Re: Hello Ms. X!

["J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>]

Rafael, Xena, and pkt,
      Several folks on this list have published in the past
about oil prices, including Paul Davidson in several places
and myself in the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics back
in 1981.
        One fact about oil prices is that they have a tendency
to great variability, to shoot up suddenly and with little warning,
only to come down somewhat later.  In a sense what lays the
groundwork for the spike up is the low price before, with a number
of factors involved including OPEC production reduction, purchases
of gas hog cars in the US, economic recovery in much of East Asia,
etc. etc.  Certainly the WTO has no authority and no agreements
regarding oil or oil prices.
      I have an amusing story about oil that I heard from an inside
source at the Clinton CEA in Washington.  This dates from the
last, much smaller, oil price spike a few years ago when Stiglitz
was CEA Chair and Leon Panetta was Chief of Staff.  The issue
was whether or not to sell oil out of the Strategic Petroleum
Reserve.  Stiglitz argued against doing so on the grounds that
it would make little difference and that the price would soon go
down anyway.  Panetta then responded, "Great! We can do it,
not cause any trouble, and get credit for the price decline!"
(and they did so).
Barkley Rosser
James Madison University
http://cob.jmu.edu/rosserjb
-----Original Message-----
From: Rafael MXrquez Arias <fallito@xxxxxxxxx>
To: POST-KEYNESIAN THOUGHT <pkt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Monday, March 06, 2000 10:19 AM
Subject: Hello Ms. X!


>Hi Xena!
>Look I'm no expert, but I think the reason why WTO
>doesn't do anything about oil prices is that it isn't
>its concern since no world agreement (under wto rules)
>has been reached ever.
>As for the sudden importance of oil (once again), well
>I think that the US government wants to have all
>possible outcomes foreseen and thus it is concerned
>with controlling oil prices because it doesn't want
>any inflation problems due to petrol. At least, they
>might be thinking, that's one less problem to solve.
>It is surely dissapointing, all this economic problems
>having a political reason...
>See ya.
>rafael
>
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