From that wonderful blog, The Road to Surfdom, this piece under the headline "Oily Comments":
"Perhaps the secret of John Howard’s recent political success is that there are actually two of him. There’s Johnny 1, the one who says one thing because it seems like a good idea at the time, and then, when that statement becomes inconvenient, up pops Johnny 2 to recalibrate the story.
So back on August 2nd we had Johnny 1 saying this about the relationship between oil prices and instability in the Middle East (emphasis added):
Well petrol prices is the biggest problem Australians have with the economy at the moment. It worries me more than anything else, it’s not something that any government in Australia can control because everybody’s battling with the problem, everybody around the world….Everybody’s got the problem, America’s got it, Europe’s got it, Asia’s got it, the Middle East has got it, and it’s being compounded by the instability in the Middle East. Bear in mind that Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia are major suppliers of oil and they’re right in the middle of enormous conflict at the present time and that’s not doing anything to keep the price of oil down and that’s feeding through into the bowser at your local petrol service station.
Of course, such comments leave Johnny 1 open to questions of accountability about Australia’s role in Iraq, and more general questions about what is going on in the region. So along comes Johnny 2 to say, well, the complete opposite:
THREE weeks ago John Howard said the war in Iraq was contributing to high petrol prices.
Yesterday the Prime Minister did an about-face, describing the Iraq argument as very thin.
“The cause of high petrol prices is the surging world demand driven overwhelmingly by China,” he told ABC radio.
Mr Howard said petrol, now about $1.40 a litre, was $1.04 at the time of the 2004 federal election, when the war in Iraq had been raging for 18 months. “Overwhelmingly, the high price of oil is due to a surge in world demand and all the respectable economic analysis that I have seen comes to that conclusion.”
Still, despite Johnny 2 “correcting” Johnny 1’s story, Johnny 2 is still left with that last claim, that “all the respectable economic analysis that I have seen comes to that conclusion.”
The first point about this is that is begs the question: where was that “respectable economic analysis” when Johnny 1 was blaming Middle Eastern instability back on August 2?
The second point it raises is that it’s wrong:
LONDON -(Dow Jones)- Political uncertainties over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, civil unrest in Nigeria and chaos in Iraq coupled with bottlenecks in the refining sector are likely to keep oil prices from falling in the near future, the London-based Centre for Global Energy Studies said Monday.
However, bearish underlying fundamentals including the slowing U.S. economy and its consequent impact on global economic growth and oil demand could prompt a sharp drop in oil prices if geopolitical tensions ease and the funds pull out of the market, CGES said in its monthly oil market report.
“An easing of tensions could cause a selloff in the futures markets without hedgers like airlines and utilities stepping in to take the slack, in which case a combination of rising inventories and falling futures prices would cause a major oil price correction,” the report said.
In fact, in a quick Google of “respectable economic analysis” it is pretty hard to find anyone who doesn’t cite instability in the Middle East as a contributor to high oil prices and anyone who describes such an argument as “thin”.
As people don’t like me pointing out that Mr Howard tells fibs, let’s just say that Johnnies 1 and 2 need to get their act together.
"Perhaps the secret of John Howard’s recent political success is that there are actually two of him. There’s Johnny 1, the one who says one thing because it seems like a good idea at the time, and then, when that statement becomes inconvenient, up pops Johnny 2 to recalibrate the story.
So back on August 2nd we had Johnny 1 saying this about the relationship between oil prices and instability in the Middle East (emphasis added):
Well petrol prices is the biggest problem Australians have with the economy at the moment. It worries me more than anything else, it’s not something that any government in Australia can control because everybody’s battling with the problem, everybody around the world….Everybody’s got the problem, America’s got it, Europe’s got it, Asia’s got it, the Middle East has got it, and it’s being compounded by the instability in the Middle East. Bear in mind that Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia are major suppliers of oil and they’re right in the middle of enormous conflict at the present time and that’s not doing anything to keep the price of oil down and that’s feeding through into the bowser at your local petrol service station.
Of course, such comments leave Johnny 1 open to questions of accountability about Australia’s role in Iraq, and more general questions about what is going on in the region. So along comes Johnny 2 to say, well, the complete opposite:
THREE weeks ago John Howard said the war in Iraq was contributing to high petrol prices.
Yesterday the Prime Minister did an about-face, describing the Iraq argument as very thin.
“The cause of high petrol prices is the surging world demand driven overwhelmingly by China,” he told ABC radio.
Mr Howard said petrol, now about $1.40 a litre, was $1.04 at the time of the 2004 federal election, when the war in Iraq had been raging for 18 months. “Overwhelmingly, the high price of oil is due to a surge in world demand and all the respectable economic analysis that I have seen comes to that conclusion.”
Still, despite Johnny 2 “correcting” Johnny 1’s story, Johnny 2 is still left with that last claim, that “all the respectable economic analysis that I have seen comes to that conclusion.”
The first point about this is that is begs the question: where was that “respectable economic analysis” when Johnny 1 was blaming Middle Eastern instability back on August 2?
The second point it raises is that it’s wrong:
LONDON -(Dow Jones)- Political uncertainties over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, civil unrest in Nigeria and chaos in Iraq coupled with bottlenecks in the refining sector are likely to keep oil prices from falling in the near future, the London-based Centre for Global Energy Studies said Monday.
However, bearish underlying fundamentals including the slowing U.S. economy and its consequent impact on global economic growth and oil demand could prompt a sharp drop in oil prices if geopolitical tensions ease and the funds pull out of the market, CGES said in its monthly oil market report.
“An easing of tensions could cause a selloff in the futures markets without hedgers like airlines and utilities stepping in to take the slack, in which case a combination of rising inventories and falling futures prices would cause a major oil price correction,” the report said.
In fact, in a quick Google of “respectable economic analysis” it is pretty hard to find anyone who doesn’t cite instability in the Middle East as a contributor to high oil prices and anyone who describes such an argument as “thin”.
As people don’t like me pointing out that Mr Howard tells fibs, let’s just say that Johnnies 1 and 2 need to get their act together.
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