Thanks to freedom of information, we know all about Sarah Palin’s tanning habit
In January, when Obama hailed the bank reform plan of the octogenarian Paul Volcker, the conventional wisdom swiftly decided that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was toast. In an administration whose attention to podium placing is reminiscent of the old Soviet Politburo, Geithner’s demotion to the side of the stage as Obama announced “the Volcker plan” was seen as the prelude to the exit. But not long after Geithner was embraced by his president as Obama walked to the podium to deliver the state of the union address. Together with the announcement of a 5.7 per cent growth rate in 2009’s final quarter, suddenly Geithner looked safe again.
But then someone tipped off MIT professor Simon Johnson, who wrote on his influential blog that “The White House is floating, ever so gently, the notion that they are open to nominations for the position of ‘Tim Geithner’s successor.’” Johnson is a former chief economist of the IMF (and Prospect’s public intellectual of the financial crisis—see p18 for his column).
Johnson’s own nominee for the job, Tom Hoenig of the Kansas City branch of the Fed, wasn’t quite at the stage of measuring up curtains for his new office, but Washington hostesses were pencilling his name into their Rolodexes. But then somebody got around to asking White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel for his opinion—which was that, in the current mood of the senate, the White House “could nominate Adam (expletive deleted) Smith” and not get him confirmed. So Geithner now looks safe, at least until November’s midterms.
Fracking for America
The “cap-and-trade” bill to combat climate change is dead, and not just because of the unhappy outcome of the Copenhagen summit. Nor can its death be blamed on the simpler bipartisan bill now offered by Senators Maria Cantwell (Democrat) and Susan Collins (Republican) that goes by the name cap-and-dividend. It proposes to auction carbon emissions payments and then give the money raised back to taxpayers to defray their higher fuel bills.
The real reason is that a quiet revolution is underway in the US energy world. The combination of fracking (using water and chemicals to fracture shale rock) and horizontal drilling has opened up vast reserves of previously unobtainable natural gas. Last year, the US overtook Russia as a natural gas producer and some analysts think it could soon be a net exporter. The US now has 100 years of gas reserves and they keep finding more of the stuff.
Despite environmental concerns about the impact on subterranean water supplies, fracking is being touted in congress as the game-changing event that will reduce US dependence on imported energy. It has already led to Gazprom delaying investment in its giant Shtokman field, intended to supply the US market. And gas is so much cleaner than coal that the US should comfortably meet Obama’s latest pledge to cut carbon emissions 17 per cent by 2020. There’s good news for Europe, too. According to Stephen Holditch, who runs the petroleum engineering department at Texas A&M university, fracking can provide western Europe with over 500 trillion cubic feet of gas—or 200 years of Britain’s annual consumption.
Snow and unemployment The February snow will lead to dismal US unemployment figures in the next labour department monthly report, due on 5th March. The total number of people employed will fall by as much as 100,000. A Deutschebank economist who measured the impact of previous blizzards estimates that the bad weather could mean that only 35,000 jobs are added in February, rather than the projected 125,000-plus.
On the other hand, the labour department suspects that their weekly reports on the number of newly unemployed could look better than they really are, since the blocked roads and stalled public transport systems make it tough to get to the local unemployment office and file a claim.
Republicans get scribbling
Sarah Palin’s book tour got her a lot of publicity, but other Republican hopefuls for the 2012 presidential nomination have been bashing away on their laptops too. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is about to publish No Apology: The Case for American Greatness. He plans to use the book tour to reinvent himself as the Republican centrist—which is odd, considering his 2008 campaign was based on him being a conservative. But the new Romney has shunned the populists of the tea party movement and appears to see same-sex marriage and gays in the military as a done deal, with social mores changing too fast for Republicans to reverse the tide.
The Christian evangelical candidate and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee published his book, A Simple Christmas: Twelve Stories That Celebrate the True Holiday Spirit, last year. The soggily sentimental tome reached number three in the New York Times bestseller list. And like Sarah Palin, Huckabee appears on television for the Fox network. His radio show, The Huckabee Report, is the fastest growing radio programme of the past decade.
But all their hopes of winning the New Hampshire primary have just been dented by the emergence of an unexpected New England rival. Scott Brown, the new Republican senator from Massachusetts (and former Cosmopolitan nude model) is writing “an inspirational book” and has hired super-lawyer Robert Barnett as his agent.
The pre-campaign will soon start to get dirty. Expect to hear a lot about the 3,000 emails of Palin’s husband Todd, known as “first dude,” recently obtained through a Freedom of Information Act inquiry. Particularly the one about how the Palins coached her staff to disguise the amount of electrical work needed at the Alaska governor’s mansion to hook up her tanning bed.
In January, when Obama hailed the bank reform plan of the octogenarian Paul Volcker, the conventional wisdom swiftly decided that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was toast. In an administration whose attention to podium placing is reminiscent of the old Soviet Politburo, Geithner’s demotion to the side of the stage as Obama announced “the Volcker plan” was seen as the prelude to the exit. But not long after Geithner was embraced by his president as Obama walked to the podium to deliver the state of the union address. Together with the announcement of a 5.7 per cent growth rate in 2009’s final quarter, suddenly Geithner looked safe again.
But then someone tipped off MIT professor Simon Johnson, who wrote on his influential blog that “The White House is floating, ever so gently, the notion that they are open to nominations for the position of ‘Tim Geithner’s successor.’” Johnson is a former chief economist of the IMF (and Prospect’s public intellectual of the financial crisis—see p18 for his column).
Johnson’s own nominee for the job, Tom Hoenig of the Kansas City branch of the Fed, wasn’t quite at the stage of measuring up curtains for his new office, but Washington hostesses were pencilling his name into their Rolodexes. But then somebody got around to asking White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel for his opinion—which was that, in the current mood of the senate, the White House “could nominate Adam (expletive deleted) Smith” and not get him confirmed. So Geithner now looks safe, at least until November’s midterms.
Fracking for America
The “cap-and-trade” bill to combat climate change is dead, and not just because of the unhappy outcome of the Copenhagen summit. Nor can its death be blamed on the simpler bipartisan bill now offered by Senators Maria Cantwell (Democrat) and Susan Collins (Republican) that goes by the name cap-and-dividend. It proposes to auction carbon emissions payments and then give the money raised back to taxpayers to defray their higher fuel bills.
The real reason is that a quiet revolution is underway in the US energy world. The combination of fracking (using water and chemicals to fracture shale rock) and horizontal drilling has opened up vast reserves of previously unobtainable natural gas. Last year, the US overtook Russia as a natural gas producer and some analysts think it could soon be a net exporter. The US now has 100 years of gas reserves and they keep finding more of the stuff.
Despite environmental concerns about the impact on subterranean water supplies, fracking is being touted in congress as the game-changing event that will reduce US dependence on imported energy. It has already led to Gazprom delaying investment in its giant Shtokman field, intended to supply the US market. And gas is so much cleaner than coal that the US should comfortably meet Obama’s latest pledge to cut carbon emissions 17 per cent by 2020. There’s good news for Europe, too. According to Stephen Holditch, who runs the petroleum engineering department at Texas A&M university, fracking can provide western Europe with over 500 trillion cubic feet of gas—or 200 years of Britain’s annual consumption.
Snow and unemployment The February snow will lead to dismal US unemployment figures in the next labour department monthly report, due on 5th March. The total number of people employed will fall by as much as 100,000. A Deutschebank economist who measured the impact of previous blizzards estimates that the bad weather could mean that only 35,000 jobs are added in February, rather than the projected 125,000-plus.
On the other hand, the labour department suspects that their weekly reports on the number of newly unemployed could look better than they really are, since the blocked roads and stalled public transport systems make it tough to get to the local unemployment office and file a claim.
Republicans get scribbling
Sarah Palin’s book tour got her a lot of publicity, but other Republican hopefuls for the 2012 presidential nomination have been bashing away on their laptops too. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is about to publish No Apology: The Case for American Greatness. He plans to use the book tour to reinvent himself as the Republican centrist—which is odd, considering his 2008 campaign was based on him being a conservative. But the new Romney has shunned the populists of the tea party movement and appears to see same-sex marriage and gays in the military as a done deal, with social mores changing too fast for Republicans to reverse the tide.
The Christian evangelical candidate and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee published his book, A Simple Christmas: Twelve Stories That Celebrate the True Holiday Spirit, last year. The soggily sentimental tome reached number three in the New York Times bestseller list. And like Sarah Palin, Huckabee appears on television for the Fox network. His radio show, The Huckabee Report, is the fastest growing radio programme of the past decade.
But all their hopes of winning the New Hampshire primary have just been dented by the emergence of an unexpected New England rival. Scott Brown, the new Republican senator from Massachusetts (and former Cosmopolitan nude model) is writing “an inspirational book” and has hired super-lawyer Robert Barnett as his agent.
The pre-campaign will soon start to get dirty. Expect to hear a lot about the 3,000 emails of Palin’s husband Todd, known as “first dude,” recently obtained through a Freedom of Information Act inquiry. Particularly the one about how the Palins coached her staff to disguise the amount of electrical work needed at the Alaska governor’s mansion to hook up her tanning bed.
