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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DebtBomb who wrote (123382)	5/15/2008 9:17:21 PM
From: Giordano Bruno	Respond to of 306849

Yesterday it was something like: Prices Rise On Tame Inflation

To: DebtBomb who wrote (123382)	5/16/2008 7:21:38 AM
From: Giordano Bruno	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

The Petroleum Price Problem: Guns For Oil The balance of trade between the US and its Arab allies has taken several odd twists since the price oil began to move up sharply last year. The US buys oil at $125 a barrel. It has recently sold Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates about $20 billion in new weapons. While some of this guns and ammo will be used to defend borders, a part of the planes, rifles, and explosives are quietly enlisted to keep militants from overthrowing the local kingdoms. It has been eighteen years since Iraq invaded Kuwait. The US spent several billion dollars to push Saddam out. It was an expensive few days in the desert. Iraq is no longer a threat to the kings and their courts, but Iran is. US carrier groups in the Gulf region are a display of commitment to keep sovereign states safe from the forces of evil. Batman in a battle group. In exchange for protecting six nation states, all of which are targets of destabilizing parties who wish to see them out of power, the US gets no increase in oil production. Crude prices, which may be the largest inflationary force in the American economy, are not falling. All of it may be a little unbalanced. Douglas A. McIntyre --------------------------------------------------------------------- Goldman Sachs Pushes Up 2008 Oil Forecast To $141 Goldman Sachs (GS), king of the oil bulls, has raised its forecast for oil prices in the second half of this year to $141 from a previous estimate of $107. For those without a calculator handy, that is an increase of 32%. The forecast does make sense no matter how unfortunate that may be. With oil at $125, it will only take modest interruption in supply caused by militias in Nigeria or mad bombers in Iraq to push the price up again. So far, major Western nations have not been able to come up with a policy for bringing down oil prices. That may be because there is not one. That is, short of threatening to withdraw military and other aid from OPEC countries. That may be next. Douglas A. McIntyre