Tuesday, March 30, 2004

Posted here Tuesday, March 30, 2004 at 6:09:29 PM     This could be the equivalent of the Madrid Bombing. OPEC May Ratify Output Cuts, Sending Crude Oil Prices Higher http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000102&;sid=apv78X979BaI&refer=uk March 31 (Bloomberg) -- OPEC at a meeting today may leave in place production cutbacks planned for next month, six ministers said, a decision that may send oil prices in New York above $40 a barrel to reach levels last seen in the 1990-1991 Gulf War. OPEC has ``had a stranglehold on this market for a very long time, so to doubt them is not a very smart move,'' said Edward Silliere, vice president of risk management at Energy Merchant LLC in New York. Oil prices may rise to $40 or $42 a barrel later this year as a result of OPEC's plan, he said. ********

Posted here Tuesday, March 30, 2004 at 5:11:12 PM     also recommend http://newyorker.com/printable/?fact/040329fa_fact THE CHURN by KATHERINE BOO C eative destruction in a border town. LastAugust, in a corner of South Texas where local newspapers still call businesses "corporate citizens," an  emergency vehicle paid a visit to a highly fortified underwear mill. The hundred-and-fifty-three-year-old Fruit of the Loom company, owned by Warren Buffett's Omaha-based Berkshire Hathaway, had just announced that its Cameron County factory would close by the end of the year. Much of its production would be shifted to Honduras. The news brought the county government's mass-layoff response squad to the scene. ********

Posted here Tuesday, March 30, 2004 at 2:49:15 PM     on population anc the ME, And why Europe is anti-american (part of the story). Important to think this through. http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110004879  ********

Posted here Tuesday, March 30, 2004 at 1:00:49 PM     Did we all know this intuitively ? Htto://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/040405fa_fact THE HEIGHT GAP   Tall men, a series of studies has shown, benefit from a significant bias. They get married sooner, get promoted quicker, and earn higher wages. According to one recent study, the average six-foot worker earns a hundred and sixty-six thousand dollars more, over a thirty-year period, than his five-foot-five-inch counterpart—about …. [no health-care coverage. In our height lies our history. …. Yet in Northern Eurone over the past twelve hundred years human stature has followed a U-shaped curve: from a high around 800 A.D., to a low sometime in the seventeenth century, and back up again. Charlemagne was well over six feet; the soldiers who stormed the Bastille a millennium later averaged five feet and weighed a hundred pounds. ********

Posted here Tuesday, March 30, 2004 at 9:12:17 AM     Sometimes those who are at a distance can see more clearly. And it is importnat to note that the NYT, printing this, is taking a stand it badly missed the day after Clarke's meeting with the 911 commission, when the Times seemed not to see the significance of Clarke's speech http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/29/international/europe/29SPIEGEL2.html ichard Clarke, Washington's director of counter-terrorism for many years, has delivered a devastating condemnation of the Bush administration with his sensational revelations. The whole affair reads like a script for a catastrophic film in the best Hollywood tradition: The White House is in panic and a heavily armed Secret Service team quickly whisks Vice President Richard Cheney to a nuclear bunker and command post underneath the White House; its principal tenant, George W. Bush, jets through the skies above the Midwest in his enormous Air Force One, searching for a safe place to land. And this review of Clarke's book this morning's Times http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/29/books/review/0411books-risen.html    ********