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I’m not an economist.  I’ll never claim to be.  I do however like to speculate on things that are going on and share my thoughts on hot topics.  The price of gas is notably going back up again and has been for the last month or so.

Prices here in the St. Louis area are hovering around the $2.50 mark. ($2.80 for premium which is what my car uses)  I guess I can say that I am officially confused about this whole thing.  I’ve read a few articles on this subject and I’m seeing different conclusions.  Tonight I read an article on Over valued Oil over on Forbes website that claims that the supply of oil is increasing beyond the demand and we should expect to see a correction of prices at the pump.  I could buy into that but looking back, a lot more affects the price per barrel than just supply and demand.  Beyond that, is the demand for oil really decreasing?  The Forbes article says they are cutting the expected world oil consumption from 2.2 million barrels a day to 1.8 million.  But does this include the number of barrels stockpiled by emerging powers like China?  China appears to be increasing its storage capacity which seems like a good plan while oil is so “cheap” right now.

Now as I mentioned before I think there is a lot more than supply and demand when it comes to the price of oil.  Right now the price per barrel is pegged to the dollar.  Over the last 10 years, the US dollar has fallen 33% which in my mind, suddenly makes oil a lot cheaper for people in Europe.  And why wouldn’t it?  One Euro is getting close to $1.40 US.  How expensive do you think things will get if suddenly the dollar isn’t the national reserve currency anymore?  Think about how bad it would be if oil reached 150 euros/barrel.

People complained last summer when gas was $4/gallon but how long after prices dropped again did it take for people to start picking up SUVs and trucks with low MPG ratings?  I guess maybe I should put my blinders on like the rest of this country and just assume that when the Dems say that large deficit spending is gonna bring us out of this mess that it actually will.  Maybe then I could actually sleep at night.

Read an article today from Business Insider today that dumbs down what exactly Mr. Geithner’s plan is to “fix” this mess.  Unfortunately, the chances of this actually fixing things is very slim.  To sum it all up in layman’s terms, he wants to change preferred stock to common stock to make the numbers look better without dumping actual money into banks. (at least for now)  This of course places responsibility right on the tax payers if more loans start defaulting.  So by fudging some numbers, the hope is that it will inspire some confidence with nothing to back up that confidence.  I suppose that might work because we the people don’t seem to pay attention to what is actually going on unless it immediately affects us.

A good example of this was demanding that the car companies build more fuel efficient cars.  No one cared before gas rose to about 1/4 of what a gallon costs over in Europe.  If cap and trade gets pushed through you can bet we’ll all start complaining about our electric bills too.  But not many people are talking about that.  Mark my words, we will be if this goes through.

Is anyone else sick of all this fuzzy math?  We’ve been doing it for years though, especially with the budget, and the biggest tool for that has been social security.  I’m sure Bush did it too (although probably not as well) but possibly the best example of fuzzy math is the myth of Clinton’s surplus.  Its easy to say you had a surplus when you convert public debt to inter-government holdings while also borrowing heavily from social security.  Then you can tell everyone about how the public debt has gone down and ignore that the deficit is really a combination of public debt AND inter-government holdings.

Maybe we need to rethink who is in charge of our treasury….

While everyone has been distracted by the razzle dazzle of our current administrations overseas trips and staring at Michelle Obama’s bare arms, the Obama administration has made a government filing broadening the defense of so called “illegal” wiretapping.

By far my favorite part of the article was this: ‘”In other words, beyond even the outrageously broad ’state secrets’ privilege invented by the Bush administration and now embraced fully by the Obama administration, the Obama DOJ has now invented a brand new claim of government immunity, one which literally asserts that the U.S. Government is free to intercept all of your communications (calls, emails and the like) and — even if what they’re doing is blatantly illegal and they know it’s illegal — you are barred from suing them unless they ‘willfully disclose’ to the public what they have learned,” ‘.

My question is why is this not getting more media coverage?  There seems to be no outrage of Obama doing/saying the same things Bush said/did.  At least even John Stewart from the Daily Show will point it out sometimes.  I haven’t been watching his show really but the following clip from a few months ago seems to sum it up.   I love when asked why is it okay if Obama says it and not okay if Bush said it, they use the analogy why is melted cheese on Italian food delicious but on Chinese food its gross.

My friend Jorin reminded me the other day of a discussion we had back during the election about this very topic.  We’ve been friends since Kindergarten and have complete opposite political views.  When it comes to legalizing marijuana we have come to an agreement though.

This seems to be a hot topic right now as many people are in favor of legalization and taxation of marijuana as a means to help bring the government back in the black.   A recent article in Time even tries to tell Why Legalizing Marijuana Makes Sense.  Jorin is all for it because of the many benefits such as more tax revenue, possible drops in crime rate, and lower incarceration.  All of which I won’t refute, but marijuana will not be legalized until it can be regulated the same as alcohol.

With alcohol, it is possible to tell when you have had to much to drink.  Currently there is no way to tell just how high an individual is.  Sure people can say that there is a greater number of alcohol related deaths than marijuana related deaths but if marijuana is legalized, I can see it easily catching up with those numbers.

The day scientists come up with a device law enforcement officials can use to test just how high you are is the day I can see legislation getting pushed through and passed.  Do I think it will happen soon?  No.  But I can see it happening in my lifetime.