Longview Partnership/Chamber of Commerce members asked for their input regarding Deep Sea Drilling and the Financial Reform Bill.  Members overwhelmingly are against another federal moratorium on Deep Sea Drilling  as well as the proposed Financial Reform Bill.  Members input has been shared with both U.S. Senators Cornyn and Hutchison and Rep.

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Chamber members asked about Deep Sea Drilling and Financial Reform

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating misleading marketing by Wall Street banks of so-called “principal protection” notes, according to a recent Bloomberg article by Zeke Faux and Joshua Gallu. The investigation focuses on notes issued by now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers that prominently featured the words “principal protection” or “principal protected” in brochures provided to investors and that were sold as safe investments

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SEC Investigates Sales of So-Called "Principal Protected" Notes

By all reports, BP is ahead of schedule in drilling the relief wells. In fact, BP will likely complete the first relief well this month. The team leader for BP’s relief wells – Boots and Coots – is 40 for 40 in successfully stopping oil spills using relief wells (around 6:10 into video).

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The Relief Wells Are Ahead of Schedule … But Will They Work?

CNBC — Bears Battering Bulls (Click for Video )   CNBC –  Insight on employment and the markets, with Ian Bremmer, Eurasia Group and Nouriel Roubini, Roubini Global Economics and NYU Stern School of Business. —————————————– CNBC — Fixing the Financial System (Click for Video )   CNBC –  The financial reform bill is headed to the Senate later this month, with Chris Whalen, Institutional Risk Analytics; Ian Bremmer, Eurasia Group and Nouriel Roubini, Roubini Global Economics and NYU Stern School of Business. —————————————- CNBC — Final Thoughts (Click for Video )   CNBC –  Concluding market insight, with Ian Bremmer, Eurasia Group and Nouriel Roubini, Roubini Global Economics and NYU Stern School of Business

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Roubini and Bremmer on CNBC Squawk Box: Global Growth Slowdown, Financial Reform, and Global Leadership

In January 2009, I pointed out : The Telegraph’s lead economic writer, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, has an interesting article arguing that we are in 1931-like conditions: A big crash has already happened Things are very gloomy But we haven’t been hit by the biggest crash, the “second leg down” which didn’t end for a couple of years What’s he talking about? Well, look at this chart: ( click here to see full image). As you can see, the 1929 crash was actually very small compared to the “second leg down” crash which didn’t end until 1932 or 1933.

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Is a Massive Head and Shoulders Pattern Completing … Just Like On the Eve of the Second Wave Down in the Great Depression?

Arnold Kling of EconLog talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the weird world of banking. Why do mortgages look the way they do? What do banks contribute to economic activity

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Kling on the Unseen World of Banking, Mortgages, and Government

Each US auto sale is worth $2973 to the chemical industry, according to American Chemistry Council research. And as the chart above shows, current sales remain well below the levels seen in the Boom years

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US auto sales slip as employment growth weakens

The pension funding crisis is causing problems for companies, as life expectancy increases. So the blog was interested to learn that drinks giant Diageo is to hand over whisky worth £500m ($750m) to its pension fund, to help bridge the deficit. Apparently the pensioners won’t be expected to drink it, in lieu of their pension

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Whisky Galore for pensioners

The Pensacola News Journal notes : Dick Snyder, director of the Center for Environmental Diagnostics and Bioremediation at the University of West Florida, began conducting water samples May 3 on Pensacola Beach every Tuesday and Thursday because beach and health officials were only doing visual assessments. What you can’t see in the water may be more dangerous than what you can see, he said. “That’s why we thought we had to start looking for dissolved oil,” he said.

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CLEAR Water Tests Positive for Oil, Officials “Only Doing Visual Assessments”, "What You Can’t See May Be More Dangerous"

When things are going well, potential problem areas get brushed under the carpet. Its only when the economy gets difficult, that tensions surface. Comments by General Electric CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, reported today by the Financial Times, are therefore a worrying sign of the uncertainty at the top of leading global businesses about the economic outlook.

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General Electric’s CEO hits at China, Obama

Kartik Athreya of the Richmond Federal Reserve Bank argues that bloggers are stupid, and that only PhD economists have a right to say anything about economics policy. This distinction is a little ridiculous, given that many of the world’s top PhD economics professors are bloggers

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Did the Fed Economist Slam Bloggers for the Same Reason that Fundamentalist Priests Slammed the Printing Press?

The G-20 is apparently relying on China to drive the world economy. But as I (and many others) have previously pointed out , China isn’t necessarily the unstoppable powerhouse that people assume. The Telegraph notes that: China’s chief auditor has warned that high levels of local government debt could derail the country’s economy, with some observers suggesting that a number of Chinese provinces are even more fiscally-troubled than Greece

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G-20 is Relying on China To Drive the World Economy … But China Isn’t Looking So Hot

In May last year , the blog was hopeful that the major decline in Russian chemical production might start to reverse. And recent ACC regional production figures have indeed shown a welcome improvement in Central and Eastern European output, which was badly hit by the 2008-9 collapse. Once again, the blog is grateful to Sergei Blagov of ICIS news for the data in the above chart, and further insight into some key areas: • Polymers (red line) has been the best performer, as domestic demand has risen along with the economy

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Russia’s chemical output begins to improve

The Department of Energy says that drill pipe from the BP pil well was violently ejected upwards into the blowout preventer. As the Los Angeles Times notes today: A team of scientists from the Energy Department discovered a new twist: Their sophisticated imaging equipment detected not one but two drill pipes, side by side, inside the wreckage of the well’s blowout preventer on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

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Department of Energy: Oil Well Drill Pipe Was Violently Ejected Upwards Into the Blowout Preventer

The Baltic Dry Index of freight costs (for iron ore, grains and coal) follows changes in global demand for bulk shipping. As such, it is an important leading indicator of future economic activity, and chemicals demand. The blog first noted Index movements in October 2007 , when this was accurately forecasting the H1 2008 boom.

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China’s slowdown hits shipping market

Darwin hit it on the nail when he wrote in ‘Origin of the Species’ that ” Unless profitable variations occur, natural selection can do nothing “.

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Home truths about the causes of the financial crisis

CNBC: The Kudlow Report — Crisis Economics: Discussing whether the recession is headed for a double-dip, with Nouriel Roubini, Roubini Global Economics chairman.  (Click for Video [6:48])   All rights reserved, Roubini Global Economics, LLC .

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Roubini on CNBC’s The Kudlow Report: Is the Recession Heading for a Double-Dip?

When the G-20 met in London in April 2009, they produced a Communiqué containing just 688 words . And as the blog noted in conclusion, there was ” no sign of a ‘Plan B’ being developed “, in case the Stimulus measures failed to work

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More words than action at G-20 Summit

A longer and more detailed analysis of this proposal of mine for an orderly restructuring of Greece’s public debt is available to RGE clients: Order from Chaos   From the Financial Times :  It is time to recognise that Greece is not just suffering from a liquidity crisis; it is facing an insolvency crisis too. Rating agencies have started to downgrade its public debt to junk level, while spreads on Greek sovereign bonds last week spiked to new highs. The €110bn bail-out agreed by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund in May only delays the inevitable default and risks making it disorderly when it comes.

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Greece’s Best Option Is an Orderly Default

According to the Volkskrant , each World Cup match of Oranje costs the Netherlands economy 130 mln euro — essentially because people sit around watching telly instead of working. Oranje has yet to sparkle, so there was limited joy to offset the loss in productivity. Thanks to Henry, Ireland’s economy was spared a similar fate — although the Boys in Green certainly would have put in a better performance than les Bleus

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The Hand of Henry

Given that parents are letting their kids play in the oil , please note that the American Academy of Pediatrics has released the following statement on the Gulf oil spill: Children should be directly supervised and should not be allowed to play in or around areas where the water or beach contains oil or sludge . Children, and whenever possible teens, should not be involved in clean-up efforts but should only return after the area is cleaned up. Children should be the last group to return to areas impacted by oil or other toxic substances

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American Academy of Pediatrics: Children Should Stay Away from Oil

The blog is a great believer in the retail sector’s ability to help us forecast chemical industry trends. McBride is Europe’s leading ‘own brand’ in the household and personal sector. Its profit warning on Thursday of ” weak retail sales across Europe “, therefore rings alarm bells.

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McBride warns of "weak retail sales across Europe"

In today’s Business Post , Colm argues that “smart” should be defined broadly if it is to stimulate economic growth, rather than the narrow focus on gadgets that the government is currently following Others and I have argued roughly the same, in different words, but without much traction I guess that in ten years time, when an independent expert will evaluate the lack of return on investment in the smart economy, politicians will argue no one had warned them at the time

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Colm Kearney on the smart economy

It’s crunch time for financial reform, and Wall Street banks are lobbying hard to keep a central pillar of financial reform from becoming law, and, at the same time, are planning ways of getting around whatever financial reform restrictions do become law, according to a recent New York Times article by Eric Dash and Nelson D. Schwart titled “Banking Lobbyists Make a Run at Reform Measures.”

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Wall Street Intensifies Efforts to Thwart Financial Reform as Greed Trumps Common Sense

This guest blog is by Mick Moran , WJM MacKenzie Professor   of Government, University of Manchester and is an edited text of the k eynote address to the Biennial Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research Standing Group on Regulatory Governance,  and was presented at University College Dublin, 18 June 2010. Regulation and the Financial Crisis The mess we are in.

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Regulation and the Financial Crisis