An Open Letter to Congress: First there was the trillion-dollar pork fest for energy. Then there was the decision to go with corn-based ethanol.

You can’t got to bed these days without waking up to higher prices for everything. Crude futures in New York hit nearly US$130 overnight, and now everyone is wondering what’s next. US$150? US$200.

Oil prices set a new record just shy of the $130 a barrel level yesterday (Tuesday), despite a concerted – though probably futile – effort by the U.S. government to rein in the runaway commodity.

Oil soared to yet another record high on Friday after Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) raised its price forecast for the second half of the year.

The war between the ‘flations drags on. Inflation has become globalized. In the United States, you are on the pot-holed highway to Hell…and more thoughts, insights and advice to take you into the weekend!

Two extraordinary things happened yesterday, the Fed cut rates 25 bps and the government started sending “tax rebates”.

The great overreach continues…there’s so much noise in the financial markets, one can barely think straight. Housing slump may exceed the Great Depression…the profit parade in commodities marches on. We pity the next president…the subprime debacle has produced a tsunami of lawsuits…and more!

Poking through dusty ruins looking for our future. Greenspan and Bush accomplished a great feat…an explosion of spending that has blown up in our faces. The U.S. still on a slip-n-slide…and more!

The Americans love British singer Leona Lewis. The Islington-born X Factor winner has been a smash hit Stateside, and has become the first British female artist to top the US album charts since Sade in 1986.

‘Read my lips – no new taxes’. That’s the promise, made in 1988, that’s widely credited as having scuppered George Bush Snr’s re-election chances come 1992.