Oil

Archive for Oil

Parsing Yglesias

I was reading Steve Horwitz’s reply to Ezra Klein on the gold standard, which in turn led me to Matt Yglesias commenting on a broader commodity standard. Here’s Yglesias: The notion of tying the value of the dollar to a basket of commodities sounds at first glance like a sophisticated alternative to the crudeness of […]

The Case for Energy Optimism

Rob Bradley has a really good essay at EconLib this month. He leads off with this amusing quote: “I’m sorry for you—coming to Texas [in 1915] to look for oil. Don’t you know there is no oil in Texas?!” —Wallace Pratt, Consultant. Then he drops some facts on us: Petroleum…is an example of an expanding […]

Murphy with Mises Institute Canada’s Founder

Here’s Redmond Weissenberger, founder of the Mises Institute of Canada, interviewing me on his show: We talk mostly about energy issues.

EPA Official Uses Historical Analogy to Explain His Enforcement Philosophy

This is pretty amazing. The fireworks start about 20 seconds into it. For more background on this, see this Forbes article.

Thoughts on Obama’s Crackdown on Oil Speculators

I’m a hot little tamale over at IER’s blog today. An excerpt: Successful speculation in the commodities markets serves a useful role in reducing price volatility and providing liquidity. By jacking up the penalties on ill-defined crimes, the Administration will actually make oil prices move more erratically. The president’s finger-wagging at the big bad speculators […]

On the “Big Oil Tax Loopholes”

I have a commentary at the Institute for Energy Research (IER) on the Administration’s recent efforts to stick it to the big oil companies. An excerpt: The rhetoric concerning the domestic manufacturing deduction is particularly silly. Back in 2004 Congress changed the tax code to encourage companies to keep their production activities within the United […]

ECON MOMENT: Oil Speculators and Iran

Instead of procrastinating by reading other people’s banal blog posts, I have found a new way to keep from earning income directly…

The Heartland Institute / Peter Gleick Affair

As promised, here are my extended thoughts on what has been dubbed “Fakegate” (by the friends of Heartland, of course). If you never really dug into this, you might be surprised at what happened. Here is my conclusion: The Heartland affair has shown not merely that some climate alarmists (namely Gleick) will stoop to outright […]