Your daily briefing for all the top news in Energy, Technology, Finance, and Politics.
Energy
Isis sells smuggled oil to Turkey and Iraqi Kurds says US Treasury
FINANCIAL TIMES (Subscribe)
Sam Jones, Piotr Zalewski and Erika Solomon
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) is earning as much as $1m a day through the sale of oil to some of its biggest enemies: middlemen from Turkey, Iraq’s Kurdish community and the regime of Bashar al-Assad, according to the US Treasury.
Fracking industry booming despite liberal protestations
WASHINGTON TIMES
Valerie Richardson
Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee issued a report crediting hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling for fueling an “energy renaissance,” but noted that production on federally owned lands has actually decreased due to tight administration land-use policies. “The Obama administration and [its] far-left environmental allies are constantly attacking hydraulic fracturing in an attempt to blur the line between what is and what is not hydraulic fracturing, and to manufacture risks and associate them with the practice,” said a Senate minority staff press release.
The Oil Price Swoon Won’t Stop the Shale Boom
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Mark P. Mills
With oil prices sliding, energy investors are worried, while Saudi Arabia and Russia no doubt hope, that low prices will cap America’s boom in shale-oil production. Green-energy types sit by, happy to see turmoil in the fossil-fuel sector. But price dips are common in oil and other markets subject to cyclical swings. True enough, sellers of any product prefer high prices to low; but the current slump sets the stage for what I call America’s shale boom 2.0.
Three Questions Surrounding BP’s Puzzling Politico Piece
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Jason Plautz
Politico Magazine on Wednesday published an editorial from oil major BP titled “No, BP Didn’t Ruin the Gulf.” It went poorly for everyone involved.
European Leaders Agree on Targets to Fight Climate Change
NEW YORK TIMES
James Kanter
The 28 leaders of the European Union agreed early on Friday on targets for protecting the climate and generating greener power despite deep divisions among their nations over how to produce energy. The main target that won approval was a pledge to slash emissions by at least 40 percent, compared with 1990 levels, by 2030.
Warren Buffett Puts Wind in Berkshire’s Sails
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Anupreeta Das
Warren Buffett is synonymous with his hometown of Omaha, Neb., but for a glimpse into the future of his investment empire, look east…to Iowa. In the neighboring Hawkeye State, the Berkshire Hathaway Inc. chairman has sunk billions into wind-farm projects, part of a big gambit on renewable energy by a utility company he acquired in 2000 and has built into one of the country’s largest power suppliers.
Technology
Tech learning political ties can also be a bind
POLITICOPRO (Subscribe)
Tony Romm
Google, Facebook and other tech giants have been spending furiously inside the Beltway as they seek sweeping changes to the country’s patent, privacy and immigration laws. But as these companies angle to improve their political fortunes, they’ve also backed candidates and causes that are at odds with the beliefs of the larger tech community back home — and the industry has faced plenty of criticism as a result.
Meet ‘forbearance,’ the obscure governing tool that just might resolve the net neutrality debate
WASHINGTON POST
Nancy Scola
Where forebearance becomes important in the net neutrality debate is where it is being proposed as a sort of negotiated settlement. Take the approach advocated by Silicon Valley Democrat Rep. Anna Eshoo on Wednesday as a “light touch.” The plan would move broadband Internet into Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. That’s the more heavily regulated title, the one that includes landline telephones. But under Eshoo’s plan, the FCC would choose not to enforce some of the act’s several dozen provisions that broadband providers find the most onerous, such as imposing limits on how telecom products can be priced. That’s forbearance.
Cable television is dying, but cable companies are thriving
VOX
Matthew Yglesias
Comcast still has more television customers than broadband customers, but those numbers are getting very close and the lines should cross very soon.
Finance
Janet Yellen is in danger of becoming a partisan hack
WASHINGTON POST
Michael R. Strain
I think it is appropriate to ask whether the Fed chair should be expressing concern over whether income inequality is un-American. And to answer: No. The Fed chair shouldn’t sound like a left-leaning politician opining about hot-button political issues.
The Fed is telling Wall Street banks to clean up their ethics or get broken up
VOX
Matthew Yglesias
Speeches from Federal Reserve Bank presidents tend not to be very interesting, and indeed New York Fed President William Dudley’s recent talk on “Enhancing Financial Stability by Improving Culture in the Financial Services Industry” seems to have been titled so as to maximize the number of people who ignore it. But he ended with a bombshell, telling CEOs that unless they clean up their acts, the Wall Street megabanks are going to get broken up.
Thirty-one banks prepare for Fed tests
FINANCIAL TIMES (Subscribe)
Gina Chon
Global banks will have to show how they can withstand a spike in oil prices, a rise in the US unemployment rate and an increase in risky corporate loans as part of the 2015 Federal Reserve stress tests.
The Real Bailout Victims
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
It’s certainly true that the government deserves criticism for how it spent the A.I.G. bailout money: It funneled the money to the banks to make them whole on deals they had done with A.I.G., instead of requiring them to absorb some of the losses. But again, the real victim of the overly generous treatment of the banks is the American public.
Politics
Barack Obama, bewildered bystander
WASHINGTON POST
Charles Krauthammer
With events in the saddle and a sense of disorder growing — the summer border crisis, Ferguson, the rise of the Islamic State, Ebola — the nation expects from the White House not miracles but competence. At a minimum, mere presence. An observer presidency with its bewildered-bystander pose only adds to the unease.
Obama moves key Senate races toward GOP
POLITICO
Manu Raju
Each day seems to offer fresh polling bound to make Democrats nervous, showing that their candidates need to win a significant amount of support from voters who now disapprove of the president.
Millennial voters a new worry for Dems
THE HILL
Amie Parnes
Plagued by unemployment and an overall economy anxiety that has seen many take jobs beneath their qualifications, the generation of 18- to 34-year-olds feels a sense of disappointment in the party it helped boost in previous elections, political observers say. Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist and former spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), said that the promise of “hope and change millennials invested in has hit a brick wall.”
GOP Gains in Key Senate Races as Gender Gap Narrows
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Janet Hook
In a warning flag for Democrats, recent polls suggest the party is failing to draw enough support from women in three key Senate races—in Iowa, Arkansas and Colorado—to offset the strong backing that men are giving to Republicans. Surveys this week in Arkansas and Colorado for the first time also showed the GOP candidates pulling even or ahead of Democrats among women voters, threatening to close the gender gap that has been a cornerstone of Democratic electoral strategy for decades.
Republican Party Faces Hurdles in Push to Increase Appeal to Blacks
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Siobhan Hughes
As the GOP seeks to enlist black voters, who outnumbered Hispanics in the 2012 election, it faces a dearth of elected African-American officials who can stand as signs that blacks have a home in the GOP.
Democrats Attack Over Outsourcing in Key Senate Races
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Beth Reinhard and Damian Paletta
Democrats in crucial Senate races are turning to a tactic that has worked in the past: trying to cast Republicans as too willing to send jobs overseas. “Elections are very much about the question ‘Who’s on your side?’ and the outsourcing attacks very clearly illustrate that Republicans are not,” said Democratic strategist Bill Burton, who led a Democratic super PAC that ran a series of ads attacking Mr. Romney’s business record in 2012.
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, after missteps, fights for a second term
WASHINGTON POST
Dan Balz
Hickenlooper arrived in the governor’s office as a business-friendly, centrist Democrat, and his casual, relaxed style seemed an ideal fit with the ethic of his state. There was even talk about a possible run for president in 2016, if Hillary Rodham Clinton decided to forgo another shot at the White House. Then came 2013 and a confluence of events that shifted the state leftward on guns, same-sex unions and legalized marijuana; opened up partisan warfare; and recast Hickenlooper in a less flattering light.
The ‘Colorado Model’ Goes Thud
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Kimberley Strassel
If Colorado is serving as a model for anything these days, it’s the risks of Democratic overreach. Sen. Mark Udall has trailed GOP Rep. Cory Gardner in every poll since September. Gov. John Hickenlooper is trailing Republican Bob Beauprez in poll averages. Republicans are poised to take back the state Senate. Democrats recently pulled funding from the only Colorado U.S. House seat they had targeted, that of GOP Rep. Mike Coffman. The party’s biggest mistake was thinking its recent electoral victories—based largely on a superior campaign game—translated into a mandate for liberal governance.
Lewinsky mistreated by authorities in investigation of Clinton, report says
WASHINGTON POST
Rosalind S. Helderman
Lewinsky, now 41, has long felt that she was mistreated by authorities in the 12-hour marathon session, which began as an ambush at the food court at the Pentagon City mall and then moved to a hotel room at the mall’s adjoining Ritz-Carlton hotel. As it turns out, so did government lawyers who conducted a comprehensive review of the incident in 2000, two years after the encounter. Their findings are contained in a report — recently obtained by The Washington Post — that key players had long believed was under court-ordered seal.
Iraq and the U.S. are losing ground to the Islamic State
WASHINGTON POST
David Ignatius
If there’s a ray of hope in the chilling accounts provided by Gaood and Jibouri, it’s that even a man who says he’s siding with the Islamic State still says he wants U.S. help, so long as it comes with protections for Iraq’s Sunni community. “We want to create a strategic relationship with the Americans,” Jibouri says, arguing that such a political deal is “the light at the end of the tunnel.” Yet when asked about the U.S. plan to create a national guard for the Sunnis, Jibouri scoffs and says that it’s “wishful thinking,” because Iraq’s Shiites and Kurds will never agree. Until Sunni rights are respected, he says, “we will not allow the world to sleep.”
Obama gives Syria’s Assad another pass on chemical weapons
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
One grim indication that the regime of Bashar al-Assad has been emboldened by the U.S. air campaign in Syria is the fresh reports of chemical weapons attacks on civilian areas. The Institute for the Study of War has compiled 18 allegations by Syrian sources of chlorine gas attacks by the regime since U.S. strikes against the Islamic State began in August. The first strike was reported Aug. 19 — the same day that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said it had completed the neutralization of the chemical weapons stockpile surrendered by the regime. The most recent was reported last week, when government forces allegedly used chlorine gas against rebel positions in the suburban Damascus area of Jobar.
