http://sg.biz.yahoo.com/…

The United States has asked four oil-rich Gulf states for close to 300 billion dollars to help it curb the global financial meltdown, Kuwait’s daily Al-Seyassah reported Thursday.

Quoting “highly informed” sources, the daily said Washington has asked Saudi Arabia for 120 billion dollars, the United Arab Emirates for 70 billion dollars, Qatar for 60 billion dollars and was seeking 40 billion dollars from Kuwait.

Al-Seyassah said Washington sought the amount as “financial aid” to face the fallout of the financial crisis and help prevent its economy from sliding into a painful recession.

The daily said the United States plans to use the funds to help the ailing automobile industry, banks and other companies suffering from the global financial turmoil.

The four nations, all members of OPEC, produce together 14 million barrels of oil per day, around half of the cartel’s production and about 17 percent of world supplies.

The four states are estimated to have amassed close to 1.5 trillion dollars in surplus in the past six years due to high oil prices that rocketed above 147 dollars in July before sliding to just above 50 dollars.

The daily also said that the United States has asked Kuwait to forgive its Iraqi debt estimated at around 16 billion dollars.

$300b is really a drop in the bucket though compared to the $7.76t promised by the government.

http://www.marketwatch.com/…

Japan’s Nikkei 225 Average sank 9.6% to end at 7,649.08, a closing level it hasn’t seen since April 29, 2003. The benchmark is now valued at less than a fifth of its all-time high of 38,915.87, which it touched in December 1989.

“There is a complete loss of confidence and it was brought on by the decline in Japan,” said Francis Lun, general manager at Fulbright Securities in Hong Kong. “We are going back to the stone ages.”
South Korea’s Kospi index dropped even more, plunging 10.6% to close at 938.75, registering its first fall below the 1,000-point level since June 30, 2005.

India’s Sensitive Index hit the day’s bottom at 8,566.82, a level it hasn’t seen since November 2005, before ending down 11% at 8,701.07.

During the tumultuous week, the Nikkei lost 12% and the Sensex shed nearly 13%, while the Kospi sank more than 20%.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index, which ended below the 14,000-point level a day earlier, fell past even the 13,000 milestone during the session for the first time since October 2004. The index ended down 8.3% at 12,618.38.

“I don’t think the turmoil will be finished any time soon. I think it’ll continue this quarter and the next. It’s very difficult to see the bottom in the near-term,” said Hirokazu Yuihama, head of regional strategy at Daiwa Institute of Research in Shanghai.

http://money.cnn.com/…

U.S. stock futures tanked early Friday as fears of recession deepened a global market rout.

Dow Jones industrial average futures were down more than 500 points at 5:30 a.m. ET. S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures were also down sharply.

Oil. Also, the Organization of Petroleum Producing Countries, which controls 40% of the world’s oil supply, announced on Friday that it would cut production by 1.5 million barrels a day, from its current level of 29 million.

OPEC had intended to raise prices by reducing production. But after the announcement, oil prices dropped $3.24 a barrel to $64.60 in electronic trading.

And the likely next president wants to increase spending, increase taxes, create makework projects and his party is talking about getting rid of 401k’s. Not that the other asshat is much better… but…

Just read America’s Great Depression [PDF]… I say it a lot but it is really important information to know.

I’ve gotten 2 people at where I work to read The Case Against the Fed. One of them told me it was likely the most depressing book he’s ever read. Implying his agreement with the books prime argument he said that the reason for his negative feeling was due to the fact Rothbard’s solution will never be implemented or even considered. Just yesterday I traded info on books with another coworker who may now be checking out The Case Against the Fed and/or America’s Great Depression. This is the opportune time to speak about this topic to people. Take advantage of it if you can.

Ahmadinejad to OPEC: Dump weak dollar

Speaking at a ceremony to open the 29th ministerial meeting of the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID), Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeated his proposal made about six months ago in a rare summit of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’s heads of states.

“The fall in the value of US dollar is one of the pressing problems of the world today,” warned the Iranian president at the conference in Isfahan on Tuesday.

He further expressed concern over the adverse effect of the dollar depreciation on the international community, especially energy exporting countries through increasing the price of commodities like wheat, rice and oilseeds.

Ahmadinejad said he warned six months ago in the summit conference in Riyadh that there were many indications pointing to continued fall in the value of the greenback.

“And we see that this continues to happen and the resources and wealth of OPEC member countries have been hugely damaged.

“I again repeat my previous proposal; we should have a basket of different international hard currencies as the basis or the member countries should come up and produce a new hard currency for petroleum contracts,” he stressed.

“They get our oil and give us a worthless piece of paper,” Ahmadinejad said earlier after the close of the summit in the Saudi capital of Riyadh.

As I recall Iraq was threatening to trade in Euro’s before the US government invaded. Given all the threatening maneuvers the Bush administration has been making you’d think Ahmadinejad would be less boisterous.

http://news.yahoo.com/…

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation on Tuesday allowing the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies and working together to set crude prices, but the White House threatened to veto the measure.The bill would subject OPEC oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela, to the same antitrust laws that U.S. companies must follow.

The measure passed in a 324-84 vote, a big enough margin to override a presidential veto.

The legislation also creates a Justice Department task force to aggressively investigate gasoline price gouging and energy market manipulation.

“This bill guarantees that oil prices will reflect supply and demand economic rules, instead of wildly speculative and perhaps illegal activities,” said Democratic Rep. Steve Kagen of Wisconsin, who sponsored the legislation.

The lawmaker said Americans “are at the mercy” of OPEC for how much they pay for gasoline, which this week hit a record average of $3.79 a gallon.

The White House opposes the bill, saying that targeting OPEC investment in the United States as a source for damage awards “would likely spur retaliatory action against American interests in those countries and lead to a reduction in oil available to U.S. refiners.”

The administration said less oil going to refineries would limit available gasoline supplies and raise fuel prices.

Foreign investment in U.S. oil infrastructure has declined in the last decade. But the state-owned oil companies of several OPEC nations are owners of U.S. refineries, and those investments could be affected if the legislation becomes law, said Arlington, Virginia-based FBR Capital Markets Corp.

The bill also requires the Government Accountability Office to carryout a study on the effects of prior oil company mergers on energy prices.

The Senate would still have to approve the House measure.

The Senate previously approved similar legislation as part of a broad energy bill. However, the OPEC-suing provision was removed after White House opposition in order to get the underlying energy legislation signed into law.

Speculation is an essential knowledge source for the market. Just like any other source it’s important for the market to function optimally. The speculation is wild because some group of jackasses in Congress and the executive branch of the USA government are waging wars on people who did us no harm. Because they are screwing up the value of the currency and attempting to carve the path for future energy sources. No bill can guarantee prices. They will likely cause shortages like the late 1970’s. As Mises said when the government interferes and screws things up… they know nothing else but to continue to interfere and to screw up.

I’m not sure how the hell they can enforce anything like this, I’ve not read the bill yet, but this sounds to me to be a declaration or war or at least an aggressive act.

If the government wants prices to drop stop the intervention. Leave the market alone. Leave the people and governments of the oil producing nations alone. Leave domestic energy production alone. Let them build refineries, let them drill for new oil sources, let them build nuke plants. Then will the costs normalize.