Blog Posts by Tim Sprinkle

By Pierpaolo Barbieri

Exactly a year ago, Argentina President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner announced to the world the expropriation of 51% of Argentine oil company YPF from Spain's Repsol.

It had all been planned. The announcement, broadcast on all the television channels, between applause and ovations. The Argentine provinces, seduced with a stake in the new company. And the Spanish board, disoriented after failed negotiations.

The commercials were ready. Even the retro logo preferred by Kirchner's marketing was premeditated: It promised a back to the future featuring independent development, increased production, and “popular” prices to encourage consumption, culminating in precious energy independence. And this independence would be achieved with Argentina’s own resources, not as vassals of foreign companies.

The Kirchner rhetoric was, as always, both nationalistic and hopeful. The privatization of the hated neoliberal years was tinged with irregularities. A new era dawned.

The

Thirty years ago, an upstart, young computer company called Apple (AAPL) threw a party.

A big party, with kegs of beer, rowdy crowds and rumors of skinny-dipping at La Playa Hotel, a small, family-owned resort on the California coast that was a popular site for corporate retreats in the early days of Silicon Valley. The facility’s management at the time and, of course, other guests, were less than impressed by the Macintosh team’s hijinks, and as a result the eventual iPhone and iPad maker was unceremoniously kicked off the property and banned from the Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif. resort for life, effective 1983.

In retrospect, the punishment was probably well deserved. According to Frank Rose’s book “West of Eden: The End of Innocence at Apple Computer,” the clash of cultures at La Playa was evident from the start. And it all went downhill from there.

“When [former Apple senior vice president Jay Elliot] was eating dinner in the La Playa’s primly starched dining room and saw a dozen

Gasoline prices are falling nationwide this year, but there’s no reason for drivers to get too excited about it just yet.

The average price for a gallon of gas is expected to go down slightly this summer versus both 2011 and 2012, according to a new report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), but will still likely top out at $3.63 per gallon during the big travel months of April through September. That’s down from $3.69 last year and $3.71 in 2011. Back in 2010, which seems like a lifetime ago in terms of fuel prices, drivers were rolling out of gas stations at just $2.76 per gallon.

Lower crude oil prices are primarily to thank for these (admittedly tiny) new savings, but U.S. gasoline inventories are also now at healthier levels than in recent years and that’s helping to keep prices down, according to EIA. Last year, 98,000 barrels per day were withdrawn from this inventory to keep up with fuel demand, and that figure is expected to be cut in half this summer.

Of

Early last week, a group called "STOP the Monsanto Protection Act" began circulating the following paragraph on Facebook (FB).

"I am truly upset that the majority of Americans who were aware of this expressed concern (to put it lightly) and nothing was done by our elected officials. Our mainstream media outlets haven’t barely even so much as mention it (sic), let alone mention the numbers of people who (sic) DO NOT SUPPORT THIS ACT OF TREASON!!! This is them openly telling us they no longer represent us and we do not have the power to stop them ..."

Clearly, the section of the recently signed H.R. 933 budget bill that has become known as the Monsanto Protection Act by its opponents, due to its favorable impact on companies such as Monsanto (MON) and DuPont (DD) and the multibillion dollar genetically modified foods industry as a whole, has aroused serious passions.

But it takes a special kind of outrage for an obscure rider in a government spending bill to cross over from

Sorry, baseball fans, but ticket prices are going up. Again.

In what’s become something of an annual ritual, the average price of a Major League Baseball ticket has hit new highs this season, to a league-wide average of $27.73, according to Team Marketing Report’s 2013 Fan Cost Index (FCI), an annual survey of ticket and stadium entertainment prices. That’s up 2.7 percent versus the 2012 season.

It’s the largest jump in MLB ticket prices since 2009 and is equal to the total increases of the last three seasons combined. According to FCI, 15 teams increased prices by more than one percent, six kept prices flat, and nine teams actually cut prices. The Toronto Blue Jays led the league in increases, raising ticket prices by 29.6 percent, followed by the Los Angeles Angels at 23.4 percent, the Washington Nationals at 15.4 percent, and the Texas Rangers at 10.0 percent.

And the big spenders are still the usual suspects. The Boston Red Sox remain the priciest ticket in baseball at

The Apple (AAPL) retail experience has been a key part of the company’s image since its first stores opened in the summer of 2001. The sleek maple-and-stone spaces, with products front-and-center and an army of cheerful, T-shirt-wearing sales staff always at hand to answer questions or offer assistance -- for many shoppers, the bustling, busy energy of the stores is a big part of the brand's appeal.

“The Apple stores offer an amazing new way to buy a computer,” said Apple CEO Steve Jobs upon their opening, which at that point weren’t even selling the iPod yet. “Rather than just hear about megahertz and megabytes, customers can now learn and experience the things they can actually do with a computer, like make movies, burn custom music CDs and publish their digital photos on a personal website.”

But, as it turns out, many of Apple’s own retail employees don’t see it that way, and they’re taking to social media in droves to vent their frustrations – with the customers, the products

Last week, the Colorado General Assembly began the arduous task of crafting a regulatory framework for the state’s new “adult use,” aka recreational, marijuana industry, which was approved by voters last November. A task force was convened to offer suggestions (and it did, 165 pages (PDF) worth of them), a special committee was created to review those suggestions and the legislature is expected to vote on the full package later this year.

Get ready, government wonks, this is how the sausage is made.

For the rest of us, however, it is a chance to see an industry take shape. So what types of regulations is the state considering? What might the country’s first truly legal cannabis industry actually look like? Here are a few of the proposals that are being discussed.

Potency labeling: Like the alcohol-by-volume information now found on the side of every alcoholic beverage container sold in the United States, cannabis products may soon carry THC by weight or total THC per dose labeling.

The United States is on track to produce more domestic crude oil than it imports from overseas sources by the end of the year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) March energy report. When it happens, it will be the first time since February 1995 that domestic crude production has outstripped imports.

Here is EIA’s chart showing the long-term trend.

According to the report, increased shale oil production in Texas and North Dakota gets the credit for this shift, with some estimates suggesting that domestic sources will be out-producing imports by as much as two million barrels per day by the end of next year. What’s more, monthly U.S. crude production could even reach eight million barrels per day in 2014, highs not seen since 1988.

In theory, this could mean lower prices for consumers, as domestic production involves lower transportation costs and generally less price fluctuation. But whether or not that translates to actual savings for everyday Americans