clipped from members.forbes.com
But the Saudis overestimated non-opec production. Check out the relationship between prices and production in the accompanying chart. The Saudis hold the key to long-term oil prices since they are one of the few exporters--Kuwait and Abu Dhabi are the others--with the ability to increase production significantly. How long before we get some relief? Littell expects the impact of all that additional oil to hit U.S. markets in a couple of months or so. The Saudis "didn't plan on $80 oil," he says. "They wanted to keep it around $60 and did the wrong thing." |
This website contains information from several blogs and from reputable news sources . The topics range from Alzheimer's to investments.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Expect $60 oil soon?
Sunday, October 28, 2007
The real stuff on housing and subprime
clipped from krugman.blogs.nytimes.com
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Wednesday, October 24, 2007
2007 Christmas Stamp Unveiled
“Madonna of the Carnation” featured on 2007 Christmas Stamp
What:
Unveiling and First Day of Sale of the “Madonna of the Carnation” Postage Stamp
When:
Thursday, October 25, 2007
10:30 am
Where:
National Gallery of Art
West Building, West Garden Court
7th Street & Constitution Ave. NW
Washington DC
Who:
Yverne P. Moore, Postmaster, WDC
Alan Shestack, Deputy Director, National Gallery of Art
Details:
Formerly know as Holiday Traditional stamps, the Christmas stamps adorn millions of letters, greeting cards and packages each year. Since 1978, the theme of these stamps has been the Madonna and Child, and the stamps have attracted a devoted following over the years. The 2007 design features Bernardino Luini’s oil-on-panel, “The Madonna of the Carnation”, which dates to around 1515 and is now part of the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The stamp art is a detail of the work, as the image was slightly cropped on all four sides to fit the stamp format.
A viewing of the Bernardino Luini’s “The Madonna of the Carnation” oil-on-panel will be part of the stamp unveiling ceremony. Stamps will be available for purchase and a special pictorial postmark will be offered.
# # #
An independent federal agency, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that visits every address in the nation, 146 million homes and businesses, six days a week. It has 37,000 retail locations and relies on the sale of postage, products, and services to pay for operating expenses, not tax dollars. The Postal Service has annual revenues of $75 billion and delivers nearly half the world’s mail.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Helping the Fed Target Asset Prices
clipped from blogs.wsj.com
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Wildfire Pictures Worth a Thousand Words
clipped from blogs.usatoday.com clipped from www.cnn.com clipped from www.cnn.com clipped from www.cnn.com |
Monday, October 22, 2007
It looked like the end of the world
clipped from blogs.usatoday.com
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Friday, October 19, 2007
From the Krugman Blog
clipped from krugman.blogs.nytimes.com
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Greenspan Warns Of Risks With ‘Super SIV’ Fund
clipped from www.emergingmarkets.org
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Thursday, October 18, 2007
Do Politicians Lie?
clipped from online.wsj.com
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Wednesday, October 17, 2007
The real economic crisis
Source Guardian Unlimited
John Schmitt and Dean Baker
For Americans, the long-run implications of this little-discussed slowdown, if sustained, are actually more important to future living standards than any of the other events currently worrying world markets. For Europeans, long-encouraged to see the United States as the flexible economic ideal, the productivity slowdown sounds another note of caution about the US model. Europeans already know that the US economy generates substantial inequality. The last three years of slow productivity growth now suggest that all that inequality apparently doesn't even guarantee faster growth.
Economists define "productivity" as the value of goods and services produced per hour by an economy's average worker, and agree that the growth rate of productivity is the single most important determinant of the long-run prospects for a country's standard of living.
The deceleration in US productivity growth since the second half of 2004 is striking by historical standards. Between 1947 and 1973, the golden age of postwar capitalism, productivity growth averaged about 2.8% per year in the United States. At that pace, the output of the average worker was set to double about every 25 years, allowing roughly comparable increases in national living standards. From 1973 through 1995, however, productivity growth took a nosedive, with the average rate dropping to just 1.4%. At this lower rate, average worker output would take about 50 years to double, implying far slower progress in living standards.
From the mid-1990s on, however, official productivity growth again accelerated rapidly, returning to a 2.9% rate reminiscent of the golden age. Quite suddenly, though, in the second half of 2004, productivity growth dropped sharply. From the third quarter of 2004, productivity growth rate, at 1.3% per year, has not even managed to match the 1.4% growth rate of the productivity bust of 1973-1995.
Some productivity optimists argue that the downturn is a blip. But, this is a blip that just turned three years old - fully one-third the length of the nine-year 1996-2004 boom that the optimists champion.
Other optimists dismiss recent performance as cyclical - related to the downturn in the US economy. Productivity does tend to decline in recessions, but few would argue that the United States, which has grown 8.5% since the second quarter of 2004, has been in a recession all this time. (Of course, plenty of evidence is accumulating to suggest that the United States may be entering a recession now.)
The productivity numbers are likely even worse than they look. The most important reason is that the official productivity figures don't handle the rapid depreciation of new technology very well. Productivity gauges average output per hour worked - including what workers produce simply to replace obsolete machinery. But, the portion of output that workers produce just to replace worn-out machinery does not actually improve our standard of living. If we are interested in the impact of productivity growth on living standards, we're better off adjusting productivity growth to reflect only output that makes us better off.
In the earlier postwar period, when machinery depreciated fairly slowly, ignoring this depreciation effect on productivity growth didn't matter much. The driving force behind the 1996-2004 productivity acceleration, however, was massive investment in computers, software and related high-tech machinery, all of which become obsolete much faster than earlier generations of capital goods. (Try running Windows Vista on the computer you bought just a couple of years ago.) Since 1995, however, the depreciation effect is large - almost 0.2 percentage points per year. After we make this adjustment, productivity growth since the middle of 2004 falls from an already disappointing 1.3% per year to a mere 1.1%, below the similarly adjusted 1.2% rate of the 1973-1995 productivity bust. Such a severe deceleration in productivity growth constitutes a serious long-term threat to US living standards.
Meanwhile, how has Europe been faring? According to internationally comparable data from the Groningen Growth and Development Centre, between 1995 and 2004, the United States outperformed most of Europe, with productivity growing about 2.5% per year in the United States, compared to 1.7% in Germany, 2.0% in France, and 2.2% in the United Kingdom.
Between 2004 and 2006, however, the US lead all but evaporated. The US rate fell to 1.7%, not much different from the rates in Germany (1.7%), France (1.4%), and the United Kingdom (1.4%). If current trends continue, US growth rates may soon be trailing those of Europe (as was the case for almost the entire postwar period before 1995).
Europeans who want their countries to adopt economic policies that are more like those in the United States should consider these data carefully. There is an argument for adopting policies that lead to more inequality and less economic security when the result is more rapid economic growth. There is no obvious argument for more inequality and less security when the result is the same or even slower economic growth.
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