It's not only the energy markets that threaten the 'low inflation' data now encouraging bondholders to keep buying... The published inflation data are surprisingly unsophisticated in so far as they compare current prices with a snapshot a year earlier. Just over a year ago, oil was every hedge fund manager's favorite speculation. ...read more

Always follow the oil market closely, because it will impact the fundamentals of many businesses -- including those we are selling short. Drivers in the U.S. no longer determine the global price of oil. So oil prices can remain high despite a weak labor market -- as we saw in the ...read more

Do you remember this time last year? As spring turned to summer, energy prices were moving upward. By mid-July 2008, oil prices peaked at $147 per barrel. But as with Gen. Pickett and his famous charge at Gettysburg, that lofty level of $147 was the high-water mark for oil prices. By ...read more

Yesterday in Part I, I discussed how the publicly traded geothermal companies are not delivering what we hoped for as returns. I described how geothermal power is the beneficiary of a lot of government benefits, from renewable-energy mandates to tax breaks. Thus, the geothermal companies (including five companies in the ESI ...read more

Hot rocks? This is Part I of a discussion of geothermal energy and investing. Part II will appear tomorrow. It’s a work in progress. I’ve been mulling this over for quite some time. There are some things that I want to get off my chest and share with you. I Love ...read more

To put an end to this cap-and-trade fiasco, the only option is probably to cap all the “revolving door” stooges and trade them out for oil and coal execs. But unfortunately, Shooters, that won’t be the fate of cap and trade. Not if the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) can ...read more

Hey here's a question to start your Wednesday off with. If Bernie Madoff gets 150 years in prison for running a Ponzi scheme, what do you think the people who designed Social Security and the Superannuation scheme ought to get? And speaking of colossally stupid government programs, you may have seen ...read more

There I was, surrounded by thousands of barrels of Kentucky’s finest -- seemingly, enough bourbon to get every of-age taxpayer in the U.S. a little tipsy. By any stretch of the imagination, this place was paradise. Rolling hills as far as you could see and the air was thick with ...read more

Coming home from the annual meet-up of the New Urbanists, I was already agitated from the shenanigans of United Airlines -- two-hour delay, blown connection -- when I waded into this week's New York Times Sunday Magazine for further evidence that our ruling elites are too stupid to survive (and ...read more

Brazil is making a national commitment to develop energy resources located far offshore in the South Atlantic. Indeed, no nation has ever advanced such an ambitious plan for long-term comprehensive offshore development. And it's being bankrolled by China. Much of Brazil's South Atlantic development will require drilling wells in waters up ...read more