[lbo-talk] Output Falling in Oil-Rich Mexico, and Politics Get the Blame

[Miles Jackson]

Doug Henwood wrote:
> As I recall the finance literature, there's not enough of a history  
> to state authoritatively that stock returns are significantly  
> different from zero over the long term. Since we've had stock markets  
> for several centuries, that's a lot of data that still falls short of  
> significance. So how can we generalize from Hubbert's n=1?
>
> Doug
> ___________________________________
>   
Two points:

1.  "n = 1" is misleading.  In a time series, the n is the number of 
time samples; thus n is large here, not 1.  Moreover, every year 
provides another opportunity to test Hubbert's model, and every year U. 
S. oil production provides further data that is consistent with the 
model.  --Yes, despite all the political and economic pressure for the 
U. S. to become "energy independent", despite all the tax breaks to oil 
companies to subsidize domestic oil production, despite all the gee-whiz 
new technology to exploit existing oil fields and find new oil fields, 
U. S. oil production continues to drop, just as Hubbert predicted.

2.  Hubbert's model also fits oil production patterns fairly well in 
other oil-producing nations like the UK and Norway.  Sure, we need 
further research, but there is in fact a growing body of data that 
empirically validates the regression model.

Miles