Oil-ay! Oil-ay! Oil-ay!

Geddit, sounds a bit like "Ole! Ole! Ole!" And would you believe that at around 14:30 on 20/3/12/ that's the sober version.

This was orginally supposed to be posted at around 11:30 on Sunday (18/3/12). However after extensive negotiation it's been decided that I'm only allowed to post it while the US equity markets are trading.

At around 16:00GMT on Thursday (15/3/12) - just as the UK Prime Minister was arriving in New York following his meeting with the US President - the US announced that the two men had agreed to release oil from their respective nation's strategic reserves. Apart from creating drama on the world stock markets the main objective was to trigger other nations to do the same bringing down global oil prices which although not yet high enough to threaten the global economy are high enough to make life very difficult for middle and lower income voters. Unfortunately a few hours later - following an Argentinian threat to take legal action over Falkland Islands oil exploration - the UK denied that it will be releasing oil from it's reserves.

What President Obama had failed to factor into his plan is that as far as the Monarchies are concerned his Presidency will expire at the end of 2012. The main way they intend to bring about this change is by conspiring to push up the global oil price ideally to derail the US economic recovery but they'll settle for driving up retail gasoline prices. Perhaps it is a shame then that President Obama is prepared to be the agent of his own destruction both by p*ssing off the people who've been carrying him for the past for years and by further driving up the oil price by pressing for ever tighter sanctions on Syria's and Iran's oil industries. After all if Saudi Arabia if want the US' support on Syria they should at least offer the US some sort of incentive. Of course though as part of the negotiations since Sunday Saudi Arabia has agreed to increase it's oil output and the global price appears to have stabilised at around USD107 per barrel.

Now who's feeling brave enough to explain to the White House that the commodity markets that deal in things like oil don't actually ever close?