TOWARD ENERGY INDEPENDENCE – AT 11:31 A.M. ET:  This is a victory for the United States, even though the forces behind Obama have fought tooth-and-nail against the very steps that are making it possible.  From Larry Kudlow at RealClearPolitics:   

Seldom has so much good news been portrayed so negatively. Oil prices continue to fall in the U.S. and around the world, but near everyone in the media is grumpy about it. The headlines today are among the silliest I’ve seen: Energy-company stocks are declining, oil deflation is an economic threat, the Fed might raise rates much later than expected, OPEC is dissolving, shale companies are going bankrupt, Russia is going bankrupt(!), and on and on.

Well, most of this is just humbug. Lower oil prices are unambiguously positive.

First, U.S. oil production has nearly doubled in recent years to 9 million barrels a day, and the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) expects U.S. supply to rise by more than 1 million barrels a day next year. And it is this supply increase that is driving down prices. Saudi Arabia and OPEC have essentially thrown in the towel, surrendering to the inevitability of lower prices from exploding U.S. energy production.

This is not only a triumph of U.S. energy independence, it is a victory for the workings of the free market. Greater supply, not government cartels, is driving down prices.

And the latest oil-price drop of nearly $8 a barrel makes the economic outlook even rosier. Apart from the declining share prices of some oil producers, virtually every other aspect of the world economy benefits, including most world stock markets. (By the way, the IEA reports that most production in the Bakken formation, one of the main drivers of shale-oil output, remains profitable at or below $42 a barrel.) And here in the U.S., the oil-price drop is a huge tax cut that will primarily help the middle class.

Senator Chuck Schumer -- who is still licking his wounds from the huge Democratic midterm losses in the Senate -- is out there attacking Obamacare as the wrong policy to halt the decline of middle-class incomes. What he’d like to see is new big-government policies (wait, wasn’t Obamacare a big-government policy?), including tax favors for targeted segments of the economy, presumably to bolster the middle class.

But guess what? We just had a free-market tax cut that will boost middle-class incomes and just about everything else.

The American energy revolution, combined with the market forces of supply and demand, is delivering something on the order of a $125 billion tax cut. Not only have wholesale oil prices dropped from about $100 a barrel to $66, but gasoline prices have fallen from near $4 a gallon to $2.78 at the week’s close.

That’s a tax cut. With no big-government spending hikes.

COMMENT:  All true.  Now watch Hillary Clinton take credit for it.  And watch the mainstream media back her up.

November 29, 2014