I have a confession to make. There's something that, at this moment, i cannot do with out. It's not booze. It's not drugs. It's not french fries. It's the Amazon.com sales rankings for books! That's because I am co-author, with my longtime journalistic colleague Jerry Seib, of the new book "Pennsylvania Avenue: Profiles in Backroom Power."    Read More

The latest inflation number for the UK economy is punchy. The analysts were looking for CPI at a little over 2.5 percent - the annualized figure as delivered is 3 percent. April came in at 0.8 percent. Food and energy prices are making it hard for the Bank of England to cut interest rates. This should be supportive for the British pound. But the market smells blood.   Read More

Whether consumers are willing to open their wallets is a big theme for Tuesday's markets.
First, Wal-mart's quarterly earnings will be reported in the wee hours of Tuesday morning.   Read More

As good as John McCain’s pro-growth, supply-side tax plan is, his cap-and-trade strategy unveiled this morning is very hard for conservatives to swallow. The whole cap-and-trade experience in Europe and elsewhere reveals that this is a huge government command-and-control operation that taxes, spends, and regulates on a grand scale.    Read More

Commodities and energy are likely to stay in the driver's seat Friday. Those were the power groups, and the financials were the weaklings again in Thursday's stock market.    Read More

As far as the Intrade pay-to-play prediction market is concerned, Senator Obama has enjoyed a considerable surge since Tuesday’s primaries. Take a look.    Read More

U.S. economist John Lipsky, who is the first deputy managing director of the IMF, is giving a speech today before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York that warns of the spread of global inflation.   Read More

Retailers' April sales reports could shape early market action Thursday and provide a window on just how the consumer is faring.    Read More

By rebounding from his political struggles over Jeremiah Wright and gas taxes, Sen. Barack Obama may have survived the toughest punch that Sen. Hillary Clinton can throw. There was another sign Wednesday...   Read More

Some notable quotes from last night's special primary politics edition of Kudlow & Company: Hillary's Mission Impossible This [Democratic] nomination – they will take it away from Hillary Clinton when they unwrap her cold, dead fingers from around it. She’s not going away.    Read More