Gas Prices Are Rising For Many Reasons.
Gas prices are at an all time high and who knows when the next time they will be below $3.00. While gas prices are emptying your pockets, there are still some ways to save on gas. Gas prices are going to keep going up, and good leadership begins with honesty. Gas prices are high because of speculators. Speculators drive up the costs because of expected instability in the Middle East.
Including oil’s record run. Light, sweet crude for May delivery rose to a new trading record of $119.90 before retreating to settle up $1.89 at a record $119.37 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Gas prices are falling because the oil markets had been extremely nervous for a long time, as a result of Katrina and the Middle East situation. They had factored in a lot of future catastrophes into the price. Gas prices are most politically relevant because they are a sharp pain that voters will be feeling this summer and fall, before they vote. All three candidates (and even President Bush) seem to “get” this.
Oil is traded as a futures market. It is worth whatever the prevailing rate is. Oil companies know what the point of diminishing returns is. They don’t sell gasoline for the cheapest they can get away with selling it for, they sell it for the most they can get away with selling it for. Oil companies will keep prices where they are and keep the savings for themselves. If I’m paying an extra quarter to somebody, I’d rather it went back into our tax pool than into Exxon’s pockets.
Oil companies sell gas and car makers sell cars that use gas so it’s a mutually beneficial situation for both of them. Oil prices did come under some pressure Friday as some investors collected profits ahead of the weekend. Many analysts argue that oil prices have risen well beyond levels that can be justified by supply and demand fundamentals; an increasing number of analysts are referring to the situation as a bubble. Oil companies declare billions of dollars in profits while the average citizen can’t make ends meet. Federal assistance is available for people who do not work for various reasons or have sub-standard incomes.
Americans, as a rule, enjoy the luxuries that their hard work has earned them. If they can afford it, most people will forego the smaller, more economical cars in favor the more impressive (and larger) SUVs and luxury vehicles. Americans also pay less than half of what they do in the United Kingdom. Other European countries also pay nothing close to the low price of $4 a gallon found here in the States.
Carpool, get a smaller car, ride a scooter you can do something! Lowered demand increased supply causes prices to fall we were taught. Caraballo also said that not too long ago, “$500 would have kept me rolling for two weeks. Now, I’ll be lucky to make it three days.”.Diesel is impacted more by global demand, the Times explains, and international demand is high.
Article by Christopher West
http://whoischriswest.com
Technorati Tags: Gas prices, sweet crude, Exxon’s, Oil companies, economical cars
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Crude Oil Is A Truly Global Market
Crude oil is no exception. Technological advances in seismic exploration have dramatically reduced the cost of finding new reserves, thus increasing oil reserves greatly. Crude oil is a mixture of different chemical called hydrocarbons. The boiling oil turns into a mixture of gases in the column. Crude Oil is a complex mixture consisting of up to 200 or more different organic compounds, mostly hydrocarbons. Different crudes contain different combinations and concentrations of these various compounds.
Crude oil is produced in Alaska, moves south on TAPS and then moves by tank ship to the West Coast. From the tank ship, the crude again moves by pipeline to refineries along the west coast of the U.S. Crude oil is discovered following lengthy scientific studies to determine the possible presence of underground deposits of petroleum (oil and related liquids). Contrary to popular belief, oil is trapped in the tiny pores of underground rock ? Crude oil is found in many parts of the world. Crude oil can be transported economically long distances overland by pipeline and overseas in very large tanker vessels.
Crude oil is useless unless it is refined into the products we really need — gasoline, heating oil and jet fuel. Crude oil is the world’s most actively traded commodity. Over the past decade, the NYMEX Division light, sweet (low-sulfur) crude oil futures contract has become the world’s most liquid forum for crude oil trading, as well as the world’s largest-volume futures contract trading on a physical commodity. Crude oil is the good that I most often use to explain this principle, which is clear in the following chart.
And as supply is stretched nearly to capacity, new sources of demand from rapidly developing China and India pull the strings even tighter. Crude oil is a global commodity and it is transportable anywhere in the world. Consumption by emerging economies like India and China, each with huge populations and improving standards of living, is growing rapidly and global demand for crude oil is outpacing supply. Crude oil is not the solution to our problems. It is like the bitter bile on the liver.
Gasoline and diesel are sold through a network of Tesoro-branded retail self-service stations on Oahu, Maui and the Big Island. Gasoline was burned off, and bitumen and asphalt (the heavier parts of crude oil) were discarded. But gradually rising in importance were the incandescent light and the internal combustion engine.
Prices for WTI are quoted at Cushing, Oklahoma, which is a major crude oil shipment point that has extensive pipeline connections to oil producing areas and Southwest and Gulf Coast-based refining centers. Prices of precious metals futures fell sharply yesterday, giving back most of the previous day’s gains. Crude oil prices seesawed in nervous trading before finishing slightly lower on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Higher cost translates into higher prices. Inflation is rearing its ugly head, even as economies slow down. Higher interest rates bring actual output in line with (the lower) potential output. If it were less worried about inflation, could the Fed offset the adverse effect of oil price increases on economic activity?
Article by Christopher West
http://whoischriswest.com
Technorati Tags: Crude oil, hydrocarbons, Alaska, demand, Gasoline, diesel, New York Mercantile Exchange, Higher cost, economies
Sphere: Related ContentJohn McCain Might Be A Compelling And Competitive Candidate For A Couple Of Reasons.
Not because his campaign managers sends out a link for a strategy briefing. If his campaign manager didn’t realize that the economy and the war were the two biggest issues then he would clearly be the dumbest campaign manager around. John McCain: Arizona senator has warned that any pullout of troops could be disastrous. He has pushed the president to send in a heavy wave of troops to quell the violence and establish order. John McCain (R-AZ), a leading candidate for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, has been one of the key congressional supporters of the interventionist foreign policies of the George W. In early April 2007, after taking what the Washington Post described as a “heavily guarded walk through a newly fortified Baghdad market,” McCain gushed about the progress in Iraq since the president’s “surge” strategy began to be implemented earlier in the year.
He will make the Bush income and investment tax cuts permanent, keeping income tax rates at their current level.”. John McCain may be trying to sell himself as a “maverick” and a “straight talker” who will tell the truth no matter the consequences, but independent, non-partisan watchdog groups aren’t buying it. Since Senator McCain wrapped up his Party’s nomination, hardly a week has passed without at least one non-partisan fact checker criticizing McCain for distorting his record on something. John McCain does a photo-op in front of a wind mill factory and he’s all of a sudden Mr.Green. Our scum leaders are willing to bury our country in debt to get their hands on oil.
John McCain : I’ve been in politics for over 20 years. And for over 20 years, I’ve had Barbera Streisand trying to do my job. He is a maverick and a moderate. If a maverick is defined as a person who goes against the grain and is willing to take risks, particularly political ones, he isn’t it. John McCain is respectable, and while I certainly commend his stands against issues such as torture and farm subsidies, he has become just another politician who sold his soul for votes. McCain-Fiengold, Immigration reform, Iraq he’s on the wrong side of too many issues for me to support him, and some of those stands seem to be motivated by political expedience rather than a grounded moral conviction.
He believes the Internet offers tremendous promise in terms of freedom of expression, information sharing, and the spread of knowledge and commerce . However, there is a darker side to the Internet. John McCain should reject and denounce his pastor Rod Parsley just like he did in case of his other pastor John Hagee. Anybody who wants to destroy Islam is actually trying to destroy the God of Prophet Abraham. John McCain, Gramm may be looking at a quantum leap in power and influence.
Someone should ask McCain how long he’s willing to have us stay in Iraq even if we are sustaining casualties. Since he believes it is in our strategic interests to stay there on a permanent basis I doubt very much he’ll say that in that case he’d only be comfortable staying two or five or some other relatively short span of years. Someone told me the bug has been corrected. Someone who could become a very good president in his ability to not always conform to the party line. Unlike Obama, who always stays strictly democratic and is an extreme liberal.
Article by Christopher West
http://whoischriswest.com
Technorati Tags: campaign managers, John McCain, Iraq, politics, extreme liberal
Sphere: Related ContentReddit Is One Of The Social Bookmarking Sites That Relies Heavily On Interaction.
Reddit is like Digg in that it allows people to “vote” for pages, but these votes train a filter which will start to recommend links based on your likes and disklikes. Facebook is a social networking website that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them, as well as allowing them to upload photos and share links and videos. Reddit is based off of a point system. The more points an article has, the better. Reddit is one of a new crop of social news sites . It was founded in the summer of 2005 by two graduates of the University of Virginia.
Reddit is a social news site that has always played second fiddle to Digg, although Reddit does have an active and loyal userbase. Users praise Reddit for having a very quick load time and no advertising. Reddit is succumbing to the trolls, just like Digg has, and Slashdot and Kuro5hin did so long ago. The comments repeat the same things over and over again. Reddit is a community website where users can post links to content on the web. Other users may then vote the posted links up or down, causing them to appear more or less prominently on the Reddit home page.
Reddit is not an echo chamber, every site I frequent has the minority of the users making similar complaints. I truly believe that reddit is the best medium for news democratization and it is being used appropriately. Reddit is the second largest social news site on the web. Unlike Digg, Reddit is much more political and science oriented. Reddit is the real eye-opener for me. It wasn’t in the top 10 in 2007 and is currently the number four referring site.
Reddit is one of the social bookmarking sites that relies heavily on your interaction with the user community on the site. Reddit uses a point system in which users can vote on each post; the posts with the most points get pushed to Reddit?s home page for all to see.
Linking to the larger size pages is better because the photographer’s name and copyright information is there, but the viewers won’t likely see the caption under the photo or the photographer’s other work. Reddit users don’t have a reputation for exploring a site that has been linked. Linked Inis one of the few career-related sites that doesn’t seem like a contest of wills between users and site designers. But the most active users are trolling for new ‘friends to pump up their network .
Article by Christopher West
Http://whoischriswest.com
Technorati Tags: Reddit, Facebook, social networking website, social news site, Digg, Slashdot, Kuro5hin, social bookmarking sites, Linked In
Sphere: Related ContentTwitter Is Being Hailed As A Revolutionary Social Networking Technology.
Twitter is a lot better then instant messaging and a chatroom. One can control who reads and who they want to follow. Twitter is my personal “Can you hear me now network” like the verizon commercial. Yes there is a lot of noise on twitter but since twitter is user controlled, you control how much noise you want to see in your twitter stream. Twitter is running on rails and it seems they just don’t have the required hardware.
It is delivering 5% of its potential; we can do much better if we de-pollute our timeline. Twitter is time drain. Plug in to your local community, add value to the conversations, and don’t be spammy. Twitter is a communication tool. It lets you socialize with others that with similar interests, so it’s also a social networking tool.
And is being hailed as a revolutionary social networking technology. Can these claims hold water? Twitter is about defining and restricting a virtual but shared social experience. By being aware and “in the loop” on what is being discussed, it allows us to feel more confident and comfortable when meeting members of our virtual network at events. Twitter is taking off like wildfire. Not just in terms of the users, but also developers.
Twitter is for staying in touch and keeping up with friends no matter where you are or what you’re doing. For some friends you might want instant mobile updates for others, you can just check the web. Twitter is a collaborative messaging environment; it’s not a marketing platform. The primary reason is that it’s not broadcasting. Twitter is primarily a communication tool and has often been described as filling the gap between email and instant messaging (IM). It is interesting that it occupies this middle ground.
Twitter is already being mentioned in most major publications across the US, including the New York and LA Times. Jaiku is now often being mentioned as the runner-up and feature-packed competitor to Twitter, leaving Pownce and all the other clones hardly any wiggle room. Twitter is not one of those fads that caught on among kids that has worked its way up the age-chain. It’s more like Google, in that it started as a drop-dead simple solution to a problem no one knew they had — and has become an obsession with a sub-set of tech-geeks and people obsessed with the nature of online community and conversation (I confess). Twitter is just fun and I have learned so much with this new tool.
Twitter is definitely replacing text messaging as my primary source of quick and short communication. One reason behind this is that I’ve stopped texting some of my friends back. Twitter is a micro blogging tool where I can only write 140 characters. Each month a few more people I knew joined it. Twitter is a communication medium and one that is particularly attractive to bloggers. Bloggers talk and talk loud and spread news like crazy.
It is merely a simple, yet elegant way to extend your reach from mobile to Internet, and from close and personal friends to “anyone you follow or follows you”. I believe that people would easily be willing to pay for that.
Article by Christopher West
Http://whoischriswest.com
Technorati Tags: Twitter, hailed, social networking technology, instant messaging, Jaiku, Pownce, texting
Sphere: Related ContentUnemployment Is A Problem Fundamental To The Workings Of The System.
Unemployment is currently at 10.4 percent (meaning over 4.3 million people out of work). By its own press and politicians declaration, Germany has been stuck in a Reform a traffic-standstill on reforms for more than a decade. Unemployment is not unique to economies in transition. Even much stronger economies, such as those of France and Spain, suffer from it. Unemployment is behind the public conflict between the new political leaders of Germany and France, who want a loose monetary policy, and their central bankers, who favor a continuation of tight money. This conflict has been exacerbated by the introduction in January of the common currency, the euro, and the European Central Bank.
Unemployment is never easy on families. It is difficult to pay bills and to buy food. Unemployment is not a “pool” but rather the difference between two quite fast-flowing rivers. In any one month, almost a quarter of the claimant count measure of unemployed leave or join the count (table 10). Unemployment is reported as more common among young people compared to the general level of unemployment. Inequity in health status and life-satisfaction is related to unemployment.
Unemployment is considered low or high relative to the so-called natural rate of unemployment. Inflation is considered low or high relative to the expected rate of inflation. Unemployment is also highest among those with some formal education. In the past, these young graduates could expect employment in the public sector, but as formal education has significantly expanded over the past generation and government coffers have come under increasing pressure, the public sector can no longer absorb what public school systems produce. Unemployment is certainly a serious issue, but most complainers completely miss the mark in terms of the causes and cures of unemployment. For example, should Americans be worried that telephone-answering jobs are being shipped overseas?
The government will not be persuaded to create jobs by endless lobbies and reports showing this is a good idea. Unemployment is sharply up and job growth is down in New York or Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago while immigrant flows have remained high. Profuse immigration into Newark and Jersey City has not remedied those two areas’ chronically weak job creation and lackadaisical economic performances. Unemployment is very dependent on productivity and GDP growth. The World Bank predicts that with a GDP growth of 0%, the total expenditures on unemployment benefits could equal 2.3% of GDP.
Unemployment is one of two primary macroeconomic problems. The other is inflation. and is the focus for a growing generalised attack on the Tories. Unemployment is said to exist: all those willing to work at the prevailing wage can not find work. Interestingly, as wages increase above W*, unemployment goes up.
Job losses are no longer contained in sectors associated with the housing bust or manufacturing slowdown, but are now spreading throughout the economy. The current labor market slowdown comes on the heels of the weakest jobs recovery in over seventy years. Jobs in the index fell 30,000 last month, and are down 264,000 this year. In 2005, during the heart of the housing boom, they were up 388,000. Job loss can quickly do away with workers’ health insurance coverage. During the 2001 recession the unemployment rate rose from 4.2 to 5.6 percent, and an estimated 1,009,000 Americans lost health insurance coverage because of economic trends.
Article by Christopher West
http://whoischriswest.com
Technorati Tags: Unemployment, health, inflation, Job losses, economic trends
Sphere: Related ContentIndiana Jones’s Hat Is The Hat We’ve Always Wanted To Wear.
But the hat really wasn’t just one hat. Indiana Jones both the swashbuckling archeologist and the joyfully hokey, brazenly sentimental, obscenely successful franchise he desired is a part of our culture’s Hollywood patrimony. Indiana Jones is a household name that makes people smile and remember the first time they were introduced to him. The theme song still has the ability to give me goose bumps every time I hear it.
Indiana Jones adventures appear in paperback novels, a television series, video games and comic books. Raiders of the Lost Ark ushered in a new hero for a generation. Indiana Jones?: If you’re heading to the refreshment counter at the movies this summer, be prepared for sticker shock. The already outrageous price of that gooey tub of popcorn is likely to be quite a bit higher by year’s end, due in part to record demand on corn stocks for ethanol production.
Crystal Skull may bring back the faces and themes we remember, but it’s curiously bloated and malnourished, too much and not enough. It’ll make a bunch of money, sure, but even after 19 years of waiting, I can’t imagine it truly satisfying anyone’s jones for Jones. Crystal skulls have since featured in many books, articles and films, most recently in the new Steven Spielberg movie Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Crystal Skull has bit too much of the “breadcrumbs dropped by an older mentor” plot of Last Crusade , and the whole thing feels anemic after a while. The attempt to mash 1950s Cold War paranoia with post-9/11 social commentary falls flat, because in Crystal Skull the damned Commies really are everywhere; this is Jack Webb’s Red Nightmare territory here, folks.
Harrison Ford rode the ups and downs of high-concept stardom, oscillating between roles that called for him to flash his customary wry grin or his equally familiar grumpy frown. Not that Indy has gone soft or the natives have gone hard, mind you, only that Mr. Ford should be left on his own, leading the Indiana Jones films. But as his son, he was pretty believable, and really enjoyable. Ford’s Commie leanings, but that certainly is not reflected in the character of Indiana Jones. Two themes that come shining through in this movie — the importance of education and family.
Lucas also didn’t shy away from exploring other genres – with some episodes being more dramatic than adventurous, or war stories and espionage thrillers devoid of “daring-do” and narrow escapes. Lucas lowered the bar and Indy skipped over it. I’m looking forward to the movie, but I always look forward to the big, fun, popcorn movies. Lucas showed the movie to cast & crew before the start of filming Raiders, and it’s been kept under wraps ever since–though I don’t see why. There are certainly similarities, but nothing along the lines of the “scene-for-scene” reviews I’ve read at some sites.
Shia Saide LaBeouf isn’t exactly used to being such a jock. The native of Los Angeles began his career doing some nice safe stand-up comedy at local coffee houses. Shia does a very good job of the more physical action in my opinion.
Article by Christopher West
http://whoischriswest.com
Technorati Tags: the hat, Indiana Jones, Crystal Skull, Steven Spielberg, Harrison Ford, Lucas, Shia Saide LaBeouf
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