Below The Beltway

Not only did the Dow Jones Average pass 13,000, it positively shattered it:
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The Dow industrials jumped 136 points Wednesday afternoon to close above 13,000 for the first time as investors hailed upbeat earnings from Amazon.com, possible asset sales by Alcoa and a strong reading on the economy.
The gain in the Dow […]

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is far from the best indicator of what’s happening on Wall Street. For that you’d do better to look at the S&P 500 or Wilshire 5000. Nonetheless, it is the one everyone pays attention to, so today’s news that it passed 13,000 for the first time is getting alot of […]

There are several stories in the news today which provide further evidence in support of the idea that the days of rapidly rising real estate prices are gone.
First, the Washington Post reports that sales of existing homes fell again in June:
In Loudoun County, for example, 515 existing single-family homes and condominiums were sold last month, […]

One stock market analyst speculates on the reason that the Dow has dropped 400 points in three days:
“I think the selling we’ve seen since Wednesday is mostly in response to the Mideast situation,” said Ron Kiddoo, chief investment officer at Cozad Asset Management.
Duh

Back on August 28th I wrote about the issue of the increased use of credit cards to pay for gasoline and what it means. Now, via CNN, comes this news.
There was a record number of delinquent credit-card accounts reported in the second quarter, according to data released Wednesday from the American Bankers Association.
A key reason […]

I was born in 1968 and only have a dim memory of the gas crisis of the early 1970s. I do remember it though. I remember odd-even days. I remember my parents taking the car down to the local garage/gas station the night before they were “allowed” to get gas and parking it there so […]

There’s a discussion going on at Outside The Beltway about this report that the use of credit cards for gasoline purchases has increased significantly in the last year.
I’ve used my credit cards to pay for gasoline for as long as I can remember. At first, it was just a convenience issue —- it was easier […]

Yesterday, I paid $ 2.61 per gallon to fill up the tank of our Honda Accord. After seeing this article about gas prices around the world, though, its clear that things could be alot worse.

Just like every day this week, today brings another story of record oil prices this time topping $ 67.00 per barrel. The price of gasoline continues to rise as well as this quote from a CNN story (Full story here.) shows:
The average price of a gallon of regular gasoline was more than $2.40 per gallon […]