India's inflation accelerated to a 13-year high after record crude oil costs forced the government to raise retail fuel prices. Stocks and bonds fell on concern the central bank will have to raise interest rates again. Wholesale prices in India were up by 11.05 percent in the week to June 7, after an 8.75 percent increase in the previous week, according to an Indian government statement in New Delhi today. Obviously this sudden surge is creating pressures all over the place to do something. Finance Secretary D. Subbarao told reporters yesterday that "The first line of defense is monetary policy action", meaning that the Reserve Bank of India is about to take further anti inflation steps. Reserve Bank of India Governor Yaga Venugopal Reddy met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram later in the day to discuss inflation and ...

Source: James West, MidasLetter  05/30/2008
Our over-saturated information world has immunized us to the most pressing problems we face as a species. The price of oil, for instance, is no longer interesting, even though it sets records weekly, simply because it has been doing so for the better part of a year, and so that news becomes uninteresting through sheer ubiquity.

The economic repercussions of this cost of oil, which, as feedstock for gasoline, heating oil, jet fuel, diesel, and many plastics, takes a long time to reach into your pocket and squeeze hard though. Would you believe me if I told you that the price you are now paying at the pump is in greater relation to $65 a barrel oil, not $135.

So if it was $65 oil that caused $3.50 a gallon gasoline, where does that put the price at the pump by the time $129 …