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

To: Les H who wrote (124789)	5/22/2008 3:17:10 PM
From: Smiling Bob	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

The Amish have been doing that forever They grow corn to feed their horses, not their tractors The Amish Farm and Alternative Agriculture A Comparison haworthpress.com

To: Les H who wrote (124789)	5/22/2008 3:52:46 PM
From: Les H	Respond to of 306849

An obstacle to dollar and general economic recovery lies in skyrocketing commodity prices. Oil has breached $125 a barrel. The OPEC oil cartel's president warns that oil could reach $200 a barrel, largely because of the market being drawn down by the dollar's slide, as the Economist magazine reported. Analysts at global investment bank Goldman Sachs say it's the other way around: Oil price increases cause the dollar to fall. They argue that there's a 95 percent correlation between the oil price and the dollar/euro rate over the past year. Since oil is still largely paid for in dollars, higher oil means a lower dollar. There's nothing the ECB can do about rising fuel and food prices, say European economic experts. But it can help the dollar and fight inflation by lowering its euro rates. Mediterranean-area bankers emphatically agree. They hope a cut would reduce inflation – which here in Greece has risen to 4 percent, far above the ECB's prescription for the eurozone of just under 2 percent – and make it easier to sell Mediterranean olive oil, citrus fruits, and other products to the US. As France prepares to take over the rotating presidency of the European Union July 1, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has also indicated his concern about the euro's rise. France could press for such help by the ECB during that term. Ideally, intervention – buying up large quantities of US dollars – by the ECB would be a great boost for the dollar. Europe's relative economic stability (banks caught in the US-generated sub-prime mortgage crisis excepted) may continue to deter the ECB from cutting rates or undertaking massive intervention. But in the end, such measures may be the only way to ease the business and personal woes of folks in Europe, tired of paying as much as double or triple in dollar equivalents for food, drink, or gasoline as they did a year or two ago. Leaders in Washington should be willing to show they are as serious as the US Treasury says it is about restoring a strong dollar – a symbol abroad of American power and prestige. They could cut as much foreign borrowing and unnecessary spending as possible, and craft a real national energy policy that truly reduces the demand, and the price, of imported oil. news.yahoo.com