Quick Overview

• Paper money is made of cotton -- "intrinsic" value anyone?

• The DOE said:
• Supplies of U.S. crude rose by 2.6 million barrels last week
• Supplies of gasoline rose by 6.2 million barrels, due in part to reduced travel resulting from winter weather.
• Supplies off distillates, which include heating oil and diesel, fell by 1.6 million barrels, a larger than anticipated drop.

• Top Wall Street firms are urging the U.S. Treasury to create an ultra-long bond with a maturity of between 40 to 100 years

• Treasury officials said that the government may not hit its $14.3 trillion debt limit until the end of May.

• (Spiegel) The terror attack on Moscow's main airport last week has fuelled the flames of xenophobia in Russia. The Kremlin isn't intervening to halt the trend that could cause deep rifts in the country's multiethnic society.

• Sugar futures rose amid concerns the worst storm to hit Australia in over 80 years would damage  sugar crops.

• Worldwide mobile data traffic will increase 26-fold during 2010 – 2015 reaching 75 exabytes a year by 2015 due to a projected surge in mobile Internet-enabled devices delivering popular video applications and services, according to the Cisco® Visual Networking Index (VNI) Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast for 2010 to 2015.