April 2012

Do You Want to Be Intellectually Honest?

Michael Giberson Some techniques for checking the tendency toward extreme partisanship, which can be a ready source of intellectual errors (source): •Take opposing points of view at face value. It is more comfortable to treat opposing points of view reductively. That is, rather than deal with a different viewpoint, we prefer to explain it away. …

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The Energy Price Version of “This Time It’s Different”

Michael Giberson David Wessel’s economics column at the Wall Street Journal takes a look at an IMF analysis of commodities prices since 1973. In the process, he makes an odd claim about energy prices. Wessel writes: To help distinguish temporary trends from long-lasting ones, International Monetary Fund economists recently charted the inflation-adjusted prices of four …

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Natural Gas Reserves May Rapidly Disappear (and Later Reappear)

Michael Giberson At Toronto’s The Globe and Mail, Nathan Vanderklippe reported, “Low natural gas price casts doubt on ‘proven’ reserves.” He explains how rapidly falling natural gas prices can cause reserves to disappear. And, by the way, with higher prices reserves can just as quickly reappear. It isn’t magic. But the nature of oil and …

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Great Strides Have Been Made Combating Price Gougers in Venzuela

Michael Giberson Venezuela “President” Hugo Chávez  has put his government strongly behind efforts to combat price gouging, which in this context means selling a good for more than the government’s permitted price. The policy has had the usual effects: shortages of ordinary consumer goods and queues reminiscent of Soviet-style communism. The New York Times reports, …

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Pat Wood: The Texas Tribune Interview

Michael Giberson Pat Wood, the former FERC chairman and former Texas PUC chairman, was interviewed recently by The Texas Tribune. Wood is surely one of KP‘s favorite ex-regulators, so of course we’re linking to the interview. Here’s just one bit: Wood: … There is also a lot that can be done, particularly on the energy …

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