As a nervous world watches the political uprising unfold in Egypt this week, one cannot escape the fact that modern communication systems have made it possible for individuals in poor countries to collaborate in ways that would have been impossible ...

The Association of American Railroads has released its Rail Time Indicators (pdf) report for January 2011 which provides a great deal of data covering the freight rail industry in 2010. We have previously followed trends in railroad traffic more closely ...

The shale gas boom in the United States has been something of a mixed blessing for independent oil and gas companies. While new technology has opened up vast new areas of exploration and production, natural gas prices have been in ...

The mid-term election results appear to match what market participants expected in the days leading up to voting yesterday. We will refrain from political commentary other than to make the observation that there is a difference between “benign gridlock” when ...

According to the Financial Times, Google is planning to construct a price index that could eventually serve as an alternative to official government statistics. While the Google Price Index (GPI) is still a work in progress and only tracks web-traded ...

The National Bureau of Economic Statistics has declared that the recession ended in June 2009, eighteen months after the downturn began in December 2007. The recession was the most severe since the Great Depression of the 1930s both in terms ...

One year is a relatively short period of time but represents an eternity when evaluating the products offered in the nascent market for electronic reading devices. One year ago, there was much excitement regarding the potential for the Kindle DX ...

According to P&C National Underwriter, the next big California earthquake could occur in the near future. University of California-Irvine and Arizona State University researchers have examined seven hundred years of quake history and found that large quakes are much more ...

Warren Buffett and Bill Gates unveiled The Giving Pledge initiative in June which launched one of the most ambitious philanthropic initiatives in history and has the potential to generate hundreds of billions of dollars in gifts over the next few ...

In a recent interview with The Economist, Nouriel Roubini, Professor of Economics at New York University, discusses his views on systemic risks, regulatory reform, risks of deflation, and prospects for growth in China. Mr. Roubini is well known for his ...

According to The Wall Street Journal, scientists have estimated that 62,000 barrels of oil per day, or approximately 4.9 million barrels in total, leaked into the Gulf of Mexico due to the blowout of BP’s Macondo well. Estimates have varied ...

New rules for offshore drilling under consideration in Congress could create major competitive advantages for offshore contract drillers that have heavily invested in modern drilling fleets in recent years. According to The Wall Street Journal, legislation designed to prevent future ...

Reforms targeting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were not included in the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory act signed into law by President Obama last month. To many observers, this was a glaring omission given the fact that the two government sponsored ...

In a very interesting article that appeared recently on Advisor Perspectives, Michael Weiss and Yuliya Tarasava examine the tendency of small capitalization stocks to outperform larger companies in the period when the economy is emerging from recession. While the article ...

According to The Financial Times, pressure is growing in Europe to impose a moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Mediterranean Sea. BP is planning to begin deepwater operations off the coast of Libya within weeks and has a rig in ...

There is little doubt that Amtrak's Acela represents a very attractive way to travel between Washington D.C. and New York City. Leaving Washington D.C. a very short distance from the United States Capitol, one can arrive at Penn Station in ...

The six month moratorium on exploratory deepwater drilling the Gulf of Mexico is continuing to heavily impact the economy of the Gulf Coast. Despite two court rulings, the federal government is continuing to insist on a complete halt to deepwater ...

The Committee of European Banking Supervisors (CEBS) released the much anticipated results of the EU wide banking stress test exercise this afternoon. Seven banks failed the stress test and will require a combined total of €3.5 billion of new capital ...

In an interview with The Economist, French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde comments on her country's attempt to trim the budget deficit to 3 percent of GDP by 2013. Ms. Lagarde states that significant austerity measures will be imposed rather than ...

At a recent presentation at the Aspen Ideas Festival, one of Shell's experts on deepwater drilling suggested that flaws in the design of BP's Macondo well were likely responsible for the blowout that led to the massive oil spill in ...