On 11/29/06, Carrol Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Nov 29, 2006, at 12:54 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> > In the last 50 years how many
> > price-changes of a few dollars a barrel have there been?
>
> The average of the absolute value of the yearly change in the yearly
> average price of oil is 22% since 1861; 27% since 1970. In other
> words, the price of oil is extremely volatile.
O.K. And the implication I would draw from this is that when a point
wanders all over the place all the time _nothing_ whatever can be
inferred from one particular variation, or even half a dozen. I'm not
sure what even in principle _might_ a variation that could be assigned
any meaning.
One of the determinants would be the degree of capacity for collective
action on the part of oil producers, and it would be interesting to
track that.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
