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HavenWorks.com/energy/archive/2008 |
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Consumer
- 
Accounting
- 
History
- 
Labor
- 
Food
- 
Health
- 
Gasoline
- 
Politics
- "New
inflation data explain middle-class squeeze." ...
"New data from the Labor Department confirm what most middle-class Americans
already know: Inflation is squeezing them." ... "As consumer prices rose
by 4.1 percent last year, the highest rate since 1990, the prices of basic
essentials such as food, gasoline and health insurance climbed far more
steeply, explaining why so many Americans are telling pollsters that the
economy is their chief concern." ... "The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported
Wednesday that the price of food and beverages rose 4.8 percent. At the
same time, real weekly earnings failed to keep pace, rising 0.9 percent
for the year. In the simplest of terms, a dollar earned bought less." ...
"Digging deeper into the data reveals, for example, that the price of bread
rose 7.4 percent last year, almost twice the rate of inflation." ... "The
price of eggs rose 29.2 percent in 2007, while the price of fresh whole
milk was up 13.1 percent. Since July, when milk prices first soared, the
price of fresh whole milk has risen by almost 23 percent." ... "The price
of health insurance, another major political-campaign theme, rose by 10.1
percent last year." ... "Gasoline prices rose 8.2 percent on average last
year, the slowest rate of growth since 2002. But pump prices began climbing
anew in October and for the last quarter of 2007 average prices rose by
just
more than 30 percent." -By
Kevin
G. Hall -McClatchyDC.com
Consumer
- History
- Energy
- "Wholesale
prices rose by 6.3 percent in 2007: Year-over-year
gain was largest in 26 years." ... "Wholesale inflation last year shot
up by the largest amount in 26 years while retailers suffered their worst
December shopping season in five years as mounting economic woes caused
consumers to put away their wallets." ... "The Labor Department reported
that wholesale inflation [the Producer Price Index] was up 6.3 percent
for all of 2007, reflecting a huge increase for the year in various types
of energy costs ranging from gasoline to home heating oil." ... "Meanwhile,
retail sales fell by 0.4 percent in December, the worst showing in six
months, the Commerce Department reported. Consumer confidence has plunged,
reflecting the worsening housing slump and a lingering credit crisis."
... "The big increase last year reflected the fact that energy prices rose
by 18.4 percent after having declined by 2 percent in 2006. It was the
biggest annual increase in energy costs at the wholesale level since they
rose by 23.9 percent in 2005." -AP
via -MSNBC
John
Edwards
- 
Environmental
- 
Law
- 
South
Carolina - Coal-Plant
- 
Corporation
- 
US
- 
Global
- 
Climate
- 
North
Carolina - 2008
Election - "Edwards
Calls for Ban on Coal Plants." ... "[2008 Election]
Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on Monday said a proposed
coal-fired power plant shouldn't be built in northeastern South Carolina,
continuing his call for a ban on those facilities." ... ""My view is that
needs to stop," Edwards said of the $1 billion, 600-megawatt plant set
to be built along the Pee Dee River in this early voting state. Santee
Cooper officials are awaiting a final permit from state environmental regulators."
... "Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, told about 150 people at
a campus of Coastal Carolina University that coal-fired plants are "taking
a bad situation and making it worse."" ... "He also said he was opposed
to new nuclear power plants and that the U.S. has no credibility in global
warming discussions. "We are the worst polluter on the planet," Edwards
said." ... ""We have to have a president willing to stand up to the oil
and gas industry," Edwards said." -By Page Ivey
-AP via -Forbes
John
Edwards
- 
Hillary
Clinton
- 
Barack
Obama - 
Government
- Economy
- Workers
- 
Families
- Alternative
Energy - Consumer
- 2008
Election
- "Responding
to Recession." ... "On the Democratic side, [2008
Election Democratic Presidential Candidate] John Edwards, although never
the front-runner, has been driving his party’s policy agenda. He’s done
it again on economic stimulus: last month, before the economic consensus
turned as negative as it now has, he proposed a stimulus package including
aid to unemployed workers, aid to cash-strapped state and local governments,
public investment in alternative energy, and other measures." ... "Last
week [2008 Election Democratic Presidential Candidate] Hillary Clinton
offered a broadly similar but somewhat larger proposal. (It also includes
aid to families having trouble paying heating bills, which seems like a
clever way to put cash in the hands of people likely to spend it.) The
Edwards and Clinton proposals both contain provisions for bigger stimulus
if the economy worsens." ... "And you have to say that Mrs. Clinton seems
comfortable with and knowledgeable about economic policy. I’m sure the
Hillary-haters will find some reason that’s a bad thing, but there’s something
to be said for presidents who know what they’re talking about." ... "The
[2008 Election Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack] Obama campaign’s
initial response to the latest wave of bad economic news was, I’m sorry
to say, disreputable: Mr. Obama’s top economic adviser claimed that the
long-term tax-cut plan the candidate announced months ago is just what
we need to keep the slump from “morphing into a drastic decline in consumer
spending.” Hmm: claiming that the candidate is all-seeing, and that a tax
cut originally proposed for other reasons is also a recession-fighting
measure — doesn’t that sound familiar?" ... "Anyway, on Sunday Mr. Obama
came out with a real stimulus plan. As was the case with his health care
plan, which fell short of universal coverage, his stimulus proposal is
similar to those of the other Democratic candidates, but tilted to the
right." ... "I know that Mr. Obama’s supporters hate to hear this, but
he really is less progressive than his rivals on matters of domestic policy."
-By Paul
Krugman -NYTimes
US
- 
Iraq
- Law
- 
Military
- History
- Oil
- Money
- "Iraq
to reinstate Saddam party followers." ... "Iraq's
parliament voted Saturday to allow some former members of Saddam Hussein's
Baath party to reclaim government jobs and said others could receive pensions
but could not return to work." ... "The 275-seat parliament is still deadlocked
over how to share the country's oil profits, constitutional amendments
demanded by minority Sunni Arabs, and a bill spelling out rules for local
elections." ... "The bill, approved Saturday by a unanimous show of hands,
seeks to relax restrictions on the rights of members of the now-dissolved
Baath party to fill government posts." ... "It is also designed to reinstate
thousands of Baathists dismissed from government jobs after the U.S. [United
States] invasion — a decision that deepened sectarian tensions between
Iraq's majority Shiites and the once-dominant Sunni Arabs, who believed
the firings targeted their community." ... "The strict implementation of
so-called de-Baathification rules also meant that many senior bureaucrats
who knew how to run ministries, university departments and state companies
ended up unemployed in a country where 35 years of Baath party rule and
extensive government involvement in the economy had left tens of thousands
of party members in key positions." ... "That, coupled with the disbanding
of the Iraqi army, threw tens of thousands of people out of work at a critical
time in Iraq's history and fueled the burgeoning Sunni insurgency." -By
Qassim Abdul-Zahra with contributions by Terence Hunt and Sameer N. Yacoub
-AP via -Yahoo
Oil
- History
- "Heating
oil price hits record for 4th week." ... "The U.S.
[United States] average retail price for home heating oil soared 5.4 cents
over the past week to a record $3.40 a gallon, the government said on Wednesday."
... "The national heating oil price was up 98 cents from a year ago, the
U.S. Energy Information Administration [EIA] said in its weekly survey
of heating fuel costs around the country. It was the fourth week in a row
that heating oil hit a record." ... "Heating oil prices are rising because
of higher crude oil costs, which topped at a record above $100 a barrel
last week, and tight supplies." -By Tom Doggett
-AP via -Yahoo
Agriculture
- Plant
- Energy
- Economy
- Food
- 
Nebraska
- 
N
Dakota - 
S
Dakota - "Grass
Makes Better Ethanol than Corn Does: Midwestern farms
prove switchgrass could be the right crop for producing ethanol to replace
gasoline." ... "Farmers in Nebraska and the Dakotas [North and South] brought
the U.S. [United States] closer to becoming a biofuel economy, planting
huge tracts of land for the first time with switchgrass—a native North
American perennial grass (Panicum virgatum) that often grows on
the borders of cropland naturally—and proving that it can deliver more
than five times more energy than it takes to grow it." ... "Working with
the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the farmers tracked the seed
used to establish the plant, fertilizer used to boost its growth, fuel
used to farm it, overall rainfall and the amount of grass ultimately harvested
for five years on fields ranging from seven to 23 acres in size (three
to nine hectares)." ... "Once established, the fields yielded from 5.2
to 11.1 metric tons of grass bales per hectare, depending on rainfall,
says USDA plant scientist Ken Vogel. "It fluctuates with the timing of
the precipitation,'' he says. "Switchgrass needs most of its moisture in
spring and midsummer. If you get fall rains, it's not going to do that
year's crops much good."" ... "But yields from a grass that only needs
to be planted once would deliver an average of 13.1 megajoules of energy
as ethanol for every megajoule of petroleum consumed—in the form of nitrogen
fertilizers or diesel for tractors—growing them. "It's a prediction because
right now there are no biorefineries built that handle cellulosic material"
like that which switchgrass provides, Vogel notes. "We're pretty confident
the ethanol yield is pretty close." This means that switchgrass ethanol
delivers 540 percent of the energy used to produce it, compared with just
roughly 25 percent more energy returned by corn-based ethanol according
to the most optimistic studies." -By David Biello
-SciAm
Employment
- Oil
- 
Pennsylvania
- "Recession
in the US 'has arrived': The feared recession in
the US economy has already arrived, according to a report from Merrill
Lynch." ... "It said that Friday's employment report, which sent shares
tumbling worldwide, confirmed that the US is in the first month of a recession."
... "Its view is controversial, with banks such as Lehman Brothers disagreeing."
... "But a reserve member of the committee that sets US rates warned that
it could do little about the below-trend growth expected in the next six
months." ... ""I am concerned that developments on the inflation front
will make the Fed's policy decisions more difficult in 2008," Charles Plosser,
president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia [Pennsylvania] said."
... "He was referring to the problems faced by the US Federal Reserve,
which might want to cut interest rates to avoid a recession, but is worried
about inflationary factors such as $100-a-barrel oil." ... "An official
ruling on whether the US is in recession is made by the National Bureau
of Economic Research, but this decision may not come for two years." ...
"Merrill Lynch said that the figures showing the jobless rate hitting 5%
in December were the final piece in that puzzle." ... ""According to our
analysis, this isn't even a forecast any more but is a present day reality,"
the report said. " -BBC/News
John
Edwards
- Barack
Obama
- Politics
- 2008
Election - 2004
Election - 
Iowa
- 
New
Hampshire - Working
- 
People
- Investment
- Civil
Rights - Lawyer
- 
Drug
- Oil
- "Obama
borrows from Edwards." ... "After beating [2008 Election
Democratic Presidential Candidate] John Edwards in Iowa on Thursday, [2008
Election Democratic Presidential Candidate] Barack Obama has decided to
join him -- repeatedly poaching his opponent's themes, language, and even
jokes." ... ""We shouldn't just be respecting wealth in this country --
we should be respecting work," Obama told an overflow crowd in a [New Hampshire]
high-school gym today." ... "Edwards's 2004 presidential campaign was centered
around the idea that the [Republican President] Bush administration had
launched a "war on work" through tax cuts that offer incentives for investment
over labor. "Hard work should be valued in this country, so we're going
to reward work, not just wealth," Edwards said in accepting his party’s
vice-presidential nomination at the Democratic’ convention in Boston. In
this campaign, he has sharpened his populist rhetoric, railing against
greedy corporate CEOs who are waging war on working people and the middle
class." ... "Since arriving in New Hampshire Friday, Obama has borrowed
Edwards's favorite verb by bragging that he had "fought" as a community
organizer and civil rights lawyer, and conceding that "insurance companies
and drug companies will not give up their profits" -- which Edwards asserts
repeatedly to ridicule Obama's talk of conciliation. Obama repeatedly invoked
those interests, as well as "big oil and big insurance," common villains
in Edwards speeches." -By Sasha Issenberg with contributions
by Foon Rhee -Boston/Globe
Oil
- Money
- FOOD:
Wheat, Soybeans, Corn - History
- World
- US
- 
California
- 
New
York
- "Commodities
Surge, Led by Oil at $100, Record Gold (Update7)."
... "Crude oil reached a record $100 a barrel and gold soared to the highest
ever, leading a commodity surge as the dollar's slump against major currencies
enhanced the appeal of raw materials as hedges against inflation." ...
"Spot gold climbed to $860.10 an ounce, and wheat and soybeans jumped more
than 3 percent. The UBS Bloomberg Constant Maturity Commodity Index gained
2.2 percent today to a record after climbing 22 percent in 2007. The dollar
fell on speculation the Federal Reserve will cut borrowing costs in an
attempt to bolster the U.S. economy." ... "``The most salient buzzword
in 2008 is going to be inflation,'' said Michael Pento, senior market strategist
for Delta Global Advisors Inc. in Huntington Beach, California, which manages
about $1.4 billion. ``The Fed is lowering interest rates and vastly increasing
the money supply. They're further fueling inflationary expectations.''"
... "Crude-oil futures for February delivery rose $3.64, or 3.8 percent,
to close at $99.62 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The previous
intraday record was $99.29 on Nov. 21." ... "Gold for immediate delivery
surged $23.25, or 2.8 percent, to $856.95 an ounce at 4:35 p.m. New York
time. Gold futures for February delivery rose $22, or 2.6 percent, to $860
an ounce on the Comex division of the Nymex, a record settlement. The metal
earlier reached $864.90, the highest for a most-active contract since Jan.
21, 1980, the day futures reached a record $873." ... "The price of heating
oil also surged to a record, and natural gas soared 4.9 percent. Platinum
jumped to the highest ever, while the dollar fell as much as 1 percent
against a basket of six major currencies after the measure tumbled 8.3
percent in 2007." ... "Wheat and soybean prices jumped almost 80 percent
last year, and corn last month climbed to the highest in 11 years." -By
Pham-Duy Nguyen and Mark Shenk -Bloomberg
John
Edwards
- Iowa
- Factory
- Work
- Health
- 
Education- Family
- Folk
- 2008
Election - Corporate
- Oil
- Government
- "Edwards
in Iowa: Closing With Class." ... ""It is time for
some truth telling, and the truth is that corporate greed is destroying
this country. I believe that we have a responsibility to stand up for the
sacrifice and the hard work of those generations before us."" ... "[2008
Election Democratic Presidential Candidate John] Edwards' final message
is simple: "to make absolutely certain that our kids have a better life
than we had. That's what this is all about, at the end of the day, to live
up to our responsibility, to live up to what our folks did for us," Edwards
said in a two-minute speech, his voice breaking, at a house party in Centerville
[Iowa] 11 hours after his factory floor appearance." ... ""One of the things
that I've seen just in the last 12 to 14 hours is the energy and excitement
as I move across Iowa," Edwards told reporters Wednesday in Mount Pleasant
[Iowa]. "And the one thing that's clear to me [is] that the people of Iowa
and the people of America are unstoppable when they commit themselves to
stopping these entrenched special interests."" ... ""I see the CEO of one
of the biggest health insurance companies in America making hundreds of
millions of dollars last year in one year. I see Exxon Mobil [oil corporation]
making billions and billions of dollars in profit, record profits. The
top 1% of Americans are taking twice as much of America's income as they
did 20-25 years ago," Edwards told supporters in Fort Madison [Iowa] today.
"The biggest corporations have an iron-fisted hold on your democracy.""
... ""I come from a family where people worked in the mills. My grandmother
had a sixth-grade education, she came from a family of sharecroppers, she
worked hard all of her life. I loved her dearly," Edwards said Wednesday
in Burlington [Iowa]. "She would have done anything for me, for my children,
for my grandchildren, and my mother and father they were exactly the same
way. They are no different than most of your parents and your grandparents.
They worked and sacrificed so that you could have a better life."" -By
Jay Newton-Small
-TIME.com
