Explosions Hit Bus and Subways
in London
LONDON (AP) -- At least six blasts rocked the London subway and tore open a packed double-decker bus during the morning rush hour Thursday, police said, killing at least two people and injuring nine, prompting officials to shut down the entire underground transport network.
The near simultaneous explosions came a day after London was awarded the 2012 Olympics and as the G-8 summit was getting underway in Scotland. Initial reports blamed a power surge, but officials were not ruling out an intentional attack.
"There have been a number of dreadful incidents across London today," said Home Secretary Charles Clarke, Britain's top law enforcement officer. He said there were "terrible injuries."
One witness, Darren Hall, said some passengers emerging from an evacuated subway station had soot and blood on their faces. He told BBC TV that he was evacuated along with others near the major King's Cross station and only afterward heard a blast.
Police confirmed an explosion destroyed a double-decker bus at Russell Square in central London and said they suspected a bomb caused the blast. Dow Jones Newswires reported that police said there were explosions on two others buses.
A witness at the Russell Square blast said the entire top deck of that bus was destroyed.
Link 2
Mutual Funds: Commodity Funds
Commodity Funds Can Add Diversity to a Portfolio Focused on Stocks and Bonds
May 26, 2005 — If you own both stock and bond funds, you probably consider yourself well-diversified. But research by Lipper Inc. suggests broad exposure to commodities like gold, oil and copper can go a long way toward rounding out a mutual fund portfolio, as long as you understand the risks.
One of the reasons stocks and bonds are paired together is that they can perform differently from each other — when one declines, the other typically advances. For even more diversification, professional investors often add other asset classes, such as real estate and commodities, that theoretically can zig when stocks or bonds zag."When the stock market drops, you don't necessarily notice it at the gas pump," said Patricia Jennerjohn, head of Focused Finances in Oakland, Calif. "The price of oil will drive the market as far as sentiment goes, but it's not necessarily correlated in terms of performance."
Mutual funds and exchange-traded funds that invest in commodities and real estate investment trusts have made it possible to use these alternative investments even in very small portfolios. For commodities in particular, there's a wide array of products, from funds that invest only in gold or natural resources to all-inclusive indexes that hold everything from crude to cotton.
"Commodities are clearly a separate asset class and would be a good diversification addition to an investor's portfolio," said Andrew Clark, a senior research analyst at Lipper. "They're on a very strong ride up, so you may want to be overweighted in them more than you might have been in the late '90s."
Indexes Funds For Small Investors
For small investors looking for an edge but not a roller coaster ride, a broadly diversified commodities index is probably best. Natural resources funds do not provide any real diversification because they are highly correlated with both large-cap and small-cap stock funds, Clark said. And while gold offers diversification, it comes with a high degree of volatility and twice the risk of small-cap stocks.
"When the stock market drops, you don't necessarily notice it at the gas pump," said Patricia Jennerjohn, head of Focused Finances in Oakland, Calif. "The price of oil will drive the market as far as sentiment goes, but it's not necessarily correlated in terms of performance."
Mutual funds and exchange-traded funds that invest in commodities and real estate investment trusts have made it possible to use these alternative investments even in very small portfolios. For commodities in particular, there's a wide array of products, from funds that invest only in gold or natural resources to all-inclusive indexes that hold everything from crude to cotton.
"Commodities are clearly a separate asset class and would be a good diversification addition to an investor's portfolio," said Andrew Clark, a senior research analyst at Lipper. "They're on a very strong ride up, so you may want to be overweighted in them more than you might have been in the late '90s."
I am but a very small potato in this big world, but it seems that what this shows is it is people who can't do relatively trivial things like put a piece of one's IRA into funds like the above who are really getting screwed.
And that's the poor.
Figures aren't available for 2004, but median incomes in this neck of the woods have been stagnant through 2003, and declined slightly for inflation.
Whether it's the "terrorists" or Bush and his friends: well off people and the prepared and informed small-fry will make money, and the poor will be the ones who really suffer.
Bush, certainly has not made us any safer- I expected that.
But at least today I'm not going to get creamed in my retirement savings. I might even make a buck or two today.
Yeah, folks, all he's really doing is getting progressives like me wealthier, because we're placing bets that he's going to screw the economy.
Update
Evidently, oil prices are - oddly enough- down.
If al Qaeda wanted to do a "Madrid" to the G8, that'd be kind of odd- as long as there's no cover-up by Bush/Blair (or news of collusion with the terrorists) all this is going to do is piss people off. And possibly scare a few conservatives.
And evidently that- I suppose- is supposed to steel the West to attempt control of the Iraqi oil supply.
That's as may be (and notably al Qaeda has not targetted the oil infrastructure as of now), but the long term trend is still up, up, and away for oil, as long as we have folks in power who would rather spend lots of effort and energy to maintain control over oil supplies instead of finding ways to make oil irrelevant.
I only hope that we indeed, this time, actually go after al Qaeda.
And get independence from oil.
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