The national average prices for gas and diesel ticked up to brand-new highs again overnight. They’re fetching $3.39 and $4.12, respectively, this morning.

Still, here’s some good news on the domestic energy front. The Bakken Trend — a huge expanse of land in the Dakotas, Montana and parts of Canada, long believed to be hiding up to 500 billion barrels of oil — has been a speculative bet thus far, but a report from the U.S. Geological Survey last week, well… changed everything.

“The Bakken Formation estimate is larger than all other current USGS oil assessments of the lower 48 states,” the USGS report says “and is the largest ‘continuous’ oil accumulation ever assessed by the USGS.”

“Holy smokes!” remarks Chris Mayer following the story. “The USGS announced a 25-fold increase in the amount of oil recoverable in the Bakken Trend. Who knows exactly how much oil lies beneath the Bakken. The point is it seems to be a whole hell of a lot.”

We’ll hear more on the Bakken Trend from Chris as the story develops. Or be among the first to check out his Bakken play in Mayer’s Special Situations… here.

Despite a few notable blowups, hedge fund managers logged their best year ever in 2007. The top 25 hedge fund managers made at least $360 million a piece — more than 18 times the minimum salary 25 five years ago.

The total top 25 made over $29 billion combined… about the annual GDP of Vermont.

We mentioned John Paulson yesterday. He made $3.7 billion last year on the right side of the U.S. housing and mortgage-backed securities trade.

But there’s no sign that people of the world are spending their money any smarter, either. After all, somebody’s actually giving these fund managers their money. And others, well, are buying nude photos:

An unnamed collector bought a nude photograph of Carla Bruni, wife of French President Sarkozy, for $91,000. That’s 20 times the expected auction price. Granted, she’s hot:

Christie’s, auctioneers of the pic, pledged to donated the proceeds to a Cambodian pediatric medical group. But the group rejected the money, saying that the children of Cambodia would sooner suffer and die than accept money raised by selling pictures of naked ladies.

So Christie’s decided to give the profits of the sale to Sodis, a project aimed at preventing a global water crisis. Heh. Good choice.

“I take exception to your comment,” writes a reader. “‘The average doctor specializing in elderly care, despite requiring more training than your average plastic surgeon…’ This statement is absolutely incorrect. The vast majority of board-certified plastic surgeons have completed seven years of postgraduate training after medical school. This is typically five years of general surgical training followed by two years of plastic surgical training. The very minimum of postgraduate training to be a board-certified plastic surgeon is five years. However, most current physicians have gone the seven-year route. To become a board-certified geriatric physician takes, at most, four years of postgraduate training. This includes three years of either an internal medicine residency or family practice residency, followed by a one-year training program in geriatric medicine. A correction in the next 5 Min. Forecast would be appreciated.”

The 5 responds: Obviously, you take your profession very seriously. We made our comments in jest. Relax.

“Great idea about opening these geriatric medical clinics,” writes a reader, “and watching your profits go up as the demand explodes. One small problem with your scenario… Medicare bureaucrats dictate how much money you can bill! Not the markets, not the quality of care you deliver, not the frightening increases in the cost of running a medical practice. Just some bozo in Washington telling every doctor in the U.S. what their extremely in-demand services are worth.

“Your patient has several complicated problems in one visit? One hour and 50 pages of red tape later you are lucky to get $36.72 for your troubles. Botox, wrinkle fillers, cosmetic nonprice-controlled services anyone? I practice dermatology in an affluent area of Los Angeles. People do not bat a fake eyelash at dropping $1,000 for a little filling and plumping, but, “Hold on there, Doc!” If they have to pay for the skin cancer surgery that will save their previously surgically enhanced nose, oh, no.

“People’s priorities are completely out of whack. The real crisis is coming when we physicians get sick enough (excuse the pun) of being raped by the system and drop out of the socialist Medicare scam altogether!”

Cheers,

Addison Wiggin
The 5 Min. Forecast

Pages: 1 2

Pages: 1 2