GM: Global marketing chief Joel Ewanick resigns

General Motors Co. Sunday said that Global Chief Marketing Officer Joel Ewanick has elected to resign, effective immediately.
GM spokesman Greg Martin said Ewanick was departing "because he failed to meet the company's expectations of an employee of the company." Martin declined to elaborate.
Ewanick issued a statement through Twitter this evening, tweeting: "It has been a privilege & honor to work with the GM Team and to be a small part of Detroit's turnaround. I wish everyone at GM all the best."
Ewanick, 52, joined GM in May 2010 as head of marketing for the company's North America unit. He was named global chief marketing officer in December 2010. Alan Batey, vice president, U.S. Sales and Service, will assume the role of global chief marketing officer on an interim basis.
Ewanick, a longtime auto industry veteran, has overseen a number of controversial decisions at GM, including a move to halt advertising on social networking site Facebook and to announce that the automaker will not advertise in next year's Super Bowl. The company said this month it may return to advertising on Facebook.
The company announced in January it was consolidating ad agencies as the automaker spends about $4.5 billion on advertising worldwide and has played hardball with television networks, demanding steep price cuts for advertising.

From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120729/AUTO0103/207290332#ixzz22718VDV6

Drought of Ideas in Congress Is Worse Than in Farm Belt

The worst drought in more than a half-century is gripping most of the U.S. Midwest and South, damaging crops and presaging higher food prices.
Congress is deadlocked as it tries to pass a new farm bill, as it does every five years, amid demands for broad emergency assistance for the hardest hit areas.
This impasse may be the best thing that one could hope for, considering the flaws in the proposed legislation. Instead of trying to adopt a new bill before its August recess, Congress should approve a one-year extension of the current law and create a narrow aid package aimed mainly at livestock producers. As bad as the existing law is, there is no reason to replace it with legislation that’s even worse.
Although some ranchers might need emergency aid, existing crop insurance protects 85 percent of the nation’s cultivated land against losses, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This summer’s drought also follows a year when farm net income was a record $98 billion, thanks to some of the highest commodities prices ever.
This isn’t to play down the severity of the drought, which started last winter with reduced snowfall. More than half the country is officially in a drought, and the Agriculture Department has declared 1,300 counties -- about a third of the nation -- disaster areas. Much of the U.S. corn crop, the world’s largest, has been damaged, and some of it has been destroyed.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-29/drought-of-ideas-in-congress-is-worse-than-in-farm-belt.html

Japan Industrial Output Falls as Korea Confidence Sinks

Japan’s industrial production unexpectedly declined and South Korean manufacturers’ confidence dropped to a three-year low, building the case for extra monetary and fiscal measures to aid growth.
Production fell 0.1 percent in June from May, when it slid 3.4 percent, Japan’s Trade Ministry said today. The median estimate of 29 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News was for a 1.5 percent gain. The South Korean confidence index for August was at 70 after 81 for July, the central bank said.
The signs of weakness kick off a week that UBS AG says will be among the year’s most important for financial markets, with the U.S. Federal Reserve and central banks in the U.K. and the euro region meeting to consider fresh stimulus efforts. The Reserve Bank of India will release its monetary policy decision tomorrow as it weighs inflation risks against the weakest economic growth since 2003.
“It’s increasingly likely that the Fed and European Central Bank will ease further by September,” said Masamichi Adachi, a senior economist at JPMorgan Securities in Tokyo and a former central bank official. In Japan, the government may implement a supplementary budget by September, with the central bank expanding asset purchases, Adachi said.
Today’s Korean data followed a slide in a measure of the nation’s consumer confidence.
South Korean Finance Minister Bahk Jae Wan said the economy is in a “difficult” situation. “I will do everything I can to find a solution for the sluggish domestic economy,” Bahk said today in a speech to government officials in Gwacheon.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-30/japan-s-june-industrial-output-falls-as-recovery-loses-momentum.html

Europe pulls the wrong lever

I’ve long held the view that contagion into Italy and/or Germany would be the key driver for more definitive action from Europe. Although we’ll have to wait until Thursday (Frankfurt time) for the ECB’s executive council meeting to find out the details the rumours are already swirling.
Last Friday world market’s got very excited by the “whatever it takes” remarks from Mario Draghi, however they were connected with “within our mandate” so it is yet to be seen exactly what the ECB will deliver. Obviously there is the downside risk of disappointment. We also need to remember that German constitutional court is still deliberating over the ESM and isn’t due to make a decision until September 12.
There are a number of ideas circulating ranging from a re-instatement of the SMP, another lowering of rates and collateral rules, through to a banking licenses for the ESM. At this point in time I think that later is a stretch way too far, but adjustments to the EFSF/ESM in order for it to make primary market purchase with support from the SMP may well be in the offing, well at least mentioned anyway.
According to various sources, the French and German governments (although I will note that Schauble’s version appears very muted ) are on-board with re-newed ECB intervention while the Bundesbank is against it. The Bundesbank reaction is expected but it must be noted that Germany only holds 2 seats on the 23 seat council, in other words no matter what their opinion they can be out-voted. The Bundesbank’s influence on the Constitutional court is obviously another matter and far more important in my opinion. There also appears to be some foreign influence with Mr Geithner once again making an appearance on European shores.

Read more: http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2012/07/europe-pulls-the-wrong-lever/

GLOBAL ECONOMY WEEKAHEAD

* All eyes on bond-buying hints from ECB chief
* ECB likely to hold fire for now
* Fed to stay on hold, too, awaiting data flow

Mario Draghi may not need to show his money this week, but impatient markets will be unforgiving if the European Central Bank chief does not flesh out his dramatic promise to do whatever is needed to save the euro.
Given the threat that the long-running euro zone crisis poses to the global economy, Thursday's ECB policy-setting meeting and subsequent news conference were always going to be important.
But they have become pivotal since Draghi vowed in London last Thursday that "within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough."
Specifically, Draghi said the ECB had a mandate to act if diverging borrowing costs were disrupting the transmission of monetary policy across the 17-country single currency area.
This is patently the case. The ECB's interest rate cut on July 5 to 0.75 percent has failed to reduce the giddily high cost of money for governments, banks and companies on the rim of the bloc, notably Spain and Italy. Sovereign yields in Germany and the Netherlands, by contrast, are negative.
Yet even as capital flees the periphery and euro zone output shrinks, few economists think Draghi is ready to announce that the ECB is resuming secondary-market bond purchases to lower yields, a policy it has pursued in the past with limited success.

Read more: http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/07/30/economy-global-weekahead-idINL6E8IS2F720120730

Scientists Use Microbes to Make 'Clean' Methane

Microbes that convert electricity into methane gas could become an important source of renewable energy, according to scientists from Stanford and Pennsylvania State universities.
Researchers at both campuses are raising colonies of microorganisms, called methanogens, which have the remarkable ability to turn electrical energy into pure methane -- the key ingredient in natural gas. The scientists' goal is to create large microbial factories that will transform clean electricity from solar, wind or nuclear power into renewable methane fuel and other valuable chemical compounds for industry.
"Most of today's methane is derived from natural gas, a fossil fuel," said Alfred Spormann, a professor of chemical engineering and of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford. "And many important organic molecules used in industry are made from petroleum. Our microbial approach would eliminate the need for using these fossil resources."
While methane itself is a formidable greenhouse gas, 20 times more potent than CO₂, the microbial methane would be safely captured and stored, thus minimizing leakage into the atmosphere, Spormann said.
"The whole microbial process is carbon neutral," he explained. "All of the CO₂ released during combustion is derived from the atmosphere, and all of the electrical energy comes from renewables or nuclear power, which are also CO₂-free."

Read more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120727144534.htm

The “Fatal Conceit” of Federal Hydraulic Fracturing Regs

There is a push to implement federal regulations on hydraulic fracturing or “fracking.” There are plenty of problems with the specific regulations that proponents have in mind. However, we can also step back and realize that the very premise of federal regulations on hydraulic fracturing ignore the lessons in humility that Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek tried to teach.
Whatever one thinks of the pros and cons of hydraulic fracturing, clearly the alleged dangers are local issues. In other words, even if we accept for the sake of argument that hydraulic fracturing cannot be economically justified because its total costs (all things considered) outweigh its total benefits, notice that these costs would be borne by the people living near the hydraulic fracturing. People in Hawaii have absolutely nothing on the line when it comes to the issue of hydraulic fracturing in (say) Pennsylvania. In fact, the people in Hawaii only stand to benefit from hydraulic fracturing, because the only way it can impact them is by providing lower energy prices.
Thus we see that hydraulic fracturing, by its very nature, confers benefits on the whole world (in the form of greater supplies of oil and natural gas) while any potential harms are concentrated primarily in the communities where the hydraulic fracturing actually occurs. Thus any federal regulations that hindered hydraulic fracturing would be nonsensical, and would amount to pure paternalism. It would effectively mean the representatives of the American people in general, were telling the people in Pennsylvania (say) that they are too stupid to make decisions about hydraulic fracturing that could harm only them, and therefore the rest of us will have to take that responsibility away from them.

Read more: http://www.productsandpower.org/2012/07/29/the-fatal-conceit-of-federal-hydraulic-fracturing-regs/