Oil Prices Are Falling. I Still Want To Bust OPEC.

It's an illegal cartel, it jacks up prices artificially, and enough is enough.

The markets tanked today on news that a new Covid variant out of South Africa called Omicron contains so many mutations that it “represents a big jump in evolution,” which doesn’t sound good. The U.S. placed travel restrictions on Botswana, Eswatini (formerly known as Swaziland), Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, and of course South Africa. The price of oil dropped 10 percent.

This last perhaps reduces the urgency of a New Republic piece I posted yesterday proposing that we bust OPEC, the illegal petroleum cartel that the United States has tolerated for 60 years. But I still think this would be a very good time to do it. It probably requires an act of Congress, but the legislation in question has bipartisan support and it once was cosponsored by Sen. Joe Biden (D.-Del.). So there’s that. You can read my piece here.

I also applauded earlier this week Biden’s renomination of Jerome Powell for another term as Fed chairman. My principal reason is Sen. Joe Manchin (D.-W.Va.). You can read that here.