Meet The Press needs economist with GED: Tim Russert struggles with supply and demand

Steve Verdon at OutsideTheBeltway has a straightfaced commentary on, well, here's the first couple lines,

MR. RUSSERT: Mr. Secretary, if demand is up but supply is down, why are the profits so high?

MR. BODMAN (Secretary of Energy): For that reason.

MR. RUSSERT: No, think about that.

MR. BODMAN: You know?

MR. RUSSERT: Play it out.

MR. BODMAN: Demand is up.

MR. RUSSERT: Correct.

MR. BODMAN: Right?

MR. RUSSERT: Right.

MR. BODMAN: So you’ve got more demand, you’re going to force price up.

You’ve got limited supply, and you’re going to have…

Verdon draws a picture for Russert. Actually, two. And they're very good ECON 101 pictures.

Rachel Sklar at The Huffington Post did a Sunday wrap up on the show, Russert Watch: Gas Is Expensive, Oil Companies Are Greedy, Change Is Inevitable. As a wrap, I think I'll stick with the lining on my cat box.

Even though she acknowledged the stand up routine - Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is comedy gold, even though she acknowledged that the oil corps. earned 8.5 cents profits per dollar last year, not far off the the all-industry pan-economy average of 7.7 cents, Rachel went out of her way to disparage and trivialize all that with that immediately struck me as actually a pretty significant premium, considering the massive output -- I mean, the oil companies sell more dollars than a lot of other industries.

Personally, I'd have stuck with the "Who's on first?" routine.