Oopsies! Open Mic Madness tonight from the OPEC conference. Here’s a choice excerpt of Saudi foreign minister Prince Al-Faisal speaking when he thought the world wasn’t listening:

“My feeling is that the mere mention that the OPEC countries are studying the issue of the dollar is itself going to have an impact that endangers the interests of the countries .. there will be journalists who will seize on this point and we don’t want the dollar to collapse instead of doing something good for OPEC.”

Well, sir, the mere mention is one thing – but considering the mentioner, it is quite another.

Also, on that subject.

Assumptions and Peak Universe.

Report: oil production peaked in ’06; will decline 3% annually. What we have is a major divergence of views; in a couple of years it should be clear who was right.

“As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented.”
- Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, & Risk Management, U.S. Department of Energy, February 2005

I’ve been squealing a great deal about our misadventure in Iraq. I realize I’ve spent a lot of time with a scolding, I-told-you-so kind of tone, rarely offering much in the way of solutions. I hope you forgive me for this, but I’ve been terribly frustrated with my fellow Americans, and it’s hard to not be a dick about it. I have been doing this in part because I warned, loudly, in the run-up to the war that we were marching into a colossal mistake. So, when many of my fellow citizens now have the nerve to act surprised that rolling our tanks into the heart of Arabia was an abject disaster, it’s a little hard to take. I also have been doing so because, frankly, I can’t offer much in the way of solutions. Ideally we’d find a multinational Arab force to take the mess off our hands, but they rightfully will tell us what we told them: to go screw. In the words of Powell: we broke it, we own it. This mistake will haunt us for generations.

Many have also said to me that looking backward won’t help us. I disagree because I think the past can teach us stuff, such as who was right and who was wrong – and it also informs us about future risks and who we should be listening to at present.
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Hey idiots, why not turn out nonessential lights anyway? Turning out lights you’re not using should not be a special occasion.

Gold and oil prices at record highs; Canadian dollar trading in parity with US dollar for the first time in over 30 years; riyal de-peg “inevitable.”

As suspected, the Kingdom is taking new steps to eliminate the dollar peg, and hasn’t moved its rates in lockstep for the first time. And, the dollar hits a record low against the Euro.  This is a very, very serious situation.

Last week we talked, half-jokingly of course (wink-nod), about ARMageddon and Wall Street shenanigans. A short conversation ensued. One of my favorite doomsayers – James Howard Kunstler of Long Emergency and Clusterfuck Nation – takes it all a bit further.

Astronauts allegedly flew drunk – come on, as if they actually fly that thing.. I mean, how sober do you really need to be to buckle your harness and pray?

NYTimes: Just What The Founders Feared

Dollar at 20-year lows; crude oil headed for $100++; reality finally hitting overleveraged homeowners; a really bad spanking on Wall Street; and it’s going to get worse.

Obesity is contagious.

Anne Hathaway is gorgeous.