Ya gotta love Alberta in the middle of an energy boom! When oil prices pass $30 a barrel, the entire province starts to feel a little bit giddy. At $40 a barrel the provincial legislature calls a special session and votes to name hydrocarbons the provincial flower.

It's nice to be noticed. Alberta's eocnomy has become the subject of media attention right across Canada, and all the thirty-year-old jokes about "Blue-eyed sheiks" and "Saudi Alberta" are being dragged out of the closet and dusted off. Worse, our economic clout means even the lamest political pronouncements are treated with respect if they come from our province.

After over a decade of almost uninterrupted growth, Alberta is now entering the fifth year of an economic boom. Despite of the mismanagement of the Klein government, which ran the province without any real economic plan, the ludicrously low royalty rates and the obsession with tax cutting, our economy continues to churn out jobs.

Inflation Alert: Inflation in Alberta is seriously out of control. In June the Consumer Price Index for Alberta was 6.3% higher than one year ago. See the data and analysis starting on page 6.

These are turbulent times in the economic world, and tumbling stock markets are just a symptom of a much greater malaise. The so-called "sub-prime mortgage crisis" (which actually has more to do with the proliferation of financial derivatives than with a few bad mortgages) remains a threat to financial institutions around the world, and no one knows exactly how large the problem is, or where the risks lie.