So Much For Another Conspiracy Theory
Remember all those media reports about the possible "political motivation" behind falling gas prices ahead of the election? Supposedly oil companies were somehow manipulating gas prices ahead of the election to help Republicans win the election. This was not a wacky Internet fringe thing -- network news anchors and newspapers like the WaPo and the NYT speculated about it, and not just on their editorial pages.
Well, you and I may remember, but apparently no major media outlet who ran this story remembers what they said. Because I have not seen a single follow-up story after the election. Surely, if gas and oil prices were being manipulated down before the election, they would quickly spike back up to their "natural" levels after the election. But of course, the whole theory was insane to begin with. To suppose that a few US oil companies, who for all their size are still small players in the world oil markets, could manipulate US commodity prices for any sustained period of time is absurd. And even if they were successful, the cost would be astronomical (just ask the Hunt family who bankrupted themselves trying to manipulate the silver market).
So I will do the follow-up story. It turns out that oil and gas prices were falling before the election because ... oil and gas prices are falling. From the WSJ on Jan 9:
Oil prices dropped $1.69 to $54.40 a barrel early Tuesday as warm
weather in the Northeast continued to hurt demand for heating fuel. The
slide comes on top of last week's 7.8% pullback in crude, which briefly
took prices below $55 a barrel, their lowest level since June 2005.
From Business Week on Jan 8:
Wholesale gasoline prices have been falling for the past few weeks,
noted Jason Schenker, an economist with Wachovia Corp. He expects
retail gasoline prices to fall further; he forecasts a dime-sized
decline this week compared to last, with the per-gallon price dipping
to $2.25 from $2.35.
People often wonder why so many wild and weird conspiracy theories seem to thrive nowadays. I am sure there are many social and psychological reasons. But surely one reason is that the media seems incredibly willing to go front page with credulous stories of the most ridiculous conspiracy theories, and then never revisit them when they are proved absurd. Its telling to me that it was left to Popular Mechanics, rather than the WaPo or the NYTimes, to publish to one authoritative debunking of 9/11 conspiracy silliness.
