Oil Prices Keep Rising The price of crude oil hit a new high yesterday (for the year, at least) of nearly $40 per barrel. The price of gasoline rose in lockstep. Prices at the pump will keep rising as long as the price of crude oil does. Many analysts say that the price of oil […]

Postcards from Old Europe – Consume your house! Note: due to extensive traveling without access to the web this postcard is a day early. As the past columns have been very Euro-centric I guess that it is high time to shift my view back to the goings-on in the US. While household demand has been […]

Evil Limbaugh Update World O’ Crap adds to Digby’s case for Rush’s evilness, though perhaps it’s just the drugs (or maybe the jonesing) talking. AB

Stupid Liberal Media Well, the media actually aren’t liberal. But there’s a good case to be made for stupidity. The latest comes via today’s Washington Post: Registered lobbyists gave President Bush $1.8 million and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) $520,000 in campaign contributions from Jan. 1, 1997, through March 31 this year, according to a […]

Plenty of Blame to Go Around Day by day, the scope of the prisoner abuse crimes grows. The number of prisoners suspected of being murdered by US guards and interrogators has now risen to 14. President Bush pled his case on a pair of Arab news channels today, Al-Arabiya and the new US-funded channel Al-Hurra. […]

Bond Yields In the wake of the Fed’s meeting and press release yesterday, it’s time to check in with the bond market. The Fed’s announcement apparently came as no major surprise to the bond market, for yields changed very little. But over the past six weeks we’ve seen quite a major increase in long-term interest […]

Is Rush Limbaugh Evil? If you asked me on Friday I would have said “No, he’s not really evil. More of an opportunistic loud-mouth junkie with a talent for fooling and entertaining the dim-witted and foolhardy.” Digby, in a lengthy post that you should read all the way to the final paragraph’s evoking of images […]

Speaking of Buffet Berkshire-Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting was held last weekend. Buffet invariably has a great line on any topic, and it looks like his designated successor right-hand man, Charlie Munger, is pretty good too. Here’s Warren and Charlie on expensing stock options: On stock options “… Write your congresspeople giving them your views on […]

Some Remarkable Statistics on China In today’s piece, Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley presents some amazing statistics on China’s economy. Here’s a sampling: In March 2004, [China’s] growth of industrial value added had surged to an astonishing 19.4% above its year-earlier level. …[O]ur calculations suggest that China’s increase in industrial output in 2003 was about […]

Steve Jobs and Warren Buffet Both are backing John Kerry. So if you like iTunes, you’ll love John Kerry. Buffet did advise Shwarzenegger as well, but I won’t hold that against him. Maybe he’ll address it in his next shareholder’s letter. AB