Your daily briefing for all the top news in Energy, Technology, Finance, and Politics.

Energy

New crude export campaign launches
FUEL FIX
Jennifer A. Dlouhy
With a website, papers and analysis, the new “Unlock Crude Exports” campaign aims to convince policymakers in the White House and Congress that it’s time to dismantle the 39-year-old ban on selling most U.S. oil overseas. Margo Thorning, senior vice president of the American Council for Capital Formation that is funding the campaign, said the change would allow the United States to capitalize on its “energy advantages,” as a domestic drilling boom sends oil production to near-record levels.

 

Steyer’s election millions can’t heat up voters on climate change
WASHINGTON TIMES
Valerie Richardson
San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer has spent a staggering $76 million to promote climate change as a political issue in this year’s elections, but the subject isn’t exactly firing up the electorate. Polls show voters continue to rank climate change at the bottom of their priority lists. Even in races featuring the “Steyer Seven,” the Democratic candidates selected by Mr. Steyer as the chief beneficiaries of his largesse, the issue is barely registering on the campaign trail.

 

Energy Boom Can Withstand Steeper Oil-Price Drop
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Russell Gold, Erin Ailworth and Benoît Faucon
Oil prices would need to fall at least another $20 a barrel to choke off the U.S. energy boom, industry experts say, though some smaller American producers would face serious problems from a more modest decline.

 

The ‘Russification’ of Oil Exploration
NEW YORK TIMES
Andrew E. Kramer
The American and European sanctions against the Russian oil industry have dashed, at least for now, the Western oil majors’ ambitions to drill in the Arctic Ocean. But drilling will continue all the same, Russian government and state oil company officials have been taking pains to point out, ever since the sanctions took effect over the summer.

 

Shale Boom Shines Light on Natural-Gas Liquids
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Nicole Friedman and Timothy Puko
Natural-gas liquids, which include ethane, propane, butane, isobutane and natural gasoline, are separated out from crude oil and natural gas. They are known as the fuels in propane grills and butane lighters and as feedstocks to make plastics and chemicals. Until recently, they attracted little investor consideration.

 

As Abu Dhabi Sizes Up Oil Partners, Western Firms Risk Being Left Out
NEW YORK TIMES
Ayesha Daya
Abu Dhabi, the largest and wealthiest member among the seven states in the United Arab Emirates, is shaking up its oil industry. It has allowed the expiration of some longstanding concessions to major Western oil companies and is considering replacing at least some of them with partners from Asia and elsewhere.

 

 

Technology

FTC, FCC jostling over telecom turf
POLITICOPRO (Subscribe)
Katy Bachman and Brooks Boliek
Telecommunications companies are being hit this year with one-two punches over issues like cramming and privacy, and publicly both the FTC and FCC say they are cooperating. But privately, officials admit there is tension as the regulatory forces bulk up enforcement efforts.

 

Unpacking the F.C.C.’s Online Video Proposal
NEW YORK TIMES
Edward Wyatt
While the move by the F.C.C. might be a step toward à la carte video programming, it is a baby step at best. For now, it is uncertain whether the F.C.C. will even formally vote on the proposal, let alone approve it.

 

U.S. CTO Megan Smith: Tech has a diversity problem, and it’s up to us to fix it
WASHINGTON POST
Brian Fung
Megan Smith, the former Googler who’s now the Obama administration’s chief technology officer, has only been on the job for a month. But she’s already wading into some of the thorniest tech policy issues facing the country — including the debate over diversity in Silicon Valley.

 

 

Finance

The QE Record
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
The evidence of QE’s benefits in its second and third iterations is far more speculative and its full costs still aren’t clear. Those won’t be known until the Fed wind downs its balance sheet, if it ever does, and until we see how markets and the economy respond to rising interest rates. For all the market’s anxiety about the end of QE, it seems to be ending without a stir. Maybe that’s because it was never as helpful as advertised.

 

Fed looks toward debate on raising rates as quantitative easing ends
WASHINGTON POST
Ylan Q. Mui
But with the announcement Wednesday that the Fed would end its $3 trillion bond-buying program often described as a “booster shot” for the economy, the central bank now will turn more sharply toward a serious discussion of when to raise rates. “The moment has clearly come to take the monetary training wheels off the economy,” said Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at The Economic Outlook Group.

 

Wall St watchdog to bolster reviews of brokerage cybersecurity
REUTERS
Suzanne Barlyn
Wall Street’s industry funded watchdog plans to intensify its scrutiny of cybersecurity practices at brokerage firms in 2015 and is hiring technology savvy examiners to help boost its efforts, an official said on Wednesday. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is in the midst of developing its so-called “examination priorities” for 2015, said Susan Axelrod, the organization’s executive vice president of regulatory operations at a conference.

 

Prosecutors Suspect Repeat Offenses on Wall Street
NEW YORK TIMES
Ben Protess and Jessica Silver-Greenberg
A mixture of new issues and lingering problems could violate earlier settlements that imposed new practices and fines on the banks but stopped short of criminal charges, according to lawyers briefed on the cases. Prosecutors are exploring whether to strengthen the earlier deals, the lawyers said, or scrap them altogether and force the banks to plead guilty to a crime. That effort, unfolding separately from a number of well-known investigations into Wall Street, has ensnared several giant banks and consulting firms that until now were thought to be in the clear.

 

The S.E.C. and Political Spending
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
It’s almost Election Day. Shareholders: Do you know how the cash from companies you invest in is being spent to influence the outcomes?

 

Are Banks Too Expensive to Use?
NEW YORK TIMES
Lisa Servon
After years of debate about the “unbanked,” it’s time for policy makers to rethink the issue. The problem is not that people are unbanked, but that banks are becoming too prohibitively expensive for people to use them. The Financial Clinic, a financial coaching nonprofit with 15,000 clients, once listed “lower use of alternative financial services/increased use of banks” as one of its success measures. Not anymore.

 

 

Politics

How the Economy Is Stoking Voter Anger at Incumbent Governors
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Beth Reinhard and Damian Paletta
In a two-steps-forward, one-step-back economy, bragging rights elude incumbent governors in both parties.

 

Bet on a GOP Senate Majority
POLITICO
Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley
While many races remain close, it’s just getting harder and harder to envision a plausible path for the Democrats to retain control of the Senate. Ultimately, with just a few days to go before the election, the safe bet would be on Republicans eventually taking control of the upper chamber. We say eventually because there’s a decent chance we won’t know who wins the Senate on Election Night.

 

Millennials Bolt Obama for GOP in Midterms
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Ron Fournier
In a stunning turnaround, likely voters in the so-called millennial generation prefer a Republican-led Congress after next week’s elections, and young Hispanics are turning sharply against President Obama. A new national poll of 18-to-29-year-olds by Harvard’s Institute of Politics shows that young Americans are leaving the new Democratic coalition that twice elected Obama.

 

X Factors That May Decide Key Senate Races
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Karl Rove
Republicans are upbeat, but they must remember it’s difficult to defeat incumbents, the GOP’s key task.

 

GOP Woos Asian Voters in Swing Districts
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Laura Meckler
The small but rapidly growing Asian vote has outsize influence in parts of the country, such as San Diego, where 20% of people in the 52nd Congressional District are of Asian descent, and the Virginia suburbs outside Washington, D.C., where Republican Barbara Comstock is airing a Korean-language TV ad and has attended nearly two dozen Asian-themed events since May. Nationwide, the GOP has 10 field workers focused on Asian-American voters, including in Colorado, where Rep. Mike Coffman is in a close race for re-election in a district that is 5% Asian.

 

If Republicans Win the Senate, GOP Factions Could Battle for Soul of Party
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Norm Ornstein
As polls show a movement toward Republicans—the new ABC News/Washington Post survey shows a 6-point GOP advantage in the generic ballot—there is increasing interest in what would happen over the next two years with Republican control of both the House and Senate. I first addressed the prospect of a Republican Senate in March, and I wrote last week about how independents could shake up the balance in an evenly divided Senate. Now, some more reflections on governance with a Republican Congress in the final two years of a two-term Democratic president.

 

Can voters look forward to a Congress that actually governs?
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
Lawmakers who quietly prefer governing to posturing will have another chance to stand up and prove it after the election. Those among them who truly understand the public mood will seize that opportunity.

 

Why election is not about the Senate
USA TODAY
Editorial
The more significant story line of this year’s election might be found in the states. This year brings an enormous number of competitive governor races in all types of states. Republicans could win in blue states such as Massachusetts and Illinois. Democrats could win in deep red Kansas and Arkansas. These races will have consequences. Their outcomes will affect such things as education funding, same-sex marriage, abortion, the minimum wage and the degree to which states get serious about their unfunded public employee pensions.

 

Democrats Crash-Land the Planet
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Daniel Henninger
Foreign-policy planners and national leaders in Moscow, Tehran and Beijing get up every day and do one thing: think about how they can diminish or destabilize the U.S. Our leadership got up every day for six years and thought about . . . wind farms. When the world’s political winds shifted, Senate Democrats, as is their habit, chose not to see.

 

Those who help Ebola patients should be honored, not punished
WASHINGTON POST
Sen. Chris Coons
The political pressure for tougher restrictions is mounting, while the need for volunteers to fight the virus is quickly growing. President Obama should issue a guarantee now that those willing to serve will have that service honored and their right to return home protected.