Re: crude oil
My personal opinion, with absolutely no hard empirical evidence to back it up, is it may have something to do with the government allowing the oil companies to merge, and merge, and merge again, until you now have a few vast monopolies that have driven the independents out of business. With Congress looking the other way, they can now fix prices at pretty much any level they want as long as they're generous with their campaign donations and can come up with some rationale that the media will buy.
Similar to the trusts from a hundred years ago that Teddy Roosevelt busted up.
|