Thanks, maven. I thought your point was plenty elegant, I just restated it hastily. The new thing in my post was a suggestion as to a meaningful new benchmark...in particular one that would measure the distance between the prices perceived by one enormous pool of consumers(Americans) and the prices now actually paid by another (Europeans). I expect something along those lines could be developed by more knowledgeable people such as Jerôme and/or The Oil Drummers.