I'll admit it. I don't understand fall fashions, and I don't understand gas prices.
Fashion week just ended in New York City. The New York Times carried several photos on Monday. In each of them, attractive women were wearing hideous dresses, and they all carried facial expressions that suggested they felt as humiliated as they looked. One woman wore what looked like two spiral pancakes on her throat and a cabbage leaf on her head.
Then came a story from McClatchy Newspapers that said sport coats are "all the buzz" this season for men. If you must buy a suit, expect the legs to be slimmer, and perhaps a bit shorter, than last year. You might end up looking like you're expecting to have to walk through the aftermath of the next hurricane, which means your choice of socks will be important, too.
I understand the free market. At least, I like to think I do. But I have a hard time believing the market is making these decisions. Designers seem to be pulling hem lines and lapel widths in different directions just for the fun of it. The market just tempers the most outrageous ideas. No matter what comes down a runway in New York, you probably won't see a lot of cabbage-leaf hats this year.
Which brings me to gas prices. Every Memorial Day we see the effects of supply and demand. That's the start of vacation season, which means it's the start of long drives in minivans with children who would rather watch DVDs in the back seat than look at the Grand Canyon. The price of gas goes up because the demand for it increases. After Labor Day, when things settle down, the price goes down again — at least in theory.
But theories can be as accurate as hem-line guessing. Even within the old predictable pattern, some strange things are going on around here.
Maybe you don't remember, but this newspaper carried a headline last Dec. 14 that said, "Utah gas prices lowest in U.S." Back then, the average price in Utah was $2 per gallon, according to AAA. (Seems like decades ago, doesn't it?) No one had any real explanations for this at the time. Someone speculated that a new Costco in Bountiful was keeping prices artificially low up there (its price was $1.74). But that didn't explain why Provo's average price was $1.93 while the rest of the nation was $2.18. Utah was just, well, a cheap place to buy gas.
But this week the headline was, "Gas prices 5th highest in U.S." Today the average price of gas in Utah is $2.94 a gallon. Only in Nevada, California, Hawaii and Idaho can you find it more expensive. The national average is $2.61.
In other words, prices here did go up and down with the rest of the world market, but they went up a lot more than they went down.
So, what gives?
You can't really blame OPEC. The price of crude has fallen to its lowest level since last March. Besides, a detailed analysis of gasoline prices in this newspaper last May noted that Utahns don't get any of their gas from the Middle East. Nor does it come from any of the refineries that were damaged by last year's hurricanes. Three-fourths of what we use comes from Utah and surrounding states. Another quarter comes from Canada, specifically the tar sands of Alberta.
We're constantly told that the industry sets prices based on what it expects it will need to buy gas in the future. But with the price of oil declining, it would seem the future looks pretty cheap. Is demand here really much higher than it is elsewhere?
Amid all this head-scratching, I read a column in the Washington Post by Lester R. Brown of the Earth Policy Institute. He raises the interesting idea that the high price of gas might tempt farmers to grow wheat, corn, soybeans and sugarcane to be converted into auto fuel rather than for use as food. The market, in other words, might force the world to starve itself so it can keep driving.
Interesting theory, but that may be giving the oil market a lot more credit than it deserves.
I can't help thinking someone, somewhere is just making all this stuff up for the fun of it. I'd like to hang a cabbage leaf on his head.
Jay Evensen is editor of the Deseret Morning News editorial page. E-mail: even@desnews.com.