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

Energy

Ban on U.S. Oil Exports Seen Dying One Ruling at a Time
BLOOMBERG
Lynn Doan
The four-decade-old ban on most crude exports from the U.S., now the world’s largest producer, will be weakened bit by bit as government rulings allow exceptions, say energy analysts including IHS Inc.

 

Whirlpool Wants Congress to Ban Class-Action Suits Tied to Energy Star Program
NEW YORK TIMES
Matthew L. Wald
After government testing showed that scores of consumer products carrying the Energy Star label did not deserve the listing, a wave of class-action lawsuits was filed against the companies that manufacture the products. … A bill introduced by Representative Robert Latta, a Republican whose Ohio district is home to several Whirlpool factories, would prohibit class-action lawsuits if the E.P.A. came up with a remedy, like reimbursing consumers, for products that did not live up to their billing.

 

Frack Quietly, Please: Sage Grouse Is Nesting
NEW YORK TIMES
Diane Cardwell and Clifford Krauss
In a new oil field among the rolling hills near here, Chesapeake Energy limits truck traffic to avoid disturbing the breeding and nesting of a finicky bird called the greater sage grouse. To the west, on a gas field near Yellowstone National Park, Shell Oil is sowing its own special seed mix to grow plants that nourish the birds and hide their chicks from predators.

 

A fracking problem for Dems
THE HILL
Laura Barron-Lopez
Republicans love fracking in Colorado — and it could help them flip a critical Senate seat this fall. The onslaught against Democratic Sen. Mark Udall (Colo.) reached a fever pitch this week when Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) had to cancel a special legislative session meant to keep two hydraulic fracturing initiatives backed by Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) off the November ballot. Udall, who had stayed out of the fray on the two measures, was forced to take a side much to the GOP’s glee.

 

 

Technology

Silicon Valley’s Libertarian revolution
POLITICO
Darren Samuelsohn
Libertarian and conservative technology types huddled this weekend on Nancy Pelosi’s home turf making big promises about what they can do to help Republicans win more elections — but also lamenting how their ideas could still get lost in the shuffle.

 

The FCC wants to let cities build their own broadband. House Republicans disagree.
VOX
Timothy B. Lee
This week, the House of Representatives approved legislation from Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) that would make it harder for cities to build publicly-owned broadband networks. The proposal is a shot at Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler, who wants to remove state-level restrictions on municipal networks; Blackburn’s legislation would forbid the FCC from removing those restrictions. This is the latest escalation of a long-running war between municipal broadband supporters and incumbent broadband companies that have relentlessly opposed municipal broadband proposals.

 

Microsoft’s Top Lawyer Is the Tech World’s Envoy
NEW YORK TIMES
Nick Wingfield
Bradford L. Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, was in Berlin meeting with government officials this spring when a case kept popping up unexpectedly. How would the company respond, the officials demanded to know, to a judge’s ruling in New York that would give the American government access to a customer’s email sitting in an Irish data center? … Such are the decisions regularly faced by Mr. Smith, 55, who has become the elder statesman of Microsoft and a de facto ambassador for the technology industry at large.

 

Smaller Cable Networks Plan Their Survival Under the Feet of Giants
NEW YORK TIMES
Emily Steel and David Gelles
Those pending deals are the proposed $45 billion merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable and the $48.5 billion merger between AT&T and DirecTV, which would create cable and satellite giants that could force smaller networks to accept lower fees for their programming. And 21st Century Fox’s $80 billion pursuit of Time Warner, unveiled last week, would create a rival television and film behemoth with tremendous negotiating power over cable and satellite providers, corporate advertisers and Hollywood talent. These transformational deals are just one of several threats facing the smaller cable television network groups.

 

On Net Neutrality, Verizon Leads Push for ‘Fast Lanes’
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Brendan Sasso
In a filing to the Federal Communications Commission this week, Verizon emphasized its support for a “robust and open Internet” but said the agency should allow “flexibility” for providers to charge websites for varying speeds. “Such flexibility to experiment with alternative arrangements not only can reduce costs to end users while allowing them to access the content they demand, but also benefit [Web services] and spur continued investment in broadband infrastructure,” the company wrote.

 

 

Finance

Four Years of Dodd-Frank Damage
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Peter J. Wallison
Several months ago J.P. Morgan Chase announced that it plans to hire 3,000 more compliance officers this year, to supplement the 7,000 brought on last year. At the same time the bank will reduce its overall head count by 5,000. Substituting employees who produce no revenue for those who do is the legacy of Dodd-Frank, and it will be with us as long as this destructive law is on the books.

 

House Republicans Take Aim at Dodd-Frank
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Victoria McGrane
House Financial Services Committee Republicans are mounting fresh criticism of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial law in a report to be released Monday, contending that it failed to end the prospect of future government bailouts for large, complex financial firms and exacerbated the belief some of the firms are “too big to fail.”

 

Dodd-Frank Law Still Far From Finished
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Andrew Ackerman and Alan Zibel
Four years after President Barack Obama signed landmark legislation aimed at preventing another financial crisis, regulators still haven’t completed key parts, including standards for the mortgage-securities market and tougher regulations for credit-rating firms. Turnover and lost court battles have held back some regulators, notably the Securities and Exchange Commission, which faces more mandates under the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial law than any of the other agencies charged with writing rules. Only 44% of the SEC’s rules are final or nearly final, according to law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP.

 

Tax Inversions Turn Into Campaign Fodder
WALL STREET JOURNAL
John D. McKinnon and Kristina Peterson
The House Democrats’ campaign arm, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has blasted dozens of Republicans for their stance on the issue. “This is an issue that understandably gets people very angry,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.) “If Republicans are going to oppose our efforts in this area, they are going to have to explain why they are shielding American corporations that are deserting the United States in order to dodge their obligations to the country and American taxpayers.” … GOP lawmakers warned that the Democrats’ push could imperil jobs by limiting U.S. companies’ access to their overseas profits, weakening them financially and leaving them more vulnerable to foreign takeover.

 

In a Subprime Bubble for Used Cars, Borrowers Pay Sky-High Rates
NEW YORK TIMES
Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Michael Corkery
Auto loans to people with tarnished credit have risen more than 130 percent in the five years since the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis, with roughly one in four new auto loans last year going to borrowers considered subprime — people with credit scores at or below 640.

 

The Limits of the Law in Insider Trading
NEW YORK TIMES
James B. Stewart
The remarkable winning streak of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, came to an end a little over a week ago when Rengan Rajaratnam, the younger brother of the convicted hedge fund operator Raj Rajaratnam, was acquitted of one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud. That leaves Mr. Bharara with a still-remarkable 85-1 record in insider trading cases. But that one loss deserves an asterisk.

 

 

Politics

POLITICO poll: Stay out of Ukraine, Middle East
POLITICO
Alexander Burns
Amid deepening violence across Eastern Europe and the Middle East, Americans are recoiling from direct engagement overseas and oppose U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Ukraine by large margins, according to a POLITICO poll of 2014 battleground voters.

 

Why Are Teachers Unions So Opposed to Change?
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Antonio Villaraigosa
As a former union leader and a lifelong Democrat who supports collective bargaining, I am deeply troubled by the rhetoric and strategy we heard at both national conventions. They attacked an administration in Washington that helped protect 400,000 teaching jobs during the recession, has actively promoted labor-management collaboration and has empowered classroom teachers to help shape policy.

 

The Fiscal Fizzle
NEW YORK TIMES
Paul Krugman
About those projections: The budget office predicts that this year’s federal deficit will be just 2.8 percent of G.D.P., down from 9.8 percent in 2009. It’s true that the fact that we’re still running a deficit means federal debt in dollar terms continues to grow — but the economy is growing too, so the budget office expects the crucial ratio of debt to G.D.P. to remain more or less flat for the next decade.

 

Budget policy as prayer
WASHINGTON POST
Robert Samuelson
The Congressional Budget Office last week issued one of its periodic long-term budget outlooks. Its themes are distressingly familiar. There is no balanced budget in sight. Under favorable assumptions, the CBO projects deficits of $7.6 trillion from 2015 to 2024. Under less favorable (maybe more realistic) assumptions, the added debt would total $9.6 trillion. The big drivers are an aging population and rising health spending. The deficits materialize despite slightly higher taxes and squeezed spending on defense and most programs — for transportation, law enforcement, education and much more — that don’t support the elderly or supply health care. The CBO pronounces present policies “unsustainable,” but it does not know — no one does — when and how a breakdown might occur or what the consequences might be.

 

Must-have accessory for House candidates in 2014: The personalized super PAC
WASHINGTON POST
Matea Gold and Tom Hamburger
For the first time, the kinds of super PACs that became prominent in the 2012 presidential campaign also are a basic requirement in competitive, down-ballot House races. As one of their first to-do items, congressional hopefuls are asked to identify wealthy family members, friends or business associates willing to spend on their candidacies. As a result, deep-pocketed political patrons and special interests have a greater ability to influence the outcome of individual races with a relatively modest investment of funds.