BP and the media express quantities of oil gushing from BP's leak in the Gulf in different ways. The amount of oil coming out of the leak is most frequently expressed in barrels, but how much is that? Can people really relate to a barrel as a quantity? After all, we buy staples like gasoline, milk, and water by the gallon. To make it even more complicated for the public to understand the quantities being discussed, the amount of liquid in a barrel varies with what is being measured. Barrels of chemicals or food, for example, contain 55 gallons. A whiskey barrel is 40 gallons; a barrel of beer contains 36 gallons; a barrel of ale contains 34 gallons. (And the latter two are imperial gallons, which are just under two-tenths more than an American gallon.) All these variations in the barrel as a quantity of measure only further confuse the concept of what a barrel of oil looks like. Moreover, since oil companies started shipping oil in tankers they rarely actually ship oil in barrels anymore, so the barrel as a measurement has less practical use.

The long awaited House-Senate Financial Reform Conference Committee got underway this week. Thanks to the efforts of Public Citizen, Campaign for America's Future, CMD and others, these committee meetings will be live on C-Span 3, and all amendments will be made available in advance. At BanksterUSA we are working hard to make sure that the strong derivatives language currently in the Senate version of the bill is not weakened (Sec. 716 authored by Senator Blanche Lincoln, D-Arkansas). We are keeping a whip count on the conferees and we could use your help! A whip count helps us pool intelligence on what the members are saying to their constituents. If you make a call you can post a comment to our whip list letting us know what you heard. It is grassroots activism at its best.