Opec Meeting Results

I had heard analysts speculating that Opec's call for an emergency meeting could possibly result in a cut in supply (1 million barrel per day cut) as a last ditch effort to raise the price of oil to a "fair" price. Most of the oil minister's say that a fair price is somewhere between the $70-$80 per barrel range. Some said that the cut in production would not come until early next year (2009). It turns out that after the meeting was done, no new cuts were announced yet. I guess that's good for us, and not so good for countries like Venezuela. Apparently, some analysts suggest that Venezuela needs oil at least at $90 per barrel to finance its activities and meet its debt obligations. Equally interesting, independent researchers suggest that opec would have to cut production by 3 times per day to raise the price of oil to $65 per barrel and for the smaller countires that may not be feasible because that would cut a tremendous chunk of revenue from their budget. So, I guess we can enjoy the lower prices for now, but keep in mind that next year, the price of oil will rise again; to what levels, who knows.

Man trampled at Wal-Mart

This is a very sad story. An employee at Wal-Mart was trampled over and killed during the black Friday shopping event; just as bad was that people continued to shop while the injured employee was receiving first aid from paramedics and were even pushing the paramedics around. Its amazing that this stuff still happens after so many black Friday experiences. I would think that retailers would have figured something out by now to keep everyone as safe as possible. I realize it must be hard and that people must also modify their behavior in order to prevent this kind of thing from happening, but I do think that retailers must do their part to ensure that people have a safe shopping experience. After all, they are inviting people to come in t0 their locations and shop, so they are charged with taking necessary precautions to ensure that everyone has a safe trip. I've seen some retailers set up lines outside of their locations with security guards and let a fixed number of people go in and shop at a time. Maybe that is just what needs to happen because I don't think that saving a couple hundred bucks is worth dying for. Obviously, whatever safety precautions are currently in place right now are not working.

Transporter III -------> Commercial??

I went to see Transporter III this weekend and when it was over, I felt as if I had just sat through the longest Audi Commercial ever!!! The car practically has a star-role in the movie. Here are some examples of what I saw; You can see the Audi logo in almost every scene during the move, the car does ridiculous stunts, the car is racing through streets and then stopping on a dime, the car handles great even when off-roading a bit, the car beats a Mercedez in a high speed chase and then pushes it off a cliff (to show dominance I guess), the Audi car falls in a lake and then is pulled out and still works. Talk about product placement; and then, when then movie was over, I heard people walking out of the movie theatre talking about the cool Audi car instead of the plot of the movie?? It would be interesting to see how much of the movie-budget was covered by Audi??

OUR NEW PRESIDENT

The election of Barack Obama as our 44th president is a historic event. Everything seemed to fall in place for Obama on through the entire campaigning process. From his acceptence speech at the DNC falling on the anniversary of MLK's I have a dream speech, to the collapse of the US/GLOBAL economy 4 weeks before election day. There is a lot to learn about how he and his staff managed to run an almost flawless campaign. His ground game was unbelievable; they used text messaging, youtube videos, music...It was amazing. They had people going door to door the old fashioned way, and they hit many college campuses to enroll new voters and to encourage the existing registered voters to actually go out and vote (Except for ACORN, they suck). His campaign raised the bar to an entirely new level and I can't wait to see what the next round of elections will have in store for us. It also didn't hurt that his campaign managed to raise so much money; I heard that his campaign had so much money left over they paid all staff a bonus worth one month's wages and let everyone keep their lap tops and blackberry's. That's pretty cool.

President-elect Obama's cabinet??

So, I was watching the news today and of course the talk was (has been for a few days) about who President-elect Obama might have in mind for his cabinet appointments. Sen. Clinton for secretary of state ??? But, then I heard a really comforting thing; assuming it actually happens. News anchors hinted that Obama may want to create a cabinet of enemies, as President Lincoln had done in the past with the hope that the best end results can be achieved this way. That sounded very good to me. I have always said that the most in-effective way to solve problems is by surrounding yourself with a bunch of yes-men/women. Forcing people to consider different view points and then find a way to compromise with eachother might not be the easiest thing in world to live with, but the end result would be the best solution possible for the people it will affect, and that's really what government ought to do. Hopefully, this idea materializes.