The recent drop in gasoline prices has stirred the antennae of the tinfoil-hat brigade. You know the type: They think 9/11 was a false-flag operation by the CIA, and Area 51 outside Roswell, New Mexico, is just a decoy to keep people from finding the real alien specimens at Area 52.
According to conspiracists, oil companies are in cahoots with the Chimpy McHalliburton White House—and are lowering gasoline prices only to help the GOP. After Election Day, they say, gasoline prices will shoot back up again.
Well, Donald Boudreaux, chairman of the economics department at George Mason University—he also produces the Cafe Hayek blog—has a proposal. In a letter to The Washington Post, he writes:
Alleging that today’s falling gasoline prices result from a fiendish plot to keep the GOP in power, Kenneth Jones is certain that “gasoline prices will go right back up to $2.75-plus after the [November] election” (Letters, October 2).If Mr. Jones is correct, he - along with others who share his belief - can make a financial killing. All he need do is to invest all of his assets going long in gasoline futures (which are today about 30 percent lower than they were in late July). Indeed, he ought even to cash out all the equity in his house, max out on his credit cards, and borrow heavily from his brother-in-law so that he can invest as much as possible in these futures.
He can then contribute his post-election financial bounty to the Democratic National Committee.
Boudreaux has a point. Or at least that’s what the signals from the fillings in my teeth keep telling me.
Reader Comments:
I do not actually believe that a conspiracy is involved. Note: I WANT to believe in it, but I can’t quite manage to.
On the other hand, if this is just a market swing, then it is inappropriate to credit George W. Bush for saving us that money.
On a deeper level, a partial collapse of oil prices only reinforces our complacency and prevents us from feeling urgency in seeking a more reliable or more efficient energy system for transportation. That my friends is a bad thing even if it puts a jingle in your pocket in time for Christmas, because the problem is not gone for good. It’s just taking a vacation.
Interestingly, one of Bob Woodward’s Bush trilogies essentially said that the Saudis agreed to mess around with oil prices to help the GOP in the 2004 election. Granted, the Washington Post may have some tin-foil laying around, but I dare compare them to the folks focused on Roswell.
At any rate, if it is a conspiracy, I’m happy to reap the benefits!
Heh heh, that’s funny. But really, the tin-foil hat crowd should have realized that Republicans have been paying these outrageous prices also. In other words, Democrats weren’t the only people affected (unless Pubs were given a ‘secret’ discount all the while).
Independants like me never truly had to worry about it—I walk.
That’s an investment I’d like to make with a high level of confidence in making a tidy profit. Pass the tin-foil.
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