Wall Street's biggest fear is that rising energy prices will further increase the costs of shipping goods to market, thus driving up prices for consumers who are themselves hard hit by high gasoline prices. With fewer consumers shopping and higher costs for corporations, earnings for the current quarter, which ends next month, could falter.
Oil prices are now up 57 percent in the past 12 months, although when adjusted for inflation, oil is still roughly $8 less per barrel than it was leading up to the first Gulf War.
Market watchers said some investors had started to whisper about the possibility of a $60 barrel, even as the head of producers' cartel OPEC made soothing-but-vague comments about ``a significant outcome'' from its next members' meeting in September.
Iran's defense minister, Vice Adm. Ali Shamkhani, has warned that Iran may resort to pre-emptive strikes to prevent an attack on its nuclear facilities.
"We will not sit to wait for what others will do to us," he said. "Some military commanders in Iran are convinced that preventive operations which the Americans talk about are not their monopoly. Any nation, if it feels threatened, can resort to that."
A commander of Iran's hard-line Revolutionary Guards warned this week that Iran would strike Israel's reactor at Dimona if Israel attacked Iran's nuclear sites.
Admiral Shamkhani said Iran was certain that Israel would not carry out such an attack without a green light from the United States. "So you cannot separate the two," he said.
Thank you George Bush, for your doctrine of preemption. You've given a present to the world.
This is a "team" blog. We are a bunch of
Americans, whose rising distress
in our leader's decisions brought us together to make this site.
As Bush said, he's a "uniter." Many of us have never even met.
That's the internet for you.
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the
president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is
not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the
American people."
- Teddy Roosevelt
"Government has a final responsibility for the well-being of
its citizenship. If private cooperative endeavor fails to provide work
for willing hands and relief for the unfortunate, those suffering
hardship from no fault of their own have a right to call upon the
Government for aid; and a government worthy of its name must make
fitting response."
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions, but laws must and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
- Thomas Jefferson
"The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home."
"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain
degree."
- James Madison
"I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves." - John F. Kennedy
"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are [a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
More Sites we often
like:
more coming...
"There's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by what's right with America." - Bill Clinton.
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