Thursday, February 28, 2013

Halcon Reports; RBN Energy; WSJ Links; How Serious Is The President About Working The Issue? A 7-Minute Photo-Op

The first face-to-face meeting between the president and Congressional leaders to discuss the sequestration is scheduled for Friday: a) hours before the deadline; b) again, the first meeting between the two on this subject; and, c) schedule time: 7 minutes -- three minutes to file in; 1 minute for photos; three minutes to file out. A reminder: this is playing out as expected when the president first suggested a sequestration some months ago. [Later, 1:01 pm: CNBC video with Congress adjourning for the weekend and heading home. It looks like they are not even waiting around for the meeting scheduled tomorrow.  CNBC says the next deadline is "government shutdown, a week and a half from today."]

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment decisions based on what you read here.

WPX reports: Yahoo! In-Play: WPX Energy misses by $0.11, misses on revs: Reports Q4 (Dec) loss of $0.20 per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.11 worse than the Capital IQ Consensus Estimate of ($0.09); revenues fell 8.0% year/year to $572 mln vs the $634.69 mln consensus. Press release here

Halcon reports: Yahoo! In-Play: Halcon Resources reports EPS in-line, beats on revs : Reports Q4 (Dec) earnings of $0.02 per share, excluding non-recurring items, in-line with the Capital IQ Consensus Estimate consensus of $0.02; revenues rose 387.1% year/year to $124.7 mln vs the $114.09 mln consensus.

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Wells coming off the confidential list have been posted (only two, and one was put on DRL status).

RBN Energy talks about the natural gas situation, the pipelines, Canada and the US in the northeast.

WSJ Links

Section D (Personal Journal):

Section C (Money & Investing):
Section B (Marketplace):
Section A:
  • The sequester: identical to "going over the fiscal cliff"; go over the "sequester cliff" and then, get serious: both sides bet they'll have a stronger hand after deadline expires; this should catch one's attention: "The first face-to-face meeting on the issue between President Barack Obama and congressional leaders won't happen until Friday—the deadline for Mr. Obama to set in motion $85 billion in broad spending cuts." Question: why couldn't the president simply ignore the law on this one; plenty of other laws of much more importance have been ignored; I wonder what FDR or Reagan would have done?
  • Gas boom projected to grow for decades. More discussion here.
  • Quietly, SecTreasury confirmed; no links; story everywhere.
  • State gun laws being passed faster than ever; no links; stories everywhere.

2 comments:

  1. Bruce - I wonder why all the projected cuts are domestic?Foreign Aid is never mentioned.

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    Replies
    1. Great point. I would assume it's simply political: citizens of other countries generally don't vote in US elections. But foreign aid will take a hit. For example:

      Israel is set to lose $143 million in foreign aid in 2013 and an additional $32 million in direct military assistance if President Barack Obama and Congress do not work out an agreement to prevent automatic sequestration (google for link).

      I believe the sequestration is across the board in discretionary spending, including foreign aid. If Congress acted, they could increase cuts in some areas; decrease cuts in other areas.

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