Consumers are paying an easy $35 dollars per barrel over what they would otherwisedole out for a barrel of oil if fund managers didn`t use the benchmark futures contracts as their own personal ATMs.
The Great Recession and the poor job market has stressed the middle class to its limit. However, the seeds have long been sown from the poor fiscal and monetary policy implementation.
While conflicts within and with the Middle East region are still among the top global risks, the paradigm has definitively shifted to China and Europe.
Spain marks the fourth bailout during this Euro Zone debt crisis saga, after Ireland, Portugal and Greece, and may need more aid, while Italy is looking good to be the fifth bailout candidate
Instead of a "botched" event, the Facebook IPO is actually a total success by Wall Street standard, since concerted effort appeared to have been made to ensure an "acceptable" return for the insiders.
A recent IMF working paper predicts a permanent doubling of real oil prices over the coming decade. However, the "peak oil labor" could be just enough to tip the scale for the doubling in oil price scenario a lot sooner than year 2022.
In the 60 years since Chinese Nationalists retreated to Taiwan, the tiny island country has transformed itself quite differently from the mainland China.
