On Tue, 12 Aug 2008, The FT's Lex Column was quoted saying:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/80fcc75a-6805-11dd-8d3b-0000779fd18c.html
> "Why are oil bulls and goldbugs so quiescent? With oil consumption
> falling in North America and recessionary signals coming from Europe,
> weak demand trumps geopolitics. Moreover, one of the pipelines crossing
> Georgia was shut down already and that had failed to support oil prices
> even before the shooting started..."
First quibble: the second sentence isn't true. The attack in Turkey last week on the BTC pipeline did in fact give oil prices their first bump in four days, sending it back above $120.
Secondly, just to emphasize what Jordan said, and what this article itself says later on and should have led with, the currently rising dollar is lowering the prices of dollar-denominated commodities. And to the extent that the Georgia war led to a fall in the Euro (fear of Russia rampant, suddenly insecure-looking energy supplies), it accentuated that movement.
So it's not that loony even on the micro level. And like Doug and Jordan both said, this was also a week in which there was a large counter-movement of a bubble deflating.
Michael