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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (373880)	3/12/2008 9:23:41 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1573821

Oil producers don't much care. High prices have been good to them. Since 1999, annual oil revenues for OPEC countries have more than quadrupled, to an estimated $670 billion in 2007, says energy economist Philip Verleger Jr. What's less clear is whether OPEC has merely benefited from tight oil markets or has acted as a true cartel, restricting output and raising prices. The right answer is: both. The cartel thing doesn't fit into Tims ideology. That would be collective action, and that can't happen in the libertarian world. Everybody has to work in their own self-interest and compete with each other. So at $100+ per barrel (that costs ~$10 to harvest) there is no wealth transfer from the US to OPEC countries. It's all an illusion...

To: RetiredNow who wrote (373880)	3/17/2008 4:43:45 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573821

I'm not sure that I'd call the higher prices a triumph for OPEC's operation as a cartel. If you adjust for inflation we've seen similar prices before, and more importantly I'm not sure that the cartel members (with the possible exception of Saudi Arabia) really have the ability to increase their production enough to cause much lower prices even if the cartel broke down. Also to a certain extent the increase of the price of oil is because of the weakness of the dollar.