How Falling Energy Costs will Shape the World

I've been traveling over the last few days, and am thus a little late to this story, but it's just too good to pass up. As readers of this blog know, I've been a vocal critic of President Obama's 2009 decision to impose  - at the request of the United Steelworkers Union - tariffs on Chinese tires pursuant to Section 421 of US trade law.

Will Italy stay the course with painful economic reform? Or fall back into the old habit of profligacy and inertia? These are the stakes as Italians vote in a watershed parliamentary election Sunday and Monday that could shape the future of one of Europe’s biggest economies.

ConocoPhillips will sell some of its oilfields in Montana and North Dakota to Denbury Resources Inc for US$1.05-billion to focus instead on its promising shale oil and gas properties in the same region. Oil and gas production in the Bakken region, spanning North Dakota, Montana and Canada, is expected to double by 2015 as producers use new technologies to unlock vast supplies in shale formations, a less risky means of producing crude.

By Russ Koesterich: Executive Summary

David Fessler submits:At first glance, you might think this is a stretch. How can snowpack levels in the West possibly have anything to do with the price of natural gas nationally? It turns out that Rocky Mountain snowfall has a huge impact… Resulting water runoff from the thawing period changes the capacity of hydropower on the West Coast… and that has a huge impact on natural gas demand. Plus it varies greatly from year to year.

DC has left a new comment on your post "Paper Or Money?": If you expect shit-to-hit-fan a pretty good investment is wheat. You can purchase 5 gallon buckets of it and it will last as long as you are alive.

|Peter Boettke| As I mentioned before, the Institute for New Thinking in Economics has awarded a significant grant to the Center for History of Political Economy at Duke.  This is a very significant and positive development as far as I am concerned.  And one of the main areas of investment for CHOPE is summer programs to help PhD students develop an appreciation in the subfield, and for advanced students and junior faculty to improve their understanding on how to teach the subject.