Slippery slope - With the price of oil down to a 26-year low, the number of folks attending the annual Xmas lunch (prime ribs, oysters, etc.) at the posh Petroleum Club in Houston, dropped from 1,600 to 1,300.
Wait, there's more - A tradition had developed at the Petroleum Club that no one would pay more for a bottle of wine than for a barrel of oil. Now with oil down to $10.75 a barrel, choice vintages are gathering dust in the wine cellar, and bottled mineral water is in.
Sweeping money from the streets? - Edward DiPrete, ex- governor of Rhode Island pleaded guilty to accepting $250,000 in bribes in exchange for state contracts. He was sentenced to one year in a work release program.
Like squeezing lemons - " The ability to squeeze more out of the work force is the key to controlling labor costs. " - Economist Joel Naroff on the three percent jump in labor productivity in the third quarter of '98.
`Reemerging' nations? - International and domestic private investment in Thailand plunged 22 percent in September, the biggest drop in a decade or more.
And the cops got what? - The West Virginia State Police is paying $40,000 to two Kentucky Fried Chicken workers who were strip searched because $160 was missing. The money later turned up among some papers.
Lawyers? Never! - According to British cops, lawyers from at least 60 firms, including up to a half dozen of the top ones, are suspected of laundering millions of dollars generated each year by drug trafficking.
Free-market ingenuity -Florida's Public Service Commission is divided on the howl by Bell South to reject the application of a guy who wants to operate pay phones under the name, Florida Billsouth. And there's the Texas company soliciting customers under the name KTNT. Pronounced rapidly by a phone salesperson, some folks think, it sounds like AT&T.
Capitalism's bright future -"Corporate confidence continues to fall as Japan's economy fails to produce evidence that it has hit bottom and is ready to rebound from the worst recession in more than 50 years."- Associated Press, Tokyo.