Black Gold and Greenbacks

An Opposing Viewpoint

Black Gold and Greenbacks

Blame It on the Fed

By ROBIN GOLDWYN BLUMENTHAL

Editors Note: Although I agree with the premise that the FED has been the prime source of inflation with its easy money policies, this does not explain the cost of oil, gasoline, auto paint or food completely. The FED induced inflation is a major part of price increases (and I think planned) but corporations use inflation as an excuse to raise prices much higher than they need to.

BEFORE ANYONE GETS MORE HOT AND BOTHERED ABOUT THE RAPID and seemingly ineluctable ascent of the price of oil, or Congress gets a notion to punish somebody for it, consider this: By one measure, the price of a barrel of petroleum today should be lower than it was in 1959.

William Waitzman

Not only that, a recent analysis of oil prices over the past 50 years, adjusted for the increase in the money supply as measured by a gauge known as M3, lays the blame for surging petro prices squarely at the feet of Uncle Sam, particularly the Federal Reserve.

"By rapidly increasing the money supply and thereby decreasing the value of the dollar, the government is solely responsible for the increase in the oil price," writes Paul van Eeden, president of Toronto-based Cranberry Capital, a private investment company and publisher of a weekly commentary at <FONTSIZE=4>www.paulvaneeden.com.

Though van Eeden says that the doubling of oil in real terms since 2003 mostly reflects market factors, he ascribes oil's dizzying longer-term advance almost completely to the falling dollar and the increase in the money supply engineered by the Fed, to stimulate the economy.

Van Eeden compares the current dollar/euro exchange rate to what it would have been in January 1970, against a basket of the 12 currencies comprising the euro before its launch. His conclusion? Absent the greenback's long-term debasement, oil would probably be less than $10 a barrel, taking it back to long-ago levels. Something to ponder next time you're filling up with $4.10 a gallon regular.

Tags: oil crisis, corporate greed