Billy is rightfully incredulous over an article he points to [1] in the WaPo [2], today:
“I lay on the table a modest proposal: Put the government into the oil business.”
Somebody named Steven Pearlstein [2] loses his mind right out loud in The Washington Post.
Billy goes on to quote and comment later in his article:
“Standard’s first order of business would be to expand refining capacity in the face of the industry’s disciplined efforts to keep supply always a bit behind demand.”
Yeah, man. That’s what we need: the Post Office in charge of this sort of thing, and we won’t talk about “disciplined efforts” to make refinery construction the most bloody septic economic pain in the ass in post-WW II American industrial history. Pearlstein sees his fantastic industrial concern planting refineries here & there, “building facilities”, and “facilitat[ing]” delusionary productive activity in “Alaska and Canada”, although it must be said that if government could ever get out of its own way, then maybe this rotten little homunculus wouldn’t have to face one or two of the myriad hobbles that real producers have for generations.
Exactly so. My own take mirrors this, more or less;
The government has thusfar been the biggest roadblock to increased supplies which would be the fastest cure for the price situation. Are we really to expect that giving the monster total control of the situation, absent private investment,(private ownership being the only thing that’s kept it as manageable as it has been so far) is going to make the situation better? What the hell is in the water down there in Washington, anyway?