Wednesday I told you what an EPA rule change regarding cellulosic ethanol could mean for the Obama White House and, more important, what it could mean for the shareholders of an ethanol-industry leader. That EPA ruling is a done deal. Another proposed EPA rule… Read More

My friend Barbara phoned and invited me to lunch a few weeks ago. When she offered to pay, I knew something was up. Barbara talked about her workout routine, her daughter’s job search, and her upcoming vacation to Panama. After asking me a cursory question or two,… Read More

Picture this: A congressional staffer laden with a massive, multivolume set of books containing the president’s 2011 budget. We all saw this a couple weeks ago, when Mr. Obama released his blueprint for the government’s next fiscal year.   It’s a ridiculous… Read More

Powerful factors are aligning. These forces clearly point to an increase in the price of oil. Consider: Worldwide petroleum use is increasing. A slight pullback caused by the recession notwithstanding, global demand for oil is on the rise as China and other emerging-market countries… Read More

Throughout the 1990s tech boom, Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) made life miserable for any other firm trying to sell computers. Its lean operations enabled it to generate solid profits even as price wars kept most rivals’ bottom lines in the red. First Solar (Nasdaq: FSLR) has taken a page from Dell’s… Read More

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently cut the nation’s biofuel output quota for 2010. It wasn’t a token cut, either. It was a -94% reduction in cellulosic ethanol, to 6.5 million gallons, from 100 million gallons. (Cellulosic ethanol… Read More

Uganda, the East African nation sandwiched between the Congo and Kenya, is blessed with significant mineral resources. Its rich, fertile land is not prone to drought, and although agriculture has long encompassed a majority of the country’s economy — coffee is its most significant… Read More

This week brought a significant bit of news in the ethanol world. Industry-watchers might assume I’m talking about President Obama’s Wednesday announcement with the Energy and Agriculture secretaries that a federal biofuel output quota schedule had been finalized, a move that… Read More

The President’s health care initiative rests on a shelf with little talk in Congress about what’s next for the sweeping overhaul. At the same time, Mr. Obama has re-positioned the chessboard for his climate-control bill, suggesting at a town-hall meeting in Nashua on Tuesday that the legislation might need to… Read More

Certain companies are always worth owning. Happily, short-term market anomalies can transform such companies from a good buy into a screaming buy. Now may be such a screaming-buy time for a certain company in the energy industry. The demand for crude oil fell in… Read More