Snow Says High Oil Price Creates `Economic Headwind' to Growth

[True_Blue]

Oct. 3 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow identified the record price of oil as a ``headwind'' that threatens to sap U.S. and global growth and hurt consumer spending.

Oil prices that rose 68 percent in the past 12 months ``are causing an economic headwind,'' U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow told reporters Friday, the first of three days of international finance meetings in Washington. Yesterday he told the International Monetary Fund that oil is the chief threat to a global expansion the IMF forecasts will slow from a 30-year high of 5 percent this year to 4.3 percent in 2005.

Crude oil futures closed above $50 a barrel on Friday for the first time since trading began on the New York Mercantile Exchange in 1983. The U.S.'s concern was reiterated by counterparts from the Group of Seven industrial nations who met in Washington on Friday ahead of the two-day meeting of the IMF and World Bank, which concludes today.

``High and volatile oil prices pose a risk to the outlook, dampening consumer spending and company profitability,'' U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown said Friday. The G-7, which oversees two thirds of world economic output, is composed of the U.S., Japan, Italy, France, the U.K., Germany and Canada.

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http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=a7jSM9N.kzbo&refer=news_index

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. How much do they pay these guys...

To belabor the obvious?