Oil: A Final Note on Speculation Vs. Fundamentals
By Professor Ferdinand E. Banks
03 July 2009 @ 09:36 am EDT
Some controversy remains as to whether speculation or fundamentals were behind the spectacular rise in the oil price in 2008, or for that matter the rise in the oil price during the last 6 months. The dissention can partially be traced to academics like myself, who have been careless in our explanations of this issue. For instance, even in my textbooks (2000,2007) I failed to note that the speculators in question are not like the ladies and gentlemen in the neighbourhood betting shops in Sydney (Australia), nor the young lads who used the alley behind my home in Chicago as the site for an occasional game of dice.