Stock Investing Guide

Here I comment on some recent developments affecting oil and gasoline prices.

There is no oil shortage in the central United States, and has not been for some time, thanks to increased production from Canadian oil sands, North Dakota, and the Midwest United States:

At the same time, demand in the U.S. is down, as Americans are driving fewer miles than in 2008 with more fuel-efficient cars:

The result has been that oil is piling up in the central U.S. With inadequate pipeline capacity to transport that crude so that it could replace more expensive oil imported by refineries on the U.S. coasts, a dramatic divergence developed between the price of oil in the central U.S. (as represented by West Texas Intermediate) and that paid by refiners on the U.S. coasts (which is close to the European benchmark Brent).

However, as U.C.

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The State of Utah has enacted a new bill concerning the selling and storing of alcoholic beverages. The bill, which is named SB 314, requires individuals who store, sell or supply alcoholic beverages as a reception center (companies that lease their property to third parties for hosting events) to obtain a $10,000 surety bond. SB 314 also adds a “beer only” alcohol license requirement for restaurants. In order to obtain the license, a $5,000 surety bond must be acquired.

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It is with great sadness that I report that UCSD Economics Professor Hal White passed away Saturday morning after an extended struggle with cancer. He was an irreplaceable colleague and dear friend, and we will miss him greatly.

Hal was one of the world’s leading econometricians. One of his core beliefs was that the models and assumptions that we bring to the data are inevitably flawed and misspecified in some way. It might seem that if you believe that, there’s no hope in trying to do econometrics. But some of Hal’s most remarkable discoveries concerned how to form valid inference even if part of what you assumed was fundamentally wrong.

An example arises in ordinary regression analysis, in which a common assumption is that the variance of the regression model’s error is the same for all observations. Suppose that assumption is wrong, and instead the variance depends in an unknown way on the various explanatory variables.

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Hundreds of thousands of savers risk missing out on the potential to earn higher returns elsewhere if they fail to keep a close eye on how much interest they are earning.

This month marks four years since the run on Northern Rock, and it is almost three months since the collapse of the Icelandic banks.

As a result of these crises autumn has become savings season with billions of pounds of money in fixed rate bonds maturing and introductory bonuses on easy access accounts ending around this time.

Kevin Mountford, head of banking at MoneySupermarket, said; “Savers cannot always rely on their banks to remind them that their deal is coming to an end, so they really have to be vigilant and go as far as writing it in their diary or sticking a post-it note on the fridge so they don’t forget when their savings rate will plummet.

If you have money in a savings account that you opened during the autumn a year or more ago, it’s time to check how much interest you are being paid, as you may need to move it.

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One of the first things that my parents taught me to do, financially, was track my expenses. I remembering getting my first bank account, and starting to keep track of everything that went in and out of the account. I had a little paper booklet that I wrote down how much the original balance was, what I bought, how much it was, and what the next balance would be. When I went back to the bank to make another deposit or withdrawal, I would get the updated balance, and compare it to my paper copy. If it didn’t match, I had to figure out where that extra money went to, and why there was a difference.

I hated it. I eventually just stopped doing it, because it ended up amounting to pennies, and it was all because of a simple math mistake or a forgotten purchase. I

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