Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Foreign demand for U.S. securities surges to record
B. Barnhart, Chicago Tribune
You might say the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
Net long-term U.S. securities purchased by foreigners, including Treasuries, stocks and corporate bonds, set a monthly record in May of $126.1 billion, up from $80.3 billion in April and $56.2 billion in March, the Treasury Department reported Tuesday.
The appetite for U.S. securities from overseas stands in sharp contrast to behavior of U.S. mutual fund investors. In May, mutual fund investors sank $11.5 billion of net new cash into international equity funds while withdrawing $10 billion from U.S. equity funds, according to the Investment Company Institute. Overseas bond funds have been hot as well.
Tuesday’s report on foreign demand for U.S. securities came at a critical time, said James McDonald, director of equity research at Northern Trust. China was a net seller of U.S. Treasury securities in April and May, raising worries about financing the U.S. trade deficit.
“It offset the slowdown that China has exhibited as they have started to do a little diversification,” he said.
In fact, despite China’s apparent shift out of Treasuries, net purchases of U.S. securities from overseas were more than double the $60 billion trade deficit in May.
…A major factor in foreign investment strategies is the price of oil, said Michael Woolfolk, senior currency strategist at the Bank of New York. Oil is sold around the world for dollars, placing vast sums of so-called petrodollars in the hands of oil producers in Saudi Arabia, Russia and Norway.
…Asian countries, awash in U.S. dollars because of exports to the U.S., have the same need to recycle dollars.
(18 July 2007)
The US addiction to oil: The battered Hummer that symbolises a divided nation
Leonard Doyle, The Independent
A quiet Washington suburb has become the focus of America’s climate change schism after an act of vandalism by environmental activists.
—
With the sun going down on Brandywine Street and the lawn sprinklers hissing gently in the background, worried groups of neighbours are talking quietly about a shocking act of domestic terrorism that has occurred on their doorsteps.
They chat on the porches of their clapboard colonial-style houses in the dappled early evening light. Some have just returned from the nearby Whole Foods organic store and one worried-looking family pulls up in a Prius. Children pour out carrying musical instruments after attending their lesson.
The scene may appear as a Norman Rockwell work, but Brandywine Street in a suburb of Washington DC is now on the frontline of America’s fractious debate about climate change.
Early on Monday morning, two masked men arrived there wielding baseball bats and a machete. They then set about attacking the enormous Hummer that had been parked there for not even a week. As the owner, Gareth Groves, slept, they smashed every window, battered the panels, slashed the oversized tires and scrawled “for the environ” on the side of the seven-foot-high behemoth.
The attackers caused about $12,000 (£6,000) worth of damage before running into the night. As an act of eco-vandalism, it was not as spectacular as previous episodes in the US. A couple of years ago three environmental activists firebombed several Hummer and 4×4 dealerships in California. One of them is now serving an eight-year jail term in a federal prison and two others are on the run from the FBI.
…Curiously, while opinion polls reveal that given an option, three-quarters of Americans want dramatic increases in fuel efficient cars, they prefer to buy gas-guzzling Hummers, Cadillacs and behemoth-sized pickup trucks instead. Thirty years ago “light trucks”, as 4×4 vehicles are classified, were only a fifth of all sales. Today they account for more than half. And in June, according to the latest figures from General Motors, the world’s largest car manufacturer, Hummer sales were up by 11 per cent.
As the New Yorker magazine put it: “We buy gas guzzlers, but we vote for gas sipping.”
…Now given how fractious the debate has become, over Hummers on suburban roads and the fuel efficiency of American cars, it is unclear whether any fuel requirements will make it into the bill before Congress, or even when the House will get around to debating it.
The attack on the Brandywine Hummer has triggered an outpouring of rage across the country – on both sides of the divide – and the vehicle has become the latest poster boy for America’s failing attempts to grapple meaningfully with climate change.
…Back on Brandywine, the media attention is draining away, but the neighbours are still casting glances at Mrs Groves’ yellow house. For the moment her son is in shock but unrepentant. “To tell you the truth,” he said, “I never even thought about the environmental impact of the Hummer in the months I spent thinking about buying it.”
He is thinking about it a bit more now that the media storm is passing over.
(19 July 2007)
Murdoch’s Arrival Worries Journal Employees
RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA, New York Times
…A few weeks earlier, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation had offered $5 billion to buy Dow Jones. The Bancroft family, owners of a controlling stake in the company, rebuffed the offer at first, but there were signs that some of them were wavering.
Mr. Kann, who had been advising the family against selling, expressed hope that Mr. Murdoch would not prevail, using an image of The Journal as a citadel trying to repel an invasion by tabloid barbarians.
“The drawbridge is up,” Mr. Kann told the group. “So far, so good.”
…So a possible takeover by the News Corporation – the deal is now in the hands of the Bancroft family after the offer received board approval – has placed an unusual strain on the company and its employees. Tensions have risen between The Journal’s newsroom and management, particularly Mr. Zannino, a nonjournalist who had spent much of his career in the garment industry.
Journalists are also facing two futures they never expected when they signed on to jobs they saw more as a mission, not a business – the uncertainty of what Mr. Murdoch would do as an owner, or the uncertainty of a suddenly harsh advertising climate that could lead to deep job cuts.
“There’s a real culture of passion for the truth, for shining lights in dark places and making the mysterious understood,” said a reporter, one of dozens of people interviewed at The Journal and Dow Jones, nearly all of whom asked for anonymity, fearing a backlash from the current regime or the next one. “The overwhelming view here is that under Murdoch, that gets compromised from Day One, and that idea is devastating, heartbreaking, to people.”
… As reporters and editors wait for the Bancroft family’s decision, some see Mr. Murdoch’s bid as a way out of Dow Jones’s long-term business difficulties as a part of a larger media empire run by an engaged, well-capitalized proprietor who loves newspapers.
To others, the proposed deal looks like the end of an ideal of a certain kind of journalism, which The Journal had long protected. It has prompted a labor union within the newsroom to hunt for another buyer.
(19 July 2007)
The Wall Street Journal (the news side, not the editorial page) has always been known for some of the best journalism in the USA. It would be a shame if the WSJ’s were quality to suffer. -BA
Just posted: Dow Jones executive resigns in Murdoch protest
