The Capital Wire

Courtesy of Joshua Marshall, citing a reader in the trenches:

"No one expected this turnout. For me, it’s been a deeply humbling, deeply gratifying experience. At today’s early vote in the College Hill district of East Tampa -- a heavily democratic, 90% African American community — we had 879 voters wait an average of five hours to cast their vote. People were there until four hours after they closed (as long as they’re in line by 5, they can vote)."

Voter turnout is everything. Sighs of relief in the Kerry camp.

--UK

Bloomberg's William Pesek Jr. theorizes crude oil at $200 a barrel. In China, Marc Faber is quoted in the article as saying:

"we have a per capita consumption of oil of 1.7 barrels. In America it's 28 barrels, in South Korea 17 barrels, Japan 17 barrels, in India 0.7 barrels. In Vietnam it's probably also less than one barrel. So in Asia on the population of 3.6 billion people we consume less oil than the U.S. on a population of 295 million."

Being that China is in the early stages of industrialization, it's not hard to imagine further income growth and thus more demand for crude in the years ahead. Although, in my mind, crude's immutable laws of inelasticity should crack well before the $200 mark.

--Uday Karmarkar

INAUGURAL POST

My hope is that this blog evolves into something useful. I've been a blog-enthusiast for a couple of years now, but haven't fully tapped into the p2p content sharing potential of the blogosphere until now. Like most other new blogs, this blog is an experiment. It'll deal mostly with economics, government/politics, and advances in the blogosphere (quintessential Jeffersonian democracy). My general purpose will be to distribute thought and information -- pure and simple. Hope you enjoy it.

--Uday Karmarkar