are sobbing and moaning over beloved leader Kim Jong Il’s death. Wait! Is it possible they’re sobbing and moaning because they live in North Korea?
Fallon: Did you see last week a North Carolina couple got married in the layaway section of a Walmart? Then for their honeymoon they went to Target.
Letterman: Baseball spring training opens. Pitchers and catchers reported today. Infielders tomorrow. And Hollywood girlfriends on Wednesday.
Fallon: Last week was the 20th Republican debate. Which explains the new campaign slogan, ‘Vote Mitt Romney — or else we’ll keep doing this.’