What’s the difference between a reporter and a pundit? The reporter looks behind the obvious. All pundits do, most of the time, is belabor the obvious.
Alas, sometimes what seems obvious happens to be false.
Take Charles Gibson, TV journalist. He sort of pretends to be a reporter, right? But when he asked questions, recently, of GOP candidates, he made a statement that set him squarely in the pundit class. And proved him wrong.
He said that “intellectual honesty” required just plain admitting that oil prices can only go up.
Yup, only up.
He thought “honesty” demanded such a statement of the obvious.
But I get the feeling that all Good Ol’ Charlie has proved is he doesn’t have one ounce of skepticism in his head . . . or any decent economic perspective.
Why say this? Well, though it may seem we’ve entered a time of “peak oil” production, much of today’s scarcity has little to do with normal production, but with war and the limitations of supply and delivery caused by war.
Further, throughout much of the world the price of oil has been pretty flat. But because the value of the dollar has plummeted, the prices we Americans have to pay for oil have shot up.
If we weren’t at war, and our government weren’t horribly in debt, the dollar would be better, supplies would be better, and Charlie Gibson would widely be seen as wrong, wrong, wrong.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.