

Opinion: The Main Reason Oil Prices Are High Is Speculation
Sherlock Holmes once asked, “How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?†Or, more generally, you can reason by elimination: if you cannot deduce the cause of an event directly, you can still zero in on it by eliminating other possible explanations. This is familiar to any parent: if I come back downstairs from the attic and notice that a plate of cookies, there 10 minutes ago, is now empty, and the only other person in the house is my 6-year-old, I can state with absolute confidence that she ate them. I don’t need to catch her in the act, or even follow a trail of crumbs up to her room—the mere fact that there is no other possible perpetrator points inexorably to my young daughter....


















Tobacco, a crop under siege as the number of smoking bans in the United States continues to increase, may be turning a new leaf as a possible source of home insulation and biofuel.
Wildlife conservationists say a boom in palm oil -- used extensively for biofuel and processed food like margarine -- has affected the jungles in Borneo, endangering the already declining orangutan populations, AFP reported.
Published: September 18, 2009
Ships powered by algae and planes flying on weeds: that's part of the future the U.S. Navy hopes to bring to fruition. This week, the seagoing branch of the military purchased 40,000 gallons of jet fuel derived from camelina—a weedy relative of canola—and 20,055 gallons of algae-derived diesellike fuel for ships.
It could take ten years or more to become apparent, but I’ll call it now: the electric car will replace the internal combustion engine.
Each spring, fertilizer runoff from the Mississippi River floods into the Gulf of Mexico, causing a massive algae bloom that leads to a giant oxygen-deprived "dead zone" where fish can't survive.
The battle between US rescue plans and the recession is escalating, leaving oil prices directionless. Last week, the price of West Texas Intermediate crude rose more than $4 in the wake of the announcement by the US government of the plan to rescue Citigroup, the weaker US dollar, high expectations of the US government bailing out General Motors, and China's interest rate cut of 1.08 percentage points to 5.58% to boost economic growth.
Oil prices are a barometer of the world economy. Rising prices between 2003 and 2007 reflected the best global economic growth in a generation.
What do you do when you lose billions of dollars short-selling Volkswagen? Here is what hedge fund managers did last week: they sat down and cried.



