A funny thing happened on the way to work the other day. BBC radio reported that the Chinese regime of Hu Jin Tao would increase the price of petrol by US$0.46 a gallon. In its infinite wisdom, the Chinese leadership thinks this will dampen demand for gasoline by a marauding population of desperately capitalist, car-mad Chinese. In fact, it thought it would be doing its part in lowering the global price of oil.

Guess what? World oil price dipped. And almost every major global media outlet, led by frenzied Americans, of course, was all over the story. The question they posed was whether China’s action could be the start of a downward spiral of world oil prices – just to show the oil rich Arab sheikhs that despite their cartel, their stranglehold on the world’s oil price is not a forgone conclusion after all.