Your daily briefing for all the top news in Energy, Technology, Finance, and Politics.
Energy
Federal agency says oil exports would lower pump prices
FUEL FIX
Jennifer A. Dlouhy
Ending the United States’ longstanding ban against most crude exports could lift oil prices inside the country while decreasing the cost of gasoline, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Monday. The document — the first broad government analysis of proposed oil exports — dovetails with industry-backed studies predicting lower gasoline prices would result if repealing the export ban spurred more domestic crude production and helped lower world prices for the fossil fuel. Domestic gasoline prices tend to track the international Brent crude benchmark, rather than US. oil prices.
Questions rise as oil prices drop
POLITICO
Elana Schor
Oil has been on a wild ride this fall, dropping more than 20 percent from levels seen just a few months ago and pushing gasoline prices down for more than two weeks straight. While Wall Street agonizes over the fallout to the energy sector, Washington is watching to see how the bear market for oil affects international tensions in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, and how much the domestic economy benefits amid worries about a global slowdown.
A World Without OPEC?
NEW YORK TIMES
Joe Nocera
Simply put, the supply of oil is greater than the demand, and OPEC has lost its ability to control the supply. Part of the reason is a slowdown in global demand. China’s economy has slowed, and so has its voracious appetite for oil. Japan, meanwhile, is increasingly turning to natural gas and nuclear power. But an even bigger part of the reason is that the shale revolution in North America is utterly changing the supply-demand dynamic.
When the Endangered Species Act Threatens Wildlife
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Terry L. Anderson
Aggressive use of the Endangered Species Act by environmental groups has not been beneficial to endangered species or to private landowners. Rather than punish private landowners who conserve wildlife, we should reward them for serving the public’s interest.
Steyer Passes Adelson as No. 1 ‘Super PAC’ Donor
NEW YORK TIMES
Derek Willis
Tom Steyer, the billionaire hedge fund founder who has pledged to spend $50 million of his own money to defeat Republican candidates in Senate and governor’s races this campaign cycle, exceeded that mark in September. Mr. Steyer’s “super PAC,” NextGen Climate Action Committee, reported on Monday night that it received $15 million from him last month, putting his total contributions to the committee since June 2013 at $55 million.
Total chief Christophe de Margerie dies in Moscow air crash
FINANCIAL TIMES (Subscribe)
Michael Stothard and Carola Hoyos
Christophe de Margerie, chief executive of French oil group Total, died late on Monday when a private jet he was travelling in crashed near Moscow on take-off. According to local media reports, the landing gear on the light business jet hit a snow-clearing machine at the city’s Vnukovo airport – the driver of which was drunk, according to Russian authorities.
Technology
Leahy asks Comcast to forswear Web ‘fast lanes’
THE HILL
Julian Hattem
While the Federal Communications Commission is still drafting rules for net neutrality, which seek to ban companies like Comcast from blocking or slowing traffic to a particular website, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) told the nation’s largest cable company that it should commit to banning special deals to speed up access to some sites.
Finance
Regulator Tells Banks to Clean Up Bad Behavior or Face Downsizing
NEW YORK TIMES
Peter Eavis
A year ago, William C. Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, took aim at banker behavior in a speech that revealed his frustration after a string of bank scandals. But on Monday, after more cases of wrongdoing in the industry, Mr. Dudley seemed intent on signaling that he wanted to add actions to his words. In particular, he told bankers assembled at the New York Fed that continued ethical lapses would be a sign that their institutions were too big to manage — and that they might need to be reduced in size.
ExIm warns US of export risk from China
FINANCIAL TIMES (Subscribe)
Barney Jopson
Fred Hochberg, chairman of the US government’s Export-Import Bank, told the Financial Times he was worried that new China-funded lenders and their business allies would crowd out his agency and the US exporters it supports.
SEC Is Steering More Trials to Judges It Appoints
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Jean Eaglesham
The Securities and Exchange Commission is increasingly steering cases to hearings in front of the agency’s appointed administrative judges, who found in its favor in every verdict for the 12 months through September, rather than taking them to federal court. The winning streak comes amid a marked shift at the agency toward trying cases that are more complex before its administrative law judges. Historically, the SEC had more often turned to these judges for relatively straightforward legal actions, such as barring stockbrokers who had been convicted of criminal fraud. Thanks in part to enhanced powers granted in the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial-reform bill, the SEC lately has been using the administrative judges for complicated cases, including several involving insider trading.
How a top housing regulator plans to make it easier to get a mortgage
WASHINGTON POST
Dina ElBoghdady
On Monday, the head of the agency that oversees the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac outlined – in very broad terms – how he plans to make it easier for borrowers on both fronts. Mel Watt, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, did not give exact timing on the initiatives. But most of them are designed to encourage the industry to extend mortgages to a broader swath of borrowers.
Mixed Economic Signals From China
NEW YORK TIMES
Neil Gough
Markets around the world have been jolted by fears that slowing growth and deflationary pressures in Europe, Japan and other major economies could derail the United States. But the health of China, for decades an engine of growth, has emerged as one of the most significant wild cards in the global economy. It is hard to be certain just exactly how the Chinese economy is faring, given mixed signals in the data.
As Apple Pay Arrives, Witnessing the Next Step in Money. Maybe.
NEW YORK TIMES
Mike Isaac
“Apart from the cool factor, there’s really not a lot of value for the average merchant at the moment,” said Denée Carrington, an e-commerce analyst for Forrester Research. “Especially when you think about how merchants want to capture more information from consumers with each transaction.” She pointed out that Apple Pay did not connect to loyalty and awards programs that merchants often find valuable.
Politics
The Surprised President
NATIONAL JOURNAL
James Oliphant
The president and his staff have seemed flat-footed, reactive, surprised, and at the mercy of outside events rather than in command of them. That has contributed to an abject feeling of powerlessness emanating from the West Wing—one augmented by the administration’s own insistence at times that its reach is limited, that there was little it could to do to ease this summer’s border crisis, or push Vladimir Putin back into Russia, or protect towns under threat from Islamic State forces. So Obama was “madder than hell” when he learned about the patient backlogs at the Veterans Administration, aides said. He was angry when he was told about the problems with the federal health care website. He was mad when he found out that the Internal Revenue Service was targeting nonprofit political-advocacy groups.
The Quality of Fear
NEW YORK TIMES
David Brooks
The Ebola crisis has aroused its own flavor of fear. It’s not the heart-pounding fear you might feel if you were running away from a bear or some distinct threat. It’s a sour, existential fear. It’s a fear you feel when the whole environment seems hostile, when the things that are supposed to keep you safe, like national borders and national authorities, seem porous and ineffective, when some menace is hard to understand. In these circumstances, skepticism about authority turns into corrosive cynicism. People seek to build walls, to pull in the circle of trust. They become afraid. Fear, of course, breeds fear.
Running Against Obama, Republicans Positioned for Midterm Sweep
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Josh Kraushaar
With anxiety over Ebola running high, renewed fears of terrorism, and most Americans not feeling secure economically, it doesn’t take much imagination to see how voters could decisively punish the governing party. Republicans nominated their strongest slate of Senate candidates in at least a decade, and are benefiting from the fickle public mood. When Democrats are relying on winning races they weren’t even planning to contest in South Dakota and Kansas, it speaks volumes about the state of play two weeks before Election Day.
With Farms Fading and Urban Might Rising, Power Shifts in Iowa
NEW YORK TIMES
Michael Barbaro
As Iowans prepare to elect a new United States senator for the first time in three decades, the scale at which people and power have shifted from its rural towns to its urban areas is emerging as a potent but unpredictable undercurrent in the excruciatingly close race, offering opportunity and risk for both sides.
For the GOP, Senate control could be a doubled-edged sword
WASHINGTON POST
Michael Gerson
Republicans are susceptible to the myth of the midterm mandate. Midterm elections generally express unhappiness, not aspiration. But some conservatives took the 2010 result as an ideological turning point. They concluded that Obama’s 2008 victory was an anomaly — that the country, deep down, was really on the Republican side. It was a false dawn. As a weakened president celebrated a decisive reelection, a few things should have been clear: At the presidential level, the GOP brand is offensive to many rising demographic groups. Republicans are often perceived as indifferent to working-class struggles (because they sometimes are). The GOP appeal seems designed for a vanishing electorate. The last Republican midterm win actually complicated the long-term task of Republican reform.
Obama giftwraps another sound bite for Republicans
WASHINGTON POST
Aaron Blake
In an interview with Rev. Al Sharpton on Monday, Obama defended his support for candidates in top races who haven’t welcomed Obama to campaign with them. “The bottom line is, though, these are are all folks who vote with me; they have supported my agenda in Congress,” Obama said. He continued: “So this isn’t about my feelings being hurt. These are folks who are strong allies and supporters of me. I tell them — I said, you do what you need to do to win. I will be responsible for making sure that our voters turn out.”
State ballots: Taxes on pot, gas and millionaires
POLITICO
Rachael Bade
Gas taxes, pot taxes and a surtax on millionaires are just some issues voters will consider on state ballots across the nation in next month’s midterm elections. Here’s a roundup of some tax ballot questions to watch for on Nov. 4.
Monica Lewinsky tells of love, humiliation
POLITICO
Hadas Gold
In her first public speech in a decade, Monica Lewinsky said on Monday she is planning to start a campaign to combat cyberbullying — something for which, she said, she was “Patient Zero” during her affair with former President Bill Clinton.
Judicial elections are no place for money from interest groups
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
America’s unusual practice of electing judges has long undermined the integrity of the justice system. But the problem is getting worse: In the Citizens United age, the courtroom is becoming the next frontier in rancorous political division.
Kobani’s Unavoidable Reality
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
The small-arms drop is welcome; it lifted the spirits of the city’s defenders. But Kobani likely will join most of Iraq’s Anbar province in falling to the Islamic State if the U.S. doesn’t soon provide fighters on the ground with antitank weapons and the like. That commitment will require the U.S. to participate in some accommodations with the region’s near-term alliances. It isn’t easy. Someone should make that reality clear to people before they seek the U.S. Presidency.
