[KarlInOhio]

the late Herbert Stein said, “My devotion to the old-time religion is not so great as to make me believe that M1 or the full-employment budget deficit determines the amount of rainfall in the Russian wheat lands, the location of Peruvian anchovies or the decisions of the oil cartel."

Ben Stein's father.

[Froufrou]

And it's the Lexus Libbies in their SUVs sreaming about the war for oil. Go figure.

[the invisib1e hand]

And so long as the dollar’s value is uncertain, so too will be investment in and exploration for oil.

Yeah, that doggone "fiat" money. And...in the good old days, the "dollar's value" was certain. That is, as long as it was fixed by fiat to a commodity whose price was fixed by fiat.

[Incorrigible]

Spot on!

Stop government counterfeiting!

[RBroadfoot]

An even more ridiculous notion that was popular in the late 1970s and early 1980s was that the escalation of crude oil prices was the CAUSE of inflation rather than its results.

There is never a shortage of absurd explanations for economic events. Usually such explanations are rooted in envy (eg, "greedy oil companies") or politics (eg, "we should raise taxes", "we need new regulations", etc.).