By Roger Phelps -- The Aug. 6 issue of the Telegraph ran my "analysis" piece predicting a then-$4.50 gasoline price would plummet to $3.30 a gallon by Election Day.

It happened, and then some. So, I was half-right. And I'm no longer convinced I was right for the right reason.

So, I'll pull my neck in, eat some crow and avoid going out on the second limb of the tree that I was barking up. Just because I'm chicken, I withdraw a prediction I made that "soon after the election, gas prices will spike sharply upward." I'm doing that as Ronald Reagan's trickle-down economic theory melts down for good. I remain convinced that acting on that theory allowed market manipulation that transcended supply-and-demand.

The earlier piece cited a 2006 election-year gas-price pattern and noted it was within the realm of possibility for an oil-market manipulation to be pulled off to lower this summer's $4.50 price to where voters would resume complacency and not vote to t'row da bums out this November. The Telegraph got a letter on the August piece from Terry Ann Crumpley, who said there was "no analysis whatsoever" in it. What she meant was there was no analysis of the kind she would have done. Crumpley claimed it was impossible to manipulate an oil market.

But even were "supply and demand" a law of physics, which it isn't, so-called markets don't obey laws of physics -- or, really, any other laws, including United States Statutes. Just look at the shambles of the credit, the investment and the commodities markets and the FBI investigations of fraud across the board..

Nor do so-called markets obey quasi-religious doctrine, or ideology, the kind of thing that supply and demand, I'm increasingly convinced, is.

Heck, we even have a recent presidential candidate, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, telling Fox News audiences he believes "terrorists" are capable of manipulating the U.S. stock market -- people who, almost by definition, don't own any big oil-futures contracts or the money to buy them, or any oil fields, derricks, pipelines, refineries or gas pumps. Well, if "terrorists" have the capability, then the above-mentioned group has more.

The Telegraph’s Roger Phelps can be reached at rogerp@goldcountrymedia.com.