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Strategies & Market Trends : Zeev's Turnips - No Politics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ajtj99 who wrote (7886)	11/25/2001 5:47:43 PM
From: puborectalis	Respond to of 99280

Scripps Howard News Service WASHINGTON (November 24, 2001 11:19 p.m. EST) - A weekly size-up of the news by the Washington staff of Scripps Howard News Service: --- Predicting oil prices is even riskier than predicting the weather, but if crude prices fall much lower the Bush administration's arguments for opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling could turn into a dry hole. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates there is no economically recoverable oil in the section of the refuge that is proposed for drilling at a market price below $15 per barrel. At a market price of $18 per barrel there are 2.4 billion barrels of economically recoverable oil and 3.2 billion barrels at $20, the survey says. America consumes about 11 million barrels a day. Since it takes six to eight years from the time of discovery to get oil from Alaska's North Slope flowing through a pipeline to market, what the price would be when ANWR actually began pumping is anybody's guess. --- Wonder why Vice President Dick Cheney is being kept at least 5 miles from President Bush? The destruction range of a nuclear device carried in a suitcase is, well, just under 5 miles. --- The Pentagon has quietly revealed that it has spent $2 billion to improve homeland security and rout the Taliban in Afghanistan. The biggest chunk - $644 million - has gone to deploy aircraft carrier battle groups and other forces. Another $200 million has been doled out for cruise missiles and bombs. --- A new Gallup Poll indicates Americans will be keeping a tighter grip on their pocketbooks during the Christmas season despite lower fuel prices and interest rates. Consumer confidence already was plunging before Sept. 11, and while the willingness to spend surged slightly soon afterward, folks have again become leery about shelling out dough. --- Think it's too risky to travel over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house during the Yule season? The National Safety Council maintains that it's just about as dangerous to stay home. Over a four- to five-day holiday period, more than 500 may perish in vehicular accidents. At the same time, about 600 may die from accidents at home or in the community, with causes ranging from poisoning to falling on the ice. --- President Bush is appearing in a $12 million media campaign urging Americans to step up travel and boost the sagging economy. The travel industry, which employs about one of every seven workers in the nation, is in a slump. More than 1 million have been laid off or experienced a cut in hours. The ads will play through Dec. 10. --- On the presidential front - the election, after all, is only three years away - Vermont Gov. Howard Dean has taken the first steps toward entering the 2004 Democratic race, forming a political action committee to finance political travels and contribute to Democratic campaigns around the country. Meanwhile, Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., the campaign finance reform acolyte, hasn't ruled out a White House run. And intimates say former Vice President Al Gore hasn't given up thoughts of another presidential bid even though he has taken a job in the private sector as vice chairman of Metropolitan West Financial Inc. --- The Eid stamp, which went on sale Sept. 1, commemorates two important Islamic festivals - Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. On Nov. 13, the American Muslim Council circulated an e-mail alert complaining that the stamp wasn't included in Postal Service posters promoting holiday stamps for Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. Three days later, Paul Weyrich, a honcho in the religious right, sent a letter to House Republican leaders decrying the fact that an "explicitly Islamic" stamp was issued in the first place. --- The surge of patriotism in the wake of Sept. 11 has resulted in a shortage of American flags in the U.S. Capitol, and it will be at least six months before supplies are replenished. The Valley Forge Flag Co. said it has sold out its supply for the next year and the entire industry finds itself in similar straits. Congressional offices are hustling to secure flags for the survivors and victims of the attacks. --- The Bush administration's latest effort at a stimulus package to push the economy out of first gear looks to be going nowhere despite GOP efforts to salvage something. Bush and his congressional point men have two weeks to save the initiative. Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota has set Dec. 8 as the beginning date for the holiday recess. Prospects are looking bleak. --- Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has long been a thorn in the side of Senate Republican leader Trent Lott of Mississippi, and the relationship shows no signs of warming. Asked what he considered the best thing about the recently passed airline safety bill, McCain responded, within earshot of Lott, "There's not a single piece of pork for the state of Mississippi in this bill." The leader was not amused. --- Are we getting a bad rap as lousy savers? From 1975 to 1999, Americans saw a fivefold increase in their retirement savings assets when compared to wage and salary income, according to a new National Bureau of Economic Research report. It credits the rise of the 401(k) savings programs atop defined-benefit company pension plans. --- Officials at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are playing a duck-and-weave game over security issues. They won't identify which labs are conducting the anthrax testing on its Atlanta campus but new fences are being erected quickly around the more sensitive buildings and more guards have been affixed. Security also has been stepped up at the National Institutes of Health complex in Bethesda, Md., with six of 11 vehicle entrances closed, many more guards and plans for a fence around the 300-acre complex. --- The Federal Trade Commission has again placed businesses on notice that they better not hoodwink consumers with "Made in the USA" labels they've placed on their goods since the Sept. 11 attacks. The FTC had reaffirmed in 1997 that "all or virtually all" of a product must be made in America to merit the label.