InsideSources

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

Energy

Export-Import Bank faces danger from all sides
POLITICO
Eric Bradner
Conservatives may be headlining the opposition to the Export-Import Bank, but the efforts of coal-friendly Democrats to change the little-known agency’s rules could further jeopardize its future.

Energy Department eyes regional gas reserves for emergency use
WASHINGTON TIMES
Patrice Hill
In another presidential foray into territory once reserved for Congress, President Obama’s Department of Energy is exploring setting up sites to store reserves of gasoline in various places around the country to provide backup when major storms and other emergencies cut off access to local fuel supplies.

Australian Repeal Deals Blow to Global Carbon-Emission Plans
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Vanessa Mock, Selina Williams, and Amy Harder
Scrapping the program further isolates the EU and other countries that have plowed ahead with strict measures to limit carbon emissions and that have been counting on other nations to follow suit. It also bolsters the hand of groups in countries, like the U.S. and Canada, which argue that setting a heavy price on carbon emissions—particularly in the absence of a global consensus on climate-change measures—threatens jobs and competitiveness in a borderless international economy.

Not in My Backyard: US Sending Dirty Coal Abroad
ASSOCIATED PRESS
This fossil fuel trade, which has soared under President Barack Obama, threatens to undermine his strategy to reduce the gases blamed for global warming. It also reveals a little-discussed side effect of countries acting alone on a global issue. As the U.S. tries to set a global example by reducing demand for fossil fuels at home, American energy companies are sending more dirty fuels than ever to other parts of the world, exports worth billions of dollars every year. In some cases, these castoffs of America’s clean energy push are ending up in places with more lax environmental standards, or where governments are resistant to tackling the emissions responsible for global warming.

Solar Industry Is Rebalanced by U.S. Pressure on China
NEW YORK TIMES
Diane Cardwell and Keith Bradsher
Even as regulators continue to wrestle with the protracted trade conflict with China over solar panels, the case has already started to reshape the industry, lifting manufacturers based outside China while also raising prices of panels for developers.

Oil Prospectors Shift Back to Wealthy Lands
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Justin Scheck
For decades, big oil companies bet that risks of violence and corruption in developing countries were worth the trouble. Governments there often cut attractive deals, regulation was lax and labor costs were low. But in recent years, violence, tension with governments and harder-bargaining state-controlled oil companies have hurt profits from North Africa to Central Asia.

Murkowski gives refiners tough love on oil exports
THE HILL
Laura Barron-Lopez
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) says the conversation around crude oil exports should not be about whether it will squeeze refiners, but about what exports could “mean for the rest of the country.”

Technology

Ivy League Power Propels Columbia’s Tim Wu in Bid to be New York’s Lieutenant Governor
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Mike Vilensky
Columbia University law lecturer James Tierney hadn’t thought much about this year’s race for New York state lieutenant governor until recently. When busy with courses and research, “most academics don’t even know what state they’re living in,” Mr. Tierney said—let alone who is running for office. But then Mr. Tierney, a former Maine attorney general, discovered a left-of-center Democrat running for New York’s second-highest office: Tim Wu, a Columbia Law School professor with “a huge reputation” on area campuses.

Bill Gates’ tech worker fantasy
USA TODAY
Ron Hira, Paula Stephan et al.
IT industry leaders have spent lavishly on lobbying to promote their STEM shortage claims among legislators. The only problem is that the evidence contradicts their self-interested claims.

Hype over Census Bureau STEM report is overblown
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
President Obama’s promising STEM education initiatives in the first term have largely disappeared from view. Yet his focus on K-12 math and science education — including a commitment to prepare 100,000 new STEM teachers in the next decade — is urgently needed, considering the United States’ disappointing math scores. Basic knowledge of math and science is the bare minimum for a citizen in today’s world, regardless of career choice.

A Stronger Bill to Limit Surveillance
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
Over all, the bill represents a breakthrough in the struggle against the growth of government surveillance power. The Senate should pass it without further dilution, putting pressure on the House to do the same.

Adapting Old Laws to New Technologies
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
American law enforcement officials cannot get evidence located in other countries without the help of foreign governments. But can an American company be ordered by a court to turn over information stored on computer servers located in another country? The Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York will consider that question this week in a narcotics case in which federal prosecutors want access to a Microsoft email account stored in Ireland.

Can Reddit Grow Up?
NEW YORK TIMES
Mike Isaac
And unlike many other Internet start-ups, Reddit has never fully embraced the dominant business model of selling advertising to support its free service. But that is about to change. The company is trying to jump-start its advertising business, as well as bolster some smaller moneymaking efforts. Its challenge is to figure out how to become a real business without changing the essential nature of the service and alienating its powerhouse constituency of 114 million intensely loyal monthly users.

Finance

Dodd-Frank’s Achilles’ heel
WASHINGTON POST
Robert Samuelson
The right question is: When a crisis occurs — as it probably will — does Dodd-Frank better prepare us to handle it? Unfortunately, no. It may even make us more vulnerable. To see why, you need to understand Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act and its role in the last crisis. It’s the sleeper issue in judging Dodd-Frank.

The Danger of Too Loose, Too Long
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Richard Fisher
So what to do? My sense is that ending our large-scale asset purchases this fall will not be enough. The FOMC should consider tapering the reinvestment of maturing securities and begin incrementally shrinking the Fed’s balance sheet. Some might worry that paring the Fed’s reinvestment in mortgage-backed securities might hurt the housing market. But I believe the demand for housing is sufficiently robust to continue improving despite a small rise in mortgage rates. Then early next year, or potentially sooner depending on the pace of economic improvement, the FOMC may well begin to raise interest rates in gradual increments.

Close the tax loophole on inversions
WASHINGTON POST
Sec. Jacob Lew
For all these reasons, I call on Congress to close this loophole and pass anti-inversion legislation as soon as possible. Our tax system should not reward U.S. companies for giving up their U.S. citizenship, and unless we tackle this problem, these transactions will continue. Closing the inversion loophole is no substitute for comprehensive business tax reform, but it is a necessary step down the path toward a fair and more efficient tax system, and a step that needs to be in a place for tax reform to work.

Corporate Artful Dodgers
NEW YORK TIMES
Paul Krugman
In recent decisions, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court has made clear its view that corporations are people, with all the attendant rights. They are entitled to free speech, which in their case means spending lots of money to bend the political process to their ends. They are entitled to religious beliefs, including those that mean denying benefits to their workers. Up next, the right to bear arms? There is, however, one big difference between corporate persons and the likes of you and me: On current trends, we’re heading toward a world in which only the human people pay taxes.

Why Corporate Inversions Are All the Rage
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Walter Galvin
It’s time for Congress to reform a tax system that mainly benefits other countries. Other countries have learned this lesson already—both Japan and the U.K. have adopted a modern hybrid international system and lowered their corporate tax rates in recent years. The U.S. needs to learn from their examples and fix the broken tax system now.

Argentine Default Drama Nears Critical Stage
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Taos Turner and Ken Parks
Argentina could make unfortunate history this week if it defaults on its foreign debt for the second time in 13 years as a showdown with creditors comes to a head. When Argentina last defaulted on this debt, in 2001, it was the biggest sovereign default ever. It led to a debt restructuring and the country’s deepest recession since the Great Depression. The political turmoil was so bad that the country had five presidents in just over a week.

Argentina Dances With Default
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
The best outcome for all parties, and especially Argentina, is still for Buenos Aires to negotiate in good faith and avoid default. But if it refuses, Judge Griesa deserves support from everyone who cares about the integrity of U.S. financial markets for upholding the law and American property rights.

A Sensible Path for Avoiding an Argentine Default
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Richard Dietz
And so a path to settlement becomes clear. Argentina’s holdout creditors could agree to a three-month extension of the stay on execution of their judgment. This would allow Argentina to continue servicing its performing debt and avoid renewed default. In return, Argentina would agree to settle with its holdout creditors by payment in newly issued bonds. Such an agreement would be expressly subject to Argentina achieving a waiver of the rights-upon-future-offers clause and a commitment to launch immediately a consent solicitation for such purpose. If the solicitation failed, the clause would lapse at the end of the year and the parties would have the unfettered ability to complete the settlement in January 2015.

Politics

Prospects Brighten for Republicans to Reclaim a Senate Majority
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Patrick O’Connor
A battery of recent polling shows Republican candidates mounting competitive bids for at least 10 Senate seats now held by Democrats, including in Iowa and Colorado, states that have been leaning Democratic in recent years. Many Republican candidates have narrowed their opponents’ fundraising advantage, according to the latest campaign-finance reports. And a series of international crises has dealt the president some of the lowest approval marks of his second term, weighing on his party’s candidates.

Outside Money Drives a Deluge of Political Ads
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Ashley Parker
An explosion of spending on political advertising on television — set to break $2 billion in congressional races, with overall spots up nearly 70 percent since the 2010 midterm election — is accelerating the rise of moneyed interests and wresting control from the candidates’ own efforts to reach voters.

We’re defending the Constitution
USA TODAY
Speaker John Boehner
President Obama has overstepped his constitutional authority — and it is the responsibility of the House of Representatives to defend the Constitution. At the same time, we remain focused on the American people’s top priority: jobs and the economy.

Congress Set to Leave a Full Plate
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Kristina Peterson
With just a week left before the start of a five-week August recess, it is increasingly likely that Congress will wrap up for the summer having cobbled together only the bare minimum to keep the government functioning without addressing a list of expiring laws and a pileup of potential national crises.

Obama’s 2nd term travails: A lame duck before his time?
USA TODAY
Susan Page
The woes of a second term are nothing new, but for President Obama they seem to have started sooner and struck harder than for his predecessors.