Enough With the Low Interest Rates! by Charles S. Schwab, The Wall Street Journal
“The negative impact of current policy is clear. The near-zero interest rate experiment is weighing on consumer and investor confidence, and the Fed signals its lack of confidence with each “extended period” proclamation…Small businesses that create jobs are unable to borrow in any meaningful amounts except via 100% collateralized loans. Banks continue to hold large capital bases, mostly because they have no definitive signal yet from the federal government or regulators about what their capital requirements will be…The Fed should then move quickly to help rates float and find a more natural level. Lenders would be less afraid of getting slammed by a sudden shift in government monetary policy, knowing instead that their pricing of credit is based on market conditions, which have historical precedent and some measure of long-term predictability.”
Deficit Hawks Threaten Ethanol’s Future by Alan Bjerga and Mario Parker, Bloomberg Businessweek
“People are worried about deficits, debt, and special-interest handouts,” [Jim] Sensenbrenner says. “Ethanol is all three.”… Today the U.S. offers a 45¢ per gallon tax credit to refiners that blend ethanol with gasoline. The government also requires gasoline makers to use a steadily increasing amount of the additive, and it imposes an import tariff to deter foreign competition…The tax credit, worth more than $4.7 billion last year, expires on Dec. 31, as does the protective tariff…he battle over ethanol’s future pits the industry, corn farmers, and the U.S. Agriculture Dept. against a growing cadre of environmental groups, cattle ranchers, and deficit hawks like Sensenbrenner.”
A Cheaper, Safer Way to Move Natural Gas by Kevin Bullis, Technology Review
“Storing and shipping natural gas by trapping it in ice–using technology being developed by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy–could cut shipping costs for the fuel, making it easier for countries to buy natural gas from many different sources, and eventually leading to more stable supplies worldwide…The technology traps natural gas in the form of methane hydrate, in which methane, the main component of natural gas, is confined within cage-like ice crystals…The results of a methane hydrate demonstration project in Japan by Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding, a large maker of ships for transporting oil and natural gas, suggested that the total cost of transporting methane hydrate–including the infrastructure required to make it and release the gas at its destination–could be “much lower than that of LNG,” according to the company…The snow-like hydrate can be packed into cubes and loaded into the refrigerated ships, boxcars, and trucks now used to ship frozen food at -10 °C. That temperature is far easier and cheaper to manage than the -162 °C required for LNG.”
