The most destructive legacy of the Bush era will be the damage done by dogma and patronage to the perceived competence and good faith of the US government, from the WMD in Iraq fiasco to the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina and now the appalling mess the Treasury has made of dealing with the implosion of the financial system. When the definitive history of this period is written, there is no doubt that the Lehman bankruptcy will be seen as the critical event that accelerated and propagated a systemic crisis, and a decision driven by ideological rather than pragmatic considerations. The ultimate cost of that decision will be measured in the trillions of dollars. Markets have been further unsettled by yesterday's volte face on the TARP by Hank Paulsen, but as the whole scheme was deluded, good riddance I'd say. Despite the conspiracy theories, the Treasury grudgingly and belatedly realised ...

With partisan politics and media telling their own twisted truth about the U.S. economy, perhaps the most accurate forecast comes from Europe.

The European Commission forecast on Monday that the 15-country Eurozone will grow a meager 0.1% next year - at best.

The global financial crisis has hit Europe like Hurricane Katrina flattened New Orleans. And we expect this is a clear indicator of how the U.S. will fare as we approach 2009.

What this means to investors is that the major emerging markets such as China and India may indeed be the place for their money. China and India are certainly down from the commodity supercycle heyday, but their growth far outstrips what we’re seeing (and can expect to see) in Western industrialized economies.

The European Commission said the Eurozone’s largest economies such as Italy, France and Germany will come to virtual standstill with the prospect of 0% growth.

At the same time, second-tier

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With partisan politics and media telling their own twisted truth about the U.S. economy, perhaps the most accurate forecast comes from Europe.

The European Commission forecast on Monday that the 15-country Eurozone will grow a meager 0.1% next year - at best.

The global financial crisis has hit Europe like Hurricane Katrina flattened New Orleans. And we expect this is a clear indicator of how the U.S. will fare as we approach 2009.

What this means to investors is that the major emerging markets such as China and India may indeed be the place for their money. China and India are certainly down from the commodity supercycle heyday, but their growth far outstrips what we’re seeing (and can expect to see) in Western industrialized economies.

The European Commission said the Eurozone’s largest economies such as Italy, France and Germany will come to virtual standstill with the prospect of 0% growth.

At the same time, second-tier

...

Stewart Enterprises (NASDAQ:STEI) is the second largest provider of services in the funeral industry in the US. Laura Cadden in Today’s Financial News told readers about this stock in February. At the time, it was trading at around $6.40 a share. Since then, the share price hit $10 after the company’s larger competitor, Service Corporation International (NYSE:SCI), made a truly tempting acquisition offer.

Last week’s crude and gasoline inventories dropped more than expected as the effects of Hurricane Gustav resulted in some production disruptions. Gustav, which struck last month, was the fourth-most-destructive storm to hit the United States, causing $20 billion in damages. And then came Hurricane Ike. Ike made landfall in the Galveston area of the U.S. Gulf Coast on in the pre-dawn hours Saturday (the day I was penning this column) as a Category 2 storm with winds hitting 110 miles per hour.  Ike’s path toward Houston makes it the first storm to hit a major U.S. metropolitan area since Hurricane Katrina eviscerated New Orleans in 2005, Bloomberg News reported. We won’t know how much direct damage those high winds from Hurricane Ike will cause for several days at least. From the initial reports, the results appear to be devastating. But the indirect costs are ...

As Hurricane Ike took over the Gulf of Mexico, I watched with unusual interest, since I had been scheduled to fly through Houston to give a lecture in Baton Rouge on Friday. We had to cancel that visit to LSU, which left me to contemplate the consequences of Hurricane Ike for oil and gas markets from the comfort of my warm, snug home in San Diego.

Hurricane Ike on Sept. 12. Source: Drudge.

Essentially all of the 1.3 million barrels per day of U.S. crude oil production from the Gulf of Mexico (which accounts for about a quarter of total U.S. production) has been shut in as a result of the storm. When the same thing happened 3 years ago with Hurricane Katrina, the effects turned out to be surprisingly long-lived. Damage to offshore rigs proved costly to repair,

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The reconstruction costs for Hurricane Katrina reached $40 billion. The Chinese government just updated its estimates for the Sichuan earthquake reconstruction to $245 billion. Yup, $245 billion. That's a lot of opportunity for construction and construction supply companies.

The market knows from experience that infrastructure problems can emerge long after a hurricane strikes; early reports following Katrina's landfall in 2005 erroneously said the flooding in New Orleans was not going to be problematic. Stocks fell in overseas trading Monday after crude fell below $111 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, and their declines will weigh on the Dow Jones industrials and other indexes. First place to look, the airlines compaines and their stocks. Fun stocks to play include: Aug 29 4:03pm ET † Company Name ...

(P.S: Sorry for any disturbances the advertisements above may have caused you)If late-2004 and early-2005 are remembered for the corporate debacles of CAO, Citiraya and ACCS, the later part of 2005 will be remembered for the attention that centered on oil and refining. The catalyst was Hurricane Katrina, which was the worst-ever storm to hit the Gulf of Mexico and caused extensive damage to the refining facilities in the region, exposing the deep global capacity crunch in refining capacity.Katrina formed over the Bahamas in late August 2005 and due to the unpreparedness of the authorities, caused severe destruction along the Gulf of Mexico coast from central Florida to Texas in the form of a Category 5 storm, with the most severe loss of life and property damage occurring in New Orleans. Of more interest to oil traders was the damage to ...

Gustav gathered force and slammed into Cuba as a Category 4 hurricane Saturday, giving oil bears and stock market bulls cause for concern. Monday's trading should be out-of-control. NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Ferocious Hurricane Gustav moved into the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico on Saturday where it was expected to strengthen and threaten New Orleans after its 150 mile per hour (240 kph) winds cut a swath of destruction through western Cuba. The Category 4 ...