Peter Bromberg's UnBlog

If supply is solid and demand is solid, how can it be that oil prices are skyrocketing? President Obama offered his thought recently, explaining that “we [speculators] think that maybe there's a 20 percent chance that something might happen in the Middle East that might disrupt oil supply, so we're going to bet that oil is going to go up real high. And that spikes up prices significantly."  He even announced a special “commission” to investigate and root out oil speculators. Is Obama right about speculators being the cause of high gas prices, and that supply and demand are balanced (as he also stated)? Let’s take a closer look: The above  two charts from the International Energy Agency’s latest report show quite clearly that world oil demand is currently outstripping world oil supply. And it will get worse over the near term. If countries cannot get oil at good prices, their economies begin to suffer. Prices of everything go up. With Fed Chairman Ben Bernank...

Current wisdom in Washington is that we need to raise taxes (particularly on “the rich”).  Here’s why it won’t work. President Obama’s deficit policy speech today emphasized that if government spending breaches a trigger level, tax increases should be triggered. He has it 100 percent backwards . I’ll explain. We have a current tax policy that taxes higher income people more as a percentage of their income than those in lower income brackets. This is true even if you look at all Federal taxes, not just income taxes.  The following chart, based on data from the liberal-leaning Tax Policy Center , makes this clear: It can be seen that the highest earning group, at $212,666 and up, pays 40.3% of all Federal taxes, while the middle group (from $35,347 to $64,490 income) pays less than one quarter of that, at 10% of all Federal Taxes. These are facts, they don’t lie. But somehow the current Administration seems to think that higher income earners aren’t paying e...

You climb the stairs Looking for a sign That will tell you where to go But you never find it You retrace your steps And realize it's cold and you've left your jacket Somewhere And now you cannot go back Because you don't know where You come into a station People mill about A train comes screeching around an impossible curve the last car is blown open like shrapnel from a bomb You turn away This is not the train And no one gets on You were looking for The art museum Somewhere in your mind you know how to walk there but now you're lost You cannot go forward You cannot go back You stare into someone's face And realize it is an old friend from high school But you ask his name and he says something unintelligible You are dreaming and Awake in the dream familiar subway sounds Welcome to the subway to nowhere