Peak of Erudition

Crude oil price spiraling is continuing to haunt every major consuming economy, be it US, Europe, China or India. The crude oil prices touched a record high of 147 dollars recently and experts are saying that the prices are most likely to reach over 200 dollars in the coming year due to increasing demand and slow pace of growth in supplies. But there are certain contrarian, decade old experienced players, who are saying that the prices are most likely to fall down to realistic below 100 levels at least by 2009 beginning.

The bid by Microsoft to take over part of Yahoo in order to get a lead over it’s rival Google is most likely to fail because of the higher price demanded by Yahoo through it’s major shareholders. Microsoft is very clear that it will not increase it’s bid further as it clearly feels that the bid is fully pricing Yahoo. Another hurdle in terms of regulatory competitive evaluation is also likely to derail the deal, say experts. In case the deal fails through, Yahoo may regret for not accepting it, at a later date.

George Bush’s popularity has come a full circle. From having the highest rating few years back when he owed to fight terrorism across the globe with a heavy hand and was delivering more income in the hands of US citizens. With loss of more lives continuing in Iraq and Afghanistan, and also with clear signs of economic slowdown as indicated by the last few months economic data, the US citizens are now feeling that George Bush administration is indeed not performing as per expectation. The latest popularity rating reflects this.

The Bush administration seems to have made a gross under estimation of the cost and time for getting Iraq under total control, by clearing off all the militants holed up in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Syria. Against the first estimate of less than a year to take control, even after many years Iraq is still haunting US, and the US citizens continue to pay billions of dollars every year through their nose to keep fighting insurgents in Iraq. God only knows when will US troops will stop getting killed in Iraq.

UK is continuing to witness crash in property prices across major cities, as per latest data released by the government. Government officials fear that the continued decline in property prices does not augur well at a time when the fuel and food prices are at record highs and people are feeling the impact of high inflation. Experts opine that in the near future, UK might get into recession because of reduced spending levels of its citizens which cannot be reversed unless their income levels go up dramatically.