News You Can Use for Tuesday

There's a lot to cover today, so let's get busy ...

ECONOMY

Housing, banking crisis piles pressure on Bush

The housing crisis in the United States is fast spilling into a banking and financial debacle that could destabilize the world economy and put mounting pressure on the Bush administration to act.

Recession-Plagued Nation Demands New Bubble To Invest In

(Satire from The Onion) A panel of top business leaders testified before Congress about the worsening recession Monday, demanding the government provide Americans with a new irresponsible and largely illusory economic bubble in which to invest.

"What America needs right now is not more talk and long-term strategy, but a concrete way to create more imaginary wealth in the very immediate future," said Thomas Jenkins, CFO of the Boston-area Jenkins Financial Group, a bubble-based investment firm. "We are in a crisis, and that crisis demands an unviable short-term solution."

OIL

How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

Xx Sean’s note -- Ignore the fact that the author is glossing over all the bad stuff you know about the Cuban government. This is a story about how a country survives when it loses more than 50 percent of its oil imports, much of its food and 85 percent of its trade economy. In other words, this may have lessons for America in the future.

12mn barrels per day is Saudi Arabia's oil limit

Saudi Arabia won't be able to pump more than 12 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2010, and its sustainable production level will be only 10.4 million bpd, it was reported on Monday. BusinessWeek magazine cited a field-by-field breakdown of output it obtained from an oil industry executive.

Petrobras Union Rejects Settlement Offer, to Continue Campos Basin Strike Brazil's oil-workers union in the Campos Basin, the source of more than 80 percent of the country's oil, rejected a settlement offer from their employer, state-controlled Petroleo Brasileiro SA.

Oil Rises Above $146 as Dollar's Drop to Record Low Boosts Crude's Appeal Crude oil rose above $146 a barrel as the dollar fell to a record low against the euro, boosting the appeal of commodities as a currency hedge for investors.

Bush lifts offshore drilling ban in symbolic move

President George W. Bush lifted a White House ban on offshore drilling on Monday to try to drive down soaring energy prices, a largely symbolic move unlikely to have any short-term impact on high gasoline costs.

URANIUM

Uranium Advances 5.4% as Demand Jumps to Almost Double Supply

Uranium-oxide concentrate for immediate delivery climbed to $63.25 a pound, $3.25 more than a week before, TradeTech said in a July 11 report. There were eight sales totaling more than 1.2 million pounds last week, it said. Demand grew by a third to about 4.2 million pounds of uranium oxide, while supply held at 2.4 million.

Brown sets 'no limit' on number of reactors to be built

Gordon Brown is to fast-track the building of at least eight nuclear power stations to cut Britain's dependence on oil following the dramatic rise in its price. The Prime Minister will set "no upper limit" on the number of nuclear plants that will be built by private companies. That would mean nuclear, which provides about 20 per cent of Britain's electricity, could meet a bigger share after the new generation of nuclear stations come on stream over the next 15 years.

Contaminated US site faces 'catastrophic' nuclear leak

More than 210 million liters of radioactive and chemical waste are stored in 177 underground tanks at Hanford in Washington State. Most are over 50 years old. Already 67 of the tanks have failed, leaking almost 4 million liters of waste into the ground. There are now "serious questions about the tanks' long-term viability," says a Government Accountability Office report, which strongly criticizes the US Department of Energy for delaying an $8 billion program to empty the tanks and treat the waste. The DoE says the clean-up is "technically challenging" and argues that it is making progress in such a way as to protect human health and the environment.

Xx Sean’s note – I wrote about Hanford in my original “Golden Age of Uranium” report. It’s a problem we MUST tackle IMMEDIATELY – otherwise, we risk a catastrophic nuclear leak that would not only be an environmental disaster, it would turn the American people against nuclear power and turn out the lights on any future nuclear development.

CHINA

China Growth Probably Cooled to 10.3% in Second Quarter as Exports Slowed China's economic expansion probably slowed for a fourth straight quarter as exports cooled, raising the possibility that the government will switch focus to sustaining growth from fighting inflation.

GOLD

Barrick Gold Offers to Buy Cadence in Hostile Takeover for $348 Million Barrick Gold Corp., the world's largest gold producer, offered to buy oil and natural gas explorer Cadence Energy Ltd. for about C$349.9 million ($347.9 million) as it seeks to deal with surging energy costs.

Gold Rises to Highest in Almost Four Months in London on Flight-to-Safety Gold rose for a fifth day in London, trading close to a four-month high, as tension in the Middle East and financial concerns in the U.S. increased investor demand for the metal as a haven.

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