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

 

Energy

Germany’s Fracking Follies
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
Just when the Ukraine crisis makes clear that the need to diversify Europe’s gas supplies couldn’t be greater, Germany wants to ban fracking. “There will be no fracking for economic purposes in Germany in the near future,” German Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks announced at a press conference on Friday. Under her proposal, most forms of hydraulic fracking will be prohibited until 2021.

 

North Dakota Fracking: Behind the Oil-Train Explosions
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Russell Gold and Chester Dawson
When energy companies started extracting oil from shale formations in South Texas a few years ago, they invested hundreds of millions of dollars to make the volatile crude safer to handle. In North Dakota’s Bakken Shale oil field, nobody installed the necessary equipment. The result is that the second-fastest growing source of crude in the U.S. is producing oil that pipelines often would reject as too dangerous to transport.

 

Picking Lesser of Two Climate Evils
NEW YORK TIMES
Justin Gillis
Pound for pound, methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. But in stark contrast to CO2, methane breaks down quickly in the atmosphere. Every time you flip on a light switch, causing more coal to be burned and CO2 to be released, you are slightly altering the earth’s climate for thousands of years. Release a puff of methane, scientists say, and the climate influence will be gone in a few decades.

 

Allowing crude oil exports will benefit Americans
WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Guy Caruso
The reality is that the oil the U.S. produces does not match its refining capacity, and the reason the administration is testing the waters is because overturning the 40-year ban on exports would bring American voters the lower gasoline prices, more jobs and stable global environment that they want. Updating an old policy can be a hard slog, but this is one worth pursuing.

 

 

Technology

Mark Zuckerberg’s immigration push hits brick wall
POLITICO
Jessica Meyers
Tech leaders poured millions into FWD.us, an immigration advocacy group that has dominated ad buys, launched elaborate hackathons and coddled conservatives in an effort to revamp the country’s immigration system. It galloped into the debate with the tech industry’s classic certainty but wound up facing the same obstacles that have halted reform for decades.

 

The case against software patents, in 9 charts
VOX
James Bessen
A look at the data makes it clear why patents are unpopular in the software industry. Most software developers and startup firms gain little from patents. The patent system is difficult to navigate, thanks to unclear rules about which patents cover which technologies. And the software industry has been swamped by lawsuits from litigious firms known as patent trolls.

 

New Tech Group Joins Crowded Field to Set Rules for ‘Internet of Things’
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Don Clark
Intel Corp. and several other companies Tuesday are announcing the formation of the Open Interconnect Consortium, a group that hopes to set technical ground rules for what the industry calls the Internet of Things. The alliance—whose members include Dell Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. and Broadcom Corp.—plans to initially focus on home automation and office applications.

 

Grover Norquist thinks Republicans can ride Uber to power in urban areas. That’s probably a stretch.
WASHINGTON POST
Emily Badger
But the fact that this debate isn’t neatly drawn into liberal and conservative camps is a testament to the policy issues raised by the sharing economy: They’re incredibly, incredibly messy. They also aren’t purely about big-picture ideological battles over less regulation or more union power, the kind of divisive themes that animate federal policy debates. They’re about the gritty details of auto insurance policies and tax receipts and access for disabled consumers. That’s not the stuff of pithy partisan slogans.

 

 

Finance

Wall Street Offers Clinton a Thorny Embrace
NEW YORK TIMES
Nicholas Confessore and Amy Chozick
As its relationship with Democrats hits a historic low, Wall Street sees a solution on the horizon: Hillary Rodham Clinton. … But as Wall Street hopes for a warm embrace from the former secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton must grapple with a populist surge coursing through politics, on both the right and the left.

 

Let’s Not Shortchange The SEC
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Robert Greifeld
Legislators are likely to be consumed by discussions about order types, high-frequency trading, Regulation NMS, and other industry terms that highlight the complexity of operating our public markets. Behind them is the common-sense need for those who sell and trade securities to treat investors fairly and honestly. The SEC today plays a central role in reinforcing confidence in our world-class capital markets. Let’s ensure that the agency has the resources and support it needs to achieve this essential objective.

 

U.S. Scrutiny for Banks Shifts to Commerzbank and Germany
NEW YORK TIMES
Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Ben Protess
A trail of illicit money led the American government on a hunt through the European financial system, generating criminal cases against banks in Britain, Switzerland and most recently, France. Now the crackdown is bound for another European financial center: Germany.

 

Big, bad bank fines are here to stay
FINANCIAL TIMES
John Plender
There has been no regulatory demand for a change in the incentive structures that encouraged the bank’s executives to put profit before compliance with the law. Nobody has gone to jail. So global banks have been encouraged to continue regarding fines as an operating cost of the business, much as Mafia-controlled US waste management companies used to do. So the deterrent is not as draconian as it appears.

 

On Wall Street, the Corleone family fits right in
WASHINGTON POST
Richard Cohen
Michael: “The Godfather is dead. So is his way of doing business. Hyman Roth showed me what we should do. We turn the Corleone family into Corleone Enterprises Ltd. We list it on the stock exchange along with the other criminals. We do what we have always done, but if we get caught, nobody goes to jail. We pay a fine and say we’re sorry.”

 

The Case for Crony Capitalism
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Paul H. Rubin and Joseph S. Rubin
The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, for example, makes it illegal for U.S. businesses to pay bribes to foreign officials. But it is not always so easy to determine what is illegal, and companies may be penalized for normal business practices. It is certainly not cheap to comply. The Ex-Im Bank website says that “to avoid such consequences [of the FCPA], many firms have implemented detailed compliance programs intended to prevent and to detect any improper payments by employees and by third-party agents.” This adds to the costs of U.S. firms doing business abroad, lowering the amount of legitimate trade. Maybe the Ex-Im Bank is a reasonable, second-best response. One government subsidy may be necessary to help overcome other inefficiencies imposed by the government to begin with.

 

 

Politics

Most children illegally crossing the border alone will be deported, White House signals
WASHINGTON POST
David Nakamura and Katie Zezima
The White House signaled Monday that it expects to deport most of the unaccompanied minors entering the country illegally across the southern border, employing the strongest rhetoric to date to indicate that an influx of thousands of Central American migrants will not be tolerated.

 

Some Still Lack Coverage Under Health Law
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Stephanie Armour
Months after the sign-up deadline, thousands of Americans who purchased health insurance through the Affordable Care Act still don’t have coverage due to problems in enrollment systems.

 

Sen. Robert Menendez seeks probe of alleged Cuban plot to smear him
WASHINGTON POST
Carol D. Leonnig and Manuel Roig-Franzia
Sen. Robert Menendez is asking the Justice Department to pursue evidence obtained by U.S. investigators that the Cuban government concocted an elaborate plot to smear him with allegations that he cavorted with underage prostitutes, according to people familiar with the discussions.

 

The US will start running out of money for roads in August. Here’s why.
VOX
Brad Plumer
By the end of August, the highway portion of the Highway Trust Fund is expected to run out of money. If that happens, the federal government will have to start cutting back on the money it sends to states for transportation projects. (Once the fund is depleted, incoming revenues will be insufficient to cover all of federal spending.)