From Clay Risen, writing at The Plank:

Remember that the price-per-barrel is not a direct reflection of demand, but rather it’s filtered through a market. Expectations of continued demand, not the demand itself, drove oil prices to unrealistic levels. When it looked like that demand would drop temporarily, investors fled. But current prices are unrealistically low, a sort of concave bubble, and regardless of demand they’re set for yet another correction. In the long run, the brute facts will adhere: dwindling supply, skyrocketing demand, and a failure to develop a coherent alternative global energy strategy. If I had some extra cash, I’d be buying myself some crude oil right now. Sweet, sweet crude.

One wonders what a “direct reflection of demand” not “filtered through a market” would look like. I’m not sure that sentence contains any meaning.

But it’s the ending that’s interesting: “If I had some extra cash ….” Let’s turn that formulation around: If Clay Risen of The New Republic actually knew what oil prices were going to do, he’d have the extra cash to purchase some oil contracts, because he’d be making money faster than the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing as the world’s most successful commodities trader. I wonder how much of his own money Marty Peretz would be willing to bet on the economic insights of Clay Risen. (And isn’t “Clay Risen” a great name? There’s some sort of Christian allegory in there, somewhere.)