Today Drudge linked to a USA Today post that predicted $1 a gallon gas. I made that prediction sometime ago and also predicted (actually there had been an announcement to that effect) a $10 smartphone that Walmart would market. Parenthetically the $10 smartphone is a reality which I proved to myself by purchasing one with the pick up at store option. I cost $9.82 before sales tax. If you seriously need a phone you may want to spend a little more but if you just want something that your 9 year old can carry in his hip pocket or maybe something you could smuggle into your girlfriend in the county lockup this is the phone for you. Getting back to the prediction of dollar gas there is really only one variable. Supply. If nothing changes in world oil production the price of crude will eventually break $20 per barrel which would give us $1 a gallon gasoline. In the post I linked above I noted that the price of gas had dropped to $1.38 in Henderson, Kentucky before rebounding.
Another prediction that caught my eye was a post at the Hill that noted Economist Art Laffer predicted a Republican landside. “I would be surprised if the Republicans don’t take 45, 46, 47 states out of the 50,” Laffer told host John Catsimatidis on “The Cats Roundtable” on New York’s AM-970 on Sunday...“I mean, I think we’re going to landslide this election.” Where does the Hill get these kids? In the video the narrator refers to Laffer as Lafer and says he served in the Reagan Administration which is tantamount to saying Ike served in the Second World War. Laffer gave the nation the Laffer curve which provided the intellectual underpinning for Reagan's tax cuts. It replaced the Phillips curve which provided the intellectual underpinning for the excuses made for Jimmy Carter's dismal economy.
I'm not sure I'm as bullish on the next Republican nominee as Laffer and I don't know his track record as a political prognosticator but as my blogging partner noted I do see wide road to the White House for Donald Trump. I have written that Hillary will be the weakest candidate the Democrats have fielded since George McGovern and the most flawed candidate in the history of the republic. Furthermore I'll predict the Clinton campaign will be just as inept at handling Trump as the Bush campaign. While 45 to 47 state projections are maybe at nose bleed levels only a one million vote swing in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia would have won those 4 states and the presidency for Mitt Romney. There are easily one million disaffected Democrats in those states and if Trump cannot flip them the Republican Party should disband. A year from now we should be buying dollar a gallon gas, talking on $10 smartphones (well maybe our kids and grand kids will) and looking forward to Trump's inauguration.
What? No comments on the bankruptcy of at least 36 oil and gas companies? Or the fact that OPEC is trying to put the US out of the oil business? How do you feel about that issue?
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