The Rant

Sad . . . Moody's Cuts GM, Ford Debt to Junk Status Thursday, August 25, 2005 • GM Posts $1.10B Loss — Worst Since 1992 NEW YORK — Moody's Investors Service Wednesday cut General Motors Corp.'s (GM) and Ford Motor Co.'s (F) debt ratings to junk status, citing continued operating losses, global competition and challenges to restructuring for long-term viability. Moody's also cut GM's finance arm, General Motors Acceptance Corp. (search) , to junk status. The cuts affect about $170 billion of outstanding debt, Moody's said. Moody's was the last of the three major rating services to cut the auto giant to junk status. Moody's cut GM's senior unsecured debt rating to "Ba2" from "Baa3," and GMAC's senior unsecured rating to "Ba1" from "Baa2." The outlook is negative on the new ratings. Moody's also cut Ford's debt ratings, the second cut to junk for the No. 2 automaker. Moody's cut its ratings ...

by Lawrence Kudlow Permit me to take a contrarian view on the oil price shock. I say three cheers for higher energy prices. Why? Because I believe in markets. When the price of something goes up, demand falls off (call it conservation) and supply increases (call it new production). We're seeing a tectonic shift. As Dan Yergin has advised us, energy supplies in the next few years will explode. Now the public is even favoring nuclear power. And the government is stepping out of the way by giving FERC the authority to override localities who oppose nuclear power, liquefied natural gas or other forms of energy. Meanwhile the impact on the economy has been negligible, at least so far. And the Fed has prevented oil inflation from spreading to the rest of the economy. So much so that I think they should quit raising rates while they're ahead. Meanwhile the spread of global capitalism to places like China, India, eastern Europe and elsewhere (which is a very good thing for world prospe...

August 23, 2005 An Oil "Crisis"? By Thomas Sowell With oil prices passing the record-breaking $60 a barrel level and heading even higher, the word "crisis" is now being used and all sorts of political "solutions" are being proposed. Is there really a crisis? One of the dictionary definitions of a crisis is "the point in the course of a serious disease at which a decisive change occurs, leading either to recovery or to death." Is that where we are when it comes to oil? Are we either going to solve the problem of oil or see it destroy us economically? Political and media definitions of "crisis" are much looser than the dictionary's definition. In political semantics, the word "crisis" has come to mean any situation that someone wants to use to justify doing something that will be called a "solution." Crises are a dime a dozen by political and media definitions. Almost as common as crises are conspiracy theories. Wh...

8/29/05 By Michael Barone . . . the most important changes occurring, not just in Iraq but across the Muslim world, are changes in people's minds. . . . . Now comes the Pew Global Attitudes Project's recent survey of opinion in six Muslim countries to tell us that progress is being made in achieving that goal. Most important, support for terrorism in defense of Islam has "declined dramatically," in the Pew report's words, in Muslim countries, except in Jordan (which has a Palestinian majority) and Turkey, where support has remained a low 14 percent. It has fallen in Indonesia (from 27 to 15 percent since 2002), Pakistan (from 41 to 25 percent since 2004), Morocco (from 40 to 13 percent since 2004), and among Muslims in Lebanon (from 73 to 26 percent since 2002). Support for suicide bombings against Americans in Iraq has also declined. The percentage reporting some confidence in Osama bin Laden is now under 10 percent in Lebanon and Turkey and has fallen sharply i...

by Mark Steyn It's one thing to mourn a son's death and even to question the cause for which he died, but quite another to roar that he was "murdered by the Bush crime family." Also: "You tell me the truth. You tell me that my son died for oil. You tell me that my son died to make your friends rich. You tell me my son died to spread the cancer of Pax Americana . . . You get America out of Iraq, you get Israel out of Palestine." And how about this? "America has been killing people on this continent since it was started. This country is not worth dying for." That was part of her warm-up act for a speech by Lynne Stewart, the "activist" lawyer convicted of conspiracy for aiding the terrorists convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Last Friday, in Solano County Court, Casey's father Pat Sheehan filed for divorce. As the New York Times explained Cindy's "separation," "Although she and her estranged husband are...