Two figures from my weekend reading (via the Economist and FT, respectively) that show the skewed world of fuel subsidies worldwide:

Here is a sneak peak at some links from my weekly reading column over at TheStreet.com.

• A top trader (and good friend) blogs from the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas (Blogspot)
• What I've learned: J.R. Simplot on money and markets (Esquire)
• Michael Lewis on hiking and Russian restrooms (Bloomberg)
• Oil crisis triggers fevered scramble for the world's seabed (Telegraph)
• Marketocracy has the best fund manager in North America that you can't invest with (Forbes.com)
• Accuracy in oil supply estimates (EIA)

And two extras:

• Pace of shipbuilding finally slowing after boffo 2007 (Lloyd's List)
• More than 100 ships delayed by collapse of crane in Chinese shipyard (Lloyd's List)

Venture capital, as an institutional asset class, is pretty much dead. Sure, you can get returns from some smaller and more aggressive funds, but any supposed institutional financial asset class that a) can provably thrive only with teensy amounts of cash, and b) whose entire annual returns are bound up in fewer funds than there were graduates in my small-town high school class (18, if you must know), isn't really much of a financial asset class at all.

Matter of fact, given the tireless penchant of government and LPs for the field, it increasingly reminds me an attractive nuisance, to use the term of legal art. Hey, maybe like with neighborhood pools, or collapsing buildings, we need a metaphorical fence to protect childish would-be venture LPs from jumping in and hurting themselves.