The Clown Congress does it again

The Power Line blog observes that House Democrats are responding to high gasoline prices with Congressional kabuki theater (embedded hyperlink removed):

Today House Democrats appealed to ignorance, in their usual fashion, by summoning executives from the five biggest oil companies to berate them for high gasoline prices. This is fundamentally stupid in at least two respects.

Personally, I would have thought that government by public humilation had gone out of style with the 19th century Manchu dynasty. The problem, of course, is that liberals blame all economic problems on oligarchs. Thus, there are two theories as to why gasoline prices are so high:

1. High gasoline prices are caused by a complex mixture of insufficient supplies of oil and refined gasoline, an increase in demand for these products, instabilities in the supply chain of these products, inefficiencies in market structure or distribution, inefficiencies in government regulation, and general irrational behavior on the part of market participants.



2. None of the above. High gasoline prices are entirely due to profiteering by oligarchs.

Despite the fact that theory #1 is generally known as "reality" and theory #2 is generally known as "insanity", liberals nevertheless believe that theory #2 is correct. One can see the same general analysis in reporting about the ongoing banking crisis. Some people assume that speculative bubbles are caused by a complex mixture of market inefficiencies, deficiencies in government regulation, and irrational behavior on the part of market participants; many liberals suspect that the banking crisis was deliberately created by oligarchs in order to enslave poor people.