With oil prices then approaching $150 a barrel and air travel demand sinking, Wall Street's view was that most of the USA's airlines were destined for bankruptcy reorganization — some for liquidation — when their cash ran out within 18 months. One or two, the thinking went, would be toast by spring.

By contrast, we cannot assume anything of the kind. The biggest problem comes with the most important single commodity, oil. Back in 1930, the motorcar and aeroplanes had been invented, but only a small fraction of the world’s population had driven a car or flown in a plane. The world’s oil consumption was about 5m barrels a day. Nowadays, with tens of millions more Asians becoming motorised and jet-lagged for the first time every year, the world’s oil consumption is 85 barrels a day, up 17 times from its 1930 level.

Food inflation is to stay — and will probably get worse for some things.

[...] when the Commodity Futures Trading Commission examined Vitol's books last month, it found that the firm was in fact more of a speculator, holding oil contracts as a profit-making investment rather than a means of lining up the actual delivery of fuel. Even more surprising to the commodities markets was the massive size of Vitol's portfolio -- at one point in July, the firm held 11 percent of all the oil contracts on the regulated New York Mercantile Exchange.

The proposition will be debated over the course of two weeks from August 19 to August 29, 2008. The Economist encourages anyone interested in the topic to join the conversation, contribute opinions and cast a vote for or against the proposition. The winner will be decided by popular vote on Friday August 29, 2008.

Renewable energy options will remain "boutique" industries unless their costs are cut to make them competitive with coal and other widely used power sources, said Dan Reicher, director for climate change and energy initiatives at Google.org, the company's philanthropic arm.

The terminal will have double the import capacity of the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, currently the only oil terminal in the United States capable of handling the biggest oil tankers.

Peak oil -- the theory that the world's oilfields are in irreversible decline -- was the elixir that got investors going.

All’s well on the Energy Front, it seems.

Dirt and its upmarket cousins offer a glimpse of how rising energy prices have caused inflation in the grittier corners of the consumer culture. Products that are cheap, heavy and bulky, such as bags of soil, are particularly vulnerable to rising freight costs.

Billy Roach's 2002 Jeep Wrangler has been up for a month on Philadelphia's Craigslist. He just wants to pay off his loan, Roach says, and he's hoping to get about $10,000 for it. Book value is about $2,000 less than that.

TRAVERSE CITY, MI, Aug 13, 2008 -- The IBM Automotive 2020 Study, based on a global collaboration with 125 automotive industry leaders, today revealed an industry grappling with significant change driven by increasingly sophisticated consumers.

The U.S. airline industry has fallen on hard times, as rising fuel prices have far outpaced a series of fare hikes that began in 2006. Economic weakness, meanwhile, threatens to erode demand and rob carriers of the pricing power they reclaimed in the wake of a low-fare war with newer, leaner airlines.

A senior Ford Motor Co executive said the No. 2 U.S. automaker expects small car sales to increase sharply and achieve double-digit growth in profit margins on a class of fuel-efficient vehicles U.S. automakers had long neglected in their home market.

He stated on the record at a rare gathering of the heads of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries [OPEC] member nations have expressed a real interest in converting their cash reserves from the beleaguered U.S. greenback to the European euro. More specifically, Ahmadinejad referred to the U.S. dollar as "a worthless piece of paper."