Ugh! If you're planning a getaway for the July 4 weekend, you may have to shell out another $1 to $1.25 a gallon at the gas pump, more than 40% higher than current levels.

That essentially is one of the ugly travel scenarios that emerges from a current...

Strong, graphic language, but just the kind you might expect from fixed-income goliath Bill Gross, the managing director of PIMCO, the world's biggest bond fund with assets of more than $1 trillion.

In brief: "By eliminating QE2," he says, " the Federal Reserve would be ripping a Band-Aid off...

It's what the treacherous and fluctuating investment arena is all about. One day you're a hero. The next day, you're a bum.

Take gold, the darling of the safe-haven crowd and unquestionably one of the hottest investments on the planet. But suddenly, a lot of folks are bad-mouthing the yellow...

From Tunisia to Egypt to Libya. So where does the parade of revolutions head next? Did I hear someone blurt out Bahrain, Yemen or maybe Oman? Sounds reasonable to me since all three have been stung by recent protests and riots.

Or maybe, suggests Jordan militant and trader Caise Hassan,...

Fairy tales are supposed to be the province of the young. Not anymore. The brothers Grimm wrote their first volume of them in 1812. And now, nearly 200 years later, they seem to be making their way to Wall Street.

Here's the story. If I told you that the...

Like you, I have no idea how far the outbreak of the political unrest will spread. Not so the experts, who basically echo the signature line of the late comedian, Jimmy Durante, "You ain't seen nothin' yet."

Simply put, that means, some Persian Gulf watchers say, more political uprisings, swelling...

Hey, it's now common talk that we're on a solid road to recovery. Likewise, that President Obama, now gaining in the polls, is likely to win a second term.

Maybe so, but if one perceptive and skeptical economic mind knows what she's talking about, both are about as credible as...

Rampant bullish fever is scaring a growing number of market watchers. No wonder. It's generally a prelude to a sizable market decline.

One UK money manager who was recently in the U.S., tells me he's deeply concerned by: the "overwhelming bullish sentiment" here -- both on the part of...

After a particularly biting response to a recent column, I decided to take what may be the coward's way out by seeking personal refuge in a Dale Carnegie quote: "Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain, and most fools do."

The biting response came from a HuffPost reader in Dallas...

As an independent trader of stocks, bonds and commodities who tells me he was up more than 100% last year and is humming again in 2011, Caise Hassan's thoughts on the financial markets would seem to be worth a lot more than his views on the Mideast turmoil.

Maybe not....

Political chatter is heating up. Ditto political betting. So let's look at some of the latest and newsiest nuggets on the next U.S. presidential race through the betting odds at the United Kingdom's William Hill, one of the word's largest and most influential bookmakers. In brief:

- The big political...

If anything, the latest bummer of an employment report, last month's creation of just 36,000 jobs, versus a widely anticipated gain of 130,000 to 150,000 jobs, is a renewed S.O.S. that the wave of euphoria engulfing Wall Street may be way overdone.

Apparently investors don't want to hear about...

For the moment, at least, America's biggest economic worry -- the lofty unemployment rate -- may finally be taking a decided turn for the better.

In December, 103,000 new jobs were created in non-farm payroll employment. The January number, to be reported Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, could...

"It was like avoiding an atom bomb, or in this case, a financial bomb," quipped one Morgan Stanley trader.

That was his reaction to Monday's surprisingly strong stock market performance following Friday's wicked 166-point decline in the Dow in the wake of the Egyptian riots.

The consensus of some...

After reading in a local paper that he had died, a very live Mark Twain emphatically denied it, uttering that now famous quote: "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."

It may be the same thing can be said about our most recent recession, which, given the onset of...

We hear it from one enthusiastic economist after another: The cheery news that a U.S. economic recovery is well under way. And they're quick to offer a slew of statistics to document their vision of a perkier economy, ranging from climbing figures on retail sales to rising numbers on the...

When we're young, we build castles in the sand. And when we grow up, some of us build empires.

One fella intimately familiar with the empire-building process, a relatively unknown name to the masses, unlike such nationally known empire builders as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, is 67-year-old Dick Heckmann....

Even Superman has his bad days. We saw that last Sunday when the New England Patriots, widely viewed as the Superman of football, were beaten by the underdog New York Jets.

We saw it again in recent months when gold, the investment arena's Superman, switched from the man of...

Hey, we may be getting bad news from up above. The political upheaval we saw in 2008, with lots of incumbents fired by angry voters, is apt to continue big time in 2012. Not only that, it could cause a couple of political biggies -- Barack Obama and Joe Biden...

"Where did you dig him up?" asks a HuffPost reader in Houston, who criticized a piece I did last week quoting an economist who predicted slow economic growth and a mediocre stock market in 2011. In an e-mail, the reader wrote,

Has your Rip Van Winkle economist ever heard...