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Section D (Personal Journal):
Section C ( Money & Investing):
- Corn prices. I think you can find any story you want on corn prices going forward, but this one looks most likely: late spring, lots of flooding; late planting; high corn prices; and we don't even have to mention the ethanol support program. Corn prices surge on planting fears.
- Heard on the street: Hess shows that timing really is everything with shale.
The oil company, engaged in a proxy battle with Elliott Management, reported last week that first-quarter earnings more than doubled, boosted by proceeds from disposals. A $265 million sale of acreage in Texas' Eagle Ford shale basin was one of the smaller ones.
Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Bob Brackett has characterized the Eagle Ford as "reigning supreme" relative to other shales. And yet, Hess seems to have lost money there—indeed, it justifies the sale chiefly on the grounds that it will curb further spending there.
Besides the embarrassment for Hess of losing money in the Rolls Royce of shale plays, the wider lesson for investors is that, despite the buzz, shale offers no free lunches. Oil isn't spread uniformly beneath the ground—that's why companies have to be good at pinpointing it.
Ask OXY.Section B (Marketplace):
A drop in the global air-cargo business is hastening the decline of the 747 jumbo jet just as Boeing is preparing to launch a new plane that could ultimately replace it.
Prodded by the largest U.S. hummus maker, farmers in the heart of tobacco country are trying to grow chickpeas, an improbable move that reflects booming demand for hummus.Long a staple of Middle Eastern cuisine, hummus is earning a growing following among Americans seeking more-healthful snacks. The chickpea dip is low in fat and high in protein. Sales of "refrigerated flavored spreads"—a segment dominated by hummus—totaled $530 million at U.S. food retailers last year, up 11% from a year earlier and a 25% jump over 2010, according to market-research firm Information Resources Inc.
Section A:Hummus, done right, is incredible. And, Kraft will eventually market flavored/textured hummus to appeal to Americans. Done right, it really is delicious.
The Service Employees International Union is locked in battle here with an unusual opponent: another union.
SEIU has enjoyed years of rapid growth even as organized labor has withered in the U.S. Now, it is competing with the National Union of Healthcare Workers to represent 45,000 nursing aides, pharmacy technicians and janitors at health-care giant Kaiser Permanente. The fight is playing out in cafeterias and break rooms, where NUHW supporters and organizers in bright red T-shirts have clashed in recent weeks with purple-clad SEIU backers.
The National Labor Relations Board will begin counting ballots of Kaiser Permanente workers on Wednesday. The board threw out the results of a previous election in 2010, which the SEIU won, after finding that the SEIU had threatened members who backed the NUHW.
It was a railroad that brought this tiny town -- Barnhart -- into existence in 1910, when it was named after the stationmaster, William F. Barnhart. Today that same railroad is putting the town on the map again—as an unlikely hub of the new American oil boom.
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has created a surge of oil production from the Permian Basin, as drillers use water, chemicals and sand to crack open oil-bearing rocks deep underground. The heart of the West Texas oil region now produces about 550,000 barrels of oil a day, up 38% from three years ago.
That has given new life to Barnhart, an unincorporated town 250 miles west of Austin with only 200 residents, a post office, one taco truck and a filling station called the Big Red Barn. It has brought increased spending from oil field and rail workers, even as most of them have looked for housing in other nearby cities.
The turn in fortunes has been especially dramatic for the 113-year-old South Orient Railroad, which passes through Barnhart on its nearly 400-mile trek from Presidio on the Mexican border to a junction north of San Angelo, Texas.
- Op-ed: Obama is not the only bluffer.
Until not long ago, Israelis remained prudently coy about whether they would strike Iran's nuclear facilities. More recently, prominent Israelis have voiced doubts about whether Israel can strike those facilities, at least in any way that would make a lasting difference to Tehran's bid to acquire nuclear weapons.
Essentially, they're saying it's all a bluff.
The transition marks another decline in the quality of the Jewish state's deterrence. This would be bad news in better circumstances. Considering the way the Obama administration is acting with respect to Syria, it's much worse than that.
That's because President Obama has now made it clear that, when it comes to rogue regimes and weapons of mass destruction, he's exactly the bluffer he promised he wasn't. He warned repeatedly that the use by Bashar Assad's regime of chemical weapons against the Syrian people was a red line, a game changer, a thing "we will not tolerate."
And he responded to the regime's use of chemical weapons by doing nothing. This is supposed to be the guy who has Israel's back and will never allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon?
- Op-ed: ObamaCare, the TrainWreck.
In recent weeks, there have been increasing expressions of concern from surprising quarters about the implementation of ObamaCare. Montana Sen. Max Baucus, a Democrat, called it a "train wreck."
A Democratic colleague, West Virginia's Sen. Jay Rockefeller, described the massive Affordable Care Act as "beyond comprehension."
Op-ed: Can California dodge another TrainWreck?Henry Chao, the government's chief technical officer in charge of putting in place the insurance exchanges mandated by the law, was quoted in the Congressional Quarterly as saying "I'm pretty nervous . . . Let's just make sure it's not a third-world experience."
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