More On the Commodity Bubble

I am dubious as to his solutions, but another writer backs up my thesis that we are in the middle of another asset bubble.

Nothing makes conservatives queasier than regulation, especially of financial markets. But oil’s meteoric rise from $50 in January 2007 to almost $139 on Friday calls for drastic measures that might solve this crisis without a measure as drastic as the gas tax Charles Krauthammer proposed on Friday.

In the past, energy price appreciations of last week’s magnitude have typically been caused by supply disruptions — like the 1973 OPEC embargo, or the 4 million barrels per day in lost production that followed the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, which restricted international oil supplies for several years and caused a spike in prices.