Gas Hysteria Continues

Sunday’s New York Times Magazine cover story was one part ‘Mad Max’ mixed with one part poor economics. The 7,400 word piece by Peter Maass was a gusher of scaremongering end-of-world predictions and claimed that an oil “crisis” is imminent. Maass filled his story with comments and views from Matthew Simmons, author of a new book called “Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy.” The story did its best to paint a great scary oil conspiracy and an inevitable “crisis ahead” “whether in a year or 2 or 10.”

Maass joined the growing journalism crowd by calling oil prices a “record.” Just as others before him, Maass ignored basic math and didn’t adjust the prices for inflation. Maass also referred to the threat of oil hitting $100. But then he quoted Simmons who said “I wasn’t talking about low triple digits.” Yet the same story said that oil prices would drop again. To quote Maass, “So after a brief windfall for producers, oil prices would slide as recession sets in.”

For more Gas Hysteria, go the Free Market Project Web site.