Ground Floor: The closest I've come to trading in oil is nipping along to the petrol station to fill the tank before prices went up again, thus adding to the number of people who've heard assurances from experts that current prices are unjustified and unsustainable in the long term but who know that the long term could mean a couple of years, not weeks.
Last week, European Monetary Affairs Commissioner Mr Joaquin Almunia reiterated the view that prices should be lower based on fundamentals. Is everyone just talking their book?
As I pumped the petrol I tried to think of how the fundamentals justify $20 (€16.49) per barrel again but it wasn't easy. The price of everything depends on supply and demand, and right now demand is in the ascendant while supply is precarious. There's conflict in the Middle East and Nigeria, political uncertainty in Venezuela and political interference in Russia.
Oil exploration companies have not been exploiting new fields with the same success as before and some of the old fields are producing less - around 6.8 billion barrels a day over the last three years compared with 11.4 billion in the previous five years.
Demand is soaring, thanks mainly to China's spectacular growth. And although many of the western economies are less dependent on oil than they were 25 years ago we are still oil consumers. In fact the US is 88 per cent more oil efficient than it was in 1979 but it is actually using 7 per cent more.
For us to be in the same situation financially, with regard to oil prices, we'd have to see it trade at around $80 dollars a barrel. But nobody predicts that it will go that high - because fundamentals don't justify it.
If I'd been given a barrel of oil for the number of times that I've heard people say that fundamentals don't justify particular prices, I could set up my own oil company by now. The fact is that, whatever the fundamentals might be saying, more traders believe that - for all of the reasons above - prices won't come down.
And if they don't come down, well, they've got to buy now. Because if they don't buy now and prices continue to rise, they'll be worse off. It happens all the time in markets and the oil market is no different.
There is one additional factor pushing prices up, though - a factor which works in all other markets too - and that's the hedge funds. You know, those traders who make money whether or not the market is going up or down? The funds that nearly sparked off an equity price crisis courtesy of LTCM a few years ago? When those guys get their teeth into something they need a good reason to let go.
Some estimates say that up to 20 per cent of the current hike in oil prices is due to hedge traders and until they see a compelling reason to stop buying oil futures and start selling them again, then we can talk all we want about fundamentals but prices won't ease.
If I was a hedge trader of oil I'd be looking at pictures of burning oil wells in Iraq and thinking that I'll probably sit pretty on my position, thanks very much, regardless of the pronouncements from the International Energy Agency or Opec or European finance ministers.
Consumers want to believe that the good times (or at least the reasonable times) can continue to roll. There is a whole generation of people out there who have never lived through a recession and who believe that cutting back means not having more than two holidays a year. They don't want to hear stories of compulsory power cuts and turning down the central heating.
Neither do the rest of us - we might be less oil dependent but we sure are lifestyle dependent and less inclined to sit huddled in a room with the thermostat down.
While they ignore any notion of further shocks to the system because of higher oil prices, the US authorities still worry about consumerism in the US. Not the moral issues of consumerism, of course, just the fact that the consumers aren't consuming enough.
Consumer confidence is still shaky across the water and, despite the occasional good employment number, the so-called recovery is still more jobless than job-creating. July saw a mere 32,000 added to the non-farm payroll.
George W Bush had waxed lyrical on positive news of previous reports, saying that his tax cuts were having the desired effect and helping job creation. But with the fall off in jobs, he's having to revise that strategy. (Well, he's just ignoring it.)
Yet the Fed raised rates at its last meeting which seemed to indicate a slightly more optimistic view about the economy. I'm still not entirely sure where their optimism comes from. Although on the one hand it gives some support to George W's claims that the economy is strong and getting stronger, allied with further oil price hikes it could add to inflationary pressures which won't help things very much either.
It's a fine tightrope to walk for someone who has an election in November.
Meantime, Europe isn't exactly storming ahead. Euro-zone growth for the first quarter of the year was a somewhat dismal 2 per cent, hardly a stellar performance especially when the commission is now forecasting 1.7 per cent growth for the year as a whole. But intriguing news from France where the finance minister, Mr Nicolas Sarkozy, has made interest on consumer loans tax-deductible in an attempt to spur growth.
It may have worked - spending on manufactured goods went up 4.2 per cent in June and France's GDP grew by 3.2 per cent in quarter two. Now there's a fear among European finance ministers that the French will play a re-run of their tax-cutting on petrol and fuel of 2000, which lead to problems in other EU countries.
Plus ça change, and all that!
