$100 oil, interest rates and your gas bill

The oil price edged perilously close to the $100 mark in recent days. Jeremy Batstone Carr looks at the near-term outlook for oil and what it will mean for inflation - and interest rates.

Equity markets remain tense and risk aversion high as we enter the final few trading weeks of 2007. In last week's publication we expressed surprise by the general resilience displayed by equity investors despite the apparent "wall of worry" created by deepening fears regarding the health of the US economy and corresponding weakness in the outlook for corporate earnings.

Adding to those fears are the seemingly ever-present geo-political tensions which have been augmented of late by the build-up of Turkish military forces on that country's border with Iraq.

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