Your daily briefing for all the top news in Energy, Technology, Finance, and Politics.
Energy
Mary Landrieu’s Keystone Lifeline
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
So even if Ms. Landrieu gets her vote, Democrats can whisper to billionaire donor Tom Steyer that they know Keystone won’t become law on their watch. Republicans will have to do all of this again next year, when Ms. Landrieu’s support won’t matter. Louisiana voters should act accordingly.
Obama faces tough Keystone call
THE HILL
Laura Barron-Lopez
President Obama is suddenly facing a difficult decision about whether to veto legislation authorizing the Keystone XL pipeline. While signing a bill could boost Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu in her runoff battle in Louisiana, green-lighting the project would be a slap in the face to environmental groups who have fought for years to kill the project. Making matters more complicated, rejecting the bill — a step the White House has suggested is likely — would set the stage for a new Keystone fight in January, when Senate Republicans might have enough votes to override a presidential veto altogether.
Republicans plan energy policy revolution
FINANCIAL TIMES (Subscribe)
Barney Jopson
Since Republicans won control of Congress, attention has focused on their support for the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada and opposition to what they call the president’s “war on coal”, but a push to boost US shale energy will be at the heart of their agenda.
Natural gas exports bill gets feds’ attention
FUEL FIX
Jennifer A. Dlouhy
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee had planned to vote on North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven’s gas export bill Thursday afternoon. But Hoeven said he was pulling the bill from the agenda after Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz signaled that some changes to the legislation could lure the administration’s endorsement.
Sliding Oil and Gas Prices Give Americans More Money to Spend
NEW YORK TIMES
Nelson D. Schwartz, Clifford Krauss and Dionne Searcey
American consumers are going to enjoy a more bountiful Christmas this year, thanks in part to a most unlikely source: Saudi Arabia. The steepening drop in gasoline prices in recent weeks — spurred by soaring domestic energy production and Saudi discounts for crude oil at a time of faltering global demand — is set to provide the United States economy with a multibillion-dollar boost through the holiday season and beyond.
ND mulls rules to make crude safer for shipment
ASSOCIATED PRESS
James MacPherson
North Dakota’s top energy industry regulator unveiled new rules Thursday that would require companies to reduce the volatility of crude before it’s shipped by rail. State Mineral Resources Director Lynn Helms told the state Industrial Commission that all crude from North Dakota’s oil patch would have to be treated to remove certain liquids and gases to “ensure it’s in a stable state” before being loaded onto rail cars.
Technology
Mark Cuban says net neutrality proposals are “straight out of Ayn Rand”
VOX
Matthew Yglesias
Dallas Mavericks owner and entrepreneur Mark Cuban treated the world to a brief tweetstorm on the subject of President Obama’s net neutrality proposals this afternoon. Suffice it to say that he is not a big fan. In fact, he thinks it’s like something out of an Ayn Rand novel:
The Washington Mind
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
Only in Washington could a delay to seek regulatory clarity before spending $18 billion in shareholder money be called extortion. Even after six years of slow growth, the Obama crowd hasn’t figured out that punitive regulation reduces the incentive to invest.
How Congress can shut the door to cyberthreats
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
But one of the debates that began then remains unresolved: How to protect large and vulnerable private-sector networks? Not all the answers can be found in government, but on actions that do require legislation, this session of Congress and the one before it have come to an impasse. It is time for the lame-duck session, or the new one convening in January, to take the bipartisan path forward that a number of legislators have laid out.
Americans’ Cellphones Targeted in Secret U.S. Spy Program
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Devlin Barrett
The Justice Department is scooping up data from thousands of mobile phones through devices deployed on airplanes that mimic cellphone towers, a high-tech hunt for criminal suspects that is snagging a large number of innocent Americans, according to people familiar with the operations. The U.S. Marshals Service program, which became fully functional around 2007, operates Cessna aircraft from at least five metropolitan-area airports, with a flying range covering most of the U.S. population, according to people familiar with the program.
Facebook rewrites its privacy policy so that humans can understand it
WASHINGTON POST
Hayley Tsukayama
Your Facebook privacy settings are about to look a little different again. On Thursday, Facebook announced that it has expanded its data use policy (most companies simply call it a privacy policy but whatever) and has also made an effort to rewrite the language in a way normal people can understand.
Senate primed to act on ‘patent trolls’ in 2015
THE HILL
Julian Hattem
Legislation to block “patent trolls” will be one of the first issues the Senate takes up next year, the chamber’s No. 2 Republican said on Thursday. Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) told reporters that lawmakers are “absolutely” going to pass a bill next year when Republicans take control.
Obama and Scalia, United on Broadband as a Utility
NEW YORK TIMES
Edward Wyatt
The number of issues on which President Obama agrees with Justice Antonin Scalia probably could be counted on one hand. But one such agreement is a doozy – that broadband Internet service should be regulated as a utility.
What Obama’s net neutrality plan could mean for your mobile phone
WASHINGTON POST
Nancy Scola
But whether or not those apps would be allowed in the United States under a far-reaching net neutrality plan proposed by President Obama earlier this week isn’t yet clear. Obama called on the Federal Communications Commission to adopt strict rules that would forbid Internet service providers from charging content companies (like Netflix) to get priority access to consumers. Most of the debate around the rules has centered on broadband service to homes, but Obama advocated for applying them to mobile Internet providers, as well. That means zero-rated apps in which the content company covers users data costs could violate a strict interpretation of the principle of net neutrality, some industry observers say.
Survey: Few blacks, Hispanics among top tech executives
USA TODAY
Jessica Guynn
Missing on the management teams of major technology companies: Blacks and Hispanics. That’s according to a new survey from the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. Of the 307 top executives at 22 companies, six are black and three are Hispanic, the survey found. That’s less than 3%.
Finance
Elizabeth Warren to oppose Antonio Weiss as Treasury undersecretary
POLITICO
Ben White
Sen. Elizabeth Warren plans to oppose President Barack Obama’s nomination of Antonio Weiss, a Wall Street investment banker, to be Treasury Undersecretary for Domestic Finance, another sharp-elbowed move by the progressive movement’s most prominent leader. Weiss, head of global investment banking at Lazard, is widely respected on Wall Street. But he advised on Burger King’s acquisition of Canadian doughnut chain Tim Horton’s, a so-called “tax inversion deal.”
Fast track Trans-Pacific trade deal
USA TODAY
Editorial
Fast track is necessary because a minority could use these delaying tactics to scuttle the deal, or keep the United States out of it. More immediately, it is needed because some nations — most notably Japan — are reluctant to make concessions until they conclude that the deal will get a fair shot in the U.S. Congress. Much of the opposition to both fast track and the TPP comes from the usual labor groups, although one criticism of the TPP has merit. Language intended to thwart the pirating of movies, video games and such would threaten the flow of digital information. This needs to be fixed but is no reason to scuttle the deal.
Who’s Afraid of a Little Deflation?
WALL STREET JOURNAL
John H. Cochrane
When interest rates hit zero and the Fed can’t move the broom handle any more, the top of the broom must topple into deflation. Except we hit the zero bound, and almost nothing happened. Maybe the economy isn’t so inherently unstable and in need of constant guidance after all. Bottom line? Relax. Every few months we hear a new “biggest economic problem” from which our “policy makers” must save us. Wait for the next one.
The Fed and Full Employment
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
The job market is improving. But absent a surge in the pace of improvement, it will still be too weak to withstand tighter monetary policy in the coming year.
Will Loretta Lynch end ‘Too Big To Jail’?
WASHINGTON POST
Nolan McCarty
With the appointment of Loretta Lynch, the two-time U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, there is an opportunity for the Justice Department to take a tougher approach to financial crime. Although Lynch’s public record does little to suggest that her approach to Wall Street would differ dramatically from that of Holder’s, a very productive use of the Senate’s “advice and consent” prerogatives would be to open a discussion about how to end the “too big to jail” approach.
A House Is Not a Credit Card
NEW YORK TIMES
Bethany McLean
THIS fall, federal regulators made a controversial decision to back down from tough new underwriting standards for mortgages. Some affordable-housing advocates, allied with parts of the corporate housing industry, had successfully argued that the proposed standards would make it too hard for people to qualify, thereby reducing homeownership and hurting the housing market. Last summer, that same trump card stopped a bipartisan bill to reform the mortgage market, more than six years after Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had to be taken over by the government. All of this ignores a crucial fact: Much, and at times most, of what happens in the mortgage market doesn’t have anything to do with homeownership. A sizable percentage of mortgages — including most of the risky ones that were made in the run-up to the financial crisis — are not used to buy a home. They’re used to refinance an existing mortgage. When home prices are rising and mortgage rates are falling, many homeowners choose to replace their mortgage with a bigger one, taking the difference in cash. In other words, mortgages are a way to provide credit.
Chris Christie’s temperament spooks Wall Street
POLITICO
Ben White and Maggie Haberman
Some of Wall Street’s biggest donors take a different view. Many of them believe the New Jersey governor still represents too risky an investment, at least at this stage. Christie has an avowed fan base among some New York investors and bankers, with Home Depot founder Ken Langone leading the pack. But a number of donors, feeling flush after an election cycle in which the GOP establishment worked hard to tamp down tea party insurgents and pick mainstream winners in primaries, want to flex their muscle in picking the next nominee. That means they’ll be taking their time to choose. One problem, they say, is Christie’s decision not to resign as governor if he runs for president, despite federal securities rules that could seriously complicate his fundraising from the finance sector. But the bigger concern is temperament.
Politics
Obama Plan May Allow Millions of Immigrants to Stay and Work in U.S.
NEW YORK TIMES
Michael D. Shear, Julia Preston and Ashley Parker
President Obama will ignore angry protests from Republicans and announce as soon as next week a broad overhaul of the nation’s immigration enforcement system that will protect up to five million unauthorized immigrants from the threat of deportation and provide many of them with work permits, according to administration officials who have direct knowledge of the plan.
Obama, Down but Not Out, Presses Ahead
NEW YORK TIMES
Peter Baker and Julie Hirschfeld Davis
President Obama emerged from last week’s midterm election rejected by voters, hobbled politically and doomed to a final two years in office suffering from early lame-duck syndrome. That, at least, was the consensus in both parties. No one seems to have told Mr. Obama. In the 10 days since “we got beat,” as he put it, by Republicans who captured the Senate and bolstered control over the House, Mr. Obama has flexed his muscles on immigration, climate change and the Internet, demonstrating that he still aspires to enact sweeping policies that could help define his legacy.
Chris Christie is best positioned to lead the GOP in 2016
NEW HAMPSHIRE UNION LEADER
Craig Stevens
WITH FEWER than 14 months until the New Hampshire presidential primary, last week’s elections provided Republicans with hope for success in 2016. Clearly the big winner, and now the undisputed leader in the GOP pack, is Gov. Chris Christie. With big gubernatorial wins in battleground states like Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan, coupled with unexpected wins in traditionally Democratic strongholds of Massachusetts, Maryland and Illinois, the electoral map has been expanded for Republicans to include as many as 360 potential electoral votes. Gov. Christie, who chairs the Republican Governors Association, and other Republican Party leaders, showed that when Republicans run competent, disciplined candidates who talk about important economic issues, every state is a potential battleground.
Ted Cruz’s Greatest Weakness
POLITICO
Erica Greider
Cruz’s greater liability—and the one that might be hardest to overcome on the trail—is his inexperience. This is his greatest liability, in fact, because it’s real. He’s about to turn 44, meaning that he’d be one of the youngest presidents ever elected if he won in 2016, and nearly an entire generation younger than, say, a Hillary Clinton or most of the other likely Democratic candidates. He was only elected to the Senate in 2012; he never even ran for office before that, though he served as Texas’s solicitor general under attorney general Greg Abbott. Since arriving in Washington, he has made an outsized impression in his role as a low-ranking member of the Senate’s Republican minority, but his ability to wield power, rather than simply making trouble for those who do, is as yet untested. He has never weathered the unforgiving spotlight of a national campaign, never even really faced the barrage of opposition researchers, negative ads and whisper campaigns that would inevitably come with a presidential bid.
The Gruber Confession
WASHINGTON POST
Charles Krauthammer
It’s refreshing that “the most transparent administration in history,” as this administration fancies itself, should finally display candor about its signature act of social change. Inadvertently, of course. But now we know what lay behind Obama’s smooth reassurances — the arrogance of an academic liberalism, so perfectly embodied in the Gruber Confession, that rules in the name of a citizenry it mocks, disdains and deliberately, contemptuously deceives.
Jonathan Gruber’s payday
WASHINGTON TIMES
Editorial
Those “stupid” people have been extremely generous to Mr. Gruber. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) in 2010 investigated the $297,600 that the Department of Health and Human Services paid Mr. Gruber to sing the praises of the health care scheme. … Minnesota, for example, used federal Obamacare grants to pay Mr. Gruber to attend one meeting, participate in a biweekly email list and print a copy of the report, all for $329,000. Wisconsin paid Mr. Gruber $400,000 for the same material, requested by the office of then-Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat. When the report was presented, Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, didn’t want Mr. Gruber at the news conference. Vermont is paying him another $400,000. Such a deal!
This Democrat Is Giving Up on ObamaCare
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Burke Beu
ObamaCare is a failure. For anyone who thinks this is a misprint because no Democratic activist would make such a comment, let me add that it is too big, too complicated and too expensive. Without a public option within its network of exchanges, ObamaCare is a giant blank check to the insurance companies that pushed it through Congress. It punishes responsible consumers like me and treats younger individuals as fools who are expected to pay the bills while not paying attention.