WSJ Links; Gut Check for Heidi -- Opportunity To Break Up Family Farms

Wow, wow, wow -- foreshadowing the Great Recession of 2013. I first blogged about this a week or so ago, citing a Boston Globe article. This morning, it's the top story above the fold, front page of the Wall Street Journal: investment falls off a cliff.

U.S. companies are scaling back investment plans at the fastest pace since the recession, signaling more trouble for the economic recovery.

Half of the nation's 40 biggest publicly traded corporate spenders have announced plans to curtail capital expenditures this year or next, according to a review by The Wall Street Journal of securities filings and conference calls.

Nationwide, business investment in equipment and software—a measure of economic vitality in the corporate sector—stalled in the third quarter for the first time since early 2009. Corporate investment in new buildings has declined.

At the same time, exports are slowing or falling to such critical markets as China and the euro zone as the global economy downshifts, creating another drag on firms' expansion plans.

Elections have consequences.

A full page shouting graphic covers the front page of the fourth section: CEOs to Washington: strike a deal -- and do it now!

Speaking of "elections have consequences."

Opportunity for Ms Heitkamp to break up family farms.

Whether or not tax breaks are extended for all but the top 2%, an increase in the estate tax is a given, or is it? Will Ms Heitkamp provide the deciding vote for Mr Obama?

This will be a gut-check for Ms Heitkamp: supporting the President's goal to eliminate the Bush tax breaks will likely break up North Dakota farms. This article was in The Bismarck Tribune earlier, but it's been removed. New link:

Agriculture organizations are sounding the alarm about estate tax changes that could break up family farms if Congress does not act to stop them before January.

NAWG and more than 30 other farm organizations wrote every House and Senate office this week to urge prioritization of this important issue for farmers and ranchers.

The estate tax changes as planned could devastate family businesses in the agriculture sector by dramatically reducing the estate tax exemption, from $5 million to $1 million, while also dramatically increasing the estate tax rate, from 35 percent to 55 percent.

Many farm businesses that provide the primary income for the families who operate them would reach the $1 million threshold quickly with just a few pieces of equipment and less than 100 acres of land. This means parts of the business would almost certainly have to be split off and sold to pay taxes after the death of the primary owner.

America's oil boom: Shape up or ship out

U.S. crude-oil exports are heavily restricted. Refined products such as gasoline can be shipped abroad more easily—indeed, the U.S. became a net exporter of these last year for the first time since 1949. Refiners have been selling increasing amounts in foreign markets as domestic demand has sagged amid economic sluggishness and renewed energy-conservation efforts.

Pressure to export crude oil won't grow because the U.S. will suddenly no longer need imports. The Department of Energy expects net imports to meet 39% of domestic oil consumption in 2013. Rather, it is a matter of logistics.The rapid increase in onshore U.S. oil output in states such as North Dakota, as well as rising Canadian oil-sands output, has created a glut in the Midwest. As a result, domestic grades sell for less than international benchmarks such as Brent. West Texas Intermediate, or WTI, trades at about $87 a barrel, $22 or 20% below Brent.

Hostess union clings to hope

The union that brought the 85-year-old baker of Twinkies and Wonder Bread to its knees is holding out hope that a buyer will salvage chunks of the company and send the union's members back to work, even as Hostess Brands Inc. gears up for a fire sale.

Hostess, the company behind treats snacked on for generations, is poised on Monday to present to a federal bankruptcy judge a plan to shut down 36 plants and sell off the company's business. The liquidation was sparked by a nationwide strike orchestrated by the snack maker's second-largest union, the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers.

Profitable brands will be bought; contracts will be re-written.

Drillers begin reusing 'frack water' -- huge story, front page, above the fold, second section

Companies are racing to find ways to recycle the water used in hydraulic fracturing, chasing an emerging market that could be worth billions of dollars.

From energy industry giants Halliburton Corp. and Schlumberger Ltd. to smaller outfits such as Ecologix Environmental Systems LLC, companies are pursing technologies to reuse the "frack water" that comes out of wells after hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking"—the process of using highly pressured water and chemicals to coax oil and gas out of shale-rock formations.

Spinach, a great source for nutritional iron? Think again! This is quite incredible. I always thought spinach was a great source for iron. Nope. Wrong. 

In 1870, German chemist Erich von Wolf analyzed the iron content of green vegetables and accidentally misplaced a decimal point when transcribing data from his notebook. As a result, spinach was reported to contain a tremendous amount of iron—35 milligrams per serving, not 3.5 milligrams (the true measured value). While the error was eventually corrected in 1937, the legend of spinach's nutritional power had already taken hold, one reason that studio executives chose it as the source of Popeye's vaunted strength.

The point, according to Samuel Arbesman, an applied mathematician and the author of the delightfully nerdy "The Half-Life of Facts," is that knowledge—the collection of "accepted facts"—is far less fixed than we assume. In every discipline, facts change in predictable, quantifiable ways, Mr. Arbesman contends, and understanding these changes isn't just interesting but also useful. For Mr. Arbesman, Wolf's copying mistake says less about spinach than about the way scientific knowledge propagates.

By the way, faux environmentalists did the same thing with the hockey stick graph and global warming. And so it goes.