Remember, a few months ago when crude oil was at it’s highest (Unleaded hit >$4 in my neighborhood) and natural gas was spiking as well?

Considering both are falling (Unleaded is currently $1.85 in my neighborhood), both are sold in US Dollars on the world market, and the US Dollar is trading at it’s highest value in 8 months, I’ve been wondering what’s been so dramatically changing the value of $1 over the course of the year.

While I’m still looking for an answer, I thought this 2 year old blog post was quite prescient.

“…let’s hope Democrats can take the White House in 2008 through good politics and good policy rather than from a crash on Wall Street and a stagnating economy.” – Mark Thoma – University of Oregon, Dept of Econ – on Monday, December 4, 2006

This is the great thing about the proliferation of blogging and good search engines. Separating relevance from timeliness.

Thoma quotes a Robert Reich posts that describes how Hank Paulson’s been playing chicken with the Chinese (via interest rates) for at least 2 years. Smells close, but not quite it.