There are other factors affecting the price of oil. The prospect of an Israeli/U.S. attack on Iran has increased current demand in order to build stocks against disruption. No one knows the consequence of such an ill-conceived act of aggression, and the uncertainty pushes up the price of oil as the entire Middle East could be engulfed in conflagration...

The crisis that looms for the U.S. is the loss of world currency role. Once the dollar loses that role, the U.S. government will not be able to finance its operations by borrowing abroad, and foreigners will cease to finance the massive U.S. trade deficit. This crisis will eliminate the U.S. as a world power. [More]

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. . . read more

Unlike Hitler in 1936 who was in the process of imposing imperial ambitions on the outside world, China's political elite (as opposed to the Chinese military leadership) is most concerned with managing its own internal stressors, including a significant percentage of citizens who live in poverty. The Beijing Olympics in 2008 does not presage some new war: in a certain sense, the impulse to war has been blunted by the peaceful transactions of globalized trade; the victor's ascendence is measured in reverse proportion to the USA's hollowed out industries and scattered Rust Belts. To the masses in Asia, what America's falling economic tide exposes is the first fraction of our standard of living...

China is governed today by a political elite that fully embraces Orwellian focus on security and control. Through this set of circumstances, the sight of President Bush waving on U.S. competitors at the Olympics can be interpreted as either a brand new day based on resurgent, grand achievements or a forced smile at a dynamo he understands better now that his own time clock is running out. [More] . . read more

The oil companies' staggering profits are a windfall of the purest sort (Websters' definition: "an unexpected, unearned, or sudden gain or advantage"). This is not a moral judgment about the oil companies, it is just a description of what's happening. A windfall profits tax could generate substantial government revenues. Allocated to investment in renewable energy, it could significantly increase funds directed to renewables, and be a small but important down payment on the massive investment needed in mass transit, energy efficiency and renewable energy...

Re-regulating energy markets, imposing margin requirements and lessening investors' ability to trade with borrowed money, and cracking down on market manipulation will all slow the Wall Street frenzy and limit price spikes. For the long term, however, oil demand will continue to shoot up and supply cannot keep up. Ultimately, new sources of oil may become available, including from deep water sites and tar sands and shale, but these will be more expensive to obtain. The world is likely witnessing a long-term, steady (if bumpy) and permanent rise in oil prices. This price increase will impose major economic hardships, unless there is a massive effort to shift to oil-displacing technologies and renewable energy. [More] . . read more

There are five symbols for the Beijing Olympics: jingjing (panda), beibei (fish), huanhuan (fire), yingying (ship) and nini (swallow). These are coinciding with catastrophes and disasters... all happening on the number 8. To date there have been three disasters: the blizzard (beibei) of 1/25 (1+2+5 = 8); the Tibet riots (yingying) of 3/14; the Sichuan earthquake (jingjing) of 5/12.

There is one disaster remaining (huanhuan) and only two possible dates: 6/11 or 7/1. Nini, the swallow, is propitious and a symbol of Beijing. So is the opening day of the Olympics propitious in Chinese superstition cosmology: 8/8/08 at 8 PM. That's four 8's. Very propitious indeed: great wealth. Businesses and people will pay thousands to buy phone numbers or license plates with four 8's.

Or will this day of 8-8-8-8 be ironic? George W. Bush and the Western leaders and their bought patriots are certainly attempting to create a disaster on that day. And if it happens, the West will begin to blame China for allowing it to happen - even making it happen, as they have for everything that has gone awry the past year (2007-8), including natural disasters. How sad that racism and propaganda-inspired fear and loathing eclipse more intelligent reasoning in today's world. Still... what of the prescient superstition? Self-fulfilling prophecy? [More] . . read more

It signals among other things the clear opportunity for prominent sports organisations to play a more central social role compared with their customary place as fringe dwellers. Come to think of it, the sports business sector plays such an important part in our everyday lives that you wouldn't want it otherwise.

For too long, sport has been looked down on by the chattering classes and gets little credit for its dynamic social attributes. Let's make Federal Minister for Sport a cabinet position, create university faculties of sport and add sport to the HSC! . . read more

As if there were not enough reasons to go mad, the proliferation of acronyms related to the crisis is such that one can hardly understand them.

The first was the G20, a selected group meeting in Washington that pretended to represent all. The second was the also selective APEC group which met in Lima. There was the richest country, the United States; with a per capita GDP of 45 thousand dollars a year. But there was also the 100th ranked country, the People's Republic of China, with a per capita GDP of 2,483 dollars; China is also the number one investor in US Treasury bonds.

Now, G192 is the way that Leonel Fernandez, President of the Dominican Republic, which is not a member of either of the two, calls the member countries of the United Nations attending an economic conference with Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate of Economics.

George Soros, an immensely rich magnate of Hungarian descent and an American citizen, was one of the attending personalities.

One would have to be a chess player to disentangle the arguments of such diverse national and business interests as are represented in the G20 and the G21.

The truth of the matter is that if a Third World country signed free trade agreements with eight or ten developed or emerging countries, --some of them traditional producers of abundant and attractive low cost goods or sophisticated industrial products, such as the United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, etc.-- the nascent industry of a developing country would have to compete with the sophisticated products of the most developed countries' industries or the hard working hands of their powerful partners, one of which handles world finances wantonly. The only thing left to them would be to produce inexpensive raw materials requiring large investments ultimately owned by foreign companies fully protected from nationalizing whims. They would only have their extended hands waiting for a pious development support and an eternal debt to be repaid with their children's sweat. Isn't this what has been happening until today?

That's why I don't hesitate to show my solidarity with Chavez's position as he said that he disagreed with Lima's recipe. There are plenty of reasons. Let's see how the situation unfolds, and keep demanding out rights without ever bending our knees.

The trade deficit with China is about $250 billion. China has engineered this competitive triumph by keeping its yuan even cheaper than the dollar, euro and gold. Annually, it sells at deep discount about $460 billion worth yuan for dollars, euros and other currencies in foreign exchange markets. That provides a 33% subsidy on Chinese exports and keeps Chinese goods cheap on the shelves at Wal-Mart...

The huge trade deficit must be financed either by attracting foreign investment in new productive assets in the United States or by printing IOUs. Investment has only provided about 10% of necessary cash, so each year the United States sells currency, bank deposits, Treasury securities, bonds, and the like to foreigners. Those claims on the U.S. economy now total about $6.5 trillion. That floods world financial markets with U.S. dollars and paper assets that function much like U.S. dollars-what economists call liquidity. And, it evokes an iron law of the universe. If you print too much money, it won't have any value. [More] . . read more

As we have seen in the recent running of the Olympic torch - turned into a protester obstacle course - everything is on the table. The repression of speech by Olympic officials occurs precisely because many athletes want to talk... And yet, while I support the right of any athlete to speak out and not be silenced by Olympic bureaucrats to make things pleasant for China's rulers, we should also look critically at what it is that people are protesting...

None of this 2008 crop of athletes is daring to say that maybe protest begins at home. They are raising concerns about China's policies in Tibet or Darfur, but not the U.S. wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. There are concerns about China's labor standards, but not the way their own sponsors, like Nike, exploit those standards... Blaming China for the ills of the world ignores the stubborn fact that there is a reason the games are in Beijing. Western complicity in China's crimes isn't challenged by bashing China. It's only covered up. [More] . . read more