National Oilwell warns of
'severe downturn' in 2015 - (www.cnbc.com) Top
U.S. oilfield equipment maker National
Oilwell Varco warned
of a severe downturn in its business after orders for its drilling parts
plunged nearly 90 percent, underscoring the extent of the spending cuts caused
by the oil price slump. The gloomy outlook outweighed a better-than-expected
fourth-quarter profit, sending the company's shares down 5.3 percent on
Tuesday. Crude prices have more than halved since June due to global oversupply
and tepid demand growth, prompting oil producers to pull out of lower-margin
projects. "Customers are delaying purchases of both capital and
consumables wherever possible, seeking to conserve cash in the face of market
uncertainty," Chief Executive Clay Williams said on a post-earnings call. "Our
customers are quickly cutting spending and the downturn we face will be severe
in 2015 and possibly beyond," Williams said.
California
lawmakers seek to end 'personal belief' vaccine exemptions - (www.reuters.com) Responding to an outbreak of measles that has
infected more than 100 people, two California lawmakers said on Wednesday they
would introduce legislation to end the right of parents in the state to exempt
their children from school vaccinations based on personal beliefs. California
public health officials say 92 people have been diagnosed with measles in the
state, many of them linked to an outbreak that they believe began when an
infected person from outside the country visited Disneyland in late December. More
than a dozen other cases have been confirmed in 19 other U.S. states and Mexico, renewing a debate over the so-called
anti-vaccination movement in which fears about potential side effects of
vaccines, fueled by now-debunked science, have led a small minority of parents
to refuse to allow their children to be vaccinated.
Stocks will be 'ripped to
smithereen's':SocGen bear - (www.cnbc.com) Societe
Generale's notoriously bearish strategist, Albert Edwards, has warned that the
deflation threat currently dogging the euro zone is greater in the U.S. and
that equity markets will soon be "ripped to smithereens." "The
deflationary fault line on which the U.S. sits is every bit as precarious as
that of the euro zone, but is being disguised," he said in a new research
note on Thursday. "The scales will soon lift from the market's eyes."
Despite years of central bank easing, consumer price growth across the world
has begun to stagnate with the
euro zone recently falling into deflationary territory - when consumer price growth turns
negative. An official flash figure for the 19-country region last week showed
prices fell by 0.6 percent year-on-year in January. Across the Atlantic,
consumer prices increased 0.8 percent in the 12 months through December, the
weakest reading since October 2009. The U.S. might be posting better figures
than the euro zone, but Edwards argues that it's not a like-for-like comparison.
US productivity spins into
reverse, down 1.8% - (www.cnbc.com) U.S. nonfarm productivity braked more sharply
than expected in the fourth quarter, while unit labor costs rebounded after
falling in the prior three months. The Labor Department said Thursday
productivity fell at a 1.8 percent annual rate after rising at a revised 3.7
percent pace in the third quarter. Economists had forecast productivity, which
measures hourly output per worker, rising at a 0.5 percent pace. Productivity
was relatively weak for much of last year, increasing 0.8 percent compared with
0.9 percent in 2013. Unit labor costs, a key gauge of inflation and profit
pressures that measures the price of labor for any given unit of output,
increased at a 2.7 percent rate in the fourth quarter after falling at a 2.3
percent rate in the third quarter.
Convicted
Fraudster Jonathan Hay, Harvard's Man Who Wrecked Russia, Resurfaces in Ukraine - (www.nakedcapitalism.com) You cannot make this stuff up. One of the
sorriest chapters in recent American history was how we allowed an
unprecedented opportunity to assist Russia in managing the end of its Communist
era to turn into a looting exercise by well-placed insiders, including advisors
under contract to Harvard. If you are unfamiliar with this fiasco, which was also the true
proximate cause of Larry Summers’ ouster from Harvard, you must read an extraordinary
expose, How Harvard Lost Russia, from Institutional Investor. I am told
copies of this article were stuffed in every Harvard faculty member’s inbox the
day Summers got a vote of no confidence and resigned shortly thereafter. Jonathan
Hay ran the day-to-day operations of the Russia Project. He was found guilty of violating
three counts of the False Claims Act and was debarred from serving in USAID.
But he’s managed to resurface in Ukraine, working in the local operations of a
Polish think tank. Nicely played. By John Helmer, the longest continuously serving foreign
correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own
bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been
a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece,
the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US
presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia.
Originally published at Dances with
Bears
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