Dueling Markets: Can Food Fight Oil?(Periscope)

Byline: Rana Foroohar ; Jason Overdorf ; Owen Matthews ; Karin Rives ; Katie Baker

It's no secret that high oil prices have moved big money, some $3 trillion, from energy-consuming states in the West to suppliers like Saudi Arabia and Russia. Pooling up in huge state-controlled investment funds, this vast transfer wealth is tipping the global financial power, raising fears in the West of petrol-power domination.

Or maybe not. A recent Goldman Sachs commodities report notes that growing populations and wealth in the developing world, and to a lesser extent rising biofuel production, is moving some money back to farm powers like the United States. "Food exports won't offset our oil bill, but they will help," says Robert D. Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International. Agricultural exports are a key reason the U.S. trade deficit decreased about 6 percent last year.

--Rana Foroohar

Geopolitics And Arms Deals: In The Courtship Of India And America, India Gains An Edge

After the end of the cold war, it looked as though America had clearly won South Asia. India began distancing itself from its old comrades in Moscow, and embracing the United States as a counterbalance to China. The alliance hit a milestone in 2006, when President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed a deal by which America would give India a historic coup: acceptance into the elite club of nuclear-weapons states, and access to U.S. nuclear technology and fuel.

Now look what's happened. Communists in Parliament, who think Washington will use nuclear sales to lord it over India, have blocked the deal. Meanwhile, Parliament has declared 2008 "The Year of Russia," and the Russians are moving ahead on construction of four nuclear power plants in Tamil Nadu. In February 2006, France signed a tentative deal to assist India with nuclear-energy projects, and the two countries are expected to finalize negotiations this year. What the Singh government wants is a free market to meet its vast demands for nuclear energy, but what the communists are willing to allow is a market open to non-Americans.