The Rising Price of the Falling Dollar — Charles Kadlec, Forbes.com

Do you know why oil and prices are moving sharply higher? Some blame the oil companies, charging they are manipulating prices. Others cite U.S. sanctions on Iran and the threat of a military encounter that would disrupt the flow of oil from the Middle East.

Speculators, too are blamed for ostensibly bidding up the price of oil. In the political arena, President Obama is taking credit for increased domestic oil production even as his critics point out the slow pace of drilling permits issued by his Administration soon will hamper additional increases in the U.S. oil production.

Yet, the basic reason for higher energy prices is being overlooked, even though it is right before our eyes: Oil prices are up because the value of the dollar is down. Our common sense hides this source of higher prices because we view the dollar as fixed, and prices as moving. News reports explain the sharp rise in consumer prices in February were caused by higher energy and food prices, implying that higher prices cause inflation. Of course, higher prices do not cause inflation. Higher prices are inflation.

The cost of this deception goes well beyond the vilification of the oil industry and free markets. The real price of the on-going debauchery of the dollar is measured by the loss of our prosperity and the debasement of our liberty. Read entire article

Categories:     Tags: Charles Kadlec, Dollar, Energy, Gold Standard, Inflation, Liberty, Monetary Policy, Oil Prices, Unalienable Rights

How to Stop the Spike in the Price of Gasoline — Charles Kadlec, Forbes.com

Since 2002, the price of gold — and the price of oil — have each increased five-fold.

Here is the same point in dollars and cents. If the Fed had maintained the value of the dollar at 1/350th of an ounce of gold — instead of debasing the dollar to nearly 1/1800 of an ounce of gold– the price of oil today would be about $21 a barrel, and the price of gasoline would be around a buck-thirty a gallon, right where they were on average for the 19-years ending 2002.

So, the next time you fill up your car, direct your rath at the Federal Reserve and the governing elite who tolerate and defend the debauchery of our currency.

And, if you want to “do something” to stop the rise in the price of gasoline, start demanding the Federal government do the one thing that works to stabilize oil and gasoline prices: stabilize the value of the dollar in terms of gold. Read More

Categories:     Tags: Charles Kadlec, Energy, Gold Standard, Monetary Policy, Oil Prices

Daniel Yergin’s The Quest:  Human Ingenuity, Passion, The Fall of Caliphatism, and the Rise of Prosperity — Ralph Benko, Forbes.com

Happy New Year! Consider Keynes’s last words: “I should have drunk more champagne.” To avert similar rue when our own lives end let us pop an extra cork to celebrate a world undeniably confronting a tsunami of … affordable energy.

Daniel Yergin, in his latest and arguably most promethean work, The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World, infuses a rich ingathering of information and analysis with the narrative power of a McMurtry, the human interest of an O. Henry, all shaken, not stirred, with a frisson of Ian Fleming.

Prosperity is emerging. How did the sourpuss Malthusians in the “Limits to Growth” league allow the heretical: abundance? Clearly someone from the Club of Rome slipped up — badly — and is destined to be burned at the stake. Probably with a fossil fuel.

Categories:     Tags: Daniel Yergin, Energy, GLobal Warming, Ralph Benko