Word: higher
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...What if we took out all the traders who had nothing to do with the oil market? That would leave oil suppliers and oil hedgers: those trying to sell oil and those trying to buy oil, respectively. Suppliers benefit from higher prices and so would not be willing to sell. Hedgers, afraid of soaring prices, would buy oil futures, driving the price to unheard-of levels. Worse still, we would have to worry about the oil suppliers themselves getting in on the futures-price action. They can afford to take on huge risks in the oil-futures market because they...
...Since an oil supplier has more freedom than an oil hedger - after all, a supplier sits on oil with no rush to sell it, as a hedger attempts to curb real risk - a supplier can squeeze prices higher by refusing to sell on the futures market. The supplier would sell oil just through private deals, whose prices are determined by the futures market - and not the other way around. This catch-22 represents the systemic flaw in the global oil market...
...well. The Taliban, funded in large measure by the opium trade, which is centered in Helmand, now controls wide swaths of Afghanistan. Over the past four months, a recent U.N. report says, the number of "assassinations, abductions, incidents of intimidation and the direct targeting of aid workers" has been higher than last year. Increasing numbers of foreign fighters - "most likely affiliated with al-Qaeda" - are fighting alongside the Taliban. "There is no question but that the situation has deteriorated over the course of the past two years," General David Petraeus, who as chief of U.S. Central Command oversees the wars...
...limited to relatively generous plans worth $17,000 a year or more; 7 out of 10 said no. The Finance Committee had been hoping that taxing plans that are more generous than average could raise more than $300 billion over the next 10 years. Now it is considering a higher threshold for taxation - say, for plans that cost in excess of $25,000 a year. That would mean far fewer Americans would have to pay that tax, but it would raise less than one-third the revenue. Another idea, being floated by former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle, would...
...Curbs on religious freedom have been accompanied by cultural restrictions. The Uighur language, written in Arabic script, has been steadily phased out of higher education, having been once deemed by Xinjiang's Communist leader to be unsuitable for China's "scientific development." Uighurs in Xinjiang are often denied the right to travel outside of China, or even within it. Those who do manage to move to China's major cities eke out a desperate living as migrant workers, often viewed with distrust and suspicion by the larger Chinese population. The immediate cause of Sunday's protest in Urumqi appears...