Sweet crude oil

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6399117.stm

This is an article on the ever rising price of oil. This time it is the sweet crude oil that turns out to be a type of petroleum that contains less than 0.5% sulfur. That makes it sweet, compared to a higher level of sulfur in sour crude oil.

Back to the story... The weather is also a factor that influences the local demand for heating oil. It is not surprising, that when a snow storms hit the biggest consumer of oil - US, the price of oil goes up. This is a natural rise caused by a shift of the whole demand curve. What intrigued me in the article is the OPEC policy to cut the supply of oil during the winter time. Not only the demand is higher but the supply is also smaller. Those facts combined with an unstable situation in Middle East, are the cause of the rise in price. It is just a shift of a line on a graph, but has such serious consequences.

The article also made me think about how important the price of oil is for the world economy. The statement that we live in an oil era is not exaggerated. The VC of most of businesses is depended on oil price. That means that it doesn't only influence the cost of using our cars but the price of every good or even service that we pay for.

" I see trees of green, red roses too"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/wisc/20070213/lo_wisc/10993944

This is local news about roses. Everybody buy roses for St. Valentines Day- this is an example of increase in demand in the period of time before this day that drives the prices up as well as the quantity demanded. I am not sure, but these changes in demand are caused by expectations for future.

What happened to supply and demand for roses this year is more than the natural increase in demand. Because of frosts in California this year roses crops decreased dramatically- just like after a hurricane in Connecticut this caused a decrease in supply of apples. Supply for roses was cut what caused an increase in price and a decrease quantity demanded.

In this situation, opposite to the ones that we talk about during class, those two changes happen in the same time. The roses market is much more complex than a graph with 2, 3 or 4 lines, but we can illustrate it using them what makes it easier to see why suddenly the price for roses doubles.

It happens because of a increase in demand and decrease in supply, which both contribute to this unusual jump of the prices.

More about the Super Bowl Ads

This is an article on Super Bowl Ads, that we discussed on the "main blog". I found more background to it in this article. The fact is that the bar is set higher and higher every year. Those commercials are the best of what producers can come up with. They are paying $2.6 mln for 30 sec of air time. This is the price for showing it to ablut 100mln viewers..
An interesting insight in this issue is that the ideas for three of those extremelly expensive ads came form the amateurs.
The article gives a link to all Super Bowl commercials. (HERE)
Its fun to see them againg.

Lets get it started.

OK, so here it is- my ECON blog. I don't know how it's going to work but we'll find out soon. My experiences with online assignments are rather negative- I hope this would be different.

Ms. Mcdaniel, could you show us a sample blog, done as you would like our to be done?