dollars and sense

3-4-08—Oil edged past a 28 year old record and gold approached $1000 an ounce as concerns about inflation and energy spurred a flight into hard assets. Crude hit $103.95 in intraday trading before closing at $102.45, up 61 cents. Gold settled at a record $981.50. ... The dollar briefly hit [another] record low against the euro. WSJ A1

--[Nobel Prize Winner Stiglitz] believes the overall costs of the [Iraq] war ... will reach $3 trillion. ... “We could have but Social Security on a sound footing for the next half-century.” [Vice Chairmen of Goldman Sachs International Robert Hormats] said “that the money spent on the way each day is enough to enroll an additional 58,000 children in Head Start for a year, or make a year of college affordable for 160,000 low-income students through Pell Grants, or pay the annual salaries of nearly 11,000 additional border patrol agents or 14, 000 more police officers. ... “taxes have never been cut during a major American war. For example, Presdient Eisenhower resisted pressure from Senate Repubicans for a tax cut during the Korean war.” NYT A25

--[GOP candidate for Indiana 2d district] Zirkle suggests that Americans consider segregating the country by race. SBT a1