This is from the CBC.
The U.S. dollar decline fuels oil price increases. No doubt there is a lot of money going into oil as a hedge. There is lots of talk about curbing speculation but this article claims the basic cause of oil price increases is that demand is still high while production is not increasing to meet it. I really can't see how officials in the U.S. can do anything about speculation. There is probably even more speculation in food commodities.
Perhaps some people know more about U.S. and Israeli plans for attacking Iran than the rest of us given the supposed effect of this conflict on oil prices.
Potential Iran-Israel conflict sends oil prices up
Last Updated: Tuesday, July 1, 2008 9:06 AM ET
The Associated Press
Oil prices climbed above $142 US a barrel Tuesday amid concerns about a potential conflict between Iran and Israel and a weakening U.S. dollar.
Also on Tuesday, the International Energy Agency downsized its estimate of how much oil will reach the market. The agency said supply and demand figures will be close through the next five years, despite lower overall estimated hunger for crude as the world adjusts to record prices and cuts its consumption.
By midday in Europe, light, sweet crude for August delivery was up $2.04 US to $142.04 US a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
On Monday, the contract soared to a record $143.67 US a barrel. It later fell back to close at $140 US on reports of weakening U.S. oil demand and end-of-the-quarter profit-taking by traders.
In London, Brent crude futures rose $2.41 US to $142.24 US on the ICE Futures exchange.
"You have supply-side concerns, such as the rhetoric on Iran, that will likely keep a floor under prices," said Victor Shum, an analyst with Purvin & Gertz in Singapore. "I don't see much resistance to $150 [US], which could happen in the coming weeks."
In its Medium-Term Oil Market Report on Tuesday, the IEA said demand would rise most in developing countries, with Asia, the Middle East and Latin America accounting for nearly 90 per cent of demand growth over the next five years.
The energy agency's executive director, Nobuo Tanaka, said market fundamentals, and not speculative investments, were behind high oil prices.
'Working at full throttle'
"OPEC production is at record highs and non-OPEC producers are working at full throttle, but stocks show no unusual build," Tanaka said at the presentation of the IEA report in Madrid. "These factors demonstrate that it is mainly fundamentals pushing up the price."
Oil also rose on expectations the European Central Bank will likely raise interest rates at its next meeting on Thursday, which would help strengthen the euro against the dollar, Shum said.
As the dollar has weakened, investors have been piling into oil contracts, betting that they will gain, thereby offsetting the dollar's decline. Since the start of the year, crude has shot up nearly 50 per cent.
Traders were still anxious about tension in the Mideast after the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards warned that if his country is attacked, Tehran would strike back by barraging Israel with missiles and that it would control a key oil route in the Gulf.
Those comments, reported Saturday in Iran's conservative Jam-e-Jam newspaper, came after Israeli military exercise over the Mediterranean Sea that was seen as sending a message to Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions.
Iran is the world's fourth-largest oil exporter and OPEC's second-largest exporter. About 40 per cent of world oil exports pass through the Gulf.
Traders were also digesting news from the Energy Information Administration, which reported Monday that U.S. oil usage in April was lower than previously estimated, falling by 4.2 per cent to 19.768 million barrels per day from 20.631 million. That was 3.9 per cent lower than in April 2007 and the lowest level for the month in six years.
"We're starting to see demand destruction in the U.S., but in China and other developing countries, we still see demand growth," Shum said. "It could take several months before recent fuel price rises in developing countries start to slow oil demand in those places."
© The Canadian Press, 2008
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Medicare debate under cone of silence
This is from the Star.
The silence is good cover to mask the deterioration of the system and privatisation by stealth. I just wonder how long the Canada Health Act prohibition against co-payments will last. Off loading of costs to individual pocketbooks seems to be a pervasive "solution" that governments employ as they downsize "entitlements" and strive to streamline government to serve its core constitutents, global capitalist corporations. The mantra to cover this is "competitiveness".
Medicare debate under cone of silence TheStar.com - Columnist - Medicare debate under cone of silence
June 30, 2008 Chantal Hébert
OTTAWA
The simultaneous replacement of Ontario and Quebec's veteran health ministers earlier this month was the result of a coincidence, but George Smitherman and Philippe Couillard had more in common than just the fortuitous timing of their departure from their portfolios.
To their respective credit, they each served for five years, breaking the revolving-door pattern that had turned their provinces' health departments into ministerial pit stops on the way to more manageable responsibilities.
Their tenure started at a time when repairing a battered health-care system had become job one for every government in the country. Indeed, both Dalton McGuinty and Jean Charest were originally swept into office on the promise to fix health care. On that basis, they literally staked the success of their governments on the performance of their health ministers.
That gamble did pay off. McGuinty was re-elected with a second majority.
Jean Charest owes a significant part of his narrow victory in the last Quebec election to Couillard's enduring credibility.
But while Smitherman and Couillard acquitted themselves well in their political missions, they leave behind a system whose root problems have ultimately defeated their efforts. That is not for lack of throwing money at the issue.
Over the past five years, the federal and provincial governments have reinvested massively in the system, with health-care spending at times outpacing the rate of the growth of the economy by a ratio of two to one.
All that money has bought some relief, but not the lasting cure that was originally contemplated.
On Friday, Yves Bolduc, the doctor that Charest hand-picked to replace Couillard, declared that reducing hospital wait times in Quebec would be one of his top priorities. That has been the mantra of successive Quebec health ministers for the better part of two decades.
And earlier this month, the Health Council of Canada reported that the sweeping reforms that were promised at the time of the 2003 First Ministers' Accord on Health Care Renewal have failed to materialize.
With billions of federal and provincial dollars come and gone, the scope of the medicare net is continuing to shrink for lack of being adjusted to the changing perimeter of the health system.
With the economy entering a downward cycle and the federal surplus almost a memory, it is far from clear that balanced government budgets can continue to go hand in hand with the maintenance of the system, let alone ever allow for its overdue modernization.
Health-care spending accounts for almost half of Ontario and Quebec's public spending. Each province currently devotes twice as much to health as to education. And there is no reconciliation in sight between the declining curve of Central Canada's economy and the rising course of health spending.
The Liberals will shudder at the analogy, but it is too bad that no federal party has ever had the courage to do for medicare what Stéphane Dion's "green shift" is about to do for climate change.
He may go to his political grave for it, but the Liberal leader has at least put the pros and cons involved in walking the talk on global warming on the table for Canadians to debate.
By comparison, the medicare debate is in a political cone of silence. No party has the guts to make the case for a different medicare mix, but none of the expensive plans designed to ensure its future has delivered truly sustainable results.
Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
The silence is good cover to mask the deterioration of the system and privatisation by stealth. I just wonder how long the Canada Health Act prohibition against co-payments will last. Off loading of costs to individual pocketbooks seems to be a pervasive "solution" that governments employ as they downsize "entitlements" and strive to streamline government to serve its core constitutents, global capitalist corporations. The mantra to cover this is "competitiveness".
Medicare debate under cone of silence TheStar.com - Columnist - Medicare debate under cone of silence
June 30, 2008 Chantal Hébert
OTTAWA
The simultaneous replacement of Ontario and Quebec's veteran health ministers earlier this month was the result of a coincidence, but George Smitherman and Philippe Couillard had more in common than just the fortuitous timing of their departure from their portfolios.
To their respective credit, they each served for five years, breaking the revolving-door pattern that had turned their provinces' health departments into ministerial pit stops on the way to more manageable responsibilities.
Their tenure started at a time when repairing a battered health-care system had become job one for every government in the country. Indeed, both Dalton McGuinty and Jean Charest were originally swept into office on the promise to fix health care. On that basis, they literally staked the success of their governments on the performance of their health ministers.
That gamble did pay off. McGuinty was re-elected with a second majority.
Jean Charest owes a significant part of his narrow victory in the last Quebec election to Couillard's enduring credibility.
But while Smitherman and Couillard acquitted themselves well in their political missions, they leave behind a system whose root problems have ultimately defeated their efforts. That is not for lack of throwing money at the issue.
Over the past five years, the federal and provincial governments have reinvested massively in the system, with health-care spending at times outpacing the rate of the growth of the economy by a ratio of two to one.
All that money has bought some relief, but not the lasting cure that was originally contemplated.
On Friday, Yves Bolduc, the doctor that Charest hand-picked to replace Couillard, declared that reducing hospital wait times in Quebec would be one of his top priorities. That has been the mantra of successive Quebec health ministers for the better part of two decades.
And earlier this month, the Health Council of Canada reported that the sweeping reforms that were promised at the time of the 2003 First Ministers' Accord on Health Care Renewal have failed to materialize.
With billions of federal and provincial dollars come and gone, the scope of the medicare net is continuing to shrink for lack of being adjusted to the changing perimeter of the health system.
With the economy entering a downward cycle and the federal surplus almost a memory, it is far from clear that balanced government budgets can continue to go hand in hand with the maintenance of the system, let alone ever allow for its overdue modernization.
Health-care spending accounts for almost half of Ontario and Quebec's public spending. Each province currently devotes twice as much to health as to education. And there is no reconciliation in sight between the declining curve of Central Canada's economy and the rising course of health spending.
The Liberals will shudder at the analogy, but it is too bad that no federal party has ever had the courage to do for medicare what Stéphane Dion's "green shift" is about to do for climate change.
He may go to his political grave for it, but the Liberal leader has at least put the pros and cons involved in walking the talk on global warming on the table for Canadians to debate.
By comparison, the medicare debate is in a political cone of silence. No party has the guts to make the case for a different medicare mix, but none of the expensive plans designed to ensure its future has delivered truly sustainable results.
Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
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