It’s Wednesday, and the week’s US oil inventories numbers will soon be out. I have no clue what they will say, nor much interest, either. But others do.
Exactly why oil traders and speculators think the data has anything to do with the state of world oil demand is beyond me. I suppose, like Pavlov’s dog, [...]

Wall Street is worrying about financing the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain), and little wonder. Proposals to halt exploding public sector budget deficits in those countries already have the workers out in the streets in Athens and Madrid. But we needn’t look across the Atlantic to see a debt crisis in the making. The [...]

Is there heartache in the heartland? As Albertans shoulder the weight of a new $4.5 billion budget deficit (not to mention the burden of equalization payments to the rest of Canada) despite the fact that they own the world’s largest oil reserve open to private investment, some might suggest that something is seriously amiss in [...]

My local utility just mailed me a notice informing me that they’ve installed a new smart meter at my home that will start monitoring and charging me for my electricity depending upon time of use.
The first thing I noticed about smart (i.e. off-peak) prices was how expensive dumb (i.e. peak) prices were. At 9.3 cents [...]

There are many factors associated with Barack Obama’s plunging popularity. Botched health care reform certainly hasn’t helped. Neither has a near double-digit national jobless rate, nor a $1.6 trillion budget deficit. But what outrages American voters most is the billions of dollars given to Wall Street investment bankers, who continue to live la dolce vita [...]