This article addresses a recent issue which has impacted many US citizens living along the Gulf Coast. It discusses  the impact that Hurricane Isaac has had on the price of oil and gas in the past couple of days. The national oil and gas prices have risen by 5 cents in one day. Areas which were most affected include Ohio, Indiana and Illinois where prices rose by up to 14 cents.  This increase in gas and oil prices can be blamed on the destructive affects of Hurricane Isaac. Isaac has flooded the oil hub located along the Gulf Coast and has shutdown a main pipeline in the mid-west. This has created a limited supply of oil and gas. Now that oil and gas companies can produce less they have driven up the gas and oil prices to compensate for the lesser quantity of gas and oil sold. This relates to what we are studying in class as it illustrates how scarcity influences the price. A product retains a higher value as it becomes  scarcer. Oil has now become a more scarce resource in the US and therefore the prices have risen.

This article discusses the reasons which have resulted in a fall of fertilizer demand in India. The author states that the demand for fertilizer will drop 1/5  from 54.6 million tons  to 24 million tons by 2013. Additionally companies supplying fertilizers to the public have already experienced the first signs of decreasing demand and have been confronted with 50% decrease in potash consumption and a 30% decrease in the phosphate consumption.  Indian Companies supplying fertilizer had raised their prices the previous year due to record sales however these prices are now representing one of the key reasons for the decrease in consumption. India has experienced unpredictable rainfall this year meaning that farmers were unable to determine when they should  apply fertilizer. They knew that if they applied the expensive fertilizer without rainfall in the following days , the fertilizer would be wasted and therefore the farmer would have made a big loss. This has resulted in a decline in fertilizer consumption as farmers are not willing to take this large financial risk as the price for fertilizer is so high they will not be able to afford the economic consequences if the fertilizer is not applied at the correct time.  This links into our classwork as this scenario shows an ideal example of the law of demand. The law of demand states that as a price of a product rises the demand for it will decrease. In the article the demand for fertilizer falls as the price for fertilizer rises. 

This article tells us that fertilizer is become less scarce in India as the demand for fertilizer decreased. This means that less products are being consumed and therefore their is a surplus of the good on the market. Because the price for fertilizer was so high farmers have decided to invest the money in other products which will benefit their crops. The consumers will wait for the price to decrease before they start consuming fertilizer again. Producers will now decrease production and will sell their product at lower prices. As the demand for fertilizer has increased firms are not making as much profit and therefore they will shift their resource allocation to more profitable products.