The Rising Price of Oil Has Done Less Damage in Europe Than in America
We filled up the car yesterday. The price of diesel fuel was 1.57 euros per liter. That works out to almost $10 a gallon.
Curiously, the rising price of oil has done less damage in Europe than in America. Partly because people were already used to high fuel prices, partly because Europeans use less energy, partly because the euro has gone up against the dollar (making oil less expensive in euro terms) and partly because, since fuel is so heavily taxed, the increase caused by rising prices of the raw material is less as a percentage of the whole.
Europe was designed before the machine age. Its dense, old cities - a few still surrounded by stone walls - were meant to protect people from Goths. Vikings, Huns - and the English. Now, those cities protect people from rising energy prices. People can walk to local shops. They take buses, metros and tramways to work. They live in houses with thick walls...shutters...and often double glazed windows.
Bill Bonner
The Daily Reckoning Australia
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About the Author
Best-selling investment author Bill Bonner is the founder and president of Agora Publishing, one of the world's most successful consumer newsletter companies. Owner of both Fleet Street Publications and MoneyWeek magazine in the UK, he is also author of the free daily e-mail The Daily Reckoning.