OPEC has certainly done questionable things in the past, and anyone who denies that is simply ignoring reality.
It was as much the ridiculous speculation on the futures market that drove up the price of oil as anything alongside the excuse of instability in the Middle East (since it isn't like the Middle East is magically safer than it was a few months ago, just look at the attacks in Mumbai). The oil companies didn't even need to do anything dishonest, since speculators were doing it for them.
It used to be illegal for anyone to get involved in many aspects of the oil futures market unless they actually intended to use the oil, but we can thank deregulators that this is not longer the case. At least the artificial demand collapsed and is now back at realistic levels.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
