Obama Drilling Reversal Jeopardizes Trillions in Economic Opportunity
LSU professor estimates opening rather than restricting offshore drilling would create 1.2 million U.S. jobs annually BATON ROUGE, La., Dec. 2, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — In the wake of an announcement by the administration to reverse its plans to expand offshore oil and gas exploration in the
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Trillions to nation’s economy could come from DREAM Act beneficiaries
Beneficiaries of the DREAM Act, a bill that would grant certain undocumented students and military service members permanent residency in the U.S. and provide a path to citizenship, could contribute trillions to the nation’s economy over the next four decades, according to a new study by researchers at UCLA’s North American Integration and Development Center.
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Federal Reserve Reveals Names Of Firms That Availed Of Emergency Loan During Crisis
D.C., Washington, United States (AHN) – Over 21,000 transactions were made by the U.S. Federal Reserve when it stabilized the financial markets. Details of the transactions made in 2008 and 2009 were posted on the agency’s website upon order by Congress.
The details include names of companies that borrowed money and the amount.
Among the borrowers were:
- Citigroup $2.2 trillion,
- Merrill Lynch $2.1 trillion,
- Morgan Stanley $2 trillion and
- Bank of America $1.1 trillion.
The Fed also loaned to major American companies such as General Electric, AIG, Caterpillar, Verizon, Harley-Davidson and Toyota.
The loans also extended to subsidiaries of U.S. banks in East Asia, Europe and Canada and to large foreign banks such as Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, Deutsche Bank and UBS.
The bulk of the loans were made in the fall of 2008 when the Fed lowered lending benchmarks and extended help to different institutions that never sought assistance from the U.S. central bank before the crisis.
The Fed said most of the loans have been paid back, and none are overdue.
Last month the Fed announced the availability of $600 billion stimulus money. The announcement sparked complaints that the agency was stoking inflation and asset-price bubbles.
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Iran’s First Nuclear Power Plant Now Operational
Bushehr, Iran (AHN) – After years of delays and postponement, Iran’s first nuclear power plant in Bushehr is now operational and will be supplying electricity to the whole of Iran.
Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s atomic energy chief, announced Saturday that the reactor was fueled and operational.
He added that all that is needed is to wait for the water in the reactor to heat up gradually and for further tests to be conducted before electricity could be supplied to Iran’s national electric grid in a month or two.
Construction on the reactor was initiated in the 1970s by Kraftwerk Union, a branch of the German company Siemens, but was halted and the contract rescinded by the Islamic revolution in 1979 and by the Iran-Iraq war.
Russians completed the reactor and were supposed to operate it in 1999 but were interrupted several times by mounting technological and financial challenges as well as by U.S. pressure.
In 2005, Russia agreed to instead supply Iran with nuclear power and take back all spent reactor fuel to enable the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect the plant and assure that the nuclear waste wouldn’t be diverted elsewhere.
The first batch of nuclear fuel was delivered by Russia in 2007. It remains to be seen how the spent nuclear waste will be disposed of, or how operators might deal with the possible threat of a new computer virus attack similar to the sophisticated Stuxnet worm that was widely believed to have stalled the Iranian nuclear plant in recent months.
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Campbell Soup 1Q Profit Down 8 Percent
Camden, NJ, United States (AHN) – Campbell Soup’s earnings for the first quarter of 2011 slid 8 percent but the company maintained its full fiscal year outlook.
Net income for the period ended Oct. 31 was $279 million, or 82 cents per share, down from $304 million, or 87 cents a share, in the previous year.
Revenues dropped 1 percent to $2.1 billion, including the effects of currency.
Soup sales in the United States declined 5 percent, with revenues from ready-to-serve soups plummeting 13 percent despite increased spending to promote the products. Sales for Campbell’s condensed soups were down 1 percent.
Beverage sales jumped 10 percent largely because of increased marketing and product launches under the V8 V-Fusion brand. The double-digit growth, however, was not enough to boost the soups, sauce and beverage segment, which delivered revenues of $1.1 billion, or 3 percent less than last year.
The segment performed well in the Asia Pacific and Europe, but posted weak sales in Latin America.
Baking and snacking was the only segment to post positive growth. It brought in $544 million in revenues, 3 percent higher than a year ago, with the strong performance of Pepperidge Farm products.
Campbell Soup, based in New Jersey, kept its previous forecast for the full year. It projected revenues would rise 1 to 3 percent while earnings per share would grow between 2 to 4 percent.
The 141-year-old company launched a $100 million ad campaign in September to boost sales of its soup brands. The nationwide, multi-media campaign sought to shift focus on the iconic Campbell Soup can to versatility of soups as a snack or ingredient.
“We intend to remain competitive in U.S. soup through the height of the soup season, and it’s likely that margin pressures will persist through the second quarter,” chief executive Douglas Conant said in a statement. “In the second half, we plan to place greater focus on advertising and brand-building initiatives in our marketing efforts.”
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Palestinian Economy Booming, Thanks To Foreign Aid
Gaza, Palestinian Territory (TML) – In the lobby, a pair of workers is hanging large portrait photographs of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, while outside a construction scaffolding sits close by the front entrance, but otherwise the West Bank’s first five-star hotel is open for business.
Banners advertising the Palestinian stock exchange’s annual conference in the grand ballroom adorn centerpieces, while smartly dressed women and men in dark business suits mingle over drinks. Indeed, the demand for conference space is so strong that the Ramallah-based Movenpick Hotel began hosting them before weeks before its first guests checked in.
The peace talks with Israel have stalled, and Hamas and Fatah remain at loggerheads over who is the legitimate ruler of the Palestinian areas. But, the economies of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are shrugging off their uncertain political future and booming. Yet, economists warn, the boom is a precarious one.
“When the political situation allows it, the economy recovers and people rush out and say that is economic development. That’s not what’s happening,” Nathan Brown, professor of political science and international affairs at the George Washington University, told The Media Line.
The International Monetary Fund estimates that their combined gross domestic product will grow 8% this year. In Gaza, whose economy is coming back to life as Israel has eased its three-year-old blockade, GDP is likely to grow 16% in the first half of 2010.
Indeed, Gaza is due to gets its first five-star hotel soon as well, the Palestinian Ma’an news agency reported this month. The hotel was ready to open in 2007 when Hamas seized control of the enclave and forced the developers to mothball it.
Ramallah, the West Bank’s commercial center and unofficial capital, is replete with construction sites, but the prosperity is relative. The West Bank and Gaza are still engaging in catch-up from the days before the Intifada exploded in 2000. The subsequent fours years of violence left 3,400 Palestinian dead ( as well as over 1,000 Israelis) and left the West Bank divided by Israeli army checkpoints’ that continue to choke commerce to this day.
In Gaza, GDP per capita is only 60% of its level in 1994, the year the Oslo peace process with Israel got underway, according to the IMF. More than a third of the working age population is unemployed. The West Bank has fared better, but its per capita GDP only clawed back to its pre-Oslo level last year. Its jobless rate was 16% in the fist half of the year.
Law and order in the cities, and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s campaign to clean up the Palestinian Authority’s finances and a crack down on corruption have all helped boost economic growth in the West Bank. Israel has eased the checkpoint regime. But the main driver for prosperity is huge levels of foreign aid that is used principally to fund the Palestinian Authority’s budget deficit.
The Palestinian Authority is slated to get $1.2 billion in outside assistance this year, a sum equal to about 15% of its GDP. Investment in infrastructure, whether it’s by foreigners or the private sector, is minimal. U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton pledged $150 million more last week. The latest infusion of money brings America’s total direct budget assistance to $225 million for this year alone and overall U.S. support and investment to almost $600 million for the year.
At the Swiss-owned Movenpick, the clientele is mainly business people, not tourists, said Communications Manager Katreena Khalil. The hotel boasts seven conference rooms and is hosting a business woman’s club, but business in Ramallah means mainly government, the United Nations and the non-government that distributes the aid largesse and run health and educational programs.
“What you see is that anything related government expenditure is doing very, very well. But no external investors are rushing to get in,” said Brown.
Moreover, economic growth is focused on residential building, Paul Rivlin, a senior research fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle East and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, told The Media Line.
“The problem is that in an economy that is filled political uncertainty and numerous restrictions,” said Rivlin, author of the book Arab Economies in the 21st Century. “One of the things you can make quick and easy money and meet needs is construction. Building factories has a payoff only when you start production.”
Rivlin said he doubted that the West Bank is threatened with the kind of property bust the U.S. and Dubai have suffered because it isn’t based on speculative investments or poor lending practices. But, he said, poor unless the fundamental situation changes, the long-term prognosis for the Palestinian economy remains poor.
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China: No to climate aid and transparency
China said it will not agree to any deal linking rich nations’ aid to its acceptance of tighter oversight of efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions. |||
China said on Friday it will not agree to any deal linking rich nations’ aid to its acceptance of tighter oversight of efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
The remarks from Huang Huikang, the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s special representative for climate change talks, laid bare rifts between Beijing and rich countries – especially the United States – that could trouble high-level negotiations in Cancun, Mexico.
China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases from human activity, will be a key player when almost 200 governments meet in Cancun from late this month to try to agree on a “green fund” for poor countries and other building blocks for a comprehensive new agreement to combat global warming.
Cancun is meant to be the stepping stone to a legally binding deal next year that would lock governments into reducing the greenhouse gas pollution holding more solar heat in the atmosphere and threatening to tip into dangerous global warming.
Even modest gains at the talks appear tough after a year of bickering between China and the United States, the top greenhouse gas emitters that have also sparred over trade and currency ties.
The U.S., European Union and other governments want China, India and other big emerging economies to shoulder firmer international commitments to control and eventually cut their emissions, and to subject those emissions to tighter monitoring.
Huang told reporters that Beijing hoped to see progress in Cancun, but would not yield on what he said was China’s right to make economic growth an overriding priority.
“Recently, we’ve found that some people have always been making a fuss about so-called (emissions) transparency,” he told a news conference.
The key to success in climate negotiations, he said, was advanced economies leading with big emissions cuts and ensuring more aid and clean technology to help poorer nations.
“These are unconditional and should not be linked to anything else,” he said of rich nations’ efforts.
“This is a strong signal. Previously, we haven’t so strongly stressed that as a matter of principle we believe that improving transparency is not an issue.”
China’s emissions would keep growing for some time, Huang added, but he did not specify for how long.
“China’s overriding priority will be to develop its economy, eliminate poverty and raise people’s welfare, and our energy consumption and (greenhouse gas) emissions will experience reasonable growth for some time,” he said.
“In my personal judgement, the peak will not come any time soon,” he said of China’s greenhouse gas emissions growth.
Huang’s comments underscored the hurdles to crafting a climate treaty that will accommodate the competing demands of emerging and advanced economies.
Governments failed to agree last year on a new legally binding deal. A meeting in Copenhagen last December ended in rancour between rich and developing countries and created a loose, non-binding accord with many gaps.
China’s emissions have more than doubled since 2000 and have outstripped the United States’. In 2009 its emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels were 7.5 billion tonnes, or 24 percent of the global total, according to BP .
Beijing has made a domestic vow to reduce “carbon intensity” – the amount of carbon dioxide emitted for each dollar of economic growth – by 40-45 percent by 2020 compared with 2005. But it says that goal will not be turned into a binding international target that could hinder the country’s choice. – Reuters
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U.S. Chamber says it won’t seek Obama’s defeat
Despite mounting an aggressive attack on many Obama administration policies, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said Wednesday the giant trade association has no intention of working against President Barack Obama’s re-election 21012.
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Huntington Economist Says U.S. Economic Growth Will Be Slow & Steady
COLUMBUS, Ohio, Nov. 17, 2010 /PRNewswire/ — Despite employment worries, the U.S. economy continues to show steady, if unremarkable growth, according to George Mokrzan, Ph.D., senior economist at Huntington (Nasdaq: HBAN) (www.huntington.com). “We can expect to see a steady 2 percent growth rate f
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Labor Issues At Fore Of MLB GM’s Meeting
Orlando, FL, United States (AHN) – Draft changes and playoff expansion were on the mind of baseball’s general managers as they look ahead to collective bargaining negotiations for a new Basic Agreement next year.
Baseball’s GM’s spent Tuesday meeting with Rob Manfred, Major League Baseball’s executive vice president of labor relations and human resources.
Labor issues including the draft and possible expansion of the playoffs were among the topics discussed. Possible postseason expansion could include a second Wild Card team from both leagues.
Both are issues that have to be collectively bargained and addressed as part of labor negotiations.
The current Basic Agreement expires on Dec. 11, 2011.
“We had quite a debate on (the playoff issue),” Rockies GM Dan O’Dowd said after the meeting. “I’m going to think through that to get it a little bit more clearly in my mind. I came in thinking it would be a good idea, but after I listened to it more and more, now I’m not so sure.”
Changes to the draft could include expanding it to amateur players beyond the boundaries of the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico as well as adding a slotting system.
A slotting system would mean a set maximum amount of money for each draft pick per spot.
“There are reasons why Major League players should want a slotting system because what’s not spent on the draft could arguably be spent on Major League players,” New York Mets GM Sandy Alderson said.
MLB commissioner Bud Selig has stated that the discussion of expanding the postseason won’t be determined this week.
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