Oh, Monday

Hello, universe. Whatcha got in store for us this week?

Ask and ye shall receive. I was doing some research on the recent global oil kerfuffles so i could randomly throw that into this insanity i keep making, and it quickly dawned on me that absolutely no one understands the structure of pretty much anything anymore. Where would i even start? You can't just jump right in to the creation and dissolution of OPEC+ because nobody understands what OPEC actually is or why it can't not exist or why it controls 44% of known global oil reserves, they can't understand how that happened without understanding the oil crisis in the early 70s that led to the collapse of the 7 Sisters (just as much a cartel as OPEC, but one we happened to have a say in), they can't understand that without reaching back to busting up the Standard Oil monopoly, and so on. But even that's not really approachable because A) nobody's had a proper economics class in 40 years so we have to talk about the two completely different ways of thinking about markets to really pin down why "oligopoly" and "cartel" are synonyms and the logical evolution of Capitalism, 2nd) everybody has this bizarre notion that the commodities markets represent real tangible objects, and Barnabas Collins III) like somehow Chuck at the gas station down the street has the phone number of the Angolan Energy Secretary in his recent contacts on his cell phone. 

Why am i the guy who has to explain the global benchmarks in crude oil pricing, or how a civil war erupts in South America because Russia didn't raise or lower its production rate by 0.3% the third Tuesday in March, so Chuck over in Columbus has to raise the price on the sign 3 cents a gallon? 

I don't wanna! It's too big. People say "free market" when they obviously mean "black market," they think trading retail stocks 20 times a day is super awesome until they wake up tomorrow to the tax bill they can't afford to pay on those capital gains or to find out that company divested and their holdings are actually worth half of what they thought.

I mean, sure i can do it, but i don't wanna. I wanna just listen to The Carpenters. I love The Carpenters. Yep, that's what i'm gonna do instead. Buggerit.



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