Daily Score Blog

This trend may not be fully reflected at the gas pump yet, but the cost of oil is plummeting right along with the stock market.  Starting in mid-summer oil prices slumped a bit, then slumped some more...and then regained a bit of ground.  But just about when the economic news started looking especially dismal, the price of oil cratered -- falling from over $120 to under $70 in less than a month.  (The chart is courtesy of the ever-helpful wtrg.com.)

Uber-blogger Kevin Drum thinks we may be witnessing the deflation of an oil price bubble -- a bubble that, like the real estate market, was fueled more by speculation than by the fundamentals of supply and demand.

I think it's a legitimate theory. When prices were at their peak, speculation in the oil markets really was far more common than people realized. Investors, rather than refiners and manufacturers with a genuine need to purchase oil, held over four-fifths of all oil futures contracts earlier this year. As prospects in housing and finance dimmed, some investors probably saw green in "black gold" (Ok, that was weird) and pumped some money into commodity markets -- pushing up prices to unnatural heights.

Still, I don't think that speculation is the whole story.  Market fundamentals played a role too -- creating price volatility that's as much a problem for consumers as for energy companies.

Paul Krugman was my favorite New York Times columnist even before he won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics this week. His column on Friday lined right up with my current obsession: federal stimulus spending, quick, lots of it. He writes: “Right now, increased government spending is just what the doctor ordered, and concerns about the budget deficit should be put on hold.”

We’re plunging into what is looking like the worst recession in decades—precisely the circumstances in which federal governments should spend more than they take in, borrowing the extra. Yes, it’s a horrible time to accumulate additional debt in the United States, given our imponderably enormous national debt. But the alternative to additional debt is colossally worse: a depression.

Like many folks these days, I'm really in no financial position to be adding to my list of home projects.  Still, it's hard for me not to daydream a little bit -- especially about gadgets that would save water, energy, and space in the home.

Consider, for example, a wonder-appliance that's used widely overseas: a super-efficient clothes washer and dryer in a single unit.  Yes, such things do exist, even in the US, but they're far more common in boats and RVs than in people's homes.

Combining two major appliances into one saves manufacturing energy, and is a perfect space-saving solution for apartments and smaller homes. But for some of these combos, the coolest feature is a super-fast spin cycle that extracts most of the water from wet clothes through centrifugal force, not heat.  The super-spin is a great idea: clothes dryers use more electricity in US homes than any other appliance except for fridges; and converting electricity into heat is ridiculously inefficient. (Yuck.) It's much better to squeeze your clothes dry than to heat them.