It is the next couple of weeks that is proving more difficult to plan.<<

Get arrested! It saves you on hotel and you come away knowing a lot more about the country than you would staying with a guided tour

I finally have enough friends I need to index them

We don't call our vendors and ask, "Hey I'm thinking about purchasing some oil a year from now at March 15, what sort of price can you give me right then?",<

I learnt in my contract law courses that the first dept stores started doing exactly that over 100 years ago

if you scroll back in General you can see the prior attempts at Mafia DarkMason

usually we have some wierd theme, last time it was Nazis vs Allied commandos

I just cant' be tied to a computer enough to play

As a paralegal I say this stinks because the worst thing you can do for the client is think you know something you were never taught. Yes maybe a nurse will be competent to handle a simple cold or fever. But the nurse will not know whether they are confronted with a cold or fever or something worse. They lack thousands of hours of instruction.

This change is not done because doctors are obsolete and we dance because we are free of their dark tyranny

It is done because we can't afford to have enough doctors.

Will co-chair the meeting of my foot and his butt

I won't ignore you wc

now stay in front of me and downwind

As with any commodity you can preorder a set amount at a set price in advance.  Say I promise to buy 100,000 barrels of oil from you in March 2011 at $75/barrel.  That promise is a commodity on both sides, because you are also committed to sell 100,000 barrels of oil at $75 at that time.  So if I find somebody, or a syndicate of someones, who feels sure oil will be $80 in March 2011, I can sell them my promise for instant cash.  If oil is $80 / barrel then the guy who buys it off me will have saved $500,000 on the price of 100,000 barrels.  If oil is $60 / barrel he lost a lot of money.   

You might sell your end of the contract to people who will feel sure oil will be $40 / barrel.  Or if somebody thinks oil will be <$75 / barrel at that time, they may sell you a guarantee against losses if oil is >$75 / barrel.  They will accept the risk for the $$$ you pay as the price of the guarantee.

Where it gets messy is that oil production is really a cartel, with the producers colluding to keep prices profitable.  Also, the producers don't mind putting money behind wheeler-dealers who then speculate on oil prices.  Also, since the product takes weeks to ship globally, the amount of oil actually available for consumption, the amount of oil being pumped, the amount of oil being refined, and the amount being traded, are all separate entities.  There are collective buyers who trade in massive quantities of oil and the promise of massive quantities of oil for billions of $ every day.

if you were getting married PETA would demand the bride be returned to the wild

we already lost it...they just keep giving us teh AAA letter grade, but last 90-day auction the Treasury upped rates to 4% (vs 1.8% savings rate) and it was still so undersubscribed the Federal Reserve printed dollars to buy T-notes

this is called "monetizing the debt", under the crooks and incompetents driving the train now, it will only continue
printing dollars to loan to the Treasury so the OMB reports "revenues up" to Congress
ordering banks to pay fees to the Fed instead of raising interest rates
its not new, just new to America, and whereever its been tried its easier for the public just to overthrow the government than honor the debt

wont happen until the dollar goes blooey

say, within 10 years