The reason why the Americans, Europeans, Japanese and others who buy oil want the price of oil to go down is that their economies would benefit if it dropped. The Saudis, Mexicans, Norwegians, and others who produce oil would like the price of oil to rise, because their economies would benefit if it did. Clearly, it is not so much about the price as it is whether you are buying or selling, and most importantly, how much.

The two leading candidates for becoming major alternative energy sources are wind and solar. Both are subject to outages. The sun goes down at night and the wind sometimes fails to blow. So what do we do during the interruptions?

The broad claim is that oil prices are high in significant part because the money is pocketed by oil company executives. It isn’t just Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats who make the claim. Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly has been as outspoken as anyone about the huge payouts. So how much are we paying at the pump that goes to these rich guys?