This economy and what people think about it doesn’t get any easier to read. We’ve been lulled into a false sense of security in Las Vegas compared with the rest of the country because of the boom in gaming and construction but it’s still hard to read how the Conference Board numbers put consumer confidence very high, as the Associated Press reports, at the same time as gas prices have been going through the roof.

The business group did warn, however, that more rises would slow consumer spending, which accounts for two-thirds of all U.S. economic activity. The board’s economist says the improving job numbers have been pushing confidence up.

Of course, cynics (like the Business Press Blog) are unimpressed with symbolic measures like the FTC’s investigation into possible manipulation of oil prices and the decision to halt deposits to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

There probably are some people in the oil industry who are rounding up not down and there is also lots of anticipatory pricing - setting the price on the rumor not the crisis. And the oil companies are making out like bandits but the use of words like “manipulation” is misleading.

Oil companies have a sordid history, no doubt, but the price rise is almost all driven by fear of supply disruption with the Iraq and Iran situations. Iraq has not sold as much oil as war planners hoped and Iran’s messing with nuclear weapons means that country’s supply could disappear. The biggest single thing that would lower prices is a resolution to the Iran foreign policy problem. And the next biggest thing would be a speedy return to normality in Iraq but neither seems very likely very soon.

And the more the President pretends that he has control over the price of oil, the more he will end up getting hammered by critics who will blame him for failing to fix the problem.

And the Strategic Petroleum Reserve thing is just silly. The last energy law that went through Congress authorized the Energy Department to fill the reserve to one billion barrels. But the department’s latest figures show that the country is using 9 million barrels a day just to fuel cars. Do the math: the SPR, even if had been filled, wouldn’t be more than a drop in the bucket.

President Bush said again that hydrogen cells are the long-term answer. They are and you can read about them at the Business Press Web site.