Hey @honeybee, it is always a pleasure to read one of your economic insights. You are again spot on. People rush to the blame game without understanding how demand and supply works or even more importantly the determinants of demand and supply.

It can be difficult to isolate one particular cause for anything as many things are changing simultaneously. This is also one of main criticisms of computable general equilibrium (CGE). Committing millions of dollars and months of effort to try a find a precise correlation between events and actions when the economy for so many other reasons during the meantime is changing. I much rather focus on the general direction and implications of events.

Getting back to blame games. It is part of human nature to want to blame someone or something for anything bad happening to them. Politicians love to feed off of this as well. It gives them a chance to offer a solution (normally a bad solution but one that fits their agenda quite nicely).