Ran across this interesting piece from Business Week, which doubles as a fairly strong indictment of business journalism. Sounds like the efforts to force gas prices back up are under way – again.
And, it reminds me of one of my pet peeves about television journalism: During the runup to $4 a gallon gas, invariably you’d find a TV reporter sitting in front of a commodities broker asking them the future of gas prices.
And equally invariably, the answer would be $5 a gallon. Or $6. Or $7. Or something typically self-serving.
Asking a commodities trader about the future of gas prices is a little bit like asking John Dillinger for a projection on bank robbery numbers nationwide.
4 Comments
Good analogy Bill.
Amen to the above analogy. I wish they’d ban speculators from Wall Street. All they do is run up prices on certain commodities or stocks for a while, then sell and take their profits and leave everyone else hanging. They’re absolutely going to ruin it for the average investor. I certainly won’t invest in Wall Street again, unless they pass some very stringent laws regarding speculators and trading companies.
The current administration is on the record pledging that kind of speculation won’t be allowed to run rampant again. I shudder to think what the impact of $4 gas would have on an already-reeling retail sector.
It’s another example of greed worth watching.
Another good example of why we need newspapers.
(Oh, who am I kidding? No one’s even listening … they’re all off getting their “news” from TV and Internet blogs.)