When the economy fell off the cliff last fall, Donald Trump predicted, "I'll tell you one piece of good news: you will see the price of oil drop like a rock!" And he went on to say, "I hate OPEC. Every time the stock market goes up, OPEC raises the price of a barrel of crude and takes the profits. Every single time!"
He was right. Within days gasoline prices followed the price per barrel down, down, down from the high over $4.00 a gallon last summer to a little over $1.00 at its lowest point in the depths of the stock market decline. But now, with the market improving, up, up, up goes the oil price again, creeping up through the dollar-something range to just over $2 at the pump. Then, yesterday, here, ka-boom! Up suddenly 16 cents per gallon all over town! They couldn't even wait for Memorial Day weekend.
Some say they're just responding to increased demand for summer driving. I say balderdash, they're following OPEC's deathlock stranglehold on the Dow. Summer driving's actually predicted to be lower this year, but the oil companies and station owners are gleefully jumping the gun on declaring the recession over, I guess. (Odd how they all seem to agree on the same amount to hike their prices in one day in our "free market system" isn't it.)
But The Donald's insights may provide a convenient index to how much we've grown the economy since the pits last January. If gas has gone from about a dollar to about two dollars per gallon, then the economic recovery, by the Trump Index, has come back about 50%. Similarly, if it fell from about four dollars per gallon to about two dollars, it has fallen about 50%.
Forget about the Dow, the Consumer Confidence Index, the Gross Domestic Product and all the other imposters that attempt to tell us how well or how poorly we're doing. Trump's OPEC Greed index may be all we need.
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