THERE'S NO SURER SIGN THAT A PROBLEM HAS PASSED...:

Oil's Dramatic Price Retreat Ripples Around the World (Steven Mufson, 9/17/08, Washington Post)

Just two months ago, spiking petroleum prices were emboldening confrontational oil exporters such as Venezuela, Russia and Iran, fueling inflation anxiety at the Federal Reserve, raising expectations at American biofuel producers, and crimping the budgets of airlines and ordinary households alike.

Suddenly, the oil market's dynamic has changed. Prices have beaten a two-month retreat, confounding forecasts that many experts had just revised upward, fanning tensions within OPEC, dimming the financing prospects for alternative-fuel firms, and erasing tens of billions of dollars of value of energy stocks and oil and gas investments.

Prices remain extremely high by historical standards, and the House of Representatives, sensitive to voters' unhappiness, passed an energy bill that would allow oil drilling in new offshore areas, trim oil company tax breaks, ease the way for oil shale development and help finance alternative energy sources.

...than Democrats changing their mind about it.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 17, 2008 11:30 AM