by Richard Morrison
August 22, 2008

1. FINANCE

Members of Congress blame oil “speculators” for driving up the cost of oil with their investments.

CEI Expert Available to Comment: Center for Entrepreneurship Director John Berlau on the basics behind speculating:

“Even if speculation were found to be boosting the price, it would be counterproductive to ban it. Futures and forward contracts are just bets that commodity prices will go up in the future. If the bets are wrong, then the speculator gets clobbered and prices go back down for consumers. But if the speculator is right, than even a temporary rise in prices sends us valuable signals about what is happening with a resource. And any limit on speculation might lower prices in the present, but not do anything to prevent their inevitable rise in the future.”

2. LEGAL

Legal wrangling continues over Congress’ grant of immunity to phone companies for participating in the federal government’s domestic surveillance program.

CEI Expert Available to Comment: Special Projects Counsel Hans Bader on the legal arguments against immunity for phone companies:

“Congress gave the phone companies immunity against the billions of dollars in lawsuits brought against them for cooperating with federal anti-terror surveillance programs. The ACLU and some trial lawyers argue that this is unconstitutional. But even law professors, like Howard Wasserman, who don’t like the grant of immunity, agree that it is constitutional. Indeed, the legal arguments against immunity don’t pass the straight face test, although it is conceivable that a mischievous judge who has previously ruled in favor of telecom lawsuits and is angry at Congress for curbing them will pretend to be convinced by them in order to allow such lawsuits to proceed.”

3. SCIENCE

The U.S. Global Change Research Program releases a study on the predicted effects of global warming around the country.

CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Christopher C. Horner on the flaws on the study:

“The authors go to great lengths to obscure their inability to credibly articulate human influence on the climate. They do so through selectivity in research, alarmist language, failure to provide relevance or context to many of their claims, and generally throughout with transparent advocacy in tone and content.”

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FOR MORE INFORMATION

To contact a CEI expert for comment or interviews, please call the CEI communications department at 202-331-2273 or email to pr@cei.org.