Daily Digest
Daily Digest 6/4 - Carving Up Iraq Barrel By Barrel, Portugal Cuts Growth Forecast, MI Spill Highlights Need For Safety Overhaul
by Daily Digest
Monday, June 4, 2012, 10:03 AM
- Don Coxe - Emergency Fed Meeting & Gold Backed Bonds
- Carving Up Iraq, Barrel By Barrel
- Merrill Losses Were Withheld Before Bank of America Deal
- Portugal Cuts Growth Forecast, Adding to Economic Gloom
- Rainwater Harvesting in the Amazon Cleans up Where Oil Left its Mark
- Michigan Oil Spill Highlights Need for Safety Overhaul
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Economy
Don Coxe - Emergency Fed Meeting & Gold Backed Bonds (Thomas C.)
With continued turmoil in global markets, today King World News interviewed 40 year veteran Don Coxe, Global Strategy Advisor to BMO ($538 billion in assets). Coxe shocked KWN by saying that Europe is actively working to introduce gold backed bonds. He said, “They would have the security of gold.” Coxe stated we could see this take place “within the next three months ... because this crisis is developing so fast.” Coxe also discussed the possibility of an emergency Fed meeting, but first, here is what Coxe had to say about the spectacular gold rally which took place on Friday: “First of all, a rally like this, you know a huge amount of it is short covering. The short positions had been building up on this. We were having one of the highest short positions on the gold futures that we’ve seen in a long time.”
Carving Up Iraq, Barrel By Barrel (James S.)
Internal politics get even trickier when you add to the mix in-fighting over oil with the country’s Kurdish north. Baghdad went as far as to slip a clause in the contracts on auction forbidding international companies from signing any deals with the semiautonomous Kurdish north. The addition of this clause was a direct response to a skirmish with Exxon Mobil, which had the audacity to sign a contract with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in October last year for six exploration blocks. From Baghdad’s perspective, this was an illegal deal that threatens Iraq’s sovereignty. The clause also comes amid rumblings that other oil giants, including Shell and Total, are considering similar deals with the Kurdish north that would bypass Baghdad.
Merrill Losses Were Withheld Before Bank of America Deal (jdargis)
The filing in the shareholder suit included sworn testimony from Mr. Lewis in which he concedes that before Bank of America stockholders voted to approve the deal he had received loss estimates relating to the Merrill deal that were far greater than reflected in the figures that had appeared in the proxy documents filed with regulators. Shareholders rely on statements made in proxy filings to decide whether to approve transactions their companies have proposed, and companies must disclose all facts that could be meaningful for shareholders trying to decide how to vote on a deal.
Portugal Cuts Growth Forecast, Adding to Economic Gloom
Portugal last year sought 78 billion euros, or $97 billion, from the European Union, the European Central bank, and the International Monetary Fund after a loss of confidence in its public finances left it unable to access the bond market. Of the funds, 12 billion euros was earmarked to repair banks’ tattered balance sheets.
Energy
Rainwater Harvesting in the Amazon Cleans up Where Oil Left its Mark (jdargis)
Collecting and processing rainwater in such a polluted place requires extra care. The harvesting systems that ClearWater is using were designed specifically for this area: They have a filtration layer that targets the heavy metals that pollute the area, Anderson says. And the group is going to be doing tests on the water to make sure that it is clean enough to serve as drinking and cooking water—which would be its primary use.
Michigan Oil Spill Highlights Need for Safety Overhaul (James S.)
A few shifts later, it appears operators were still debating what happened with Line 6B. A manager had suggested that "something else" was going on, possibly with the "computer or the instrumentation." If it was a rupture, the manager said, "someone is going to notice that and smell it." At 11am on the morning of July 27, a utility company employee reported Talmadge Creek "was black" and got a call in to Enbridge. Residents in Marshall, however, had called the police to report odors at 9 pm on July 26, but nobody bothered to call Enbridge.
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