Christmas in July? Maybe not a bad idea this year. Retailers are already talking about price increases of up to 15 percent this year on holiday goods, from staples like tree ornaments and toys to luxury gifts like European handbags and clothing. The main cause? It's the same old chestnut, soaring energy prices. ...more

July 31, 2008

Americans see a slice of sunlight for the economy, as a widely watched report on Tuesday showed that people are not as pessimistic about the future as they were a month ago. ...more

July 30, 2008

Faced with record-high gas prices and the November elections, not a day goes by without a politician's pitch to provide consumers with some relief - be it to permit offshore drilling, crack down on speculators, curb inventories in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve or grant a gas tax holiday. Yet each of these policies would have a negligible impact on gas prices. ...more

July 27, 2008

Shades Of H.G. Wells Methinks Patrick Miketinac has to set the dial in his time machine to 2008 and come to visit us here in the real world. No matter how much you wring your hands or pull at your silver locks, we aren't anytime soon going back on the gold standard. Let's be realistic. I never said we could drill our way out of this, though I'm pretty sure we "not-drilled" our way into it. What would the Middle East look like today had we not been pouring our national wealth in their pockets for more than 30 years? Did you ever see "Lawrence of Arabia?" Now that's nostalgia! ...more

July 25, 2008

As giant oil companies like Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips get set to report what will probably be another round of eye-popping quarterly profit, just where is all that money going? ...more

July 23, 2008

The national debate over opening more offshore areas to oil and gas exploration has begged the question: Just what are the companies doing with the tens of millions of acres they're already leasing from the federal government? ...more

July 21, 2008

Coldwell Banker recently surveyed its sales associates to evaluate the effect of rising gasoline prices on their customers and trends toward urban living with interesting results, company officials say. ...more

July 20, 2008

Prices at the pump pulled back from record highs Friday as another slide in oil capped crude's biggest one-week drop in more than three years. ...more

July 19, 2008

Last week, the front pages of the world press blossomed with photos of four Iranian rockets, fired in salvo, heading skyward. ...more

July 16, 2008

Wall Street's angst over the ongoing fallout from the credit crisis made for a turbulent end to a volatile week Friday - stocks tumbled, soared and then turned south again as investors tried to assess the dangers faced by the country's biggest mortgage financiers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. ...more

July 12, 2008