Bill O'Reilly is Stuck On Stupid On Oil
(Gotta jump on the Russel Honore bandwagon!)
I've been watching Bill O'Reilly since he first got started on Fox. I was a fan simply because he was a maverick, made the right enemies and didn't pull from from standard play book; I am less of a fan now because he is so powerful that when he is wrong he can be dangerous. I have always maintained that his biggest blind spot, among several, is on oil and gas prices. Here is really wrong and really dangerous. He persists in putting forth the notion that the oil market is rigged and that there are a bunch of cigar-chomping, robber-baron oil executives screwing the average consumer for kicks. He is absolutely clueless on how the oil markets work and has given his conspiracy theory such play recently to the point where 89% of "billoreilly.com premium members" (whatever that means) believe likewise. All this means is that 89% of the folks who responded to the poll are as clueless as O'Reilly.
Bill doesn't seem to understand some basic economics. He was on a witchhunt tonight for a specific person or entity that is making all the illict oil profits that he thinks are being made. He dismissed the notion that it is "the market" that sets the price because he says "that's nobody, there is no person or thing that is the market." Of course, there is such a person. It is you and me and the hundreds of millions of people who make decisions about consuming oil for the thousands of applications that it is used for. The fact that the market is diffuse doesn't hide the essential fact that the market is entirely real people. If I want to drive to granny's house, I am competing for the oil to achieve that with a tire manufactuer who wants to make tires, who is competing with people who want to heat their homes, who are competing with a farmer who needs to harvest soybeans who is competing with the Chinese government who are stockpiling oil for strategic reasons who are competing with an airline that wants to fuel their planes and on and on and on. Untold uses are competing for the same resource and those that invest in finding and producing that resource can choose to sell it into the channel that is likely to pay the most for it at the end of the day. At the most basic level, Chevron can sell oil to, for example, the Chinese gov't or to American Airlines or to me. Whoever wants it most will pay for it. Complicate this with the hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure that support getting that oil to me, AA or China in usable form. Further add in thousands of laws and regulations that dictate minute details of how this process of getting oil to people in usable form can be conducted. Bill simply has no understanding of the fact that there are thousands of uses for oil, hundreds of producers, thousands of middlemen and hundreds of millions of end users and all of this is governed by thousands of laws and regulations. He wants to boil it down and haul somebody into the chair to convict and hang on behalf of "the folks" - he is on the hunt for that small group of diabolical individuals who are screwing us. So let me get this through to you Bill - my decision to keep the car parked and eat ice cream with my kids IS the market, and my decision that travelling 100 miles in my 18 mpg car (that I freely chose to buy for my own very good reasons) to see my ailing Dad is worth $5.00/gallon to me IS the market. And if the Chinese want to stockpile oil to invade Taiwan or American Airlines wants to fly 747s half-empty from Dallas to Duluth that is the way it is and I get to make and remake my own personal utility calculations everyday based on that critical piece of information...price.
UPDATE: I'm in pretty good company.
I've been watching Bill O'Reilly since he first got started on Fox. I was a fan simply because he was a maverick, made the right enemies and didn't pull from from standard play book; I am less of a fan now because he is so powerful that when he is wrong he can be dangerous. I have always maintained that his biggest blind spot, among several, is on oil and gas prices. Here is really wrong and really dangerous. He persists in putting forth the notion that the oil market is rigged and that there are a bunch of cigar-chomping, robber-baron oil executives screwing the average consumer for kicks. He is absolutely clueless on how the oil markets work and has given his conspiracy theory such play recently to the point where 89% of "billoreilly.com premium members" (whatever that means) believe likewise. All this means is that 89% of the folks who responded to the poll are as clueless as O'Reilly.
Bill doesn't seem to understand some basic economics. He was on a witchhunt tonight for a specific person or entity that is making all the illict oil profits that he thinks are being made. He dismissed the notion that it is "the market" that sets the price because he says "that's nobody, there is no person or thing that is the market." Of course, there is such a person. It is you and me and the hundreds of millions of people who make decisions about consuming oil for the thousands of applications that it is used for. The fact that the market is diffuse doesn't hide the essential fact that the market is entirely real people. If I want to drive to granny's house, I am competing for the oil to achieve that with a tire manufactuer who wants to make tires, who is competing with people who want to heat their homes, who are competing with a farmer who needs to harvest soybeans who is competing with the Chinese government who are stockpiling oil for strategic reasons who are competing with an airline that wants to fuel their planes and on and on and on. Untold uses are competing for the same resource and those that invest in finding and producing that resource can choose to sell it into the channel that is likely to pay the most for it at the end of the day. At the most basic level, Chevron can sell oil to, for example, the Chinese gov't or to American Airlines or to me. Whoever wants it most will pay for it. Complicate this with the hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure that support getting that oil to me, AA or China in usable form. Further add in thousands of laws and regulations that dictate minute details of how this process of getting oil to people in usable form can be conducted. Bill simply has no understanding of the fact that there are thousands of uses for oil, hundreds of producers, thousands of middlemen and hundreds of millions of end users and all of this is governed by thousands of laws and regulations. He wants to boil it down and haul somebody into the chair to convict and hang on behalf of "the folks" - he is on the hunt for that small group of diabolical individuals who are screwing us. So let me get this through to you Bill - my decision to keep the car parked and eat ice cream with my kids IS the market, and my decision that travelling 100 miles in my 18 mpg car (that I freely chose to buy for my own very good reasons) to see my ailing Dad is worth $5.00/gallon to me IS the market. And if the Chinese want to stockpile oil to invade Taiwan or American Airlines wants to fly 747s half-empty from Dallas to Duluth that is the way it is and I get to make and remake my own personal utility calculations everyday based on that critical piece of information...price.
UPDATE: I'm in pretty good company.
posted by Donny Baseball at 12:10 AM
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