Interesting article. The amazing thing I keep seeing over and over is this bizarre blind faith that it’s all about to be over.
All the assumptions, all the planning seems to be constantly around the Strait reopening “in the next week or two” whether that was at the beginning of the war, or now.
All that’s happening at the moment is we’re deferring the worst of the price shocks based on a hope it’ll all be avoided. Instead of the market prices moving higher to reduce demand and use, prices are being artificially kept down which is artificially preserving demand and speeding up the depletion of stocks. That’s all based on a bizarre hope that it’ll all be over before it comes back to bite us on the arse.
If prices had been allowed to go up, there would certainly be economic consequences. But it’d be more gradual than the now rapidly approaching scenario of a sudden precipice where we go from drawing down stocks to having no stocks left but with the same high level of demand to service. That’s a scenario that causes a massive spike in prices and a sudden shutdown of economic activity.
This has been one hell of a gamble, and I don’t think it’s going to pay off.
Yeah, also price doesn’t really slow demand very quickly since people rely on transportation. Especially in the US where electric charging station funding was canceled and most people need to drive at least an hour a day for commutes because of the “return to work” policies to revitalize commercial real estate that collapsed during COVID. Not many people can survive without right now. And if prices were to rise to their actual market driven prices right now, the Republican party would lose a ton of their flock with midterm elections not too far off. Of course, then again it’s always possible gasoline riots are the way the Republican party intends to stay in power. Good excuse to cancel elections I suppose. Their flock has taken every other loss of rights without complaining as long as they crack down harder on the enemy of the day, immigrants or trans people probably, or maybe the supreme court will finally get around to ending legal gay marriage as they’ve been threatening to do.
Blocked
:c
because?
