Political Quotes

“Last Friday, five startling things happened to our economy. The futures price for a barrel of crude oil rose above $139, an alltime record. It increased over $10 in 1 day, and the increase in price on Thursday and Friday was the largest 2-day increase in the 130-year history of the New York Mercantile Exchange. That morning, a Morgan Stanley analyst had released a report predicting that the price of a barrel of oil could reach $150 by the Fourth of July. Also that morning, the worst job report and worst unemployment report in 12 years was released. The national unemployment rate has now reached 5.5 percent. By the end of the day, in reaction to this news, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 394 points. The average price for a gallon of gasoline at the pump on Friday, nationally, hovered around the alltime record of $3.99 a gallon. Are these five events related? Of course they are. There are many other economic events that took place last week that were also very important and related. Here is the more difficult question: Did any of these events cause others to occur? Most importantly, what led to that record increase in the price of oil, which will no doubt lead to crushing increases in the price of gasoline in the days to come? The honest truth is nobody knows. Not the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the regulator that is supposed to be monitoring the futures market.”