Mo's Marketplace | News of the Day - May 5

Monday, May 05, 2008

News of the Day - May 5

 

Today is the 104th anniversary of Cy Young's Perfect Game - the first one in American League History....of course by 1904 that history was a little more than 3 years old.  He defeated the Philadelphia A's 3-0.


Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more heated between Red Sox/Yankees, get a load of this story from boston.com: “A woman accused of running down a man in her car after a Red Sox-Yankees argument in a bar never hit her brakes as she accelerated toward the small group he was in, a prosecutor said Monday.” And it only gets worse for the woman from there. In case you’re wondering, she was the Yankees fan in the incident.


The victim of the incident apparently taunted the woman with “Yankees Suck,” whereupon she got into her car and drove into him. His family has donated his organs, but I just can’t get by the idea one of this man’s dying thoughts was so banal as “Yankees Suck.”


Keeping up with some of my recent posts (and this one) on the price of oil – today a barrel has gone up over $120. Why? Nigerian terrorists causing concerns about disruption and the service sector in the US expanded last month signaling increased use. Added to increased international demand, and a dollar that has lost 14% of its value against the Euro it’s not hard to see why oil keeps increasing, although demand in the US for gasoline and petroleum products have apparently decreased by 2.7% over the last year… I suspect part of that decrease is a softening economy as well as the high price of gas limiting demand.


Meanwhile, the plant that makes the Chevy Malibu has gone on strike – each plant has it’s own labor deals with the UAW locals in addition to the master agreement negotiated between GM and The UAW. This provides a nice look back at another recent article on leverage in negotiations, the Malibu is one of GM’s hottest sellers and is absolutely critical to the company given that most of their stock hasn’t been selling. Hard to sell trucks getting 13 MPG when gas is at $3.65 (and 9/10). Leverage is everything – the local is governed by wages under the master agreement, but in this case it’s all about working conditions and seniority issues.

 

Posted by Mo at 10:58:13 PM in News And Legal (10) | Comments (0)

Comments

Name
URL (remember "http://" or your link will be broken)
Email
Email address is not published - it's not required, but I probably won't approve your comment without it
Remember Me
Comments

CAPTCHA
Write the characters in the image above