Subscribe
You know the labor market is tight when the local McDonald’s starts handing out $300 signing bonuses. Workers are coming in from all over, making it tough to find housing. They might sleep in their trucks or pitch tents, but it can get 50 degrees below zero, which makes such a move dangerous.
(more...)India’s inflation in food prices has been soaring lately — holding for weeks above 17 percent — due to a combination of factors including the weakest monsoon rains in nearly 40 years, new taxes on gasoline and diesel, and increased excise taxes on a wide variety of products.
From BusinessWeek:
(more...)Well… After a couple of weeks of waiting, and wondering if it was going to print or not… There was a very nice article in The Wall Street Journal on Saturday that featured… Me! And my Pfennig! I’m sure that most of you missed it, so if by chance you would want to read what Jeff Opdyke had to say about me and the Pfennig… Click here.
(more...)Iraq will pump up oil production from 2.4 million barrels a day now to 12 million barrels by 2017. That’s the promise of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who’d like to hold onto his job after elections on Sunday.
It’s not 2004 anymore. And it’s no longer in Washington’s interest to play up purple fingers in Iraqi elections. So let’s bring you up to speed on what’s been happening there since the “surge” was deemed a success:
(more...)Markets in the US ended yesterday’s session in the red. The Dow was off by 100 points, or around 1%. The broader S&P 500 fell a bit harder, down 1.3% at the close. Gold slipped, too. The yellow metal sunk below the $1,100 mark and now trades for about $1,095 per ounce. Oil gained a smidge, to just shy of $80 a barrel.
(more...)According to Addison Wiggin at The 5 Minute Forecast, “Schlumberger just pulled off a super-sized acquisition of Smith Intl. In an all-stock, $11 billion transaction, SLB is now by far the world’s biggest oil service company. Should revenues stay the same, Schlumberger will be double the size of Halliburton, its closest competitor.”
(more...)Based on its new quarterly report, Houston-based onshore, rig-based well servicing contractor Key Energy Services (NYSE:KEG) is showing renewed signs of sales growth.
Agora Financial expert editor Chris Mayer dug deeply into the numbers and had the following opinion:
(more...)We are entering a time of year that in recent decades has been good for energy prices and energy equities.
Combine that with new estimates that domestic and global energy demand will rise in 2010, and we have the makings of a promising period for investors. March tends to be one of the best months of the year for both crude oil and natural gas.
(more...)We are entering a time of year that in recent decades has been good for energy prices and energy equities.
Combine that with new estimates that domestic and global energy demand will rise in 2010, and we have the makings of a promising period for investors. March tends to be one of the best months of the year for both crude oil and natural gas.
(more...)OK… Well, the “experts” that thought the trade deficit was going to narrow in December got their lunch handed to them yesterday, when not only did the trade deficit NOT narrow, but widened from $35 billion to $40 billion! Now that stinks! And… I’ll tell you right now, it will deduct from the 5.7% GDP figure that was printed a couple of weeks ago. Yes, this increase in the trade deficit will probably reduce the GDP figure to at least 5%.
(more...)Arthur Laffer, former head of the Office of Management and Budget, has decided that President Obama’s 2011 budget “is the perfect plan for catastrophe.” Laffer has a variety of policy recommendations he presents in an interview released today, and some of his more interesting thoughts include the three we’ve transcribed below:
(more...)The biggest emerging economies have ambitious plans that require a greater share of the world’s limited commodities. This trend is spurring profound and permanent disruptions in how these resources are allocated now and in the future. For investors, these disruptions present opportunities.
Simply put, an investment in natural resources is a vote of confidence in global economic growth.
(more...)