Your daily briefing for all the top news in Energy, Technology, Finance, and Politics.
Energy
Influence game: Shaping railroad safety rules
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Joan Lowy
Billions of dollars are riding on how these rules are written, and lobbyists from the railroads, tank car manufacturers and the oil, ethanol and chemical industries have met 13 times since March with officials at the White House and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
Keystone backers want to keep pipeline in the public eye
THE HILL
Timothy Cama
Proponents of the Keystone XL pipeline are working to keep the project in the public eye, even as it becomes clear it will not be green-lighted until after the elections.
Fighting Climate Change With Trade
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
The United States, the European Union, China and 11 other governments began trade negotiations this week to eliminate tariffs on solar panels, wind turbines, water-treatment equipment and other environmental goods. If they are able to reach an agreement, it could reduce the cost of equipment needed to address climate change and help increase American exports.
Envisioning Profit in Environmental Good Works
NEW YORK TIMES
John Schwartz
What is most interesting about this project, however, is who is paying the bills. While the state government has developed a detailed master plan for wetlands restoration in the region, and money has been promised from the federal government and the BP settlement of the 2010 oil spill, this project is getting its funding from a private equity firm. The company, Ecosystem Investment Partners, intends to profit from its good works by selling environmental restoration credits to private developers and government agencies like the Army Corps of Engineers, which need them to offset environmental damage done by their projects.
Hudson Valley of the Dolls
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
The New York Democrat has emerged as the leading opponent of a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) plan to add $350 million a year in extra electricity costs to the Hudson River Valley to subsidize New York City. This month Mr. Schumer told the Poughkeepsie Journal that, “From start to finish FERC’s approach to this unneeded and unwanted capacity zone has been arrogant, heavy-handed and disdainful of hard-hit ratepayers.” And that was the gentle part.
Technology
Micromanaging the Web Would Be a Macro Mistake
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Thomas W. Hazlett and Joshua D. Wright
The modern, open Internet evolved in the marketplace, with customers and firms making unregulated deals. The government’s primary contribution has been to clear out the “public utility” regulations that would have stifled it. As FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai explained in February when the FCC announced its latest attempt to salvage net-neutrality rules: “The Internet was free and open before the FCC adopted net-neutrality rules. It remains free and open today. Net neutrality has always been a solution in search of a problem.”
Google, Facebook, Netflix Make Their Official Case for Net Neutrality
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Brendan Sasso
Broadband access providers have the technical ability and the financial incentive to clog Internet traffic and extort tolls from Web companies, the Internet Association wrote in a comment to the Federal Communications Commission. The group, which represents Google, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, and others, said broadband providers could turn the Internet into “a pay-for-priority platform more closely resembling cable television than today’s Internet.”
U.S. Chamber of Commerce looks West to boost tech business
WASHINGTON POST
Holly Yeager
David Chavern says it was his idea to feature a picture of William Howard Taft wearing Google Glass on the brochure for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s new Center for Advanced Technology & Innovation. … The center — which was announced in April and hosts its first event this week — is the Chamber’s only major office outside Washington, and part of its mission is to serve the powerful business lobby’s existing members. But the big focus is persuading Silicon Valley that it needs what Chavern calls “public policy leadership on national issues” and the kind of lobbying muscle he says that only the Chamber can provide.
Congress is overdue in dealing with the cybersecurity threat
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
For several years, it has been clear to many in government and the private sector that the nation needs to vastly improve protection of its private networks and that only government has the sophisticated tools to do that. But Congress has balked at legislation that would ease the necessary cooperation. Thus it was encouraging to see the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence vote 12 to 3 last week to approve a cybersecurity bill that would begin to bridge the gap. Its prospects in the full Senate are uncertain. A similar bill passed the House last year.
Electronic health records ripe for theft
POLITICO
David Pittman
America’s medical records systems are flirting with disaster, say the experts who monitor crime in cyberspace. A hack that exposes the medical and financial records of hundreds of thousands of patients is coming, they say — it’s only a matter of when.
Tech mogul Sean Parker ramps up GOP giving
POLITICO
Alexander Burns
Silicon Valley billionaire Sean Parker has sharply ramped up his political giving to Republicans, directing upwards of half a million dollars to GOP candidates and causes during the most recent quarter of 2014, sources said.
Amazon, a Friendly Giant as Long as It’s Fed
NEW YORK TIMES
David Streitfeld
Vincent Zandri hails from the future. He is a novelist from the day after tomorrow, when Amazon has remade the worlds of writing, printing, selling and reading books so thoroughly that there is hardly anything left besides Amazon.
Finance
The end of quantitative easing is good news
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
The conclusion of the Fed’s bond-buying, which had increased its balance sheet to $4.4 trillion from $900 billion before the financial crisis, is good news in two ways. It is a sign that the Fed believes growth and job creation have finally achieved enough momentum to continue without the stimulus that comes from adding to the Fed’s balance sheet — while the stimulus of near-zero interest rates and the expanded balance sheet remain in place. And it is a much-needed recognition that easy monetary policy may be breeding asset bubbles not unlike those that contributed to the crash.
The Government Bond Racket
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
Now here’s something you don’t see every day: Governments might stop pressuring banks to lend money to governments. Believe it or not, a burgeoning reform effort is underway among the regulators who did so much to create the last crisis and often seem to ignore its lessons.
The Argentine Bond Mess Gets Messier
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Mary Anastasia O’Grady
The Bank of New York is unable to make the payments without crossing the judge and unable to send the money back without instructions from Argentina. It has filed a motion for clarification. Since Judge Griesa has ruled that the trustee may make payments on bonds governed under Argentine law, holders of Euro bonds have filed a motion requesting similar treatment. This chaos is good news for those who wanted an IMF sovereign-bankruptcy court in 2001.
Companies That Offer Help With Student Loans Often Predatory, Officials Say
NEW YORK TIMES
Rachel Abrams and Jessica Silver-Greenberg
Debt settlement companies, which offer to help borrowers lower their monthly loan payments for a hefty upfront fee, have long been fraught with problems. But federal and state regulators are spotting new instances of abuse as the companies shift away from their traditional targets — credit card and mortgage debt — to zero in on student loans. The companies are coming under fire for potentially questionable tactics.
Empty Floors Fray Traders’ Nerves
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Katy Burne, Justin Baer and Saabira Chaudhuri
A deep slump in trading activity in everything from stocks and bonds to currencies is changing the face of Wall Street. Businesses that once contributed disproportionately to the revenues of the world’s largest banks are now bleeding jobs and sparking fears of a permanent decline.
Clock Synchronization With Traders Is Challenge for Regulators
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Bradley Hope
Regulatory and trader clocks can fall out of synchronization when they don’t regularly benchmark time keeping against government master clocks or if they measure time in different fractions of seconds. Without the ability to clearly reconstruct the order of market events, regulators say they may struggle to detect abuses such as “spoofing,” where a trader manipulates prices by entering and canceling orders for a stock to lure other traders into the market, and other illegal practices that distort prices.
Politics
Obama Contends With Arc of Instability Unseen Since ’70s
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Jay Solomon and Carol E. Lee
A convergence of security crises is playing out around the globe, from the Palestinian territories and Iraq to Ukraine and the South China Sea, posing a serious challenge to President Barack Obama’s foreign policy and reflecting a world in which U.S. global power seems increasingly tenuous.
The real Medicaid problem
WASHINGTON POST
Robert J. Samuelson
The White House recently put out a 40-page report arguing that the 24 states that have not expanded Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA or “Obamacare”) are hurting their poor and themselves. It’s an easy case to make, but it’s incomplete and misleading. The further truth is that Medicaid also threatens to crowd out spending for many traditional state and local functions: schools, police, roads, libraries and more.
Capitol’s Partisanship Is Taking Hold in Governors’ Ranks
NEW YORK TIMES
Jonathan Martin
The state leaders scorned Washington for inaction on immigration and transportation funding. But on those issues, and others like education, many of them are just as uneasy about taking potentially controversial stances or are simply as split as their federal counterparts.
Common Core Becomes Touchy Subject for Governors Group
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Beth Reinhard
The National Governors Association was one of the founders of Common Core, a set of academic standards aimed at raising student achievement. But as Democratic and Republican governors gathered here for summer meetings, Common Core wasn’t on the official agenda, a sign of how the bipartisan idea has become a political minefield.
