Your daily briefing for all the top news in Energy, Technology, Finance, and Politics.
Energy
America’s Untapped Energy Weapon
POLITICO
John R. Bolton and T. Boone Pickens
How can America fight back? One necessary response is to begin to break the dependence on foreign oil that has long threatened our national security and compromised our economic viability. Although Iraq’s near-term problems are deeply troubling for oil markets, the longer-term implications for increased Iraqi oil production may be worse. Fortunately, however, America remains secure as the most important source for oil-supply growth worldwide. We should act accordingly now, not later when inadequate supply growth drives oil prices up.
Energy fight turns into money war
POLITICO
Lauren French
The race to become the top Democrat on a powerful energy panel has turned into a money war. Reps. Frank Pallone of New Jersey and Anna Eshoo of California must demonstrate they have the policy chops to serve as ranking member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, but they are also angling to prove they could be a fundraising powerhouse.
Deal Struck in Colorado Over Vote on Drilling
NEW YORK TIMES
Jack Healy
Seeking to head off a costly election-year fight over oil and gas drilling that could threaten vulnerable Colorado Democrats, Gov. John W. Hickenlooper said Monday that he had reached a deal to keep two antifracking measures off November’s ballots.
Shale’s Big Spenders Needn’t Fight the Fed
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Liam Denning
Don’t count on rising rates to swamp shale drilling, though. For one thing, a lot of the sector’s existing debt carries fixed interest rates, perhaps 90% of the amount outstanding, according to Brian Gibbons at CreditSights. The industry also isn’t facing imminent demands to pay back or roll over a lot of this debt. Roughly 60% of the amount outstanding, or $346 billion, doesn’t mature until after 2020, according to data from Mr. Gibbons.
How the U.S. got mixed up in a fight over Kurdish oil — with a unified Iraq at stake
WASHINGTON POST
Steven Mufson
The United Kalavrvta, a tanker the length of three football fields, is carrying about 1 million barrels of crude oil from the Kurdish region of Iraq. It set sail for Galveston, but it never got there. The central government of Iraq, despite recent military setbacks, dispatched its American lawyers to do battle in the federal court in southern Texas, where a judge ruled that the tanker’s cargo, worth about $100 million, should be seized if it came within Texas state waters.
Why open access advocates aren’t thrilled with the DOE’s plan to expand public access to its research
WASHINGTON POST
Andrea Peterson
On Monday, the Department of Energy released its plan to implement a White House directive aimed at opening up more federally funded research to the public. … But some access advocates, such as Heather Joseph, the executive director of Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), say the policy “falls short in some key areas.”
Demand for Sand Takes Off Thanks to Fracking
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Alison Sider
Sand prices are rising and companies are racing to build new mines in South Dakota and other locations as demand intensifies for the silica crystals that energy companies use to frack oil and gas wells.
America’s Oil Export Policy Is Stuck in the ’70s
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Thoman Tunstall
The misalignment between the ever-increasing supply of light U.S. oil and the underutilized heavy-crude facilities on the Gulf Coast suggests that the 40-year ban on oil exports has outlived its usefulness. Congress would be wise to repeal it.
Coal miners: The forgotten men
WASHINGTON TIMES
Editorial
A hundred years have passed since the American economist William Graham Sumner described “the forgotten man” of society. “He works, he votes, generally he prays — but he always pays.” A century on, there is no better description of the thousands of Americans who have toiled for generations in America’s coal mines, and who are now paying dearly for the energy follies of President Obama.
Technology
Wikipedia link to be hidden in Google under ‘right to be forgotten’ law
THE GUARDIAN
Juliette Garside
Google is set to restrict search terms to a link to a Wikipedia article, in the first request under Europe’s controversial new “right to be forgotten” legislation to affect the 110m-page encyclopaedia. … Jimmy Wales, who co-founded Wikipedia in 2001 and has overseen its transformation into the sixth most visited site on the internet, told the Observer: “It’s completely insane and it needs to be fixed.”
How closely is Google really reading your e-mail?
WASHINGTON POST
Hayley Tsukayama
Most users know that Google routinely uses software to scan the contents of e-mails, including images, to feed its advertising and to identify malware. But many may not have been aware that the company is also scanning users’ accounts looking for illegal activity — namely, matching images in e-mails against its known database of illegal and pornographic images of children. That bit of Google policy came to light last week, when a Houston man was arrested on charges of having and promoting child pornography after Google told the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that he had the images in his Gmail account.
China Warns Microsoft Against Obstructing Probe
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Eva Dou
Chinese regulators on Monday publicly warned Microsoft Corp. against obstructing an antitrust investigation into the firm, in the latest sign that Beijing has turned frosty on the U.S. software maker.
Comcast is expanding its $10-a-month Internet program for the poor
WASHINGTON POST
Brian Fung
Comcast is relaxing one of the eligibility requirements for its low-cost Internet access program, Internet Essentials. With the change, more Americans who are in poverty will be able to sign up for the company’s $10-a-month broadband program.
A new FCC proposal would drive a wedge between Sprint and T-Mobile
WASHINGTON POST
Brian Fung
Rumors of a merger between T-Mobile and Sprint, the nation’s third- and fourth-largest wireless carriers respectively, have been swirling all year. As the summer wears on, though, analysts say Sprint’s prospects for buying out T-Mobile are looking increasingly grim — and that meanwhile, T-Mobile has everything to gain if it simply holds out for a better deal.
Finance
Another Lousy Bank Bailout
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
The bailout is also a reminder that for all of their bragging about reforms, European leaders still haven’t done enough to clean up the Continent’s bank balance sheets. Regulators in Portugal and at the European Central Bank were caught by surprise at the magnitude of the bank’s problems. Europe needs to do more before the next recession arrives.
The SEC as Prosecutor and Judge
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Russell G. Ryan
On its website, the SEC accurately describes itself as “first and foremost” a law-enforcement agency. As such, the agency should play no role in deciding guilt and meting out punishment against the people it prosecutes. Those roles should be reserved for juries and life-tenured judges appointed under Article III of the Constitution. Today’s model of penal SEC law enforcement is categorically unsuited for rushed and truncated administrative hearings in which the agency and its own employees serve as prosecutor, judge and punisher. Such administrative prosecution has no place in a constitutional system based on checks and balances, separation of powers and due process.
Focusing on G.M. Unit, U.S. Starts Civil Inquiry of Subprime Car Lending
NEW YORK TIMES
Michael Corkery and Jessica Silver-Greenberg
The inquiry is being undertaken amid worries among some regulators that checks and standards are being neglected as the subprime auto loan market surges, in a small, yet disturbing, echo of the subprime mortgage crisis. Those concerns — and signs that some borrowers’ loan applications had false information about income and employment — were the subject of a front-page article in The New York Times last month. General Motors’ finance subsidiary disclosed in a securities filing on Monday that it had received a Justice Department subpoena for documents on the origination and the securitization of subprime loan contracts since 2007. The subpoena asks for the underwriting criteria and how the loans were represented to those who were pooling them and assembling securities to be sold to investors.
Fed Survey: Mortgage Standards Ease for First Time Since Housing Bust
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Nick Timiraos
Nearly one in four U.S. banks said they had eased mortgage-lending standards for borrowers with strong credit during the second quarter, the largest such movement by lenders since the housing bust hit nearly eight years ago.
Judge’s Ruling Against Bank of America Showcases a Novel Enforcement Strategy
NEW YORK TIMES
Peter Henning
After persistent criticism for not pursuing cases related to the collapse of the housing market, the Justice Department in 2012 started using a once-obscure provision of the Financial Institution Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act, known as Firrea, to sue banks. The government targeted banks that helped fuel the boom in subprime mortgages by making loans to unqualified borrowers and then packaging them as residential mortgage-backed securities sold to investors to finance more loans.
Goldman Sachs Dumps Weaker Hedge-Fund Clients
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Justin Baer and Juliet Chung
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is upending the way it does business with hedge funds, jettisoning less-profitable clients and increasing some fees on others as it adapts to new banking rules, people familiar with the matter said.
Politics
If You Like Your Obamacare Plan, It’ll Cost You
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Sam Baker
People who decide to stick with the coverage they’ve already gotten through Obamacare, rather than switching plans, are at risk for some of the biggest premium spikes anywhere in the system. And some people won’t even know their costs went up until they get a bill from the IRS.
Hospitals Cash In on the Newly Insured
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Christopher Weaver
A rush of newly insured patients using health services has boosted hospital operators’ fortunes but has racked up costs that insurers didn’t anticipate, corporate filings and interviews with executives show.
Challengers From the Right Struggle in G.O.P. Senate Primaries in 2 States
NEW YORK TIMES
Jonathan Martin
What gives Republican officials a measure of confidence in Mr. Alexander’s performance in the primary is that he is facing a multicandidate field, and therefore not all the votes against the incumbent will go to Mr. Carr. Further, unlike many Southern states, Tennessee has no runoff, meaning that Mr. Alexander needs only a plurality of votes on Thursday to win renomination rather than 50 percent. Top Republicans in Washington have been more concerned about Mr. Roberts, who is less vulnerable to an ideologically driven challenge than Mr. Alexander but whose campaign has not been as sophisticated as that of Mr. Alexander. (There has been little public polling in either race.)
Democrats Seize on Social Issues as Attitudes Shift
NEW YORK TIMES
John Harwood
“Udall is running his entire campaign on social issues,” said Brad Dayspring of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “All they talk about is birth control, ‘personhood,’ abortion.” So will many other Democrats this fall. They aim to match President Obama’s feat in 2012, when the incumbent used topics such as same-sex marriage and contraception as weapons to offset his vulnerability on the economy.
