How are you spending your IRS stimulus rebate? Can you keep food and energy costs from consuming it?

Times readers have lots of creative uses for their rebate checks, from electronics and travel to repairing old appliances and buying new ones. You already know that I spent mine on a vacation to Wyoming. However, Slate columnist Daniel Gross says rebates aren't going to stimulate the economy much because a big percentage of the money will be consumed by higher energy and food costs.

Gross raises an important point. However, many of us have options--we don't have to sit back and let food and fuel consume our entire rebates. Unless you are required to drive as part of your job, you may be able to drive less by car pooling, combining errands, shopping closer to home, walking, biking or even taking the bus. With electricity prices on the way up, it pays to push that thermostat up. You also can cut food costs by opting for fewer processed and packaged foods, eating less expensive proteins and brown bagging it when you are working or out running errands. 

Comments

[Steve]

Those are some of the most interesting statistics, but why post it here.

[tHE MOST AMAZING STATISTIC]

This shows that federal revenue remains consistent with changes in tax rate and proves that lower taxes boosts the economy and tax revenue stays same
http://www.heritage.org/research/features/BudgetChartBook/fed-rev-spend-2008-boc-T1-Income-Tax-Receipts-Stay-Constant.html

[bush's legacy not so good.]

http://www.heritage.org/research/features/BudgetChartBook/fed-rev-spend-2008-boc-S2-Since-9-11-Federal-Spending-Has.html

[wow---federal spending chart. amazing.]

http://www.heritage.org/research/features/BudgetChartBook/fed-rev-spend-2008-boc-S1-Federal-Spending-Has-Increased.html

[Interesting chart on tax cuts]

http://www.heritage.org/research/features/BudgetChartBook/fed-rev-spend-2008-boc-R3-Corporate-Income-Tax-Cuts-Boost.html

[IRS]

why don't we have a flat tax as filling out all these papers and paying an accountant all this money is such a wasteful drain of resources.

[Helen please write about this]

Steve Forbes says inflation in oil is from fed stimulus and weak dollar that begain in 2004 and it is evident by the price of gold.

[Oil Inflation===is it manipulation by traders or manipulation by Fed with weak dollar]

The price of oil and inflation are often seen as being connected in a cause and effect relationship. As oil prices move up or down, inflation follows in the same direction. The reason why this happens is that oil is a major input in the economy - it is used in critical activities such as fueling transportation and heating homes - and if input costs rise, so should the cost of end products. For example, if the price of oil rises, then it will cost more to make plastic, and a plastics company will then pass on some or all of this cost to the consumer, which raises prices and thus inflation.

The direct relationship between oil and inflation was evident in the 1970s, when the cost of oil rose from a nominal price of $3 before the 1973 oil crisis to around $40 during the 1979 oil crisis. This helped cause the consumer price index (CPI), a key measure of inflation, to more than double from 41.20 in early 1972 to 86.30 by the end of 1980. Let's put this into perspective: while it had previously taken 24 years (1947-1971) for the CPI to double, during the 1970s it took about eight years.

However, this relationship between oil and inflation started to deteriorate after the 1980s. During the 1990's Gulf War oil crisis, crude prices doubled in six months from around $20 to around $40, but CPI remained relatively stable, growing from 134.6 in January 1991 to 137.9 in December 1991. This detachment in the relationship was even more apparent during the oil price run-up from 1999 to 2005, in which the annual average nominal price of oil rose from $16.56 to $50.04. During this same period, the CPI rose from 164.30 in January 1999 to 196.80 in December 2005. Judging by this data, it appears that the strong correlation between oil prices and inflation that was seen in the 1970s has weakened significantly

[ICE Futures]

what is that and how do they controll the price. markets need to be fair, not manipulated.

[Dear Helen]

can u write about the oil manipulation as it is affecting me terribly.

[Oil manipulation investigation.]

The CFTC’s announcement about its oil investigation suggested a single, broad probe that began in December 2007. But people familiar with its enforcement priorities say the agency is pursuing multiple oil investigations, and that many of them relate to one another. CFTC enforcement chief Gregory Mocek said the agency has about 60 manipulation investigations open in various commodity markets.

The CFTC has expanded an investigation, disclosed previously by The Wall Street Journal, into alleged short-term manipulation of crude-oil prices via a widely used price-reporting system run by Platts, a unit of McGraw-Hill Cos. One suspicion is that energy companies and traders have at times issued a flood of orders during a time window used by Platts to determine its reported prices for physical oil transactions, then used the potentially distorted prices to make profits in other markets. Platts has said its system has safeguards to protect against manipulation. Subpoenas on the matter have gone out in several stages, people familiar with the cases say. The agency has also been questioning traders about similar activity in the jet-fuel market, people familiar with the matter say.

Another area of concern for CFTC regulators is whether the owners of crude-oil storage tanks use their knowledge to make bets on oil-futures markets. In theory, the owner of a tank could issue misleading information about the tanks being full or empty, leaving the wrong impression about whether oil is in plentiful supply. Then they could make trades to profit on the misunderstanding. Unlike most stock markets, insider trading isn’t generally illegal in commodities trading. An oil company can take advantage of inside information about its production outlook when it makes trades…

The CFTC said it reached an agreement with IntercontintentalExchange Inc. and the Britain’s Financial Services Authority to require more information about the oil trading that takes place on the exchange’s ICE Futures Europe platform. While ICE oil futures are traded electronically on computer terminals across the U.S. and have prices tied to oil futures offered by rival New York Mercantile Exchange, owned by Nymex Holdings Inc., they haven’t been subject to the same CFTC reporting requirements as Nymex trading. ICE will now provide daily information on large trader positions in its oil-futures markets, divulge more details on market participants and notify the CFTC when traders exceed position limits.

The CFTC is now also investigating cotton trading, which had a big spike in March and then a big drop — that commodity’s trading took place on ICE as well.