Oil prices; "Busharraf"; financial markets; Krugman, the left, and Hillary, Inc.

Stock futures are down.  But oil prices aren't just rising, they're racing.  The rise is partly due to the weakness of the dollar, partly to pure greed.

...This latest ascent does not appear to be linked to any one conflict or to any physical shortage.  Instead, traders who treat oil like any other commodity are widely thought to be driving prices upward, bolstered by a weak dollar and money flowing out of stock markets and other investment vehicles.

With any luck, we'll get another break.

Many veteran oil analysts say this is a bubble. Oil is historically a cyclical business. Modestly higher production by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, a warm winter, slower U.S. economic growth and a flattening of demand in the United States could puncture these lofty prices.

Barney Frank, according to the New York Times, has come up with a great bill to curb abusive lending. 

The unassailable premise of the bill — the Mortgage Reform and Antipredatory Lending Act of 2007 — is that lending standards and consumer protections have proved disastrously lax as mortgage making has gone from a local business to a faceless global market for mortgage-related investments.

Wall Street (of course) doesn't like the bill.

The bill’s critics — mainly the finance industry that profited immensely during the mortgage bubble — claim that new rules could sharply curtail lending. But the current credit squeeze was brought on by reckless lending. Obviously, an absence of rules is a much greater threat to the stable flow of credit than is sound regulation.

Overnight nail-biter talk shows have an increasingly informed audience talking about Pakistan comparing the repressive moves made by Musharraf to those made here by, well, "Busharraf."  Someone mentions an equally irresponsible Congress capable of (specifically) HR 1955.

Meanwhile, Paul Krugman is talking about a tectonic shift, documented in Democracy Corps polls.  America is taking a sharp left turn.

Longer-term studies of public opinion suggest a substantial leftward shift. James Stimson, a political scientist who uses data from many polls to construct an index of the overall liberalism or conservatism of the electorate, finds that America is now more liberal than it has been since the early 1960s. And the tactics the right has historically used to distract voters from economic issues, above all the exploitation of racial tensions, have been losing their effectiveness.

But the Democratic Party is no longer likely to benefit from that leftward move.  The Democratic Party is moving in another direction.

The Financial Times reports, “Key votes have been delayed and time bought after the investment industry hired some of Washington’s most prominent lobbyists to influence lawmakers and spread largesse through campaign donations.” It goes on to describe how Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, was “toasted by industry lobbyists” (and serenaded by Barry Manilow) at a money-raising party for his special fund to help Democrats get elected next year...

Hillary Clinton is -- or is thought to be -- a symbol of Democratic  Party corporatism.  Krugman cites an article in the Nation.

... Fears of betrayal are often focused on Hillary Clinton. ... “Not only is Hillary more reliant on large donations and corporate money than her Democratic rivals,” warned the article, “but advisers in her inner circle are closely affiliated with unionbusters, G.O.P. operatives, conservative media and other Democratic Party antagonists.”

If the left is gathering strength, who is its leader?

Comments

[Ron G]

The leaders are left-leaning bloggers.

Don't look to Congress, they're followers by any definition.