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Energy

US should end energy protectionism
FINANCIAL TIMES (Subscribe)
Editorial
Greens oppose exporting US hydrocarbons partly because of global warming. Some manufacturers oppose liberalising LNG exports because it would reduce their price advantage from cheaper shale gas. Both arguments are mistaken. Gas is the least carbon-intensive fossil fuel and it makes no difference where it is consumed. As for the second point, US manufacturers would still enjoy lower gas prices. Boosting shale exports would also stimulate further investment in its supply. The case for going ahead is compelling. Mr Obama has staked much of his reputation on building a 21st-century transatlantic economic partnership. He must not allow a noisy but small group of protectionists to stand in his way.

 

Pushing Back Against Obama’s War on Coal
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Rep. Mike Kelly
Coal workers are upset because the White House-ordered regulatory scheme will badly damage the coal industry and cost Americans in higher electricity costs and lost jobs while doing little to fight climate change. It was good to see coal finally get a public hearing. The bad news is that President Obama and the EPA have already issued their guilty verdict and handed down the sentence.

 

As Oysters Die, Climate Policy Goes on the Stump
NEW YORK TIMES
Coral Davenport
The Democratic governor [Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington], aided by what is expected to be millions of dollars from his billionaire friend Tom Steyer, is using the story of Washington’s oysters — scientists say a rise in carbon levels has spiked the acidity of the Pacific and is killing off shellfish — to make the case for passing the most far-reaching climate change policies in the nation.

 

EPA’s plan on climate change fills a void as Congress does nothing
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
Unless and until the EPA’s attackers get behind a real climate plan, the EPA has reason to fill Congress’s irresponsible policy void. The agency’s plan won’t destroy the American way of life. It will have some costs, but it will also get the country started on the emissions path it must sooner or later travel.

 

Dispute Flares Over Burned-Off Natural Gas
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Chester Dawson
Continental Resources Ltd. says it wants to pay state taxes and make royalty payments on natural gas it improperly burned off at dozens of wells in recent years. The company is asking state regulators to approve its plans, including the value it is assigning to the gas that was burned in the controversial practice known as flaring.

 

Kenya Wind Farm Signals Hurdles for Obama Program
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Heidi Vogt
On a plateau above Kenya’s Rift Valley, farmer David Kinyanjui looks over his cabbage field and the house he refuses to abandon to make way for the country’s first private wind farm—a telling snag for an ambitious U.S. aid program in Africa.

 

China’s surprise on climate change
USA TODAY
Editorial
If the U.S. acts to curb emissions, it puts pressure on China to go along. If it doesn’t, it gives China an excuse to delay. Thanks to the Obama administration’s plans, White House counselor John Podesta says, during the latest discussions with the Chinese “we didn’t have to hear lectures about what we weren’t doing.”

 

America’s pain is China’s gain
USA TODAY
Rep. Ed Whitfield
With growing economies and energy demands in China, India and the rest of the developing world, America’s so-called leadership on climate change is highly unlikely to succeed — and very likely to backfire. U.S. jobs and economic opportunity will be lost to countries hungry for affordable energy.

 

 

Technology

Fast Lanes Saved the Internet
WALL STREET JOURNAL
L. Gordon Crovitz
In other words, fast lanes won’t kill the Internet. They’ve saved the Internet. If it weren’t for these fast lanes, the Web would have screeched to a halt when photos and video began to supplement text-based traffic. At peak times, Netflix alone now accounts for one-third of all Internet traffic. If it weren’t using its own network to cache video locally around the world, other traffic on the Web would get hung up or delayed. Fast lanes keep everything else flowing smoothly, from email to security cameras to remote surgery.

 

Facebook’s Gateway Drug
NEW YORK TIMES
Evgeny Morozov
In this way, Facebook and Internet.org are following a well-trod path. As the World Bank has demonstrated, when development becomes just a means of making a buck, the losers will always be the people at the bottom. Thus, to Silicon Valley’s question of “Is Internet access a human right?” one could respond by turning the tables: What kind of “Internet,” and what kind of “access”?

 

FCC Seeks to Ban Joint Bids by Wireless Companies at Spectrum Auction
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Gautham Nagesh
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler circulated on Friday new rules for the auction, which proposes banning the four nationwide wireless carriers from teaming up to bid at the auction. The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Sprint and T-Mobile were working on a planned joint venture that would raise roughly $10 billion to spend at the auction ahead of a possible merger.

 

Inside Brigade: A look at the bet Sean Parker’s making on his ‘civic network’
WASHINGTON POST
Nancy Scola
Asked about the action that Brigade users will be expected to take — Post updates? Consume content? Give money? — Windon winced a bit before saying, “We’re still a little loose on talking about the specific of that,” though he suggested that just about anything you might do on another social network you might do on Brigade, including a “collective action” component that might indeed differentiate this network from others.

 

Microsoft digs in on digital privacy
THE HILL
Julian Hattem
Microsoft is squaring off against the Justice Department in a case that could have drastic ramifications for the protections on people’s data. … “The stakes are huge for both sides,” said Orin Kerr, a George Washington University law professor and former Justice Department official. “This is really about what happens with privacy in the global Internet and this is one of the first cases to really grapple with the problem,” he added. “This is the first round in an ongoing debate on where are the limits of privacy abroad.”

 

 

Finance

Jobs and the Fed
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
Where we disagree with Ms. Yellen is that more months or years of near zero-interest rates are the recipe for faster growth. As Stanford’s Ron McKinnon has argued, the zero bound has distorted decisions about the allocation of capital. And the Fed’s monetary exertions have led to excess bank reserves that haven’t translated into the greater lending that many predicted. Getting off the zero bound would not mean a premature monetary tightening. It might even increase monetary velocity by inducing more bank lending. The Fed could find it does better by jobs and growth by a more rapid return to monetary normalcy.

 

Wreck of Cards
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
A law of political physics is that a regulator will always find something new to justify its existence, whether or not it’s needed. Witness the plan by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (Finra) to gather account information each month from America’s roughly 4,000 brokerage firms.

 

France urges G20 to put issue of US bank fines on agenda
FINANCIAL TIMES (Subscribe)
Michael Stothard, Hugh Carnegy, And Martin Arnold
France has gathered support to challenge US regulators imposing heavy penalties on foreign banks at a G20 meeting of world leaders later this year after the record $8.9bn fine levied on BNP Paribas last month.

 

Activist Firms Join Tax-Deal Push
WALL STREET JOURNAL
David Benoit
Adding the latest in-vogue deal maneuver to their playbook, activist investors are pressing for overseas mergers that can slice tax bills. In the latest example, Marcato Capital Management LP hired an investment bank to try to drum up interest from U.S. hotel companies that could possibly cut down on their tax bills by buying U.K.-based InterContinental Hotels Group IHG.LN PLC, according to people familiar with the matter.

 

Inverted View of U.S. Corporate-Tax Bite
WALL STREET JOURNAL
David Reilly
As of June, U.S. government receipts from corporation tax, on a rolling 12-month basis, came to about $303 billion, according to Treasury Department data. That is up 11%, year over year and marks the first time in nearly six years such receipts have cracked the $300 billion mark. Yet they remain 20% below their prerecession peak of about $383 billion, reached seven years ago.

 

To address the issue of ‘inversion,’ tax shareholders
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
The key to genuinely resolving the inversion problem, as opposed to patching it up — or exploiting it — in an election year, is to shift the focus of corporate taxation to the people who actually own a given company: shareholders. It’s harder for individuals to “reflag,” so it’s more efficient to tax their dividends than it is to chase corporate income streams around the globe.

 

Obama’s Other Success
NEW YORK TIMES
Paul Krugman
But also like Obamacare, financial reform is working a lot better than anyone listening to the news media would imagine. Let’s talk, in particular, about two important pieces of Dodd-Frank: creation of an agency protecting consumers from misleading or fraudulent financial sales pitches, and efforts to end “too big to fail.”

 

Big Banks Still a Risk
NEW YORK TIMES
Gretchen Morgenson
“I think people are increasingly aware that this is still a serious, serious problem,” [Sen. Sherrod Brown] said. “This report has underscored that if there is a real crisis, investors will move their money to the banks that are too big to fail. That was significant and is really troubling. The system continues to reward risky behavior.”

 

Debt Collectors Under Fire by Regulator
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Alan Zibel and Jacob Gershman
The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last month filed its first lawsuit against a debt-collection firm, Marietta, Ga.-based Frederick J. Hanna & Associates, accusing it of violating federal consumer-protection laws. Legal specialists said the suit could signal the regulator’s intent to target similar high-volume law firms—and potentially banks and debt buyers—over allegations that debt collection claims can be out of date, incorrect in their amounts, lacking in documentary support or overlapping with claims filed against the same debtors.

 

 

Politics

Paying for the Thousand-Dollar Pill
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Karen Ignagni
In a competitive market, there wouldn’t be any debate about pricing. The market would set the price. And plans would use the innovative payment arrangements and other tools to lower prices and encourage the use of the most cost-effective drugs. The challenge here is that drug makers are given years of exclusivity for their innovation. With some of these new treatments, there is no competition, only monopolies protected by the government.

 

The Custom-Made ‘Super PAC’
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
Attention, parents of political candidates. There is now a way to spend an unlimited amount on your child’s campaign for Congress, completely ignoring that annoying $2,600 legal limit on what you can give. All you do is set up a “super PAC” for your kid and start writing checks. It’s not much harder than that 529 account you used for the same kid’s college education.

 

As Democrats avoid Obama, Romney is in demand on the midterm campaign trail
WASHINGTON POST
Robert Costa and Philip Rucker
President Obama thumped Mitt Romney in the 2012 election, but now their political standings seem reversed. During a summer in which Democratic candidates are keeping their distance from an unpopular president, Romney is emerging as one of the Republican Party’s most in-demand campaign surrogates.

 

Republicans’ increasing reliance on white voters may not spell electoral doom just yet
WASHINGTON POST
Chris Cillizza
It’s a widely accepted idea that Republicans are sitting on a demographic time bomb: The GOP is getting whiter and whiter in terms of the voters it attracts even as the country is growing increasingly diverse. Marisa Abrajano, an associate professor of political science at the University of California at San Diego, doesn’t dispute that basic notion in a new study of the electorate. But she does suggest that the time bomb may well have a very long fuse — and that in the time before it explodes, Republicans could actually benefit electorally from a consolidation of the white vote.

 

Obama’s role in fall midterms: Walk a fine line
WASHINGTON POST
Dan Balz
What is the line President Obama must walk between now and November? A political strategist who did not want to be identified framed it succinctly: For the next three months, Obama must be a partisan warrior, but not a petty partisan warrior.