This FRONT PAGE post on CNBC argues that oil will go down $40 a barrel if Obama wins because of the political risk premium currently being placed on oil due to Israel-Iran tension. But does the article provide any explanation of where this number came from? No. It just outlines how Obama’s soothing rhetoric might undermine the case for risk being priced in. But why not $25 or $100 for that matter? The $40 dollar figure makes appearances all the time…BUT SHOW ME THE MODEL! Is it really as simple as price divergence between oil quotes in dollars and other currencies? If a person is motivated enough to read an economists blog post on CNBC about geopolitics’ impact on oil prices, they probably can handle a cursory explanation of the model that got you to $40.

In general, I think we are all experiencing an explosion in content but it is getting harder to get insight. Models are not always explained. We can quickly access a lot of opinions through the internet, but we don’t always see through to the building blocks of those opinions. I hate surrendering my judgment by not being able to see the building blocks. And you have to wonder if seemingly unrelated messes like sub-prime and global warming aren’t being compounded by the fact that cotidian use of web-based information is habitualizing us as information aggregators of topline insight. “Hey, if the ratings agencies say its good, how bad could these mortgages be?” or “Well, some nerds say warming is happening, some say it isn’t? Who to believe?” seems eerily familiar to the personal decision-making that people make in this era of the internet search.