Crude oil prices tumbled today following the announcement by the Federal Reserve on interest rates.

Earlier today the Federal Reserve said it would lower interest rates by a quarter percentage point.

CNN reports: “US light crude for June delivery fell $2.17 cents to settle at $113.46 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Just before the central bank’s announcement, oil was 93 cents lower at $114.70 a barrel.

Iran has stopped trading in US dollars for oil, according to a top Iranian oil ministry official.

The official, Hojjatollah Ghanimifard, told Iranian state-run television today that “the dollar has totally been removed from Iran’s oil transactions,” and that the country has “agreed with all of our crude oil customers to do our transactions in non-dollar currencies.”

The dollar’s spending power, like it or not, is at the mercy of Iranian president President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, says Addison Wiggan

“Total debt everywhere, like Old Man River, just keeps rolling along, like a snowball rolling downhill, getting bigger and bigger, which is such a strange mix of metaphors that I realize that I am completely confused and frightened.”

Whether it’s the flow of the news, or your friendly blogger’s momentarily shortened attention span, we offer up a smorgasboard of brief items for your consideration today.

The US economy is on the ropes but it’s not in recession, according to Commerce Department data on growth from January to March.

This from the AP news wire:

The country’s economic growth during January through March was the same as in the final three months of last year, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. The statistic did not meet what economists consider a definition of a recession, which is a contraction of the economy.

It seemed such a neat idea. The Government needed money, and there were all these British companies making a packet abroad, but not registering the cash in the UK. Fix the loophole, ran the logic, and hey presto! More tax revenues in the Treasury coffers.

The world has certainly given us a lot, and we keep asking for more. We have a need for many natural and precious resources that nature has to offer, but we must know where to look. The better we can find and extract these resources, the better we can use nature’s gifts to their full potential.

One of the largest problems for farmers is getting sufficient supply of water to their fields. The other problem — which Kevin Kerr, editor of Resource Trader Alert, recently wrote about — is the cost of fuel.

A few weeks ago I wrote about how John McCain’s proposed gas-tax holiday was complete BS. And I got some great responses to that article. One of my favorites goes to someone who thinks the U.S. somehow ‘deserves’ lower gas prices.

What a basket case. The market basket of real food items that I compiled from 1938 to the present, compared to the minimum wages of the time, sparked a few memories and some agreement that inflation is much higher than official figures recognize.