Keyword: speculation
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FORT HOOD — One of the most sensational allegations stemming from last week's shooting spree at Fort Hood was a claim that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan shouted “Allahu akbar!” before firing into scores of soldiers at a large post processing center. A day after Army chief of staff Gen. George W. Casey Jr. expressed concern over potential anti-Muslim reaction in the wake of the mass shooting, Fort Hood appeared to distance itself from the controversy. A spokesman for the post, asked to clarify comments made last week by Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, the Fort Hood commander, who suggested that Hasan...
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[UPDATE: Lambeth Palace has denied reports that there is to be an emergency meeting of Church of England bishops to discuss the Pope's offer tomorrow.] Here’s what I think Dr Rowan Williams is most worried about as the reality of the Pope’s offer sinks in: the prospect of the Bishop of Chichester and many of his clergy signing up to the new Ordinariate. Bishop John Hind put out a statement today which denies that he is about to become a Roman Catholic. Read between the lines, though. It doesn’t mean that he won’t join the new Papal structure in the...
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Wall Street is up to its old tricks again. One year later, one of the key excesses that led our consumer-based economy into an historic downturn is being abused in the exact same way that got us $147-a-barrel oil last summer. Worse, many in the media are again getting the facts wrong on oil prices and demand— Forget what Cambridge Energy Research Associates reported on Oct. 13. By its calculations oil demand actually peaked in 2005 among the industrialized members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation, while in the U.S. alone oil usage has dropped by 2 million barrels a...
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<p>ANNANDALE, Va. (MarketWatch) -- It's hardly earth-shattering news that the last six months have been a speculative period for the stock market.</p>
<p>Nor is that a big surprise: The initial thrusts upward of a brand new bull market are always speculative.</p>
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Back in 2002 and in the aftermath of the Enron and Worldcom implosions, former Sen. Paul Sarbanes, D-Md., and former Rep. Mike Oxley, R-Ohio, created the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, meant to curb allegedly funny accounting and business practices. As President George W. Bush asserted in signing the bill, "There will not be a different ethical standard for corporate America than the standard that applies to everyone else." Nice political theater for sure, but then reality set in. Fast-forward four years, and the joke was on politicians naïve enough to believe that corporations with aspirations of going public would lie prostrate before...
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Do you have to be a power-plant owner to really understand the natural gas market? Should makers of aluminum siding being the only ones allowed to buy aluminum? These are the kinds of questions being raised in many commodities markets today. The issue is speculators versus users of fuels, metals and agricultural products. Both of these groups are big investors in commodities. Users buy these goods to consume them. Speculators buy without any intention of ever using them. A speculator looks purely to make a profit by buying and selling the rights to a pound of copper or a barrel...
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The staggered phase out of energy-wasting light bulbs begins on Sept. 1 in Germany. The unpopularity of the energy-saving compact fluorescent bulbs that will replace them is leading consumers and retailers to start hoarding the traditional bulbs. As the Sept. 1 deadline for the implementation of the first phase of the EU's ban on incandescent light bulbs approaches, shoppers, retailers and even museums are hoarding the precious wares -- and helping the manufacturers make a bundle. The EU ban, adopted in March, calls for the gradual replacement of traditional light bulbs with supposedly more energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs (CFL). The...
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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ahZl9asR.GX8
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The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is planning to issue a report next month that suggests that wild swings in oil prices were significantly driven by speculators, the Wall Street Journal reported on its website on Tuesday. A 2008 report by the main U.S. futures-market regulator that attributed oil-price swings primarily on supply and demand was based on "deeply flawed data," Bart Chilton, one of four CFTC commissioners, told the paper in an interview on Monday. The CFTC did not reveal preliminary figures from the report to the paper and declined to discuss the previous data. Reuters attempts to...
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Big speculators such as hedge funds and investment banks have sharply reduced their buying positions in oil futures in recent weeks, just as regulators are considering setting limits in energy speculation. The drop in speculative positions likely contributed to last week's 10% slump in oil prices -- the biggest weekly loss in six months, analysts said. Long, or buying, positions held by non-commercial traders, a category the regulator uses to classify big speculators, dropped by 16,382 contracts in the week ended July 7, according to the weekly Commitments of Traders report released by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission late Friday....
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‘Rogue broker’ blamed for oil spike By Javier Blas and Izabella Kaminska in London Published: July 2 2009 12:07 | Last updated: July 2 2009 20:26 The startling spike in oil prices to their highest level this year on Tuesday was caused by a rogue broker who placed a massive bet in the Brent oil market, triggering almost $10m (€7m) of losses for his company. PVM Oil Associates, the world’s largest over-the-counter oil brokerage, said on Thursday it had been the “victim of unauthorised trading”. The privately owned company said that as a result of the unauthorised trades it had...
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Air France pilots battled for up to 15 minutes to save the doomed flight that went missing over the Atlantic this week, electronic messages emitted by the aircraft have revealed. Details have emerged of the moments leading up to the disappearance of flight AF 447 with 228 people on-board, with error messages reportedly suggesting the plane was flying too slowly and that two key computers malfunctioned. Flight data messages provided by an Air France source show the precise chronology of events of flight AF 447 before it plummeted into the sea 400 miles off Brazil on Monday. These indicate that...
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Florida-based radio station KissFM reports that Patrick Swayze has died. So sad if its true
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Although the CDC has not explained whether the current swine flu outbreak in Mexico and the United States is bioterrorism, influenza can be very readily manipulated and may be one of the best candidates for weaponization for several reasons: 1) Terrorists can prepare a vaccine to protect themselves and their host populations in advance of its release. 2) Influenza is airborne, it is transmitted through either solid or lipid aerosol, therefore it’s easy to spread. 3) There is a normal period of incubation during which time the carrier displays no symptoms, but can infect others. Therefore, dispersion is very efficient....
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In a discussion this morning with a cell biologist and medical doctor working at Johns Hopkins, my friend thought this 4-part flu combination is highly unusual and looks like it could be man-made. Especially because it has an avian strain. My doctor friend (he's Taiwanese) explained that in Asia, it's common for a avian-swine-human flu to happen naturally, but this virus first showed up in Mexico, where pigs and ducks are not usually raised together. Also, recombination of more than 2-different flu viruses is extremely rare. I'm just repeating what he said as an expert in the field. He says...
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The recently released Department of Homeland Security assessment of rightwing extremism represents an alarming politicization of that huge federal agency. The 10-pages document is entitled: "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment." Its source is the Extremism and Radicalization Branch of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis Assessment, of the Department of Homeland Security. (Imagine the size of their security badges.) Read it here. American Thinker Jim Byrd's article entitled "Is Texas A Terror State?" provides a catalogue of transgressions that cumulatively define rightwing extremism. Byrd concludes that, when measured against Governor Rick Perry...
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As state budgeters look toward another multi-billion dollar budget deficit this summer, attorneys for the Legislature and Gov. Schwarzenegger have issued a new opinion reaffirming the legality of a plan passed by Democrats last December that raised revenues without requiring a two-thirds vote. The March 9 opinion from Legislative Counsel Diane Boyer-Vine, addressed to Gov. Schwarzenegger, reaffirms a 2003 opinion by her office that finds a bill that raises one tax and lowers another by an equal or greater amount only needs simple majority votes in each legislative house. “We think that a tax bill is not subject to the...
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How Goldman Sachs was at the center of the oil trading fiasco that bankrupted pipeline giant Semgroup. When oil prices spiked last summer to $147 a barrel, the biggest corporate casualty was oil pipeline giant Semgroup Holdings, a $14 billion (sales) private firm in Tulsa, Okla. It had racked up $2.4 billion in trading losses betting that oil prices would go down, including $290 million in accounts personally managed by then chief executive Thomas Kivisto. Its short positions amounted to the equivalent of 20% of the nation's crude oil inventories. With the credit crunch eliminating any hope of meeting a...
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Details remain vague, but The Juice has just learned that authorities believe they have found the body of Natalee Holloway, the 18-year-old from Clinton, Miss., who vanished in the Caribbean island in May 2005. A Miami-based flight attendant for American Airlines tells The Juice that a cadaver dog was aboard a Miami-to-Aruba flight. The officer with the dog was going to search for the remains of Holloway. "They think they've found where Natalee Holloway's remains are, and they're taking the dog down to confirm that," said the flight attendant, who lives in Fort Lauderdale. "They're not telling anybody because Aruba...
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About the only economic break most Americans have gotten in the last six months has been the drastic drop in the price of oil, which has fallen even more precipitously than it rose. In a year's time, a commodity that was theoretically priced according to supply and demand doubled from $69 a barrel to nearly $150, and then, in a period of just three months, crashed along with the stock market. So what happened? It's a complicated question, and there are lots of theories. But as correspondent Steve Kroft reports, many people believe it was a speculative bubble, not unlike...
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