Coal company announces layoffs in response to Obama win

A coal company headed by a prominent Mitt Romney donor has laid off more than 160 workers in response to President Obama's election victory.
Murray Energy said Friday that it had been "forced" to make the layoffs in response to the bleak prospects for the coal industry during Obama's second term. In a prayer circulated by the company, CEO Robert Murray said Americans had voted "in favor of redistribution, national weakness and reduced standard of living and lower and lower levels of personal freedom."
"The American people have made their choice. They have decided that America must change its course, away from the principals of our Founders," Murray said in the prayer, which was delivered in a meeting with staff members earlier this week.
"Lord, please forgive me and anyone with me in Murray Energy Corporation for the decisions that we are now forced to make to preserve the very existence of any of the enterprises that you have helped us build."
Murray cited pending regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency and the possibility of a carbon tax as factors that could lead to the "total destruction of the coal industry by as early as 2030."
In August, Murray shuttered an operation in Ohio, again blaming the Obama Administration and its alleged "war on coal."
Mitt Romney echoed this line on the campaign trail, accusing Obama of undermining the country's energy security.
Administration officials responded to these attacks by affirming that Obama supports "clean coal." They also pointed out that more coal miners were on the job in the U.S. this year than at any time since 1997, and that U.S. coal exports have risen 31%.
Domestically, however, coal production has dropped sharply, falling roughly 15% in 2011 versus years prior, according to the National Mining Association.
But the industry's woes go way beyond Obama's policies.
Utility companies are increasingly ditching coal in favor of cheaper, cleaner natural gas. In addition, the recession and improved energy efficiency have crimped demand for power.
Looking ahead, the coal industry faces a rule going into effect in 2015 that tightens the amount of mercury coal plants can emit, as well as regulations on mountain-top mining. Both will make coal production and coal-fired power plants more expensive.
The rules themselves are not Obama's doing, although he has implemented them fairly quickly. Most stem from the Clean Air Act, which was signed by Richard Nixon and strengthened during the first Bush presidency.

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U.S. to Pass Saudi Arabia in Energy Production, IEA Says: Huge Foreign Policy, Economic Implications

A new report by the International Energy Association says the U.S. will become the world's largest oil producer by 2017, overtaking current leaders Saudi Arabia and Russia. U.S. energy policies initiated by the George W. Bush administration and implemented by President Barack Obama have moved the U.S. toward energy independence and away from Middle East energy sources. U.S. oil production has risen rapidly since 2008 and oil imports are at their lowest level in two decades.
"North America is at the forefront of a sweeping transformation in oil and gas production that will affect all regions of the world, yet the potential also exists for a similarly transformative shift in global energy efficiency," says IEA Executive Director Marian von der Hoeven in a statement.
The IEA also says the U.S. could become self-sufficient in energy by 2035 and a net exporter of natural gas by 2020. The Obama administration's push to develop and grow domestic natural gas capabilities has led to a natural gas drilling boom. Production has jumped 15% in four years but the glut in natural gas supplies have also caused the price of natural gas to plummet. According to the White House, the U.S. holds a 100-year supply of natural gas and domestic production is at an all-time high. The Daily Ticker's Aaron Task and Henry Blodget both agree that the explosion in domestic energy production could alter the geopolitical landscape and U.S. labor market.
"The foreign policy implications are maybe even bigger than the economic ones," says Task.
"For 50 years or more we have been just addicted and coupled to a region of the world where so many people hate us," Blodget adds.
Oil and petroleum imports have fallen an average of more than 1.5 million barrels per day and domestic crude oil production has increased by an average of more than 720,000 barrels per day since 2008. As domestic drilling has expanded so has the number of oil and gas production jobs. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, job growth in these industries has risen 25% since January 2010.
Related: The Fracking Revolution: More Jobs and Cheaper Energy Are Worth the "Manageable" Risks, Yergin Says
President Obama says natural gas production could support 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade. Most of these positions are highly desirable from a financial standpoint. Drilling and support jobs pay about $34.50 an hour, 50% more than the national average according to The New York Times.
Cheap natural gas and the administration's eagerness to expand U.S. energy production has shifted resources away from green energy technologies like solar and wind.
Related: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Renewable Energy Is Key to U.S. Growth
The method of extracting natural gas from shale rock formations has come under intense scrutiny. Many local cities and communities have already banned the practice. Hydraulic fracturing, more commonly referred to as hydrofracking or fracking, involves injecting large amounts of sand, water and chemicals into the ground at high pressures. Critics of fracking say this process produces millions of gallons of wastewater that contain highly corrosive salts and carcinogens. These radioactive elements could pollute water sources such as rivers and underground aquifers and pose serious dangers to the environment and individuals.

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Eurozone back in recession in Q3

LONDON (AP) -- The 17-country eurozone has bowed to the inevitable and fallen back into recession for the first time in three years as a sprawling debt crisis took its toll on the region's stronger economies.
And with surveys pointing to increasingly depressed conditions across the eurozone at a time of high unemployment in many countries, there are fears that the recession will deepen, and make the debt crisis even more difficult to handle.
Official figures Thursday showed that the eurozone contracted by 0.1 percent in the July to September period from the quarter before as economies including Germany and the Netherlands suffer from falling demand.
The decline reported by Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, was in line with market expectations and follows on from the 0.2 percent fall recorded in the second quarter. As a result, the eurozone is officially in recession, commonly defined as two straight quarters of falling output.
"We can dispense with the euphemisms and equivocation, and openly proclaim that the euro area economy is indeed in technical recession," said James Ashley, senior European economist at RBC Capital Markets.
Because of the eurozone's grueling three-year debt crisis, the region has the focus of concern for the world economy. The eurozone's economy is worth around €9.5 trillion, or $12.1 trillion, which puts it on a par with the U.S. economy. The region, with its 332 million population, is the U.S.'s largest export customer, and any fall-off in demand will hit order books.
While the U.S has managed to bounce back from its own savage recession in 2008-09, albeit inconsistently, and China continues to post still-strong growth, Europe's economies have been on a downward spiral — and there is little sign of any improvement in the near-term.
The eurozone has managed to avoid returning to recession for the first time since the financial crisis following the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers, mainly thanks to the strength of its largest single economy, Germany.
But even that country is struggling now as confidence wanes and exports drain in light of the debt problems afflicting large chunks of the eurozone.
Germany's economy grew a muted 0.2 percent in the third quarter, down from a 0.3 percent increase in the previous quarter. Over the past year, Germany's annual growth rate has more than halved to 0.9 percent from 1.9 percent.
Perhaps the most dramatic decline among the eurozone's members was seen in the Netherlands, whose economy shrank 1.1 percent on the previous quarter.
Five eurozone countries are in recession — Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Cyprus. Those five are also at the center of Europe's debt crisis and are imposing austerity measures, such as cuts to pensions and increases to taxes, in an attempt to stay afloat.
As well as hitting workers' incomes and living standards, these measures have also led to a decline in economic output and a sharp increase in unemployment.
Spain and Greece have unemployment rates of over 25 percent. Their young people are faring even worse with every other person out of work. As well as being a cost to governments who have to pay out more for benefits, it carries a huge social and human cost.
Protests across Europe on Wednesday highlighted the scale of discontent and with economic surveys pointing to the downturn getting worse, the voices of anger may well get louder still.
"The likelihood is that this anger will continue to grow unless European leaders and policymakers start to act as if they have a clue as to how to resolve the crisis starting to unravel before their eyes," said Michael Hewson, markets analyst at CMC Markets.
The wider 27-nation EU, which includes non-euro countries, avoided the same fate. It saw output rise 0.1 percent during the quarter, largely on the back of an Olympics-related boost in Britain.
The EU's output as a whole is greater than the U.S. It is also a major source of sales for the world's leading companies. Forty percent of McDonald's global revenue comes from Europe - more than it generates in the U.S. General Motors, meanwhile, sold 1.7 million vehicles in Europe last year, a fifth of its worldwide sales.

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