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POPS Analyst Warns of $200/Barrel Oil* *One barrel of crude oil is 42 gallons (or $4.76 per gallon) In the Cato-at-Liberty blog post "Is There an Oil Price Bubble?" Cato senior fellow Jerry Taylor writes: "The most recent Fed actions to combat the deteriorating state of the macroeconomy added even more fuel to the oil price fire. With market actors increasingly convinced that the Fed is willing to entertain inflation in the course of injecting liquidity into the market, investors are looking for investments to hedge against inflation. And what do you know? Returns on commodities have historically been better during inflationary periods than during non-inflationary periods. Ben Bernanke thus sent another strong infusion of cash into commodity futures -- again, largely into oil and gas futures.
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POPSThe Oracle of $200 Oil Goldman Sachs made headlines with his prediction of oil as high as $200 a barrel. What does this mean? $6 a gallon at the pump. Is this rapidly becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy? The somewhat breathless coverage here reminds me of an old parable from the 90s. An analyst named Henry Blodget predicted in 1998 that Amazon.com stock would hit $400 (when it was currently trading at $250ish). In a frenzy, Amazon hit it within a month. Of course, it went on to collapse spectacularly in 2000. A decade later, Amazon's never returned to trading at that level...