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POPSWhy the Wall St bailout is a bad idea Oh, and let's not forget that we import a lot of stuff. If the dollar collapses in the FOREX, all that stuff will be a lot more expensive. And since oil is denominated in dollars worldwide, well, a collapse in the dollar means that the price of oil will be going nowhere but up.
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POPSThe Death Of OPEC September 11, 2008 “We will see what the market requires and we will not leave a customer without oil." “Saudi Arabia will meet the market’s demand,” a senior OPEC delegate said. OPEC will still have lavish meetings and a nifty headquarters in Vienna, Austria, but the Saudis have made certain the the organization has lost its teeth. Even though the cartel argued that the sudden drop in crude as due to "over-supply", OPEC's most powerful member knows that the drop may only be temporary. The downward pressure on oil got a second hand. Brazil has confirmed another huge oil deposit to add to one it discovered off-shore earlier this year. The first field uncovered by Petrobras has the promise of being one of the largest in the world. That breadth of that deposit has now expanded.
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POPSGlobal Economic Downturn Sinks Crude Futures To Below $l00 The futures market briefly sank below the psychologically important $100-a-barrel mark for the first time since April 2. Wholesale gasoline prices on the Gulf Coast moved further into uncharted territory today, as refineries anticipated that Ike would lead to at least a significant pause in their operations, and at worst damage to their facilities. On Thursday, the Gulf Coast wholesale price of gasoline last traded at around $4.75 a gallon, according to OPIS, up substantially from about $3.25 Wednesday and less than $3 Tuesday. Wholesale prices are determined by major players in the supply chain including refining and trading companies, which constantly buy and sell barrels. These prices end up deciding what refineries charge distributors, before they get marked up further at the retail level for the consumer. The average U.S. retail price for gasoline edged up less than a penny to $3.675 today from Thursday
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POPSThe Really Very Problematic "Pickens Plan"
sources that T. Boone Pickens rails about in the context of oil. In its most recent annual outlook, the U.S. Department of Energy projects that the U.S. natural-gas market will become more integrated with natural-gas markets worldwide as the U.S. becomes more dependent on imported liquefied natural gas -- causing greater uncertainty in future U.S. natural-gas prices. The natural-gas supply problem will be additionally magnified if significant greenhouse-gas regulation is enacted. Here's how: Currently, when natural gas gets too expensive, electric utilities often substitute coal or cheaper fuels for power generation. Under a greenhouse-gas regulation scheme, however, inexpensive coal might no longer be an alternative because of the significantly greater greenhouse-gas emissions involved with its combustion. Utilities, and ultimately consumers, could easily find themselves at the mercy of natural-gas barons -- like T. Boone Pickens himself, a large investor in natural gas
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POPSIt's Simple People - They Charge More Because We'll Pay It
It always dumbfounds me how people can get so "up in arms" about issues like this. A company delivers a product or service and charges for it. If supply is decreased, or demand is increased, or both, they can raise prices for the product or service. It's the first law of market dynamics. In the case of texting, we consumers can't get enough of it (demand). Supply isn't really an issue in this case because texting uses so little network bandwidth they can offer unlimited texting plans. It's simple then - the wireless operators have raised prices because we'll pay for it - we have to have our texting. If we want them to lower prices, we can all stop texting as much and instead use a different form of communication. It's like gas prices - we reached a point where the price was too high so we started using less and voila, the prices came down. Granted there were other factors involved, but decreased demand was a huge reason for it. Stop texting as much and prices WILL com
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POPSWhat Is Economics? Exchange is the trading of goods for money or for other goods. A market is any mechanism for buyers and sellers to exchange goods. A free market is a market in which buyers and sellers are generally free to decide what to exchange and under what terms. Money is anything generally accepted as a medium of exchange and thus useful for storing or measuring economic value. The price of a good is the amount of economic value that must be exchanged to acquire it. Demand is willingness and ability to buy. Supply is availability and proffer for sale. The scarcity of a good is the excess of its demand over its supply, and in a free market is measured by price.
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POPSBalance Of Power- II In the waining days of the Neo-Con administration, McCain needs all the help he can get for his election and furthermore, the Geopolitical strategies of NATO and the " NEW Europe ", mostly quite right wing, must do all they can to undermine Russia and China. Human rights in Russia, China and the demand from the collective West for more Democracy are diversions and fueled by propaganda.
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POPSPrayer At The Pump Here's one you'll never hear: Oh most merciful Jesus, forgive us Bush LUVIN' fools for our "family values" by slashing social spending and bankrupting the government to pay for tax breaks for the rich, corporate welfare, and an insane, cold war-style buildup, for reversing a half century's work of hard-won environmental protections and ignoring the constitution, for making a human being a king, and for making our "moral values" our issues to shroud our wickedness in Godliness. Please forgive us for our vision, oops, hallucination that we are officially authorized by YOU to decide which values are "family" and "traditional" and how everyone should live by not promoting better wages, work conditions and job security. Forgive us Father, for we have sinned. And please lower the price of gas? AMEN.
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POPSDollar Rises, Oil Prices Fall Again, oil drop had nothing to do with supply. Demand has fallen and the dollar per this article (vs. Euro) has gained. A weak dollar has been a critical component of high gas prices. In fact, oil has dropped even though a hurricane threatened the gulf lately too. Oil has fallen, yet we have not seen a corresponding and equitable fall in gas prices (should be around 3.29 at this oil price).
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POPSRolling Blackouts Let’s emulate California? First, California didn’t cut their demand; they only kept it from increasing. Next, people may remember how well California’s energy policy worked over the last two decades. The aging infrastructure, price mandates, and botched privatization led the state into years of rolling blackouts, where utilities simply cut off supply in order to compensate for an inability to meet demand. Governor Gray Davis got recalled from office over the issue, but the blackouts continued for years afterward. And again, California never did reduce demand, not even by 5%, let alone 15%. I’m not sure Californians would feel like a great example of an energy policy that worked, and I doubt the rest of the nation feels differently. And Obama once again repeated his pledge to get a million more plug-hybrids (at 150 mpg!) on the road while cutting electrical demand, a neat trick that Obama still hasn’t explained.
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POPSCan Tax Rebates Really Prevent An Economic Downturn? If all works according to plan, more jobs will lead to more spending and thereby keep the economy from slipping into a recession. The theory behind reinvigorating capitalist economies with tax rebates is a lot like the idea of overcoming static friction, which you might remember from high school physics. When economic growth is stopped, it needs a large force to get it started, which the tax rebates theoretically provide. From then on, the hope is that all it will need are free-market forces to keep it going. Inside this Article 1. Can tax rebates really prevent an economic downturn? 2. How is a tax rebate plan implemented? 3. Criticism of Tax Rebate Plans 4. Lots More Information 5. See all Money & Economic Basics articles
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POPS0.3% of Saharan Sun Enough To Power Europe The visionary proposal comes as the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission released its strategic energy technology plan which highlighted photovoltaic cells as one of the eight technologies that need to be developed in the future. The plan also includes fuel cells, hydrogen, clean coal, second generation biofuels, nuclear fusion, wind and smart grids.
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POPSElectric Cars ! Is it the real answer ? while I believe that we need to do something, have we really given this the full thought it deserves. Then when looking for energy for this the screams will be for more nuclear power source.
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POPSSpeculators Chase the Money not Make the Money I have a couple concerns about this story. One, even though it's a very small incident that had a negligible impact on the markets, I have a feeling politicians are going to use it as an example to introduce laws prohibiting or reducing oil trading. This despite the fact that there's even more research out there that says trading has not artificially inflated prices. It's supply and demand people - demand is greatly increasing, while supply is staying flat - of course prices are going to skyrocket. Second, it uses the correlation between the increase in oil price and the amount of money going into oil futures. Yet another basic market principle people - investors are going to chase hot items. Oil starts to go up, people anticipate it continuing to go up due to supply/demand issues, investors invest in it to hopefully make a profit. Finally, don't forget the dollar - people use oil as a hedge against inflation, which his been going up due in part to the weakening dollar.
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POPSHYPERINFLATION (read, watch, learn) In late 1923, Germany undertook a monetary reform creating a new unit of currency called the rentenmark. The German government promised that the new currency could be converted on demand into a bond having a certain value in gold. Proponents of the standard answer argue that the guarantee of convertibility is properly viewed as a promise to cease the rapid issue of money. An alternative view held by some economists is that not just monetary reform, but also fiscal reform, is needed to end a hyperinflation. According to this view a successful reform entails two believable commitments on the part of government. The first is a commitment to halt the rapid growth of paper money. The second is a commitment to bring the government's budget into balance. This second commitment is necessary for a successful reform because it removes, or at least lessens, the incentive for the government to resort to inflationary taxation.
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POPSHey Pal, Can You Spare $100 Billion? Since then the shelves of many shops and supermarkets have been largely bare, except when owners are prepared to risk being caught charging prices that reflect the cost of importing goods from South Africa. Huge queues form outside any bakery selling bread at a controlled price, and demand far outstrips supply.
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