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China Reports Increase in Manufacturing

July 31, 2013 by

HONG KONG — A manufacturing index published by the Chinese authorities on Thursday provided an unexpectedly solid reading for July but did little to dispel the picture of an economy that has left the days of double-digit growth well behind it.

The reading, published by the National Bureau of Statistics, edged up slightly, to 50.3 from 50.1 in June, indicating that recent small-scale economic support measures announced by the authorities in Beijing may be having some effect on demand.

The slight increase confounded analyst expectations that the index would slip below the 50-point mark that separates expansion from contraction.

Underlining the lingering malaise within the world’s second-largest economy, however, a separate manufacturing activity gauge published by the British bank HSBC came in at an eleven-month low of 47.7. The figure, which was unchanged from the initial reading published last month, highlighted the tough domestic and international demand that many Chinese companies are confronted with.

“With weak demand from both domestic and external markets, the cooling manufacturing sector continued to weigh on employment,” said Qu Hongbin, chief China economist at HSBC, in a statement accompanying the release.

On the upside, he noted, the string of recent weak data has prompted Beijing to introduce more targeted support measures, which “should boost confidence and reduce downside risks to growth.”

The leadership that took the helm in Beijing in March has been insisting that the slowdown is not only desirable — as part of their efforts to rein in excessive lending and bring about more balanced growth — but also stable and sufficient to meet its target of 7.5 percent this year.

But it has also prescribed a steady stream of small-scale, targeted support measures in a bid to ensure that growth does not cool too rapidly.

These have included tax cuts for small and micro enterprises and measures aimed at speeding up railway construction in inland and poor areas. In a bid to raise the economy’s overall efficiency the authorities have also issued instructions to more than 1,400 companies in 19 industries to cut excess production capacity this year.

Meanwhile, the central bank on July 19 said it would no longer set a minimum interest rate for corporate loans – a symbolically important first step toward wider interest rate liberalization.

“All of these things amount to a small-scale stimulus,” said Dariusz Kowalczyk, a senior economist and strategist at Crédit Agricole in Hong Kong. These steps, combined with more fine-tuning moves that are likely to follow in the next few months, are likely to lift economic growth to just above the official 7.5 percent growth target this year, Mr. Kowalczyk said.

“The new leadership cannot afford politically to miss that target during their first year,” he said, adding that he expected moves aimed at spurring consumer demand, such as subsidies for big-ticket items or consumption-tax cuts, as well as a modest depreciation in the renminbi in the coming months.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/02/business/global/chinese-manufacturing-unexpectedly-strengthens.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Comcast and CBS Post Strong Results, Aided by Web

July 31, 2013 by

Comcast reported that its earnings rose to $1.7 billion from $1.35 billion, or to 65 cents a share from 50 cents a share, in the period a year earlier. The results surpassed analysts’ already sunny earnings projections of 63 cents a share.

Comcast’s strong quarter was spurred by its broadband Internet business and by a rebound, albeit a tepid one, of the NBC broadcast network. This was the first quarter in which Comcast owned 100 percent of NBCUniversal, the network’s corporate parent; it had previously held a 51 percent stake.

The earnings release was celebrated by Wall Street on Wednesday morning, sending Comcast’s stock up more than 5 percent. It closed at $45.08, almost achieving a record high.

After the closing bell, Comcast was joined by the CBS Corporation, the owner of the CBS broadcast network, which reported its highest quarterly profits ever. Earnings there rose to $472 million, or 76 cents a share, from $427 million, or 65 cents a share, in the period a year earlier.

“Double-digit revenue growth — and the best quarterly profits we’ve ever had — add up to a phenomenal quarter for CBS,” the company’s chief executive, Leslie Moonves, said in a statement. On a Wednesday afternoon conference call, the company’s executive chairman, Sumner M. Redstone, who comes up with new ways to praise Mr. Moonves to investors seemingly every quarter, used the term “supergenius.”

CBS’s performance was attributed in part to content licensing deals with online streaming services like Amazon, which has been running repeats of the network’s newest program “Under the Dome” this summer. The company, which has historically depended more on advertising revenue than its peers have, said it had a 22 percent increase in revenue from content licensing and distribution; Mr. Moonves’s statement mentioned that “our non-advertising revenue sources are having a bigger impact on our results all the time.”

The healthy results from both companies may augur more good news when other networks report in the weeks to come.

At Comcast, revenue for the NBCUniversal division — which includes the NBC network, a wide array of cable channels, a movie studio and other assets — was up 8.9 percent year-over-year, to almost $6 billion. Michael McCormack, a media analyst for Nomura, said in a note to investors that NBCUniversal’s performance exceeded expectations, “with filmed entertainment and broadcast television revenue offsetting weaker-than-expected theme parks revenue.”

NBC’s cable channels, including USA, Syfy and Bravo, posted a 7.7 percent increase in revenue, to $2.41 billion in the quarter. Its somewhat smaller broadcast business, which has been undergoing a reorganization, had a 11.6 percent increase, to $1.73 billion. Mr. McCormack attributed the broadcast unit’s gains to “better ratings and higher retransmission consent fees.”

Comcast executives specifically credited “The Voice,” the singing competition on NBC that has given the network some much-needed momentum.

Distribution, not content, remains the biggest part of Comcast’s business. Revenue for the distribution business, called Comcast Cable, was up 5.8 percent year-over-year, to about $10.5 billion, partly because it added 187,000 broadband subscribers in the second quarter.

Comcast has been losing television subscribers to DirecTV and Verizon FiOS for years, and it lost another 159,000 in the second quarter. But the rate of loss has slowed lately, a point the company emphasized again on Wednesday. The company squeezed a 2.7 percent revenue gain from its TV business, largely through rate increases and from subscribers who chose more expensive packages.

“Cable had outstanding growth, particularly in high-speed Internet, and NBCUniversal had strong performance across all of its businesses,” Brian L. Roberts, the chief executive of Comcast, said in a statement.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/01/business/media/2-media-companies-announce-big-gains-in-profit.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Raskin Would Be First Female Deputy at Treasury

July 31, 2013 by

Ms. Raskin is a Federal Reserve governor and a former state banking regulator. At the Treasury, Ms. Raskin would take the position held by Neal S. Wolin since the beginning of the administration.

In a statement about Ms. Raskin, Jacob J. Lew, the Treasury secretary, said, “Sarah has a deep understanding of banking and financial regulatory issues as well as a firm grasp of how to run large, complex organizations.” He added, “Sarah has demonstrated a strong commitment to protecting consumers, and she shares my conviction to do everything possible to increase job creation, accelerate economic growth and strengthen the middle class.”

A person with knowledge of the process, but without permission to speak on the record about personnel policy, said Mr. Lew had put forward Ms. Raskin’s name for the job and was particularly interested in her administrative abilities. The deputy secretary takes a large role in running the sprawling department, with tasks as diverse as the minting of currency and the collecting of taxes.

Mr. Lew also appreciated her knowledge of financial markets and regulation given the enormous continuing task of putting into effect the Dodd-Frank regulatory reform law, this person said.

Ms. Raskin is lawyer who was trained at Harvard and who worked as a Maryland state regulatory official before joining the Fed in 2010. She had earlier worked on Capitol Hill and at the Promontory Financial Group, a consultancy.

Ms. Raskin’s move to the Treasury would leave yet another vacancy at the central bank. The Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, is widely expected to leave at the end of his term in January, and Elizabeth A. Duke, a Fed governor, plans to step down in late August.

The search for a new Federal Reserve leader has raised questions about the relative dearth of women in top economic policy-making positions. Janet Yellen, the Fed vice chairwoman, is considered a contender for the top job. Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary and economic adviser to Mr. Obama, is also considered a leading candidate to succeed Mr. Bernanke.

Some Democratic members of Congress and economists have urged Mr. Obama to appoint Ms. Yellen, while several current and former White House aides are said to be pressing for Mr. Summers.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/01/business/economy/raskin-would-be-first-female-deputy-at-treasury.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Film Academy’s New Leader Starts by Sizing Up Oscars

July 31, 2013 by

“I have a meeting with the producers later today, in fact,” Ms. Isaacs said.

Speaking briefly by telephone on Wednesday, Ms. Isaacs, who succeeded Hawk Koch, said she was generally happy with this year’s show, which attracted strong ratings but was also criticized for the crude humor of its host, Seth MacFarlane. And she said she had supported Mr. Koch’s decision to bring back last year’s producers, Neil Meron and Craig Zadan, though the choice of producers has customarily been left to the incoming president.

Still, Ms. Isaacs said she anticipated changes. “Right off the bat, it will not be the same show,” she said.

Ms. Isaacs, who was elected at a Tuesday night meeting of the group’s governing board, is the first woman to hold the post since Fay Kanin, from 1979 to 1983, and is the first African-American president in the group’s 86-year history.

A consummate academy insider, Ms. Isaacs has been part of the group’s board of governors for more than 20 years. She has worked recently as an independent marketing consultant, following an executive career at New Line Cinema and Paramount Pictures.

Ms. Isaacs and Robert G. Friedman, the co-chairman of Lionsgate’s Motion Picture Group, were regarded by fellow governors and other academy insiders to be leading prospects for the presidency.

One of Ms. Isaacs’s early tasks will be to oversee a renewal of deals with Dawn Hudson, the academy’s chief executive, and Ric Robertson, its chief operating officer, whose three-year contracts are set to expire next year. Ms. Isaacs also said she expected the academy to break ground next year on its planned movie museum in Los Angeles.

In filling other positions on Tuesday, the governors elected John Lasseter, the chief creative officer of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studio, as first vice president, while electing the writer-director Phil Robinson as secretary and Richard W. Cook, a film entrepreneur and former Disney executive, as treasurer.

Jeffrey Kurland, a costume designer, and Leonard Engelman, a makeup artist, were also elected as vice-presidents.

Also at their Tuesday meeting, the academy’s governors added a 17th branch, for casting directors, to the group’s existing divisions, which represent various groups of film professionals, including actors, directors, film editors and sound artists. A number of casting directors had previously been admitted to the approximately 6,000-member associations as members-at-large.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/01/business/media/film-academys-new-leader-starts-by-sizing-up-oscars.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Bond Purchases by Fed Will Continue, at Least for Another Month

July 31, 2013 by

As expected, the Fed’s policy-making committee voted to press ahead for now with its campaign to increase job creation. And its statement said nothing about how much longer it would continue to add $85 billion a month to its holdings of mortgage-backed securities and Treasury securities. But the Fed left its economic outlook basically unchanged, suggesting that the central bank still intended to reduce the volume of its purchases later this year.

The statement, issued after a regular two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, acknowledged the weak pace of growth during the first half of the year, which it described as “modest” rather than “moderate” — the words are synonymous in English but distinct in the Fed’s carefully calibrated lexicon, suggesting an even more lackluster economic performance. But it maintained the Fed’s forecast that “economic growth will pick up from its recent pace” in the coming months, driving job creation.

The statement also repeated language first introduced after the Fed’s previous meeting, in June, that “the committee sees the downside risks to the outlook for the economy and the labor market as having diminished since the fall,” when the Fed began this latest push aimed at increasing the pace of growth.

Analysts said they expected the committee to cut back at its next meeting in mid-September. Dean Maki, chief United States economist at Barclays Capital, said the statement was “on the dovish side” because of its references to slower growth, rising mortgage rates and low inflation. Nonetheless, he added, “We continue to expect the F.O.M.C. to taper the asset purchase program in September, provided that the next two employment reports are reasonably strong.”

The committee had little time to grapple with the implications of the latest economic data. The government announced earlier Wednesday that the economy expanded at an annual rate of 1.7 percent in the second quarter, better than economists had expected but below the pace that Fed officials regard as necessary to create enough jobs to bring down the unemployment rate.

The Fed repeated its stark assessment that “fiscal policy is restraining economic growth.” It also noted that “mortgage rates have risen somewhat,” a new check on the economy that is at least partly of the Fed’s own creation.

The average interest rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rose to 4.37 percent in July from 3.54 percent in May, according to a survey conducted by Freddie Mac. But that increase is only partly the result of investor uneasiness about the Fed’s plans; it also reflects an improved economic outlook. And that improved outlook, in turn, is mitigating the impact of the rate increases.

David Hall, president of Shore Mortgage in Troy, Mich., said that the higher rates had cut into demand for refinancing, but that demand for mortgages to buy a home remained strong. “People understand the historical context, that these are still really low rates, and coupled with all the news about home values rising, there’s still a lot of excitement about buying,” he said. “That excitement has overshadowed the rate increases a little bit.”

The Fed has also become more concerned about the sluggish pace of inflation. Prices rose at an annual pace of just 0.8 percent in the second quarter, according to the Fed’s preferred measuring stick, a measure of inflation compiled by the Bureau of Economic Analysis — well below the 2 percent annual pace that the Fed considers healthy. Low inflation can cause problems, although Mr. Bernanke recently noted that the reasons were “hard to explain to your uncle.” The primary cause for concern is the risk that prices will begin to fall, which can plunge the economy into a debilitating cycle of deflation as prospective buyers wait for prices to fall even further.

James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, chided his fellow officials for underplaying this risk at the committee’s June meeting. This time the Fed noted the risk in the statement but maintained its official view that the pace of price increases was likely to rise.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/01/business/economy/fed-maintains-course-on-policy.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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U.S. Economy Grew 1.7% During the 2nd Quarter, Topping Forecasts

July 31, 2013 by

The mixed picture facing the country was evident on Wednesday, as the Commerce Department reported that the economy, adjusted for inflation, expanded at a better-than-expected annual rate of 1.7 percent in the April-June quarter, even as inflation-adjusted growth in the first part of the year now appears slower than first thought. In a separate statement after a two-day meeting of policy makers at the Federal Reserve, the central bank said the economy was on a “modest” trajectory but gave no clue as to when it might start tapering back its huge stimulus efforts.

Like economists and traders, as well as the 12 million unemployed Americans looking for work, the Fed is struggling to gauge whether better growth does indeed lie ahead.

Optimists point to improved levels of job creation in recent months, a more robust housing sector and a surging stock market that has lifted the value of investment and retirement accounts for millions of consumers. Pessimists focus on the fact that the estimated economic growth rate of about 1.4 percent so far in 2013 is well below last year’s levels of 2.8 percent, even as automatic cuts in federal spending and higher taxes continue to bite.

There were pockets of strength in Wednesday’s data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, all of which will be subject to further revision as the Commerce Department gathers more information about the economy. For example, residential fixed investment increased by 13.4 percent, a sign that housing continues to rebound. Personal consumption rose 1.8 percent, as consumers showed some resiliency, especially given the increase in payroll taxes at the beginning of 2013.

Additionally, government experts have introduced the first comprehensive change in four years in how the economy is measured. They revised figures all the way back to 1929, while also restating more recent data to show that the 2007-9 recession was slightly milder than originally estimated and growth in 2012 was a bit better.

Still, economists emphasized that although the economy’s performance in the second quarter was significantly stronger than had been feared — Wall Street experts forecast growth would come in at just under 1 percent — big challenges remain.

“The basic story of a deep recession followed by a lackluster recovery is essentially unchanged,” said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS. Growth in the current quarter, which wraps up at the end of next month, remains a wild card, he added. IHS and other companies do expect a pickup in the second half of 2013, but more fallout from the fiscal tightening in Washington could still be felt, he cautioned.

“So far the effects have been fairly muted,” Mr. Behravesh said. “We’re puzzling over that.”

Were it not for the federal cuts, growth would have been close to 2 percent in both the first and second quarters, said Steve Blitz, chief economist at ITG Investment Research. But that’s about the best Americans can hope for, he said, at least in 2013.

“I don’t see the economy breaking away from that 2 percent rate for now,” Mr. Blitz said. He is more optimistic about 2014, when he said he thought the annual rate of growth could rise to about 3.5 percent. “The economy will have adjusted to the downshift in federal spending by then, and Europe won’t be decelerating as rapidly, nor will China and Japan,” he said.

The pace at which spending by the federal government is dropping stabilized last quarter. It fell by 1.5 percent, compared with an 8.4 percent decrease in the first quarter of 2013 and a 13.9 percent plunge in the final quarter of 2012.

More clues about the economy’s performance will come on Friday, when the Labor Department reports on monthly job creation and the unemployment rate. Economists estimate the economy created 185,000 jobs in July, according to a Bloomberg survey, a bit below the 195,000 level in June, with the unemployment rate falling to 7.5 percent, from 7.6 percent.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/01/business/economy/us-economy-grew-by-1-7-in-2nd-quarter-faster-than-expected.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Facebook Shares Touch a Symbolic Threshold

July 31, 2013 by

On Wednesday morning, the company’s stock crossed an important psychological barrier, trading above $38 a share, the price at which Facebook, the world’s leading social network, first sold shares to the public in May 2012.

The catalyst for the rise was the company’s surprisingly strong second-quarter earnings report last Wednesday, which quelled many investors’ doubts about Facebook’s ability to make money from its legions of mobile users and suggested that the company’s profit stream would continue growing.

Since last week’s report, shares have risen about 34 percent. Early Wednesday, they briefly touched $38.31 a share, although they pulled back to end at $36.80 a share at the time the market closed.

The company’s shares hit a low of $17.55 last fall. Since then, investors have warmed to the company as its management demonstrated that it can increase profits and not just users.

“There was a perception that they hadn’t monetized the users they have,” said Aaron Kessler, an analyst at the Raymond James brokerage firm, referring to last summer, when the Facebook’s stock was trading at half the current level.

These days, Wall Street sees revenue potential everywhere — from soon-to-come video ads in the Facebook news feed to the expansion of high-dollar ads targeted to specific swaths of Facebook users.

“Facebook was caught flat-footed by the shift to mobile,” said Mark S. Mahaney, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets. Now, he said, “they appear to be set up as a sustainable, high-growth business.”

Still, there are reasons to be concerned. Mobile messaging platforms like Snapchat and WhatsApp are grabbing the attention of many of Facebook’s younger users. Twitter is mounting a major effort to go after marketers, especially brands that typically advertise on television, as it prepares for its own likely public offering.

And Facebook risks turning off users with too many ads. About 1 in 20 items in the news feed, the main flow of items that a Facebook user sees, is an ad. During the company’s quarterly conference call with analysts, Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said that users were beginning to notice the number of ads, suggesting that the company could not greatly increase their frequency without losing some users.

Nate Elliott, a principal analyst with Forrester Research, said Facebook users who visit the site on a computer’s browser still see too many cheap, poorly targeted ads on the right side of the page. “They’ve got to get much better at targeting,” he said.

Despite these worries, investors’ views of the company’s prospects have clearly changed.

Mr. Mahaney, whose firm has a $40 price target on the Facebook stock, said that analysts across Wall Street had increased their projections of the company’s financial performance. Analysts now expect Facebook to increase its profits 30 to 35 percent a year through 2015.

Because stocks tend to trade as a multiple of a company’s future profits, those upgrades last week sent Facebook’s stock soaring.

Facebook officials declined to comment on the stock rise on Wednesday. But for the company’s executives, who had urged investors to be patient as their strategy played out, the surge surely offers some vindication.

The company raised $16 billion from the initial public offering on May 18, 2012, vaulting it into the big leagues of American stocks, but problems struck immediately. The Nasdaq stock exchange botched the handling of buy and sell orders on the first day of trading — so badly, in fact, that regulators eventually fined Nasdaq $10 million for the fiasco.

In ensuing weeks, Facebook shares continued to fall. Instead of pouring into the stock, as they did a decade earlier with Google, many investors questioned whether Facebook’s stock was overpriced at $38 a share.

Particularly worrisome was Facebook’s seemingly nonexistent mobile strategy just as Internet users were abandoning PCs for their smartphones. The company’s smartphone and iPad applications were clunky, and it was generating no revenue from mobile ads.

Facebook’s management, including Mr. Zuckerberg, recognized the problem and began a crash course to revamp the company’s approach to mobile and better position the company for fast-growing emerging markets.

The company overhauled its apps, introduced ads into its users’ news feeds, and created a new category of revenue called app-install ads. With the app-install ads, a game maker, for example, can promote its new game in Facebook’s mobile software and give users an easy way to install the app with just a couple of clicks.

Facebook also introduced new advertising products meant to give marketers more ways to target specific groups of customers, which allowed the service to charge higher advertising rates.

While mobile advertising continues to grow, and was about 41 percent of Facebook’s ad revenue in the second quarter, investors are also looking to new areas of potential profit growth. Those include video advertising in the news feed, which is expected to begin later this year, and the possible sale of ads in Instagram, the fast-growing photo and video-sharing app that Facebook bought in 2012.

“All of those seem like relatively large low-hanging fruit, and they are starting to go after them,” Mr. Mahaney said.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/01/technology/facebook-briefly-trades-above-ipo-price.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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New Tools for Keeping the Lights On

July 31, 2013 by

Now, a decade after the largest blackout in American history, engineers are installing and linking 1,000 of those instruments, called phasor measurement units, to try to prevent another catastrophic power failure. When the work is done, the engineers say, they will have a diagnostic tool that makes the old system seem like taking a patient’s pulse compared with running a continuous electrocardiogram.

Gilbert C. Bindewald III, a program manager at the Energy Department, which has spent about $200 million to encourage their installation, said the instruments were “shedding light on the science that’s occurring behind the scenes, within the grid.”

Phasor measurement units work by measuring the rhythm of current at different points on the power grid. Readings at every point within each of the three North American grids — one covering the eastern two-thirds of North America, one covering the West, and one covering Texas — are supposed to be basically the same. If the measurements differ, it can be a sign of imminent collapse. When the current is flowing properly, phasor measurement units record normal readings — about as exciting as “watching paint dry,” in the words of Peter K. Lemme, a senior electrical engineer at the New York Independent System Operator, which runs New York’s grid. As Mr. Lemme spoke, he looked at a real-time display of phasor measurement units across the state.

But then he replayed New York records from an afternoon three weeks ago when a capacitor, a device that helps maintain voltage, suddenly failed at a substation near Utica. In response, measurements taken at an electrical substation near Rochester registered an enormous shock on a graph. In Leeds, south of Albany, the disruption was considerably milder. The disturbance gradually petered out, like a playground swing that slowly comes to rest.

If that glitch had been large enough to threaten a statewide power failure, the new devices could have alerted the engineers to the impending crisis and given them time to react, for example, by shutting down a part of the system to avoid cascading power failures. Tracy A. Flippo, the vice president for transmission operations at the Tennessee Valley Authority, said the devices could provide “precursor information” before a collapse.

The hope is that they could help prevent or at least limit a large-scale blackout like the one that happened a decade ago.

In 2003, as northern Ohio ran short of generation and transmission because of a combination of neglect, mismanagement and human error, circuit breakers took major transmission lines out of service. The power failure then cascaded across 600 miles, eight states and Canada. New York, Cleveland and Detroit went dark, as did Toronto and sections of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Massachusetts. In New York office buildings were evacuated, thousands of commuters were stranded, and hospitals were flooded with patients suffering in the stifling heat.

“Somebody in Ohio could have recognized that we either need to raise generation or shed load,” said Richard Dewey, senior vice president of the New York Independent System Operator. Or, he said, New York could have seen trouble coming and insulated itself. The two units scrutinized after the blackout, one in Detroit and one in Cleveland, showed the strain.

Other changes to the grid should help, too. The federal government, for example, has given an industry group the authority to set standards. That group, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, has levied substantial fines against companies that failed in tasks like trimming trees or testing equipment. Untrimmed trees and improper procedures for testing equipment have caused widespread power failures in recent years.

Joel deJesus, a former director of compliance enforcement at the corporation, said that in his view the large fines had been effective. “Wrists have been slapped pretty hard,” he said.

The network of phasor measurement units offers a technological advantage.

So far hundreds of phasor measurement units have been installed across the country, including 48 in New York.

Before then, the operators of the New York grid had only scattered data points within the state. For years they have been mostly blind to the grid outside New York, receiving only a few readings from devices at the borders with New England, Quebec, Ontario, and a region that includes Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland.

But by the end of 2014, officials at the Energy Department said, they anticipate that all 1,000 phasor measurement units will be in operation and linked to one another. The next step, they said, was to figure out how to better present the flood of data to human operators in a useful way.

“The question is, How do we cue them to an event that a computer might be able to see coming?” said Mr. Bindewald of the Energy Department. Initially data will be integrated into computer displays, and later it may be used to set off automatic protective actions that would prevent or limit blackouts.

Experts argue that such a system could easily pay for itself. The 2003 blackout cost billions of dollars in lost economic output.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/01/business/new-tools-for-keeping-the-lights-on.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Under Scrutiny, Goldman Offers to Speed Metal Delivery

July 31, 2013 by

Under scrutiny for the long waits that have cost manufacturers — and ultimately consumers — many millions of dollars, Goldman said on Wednesday that its warehouse unit, Metro International Trade Services, would give customers who store aluminum at the warehouses immediate access to their metal.

Through Metro International, Goldman stores vast amounts of aluminum in and around Detroit. An investigation by The New York Times found that Metro routinely shuffled tons of the metal from one warehouse to another, a tactic that profited Goldman but pushed up the price of aluminum across much of the nation.

Goldman also said on Wednesday it would suggest ways to improve the metal storage system, whose rules are dictated by the London Metal Exchange.

Regulators at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are examining practices at warehouse operations controlled by financial firms and trading houses such as Glencore Xstrata, the Noble Group and Goldman. These operations store aluminum for companies like Coca-Cola and MillerCoors, as well as for speculators.

Congress has taken an interest in the issue as well. Earlier this month, the Senate Banking Committee convened hearings on Wall Street’s push into the physical commodities markets and whether its involvement had raised prices. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led by Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, has also been privately questioning big banks like Goldman, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley on their commodities businesses.

In Congressional testimony on Tuesday, Mary Jo White, the chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, said she had asked the agency’s staff to examine the issue.

Goldman said its offer to speed up delivery of metal was open only to industrial customers of its Metro warehouses. If a customer wants immediate delivery of its metal, Goldman said it would go into the open market and buy the amount requested, then swap it to the customer. Goldman said it would pay the difference between the market cost and the higher price that includes the storage premium. Goldman said none of its customers had taken up its offer yet.

Goldman also said that it supported recent efforts at the London exchange to increase the amount of metal allotted for delivery from its large warehouses, like those owned by Metro.

Last week, in the face of rising regulatory concerns about the big banks’ commodities operations, JPMorgan said it was looking to sell its physical commodities businesses, which include sprawling storage and transportation facilities. But Goldman does not appear to be following suit.

In a television interview on Wednesday, Gary D. Cohn, Goldman’s president, said the bank had no immediate plans to sell Metro International. Under the terms of the regulatory exemption provided to Goldman when it bought Metro, the bank has until 2020 to sell it.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/01/business/under-scrutiny-goldman-offers-to-speed-metal-delivery.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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‘The Croods’ Helps DreamWorks Animation Increase Quarterly Profit

July 31, 2013 by

Glass half empty: The studio’s financial results are still being whipsawed quarter to quarter, and the underperforming “Turbo” is likely to cause headaches in the period ahead.

“The film’s soft opening is a clear result of an overly saturated marketplace and a difficult release date,” Jeffrey Katzenberg, the company’s chief executive, said of “Turbo,” which has taken in about $102 million worldwide after two weeks.

Mr. Katzenberg added, “Based on the data that we have to date, we do believe that ‘Turbo’ will be a profitable film for us.”

For the quarter, which ended on June 30, DreamWorks Animation reported net income of $22.2 million, or 26 cents a share, up from $12.8 million, or 15 cents a share, in the same period a year earlier. Analysts had been expecting 20 cents a share.

Revenue jumped to $213.4 million from $162.8 million, driven by $584 million in global ticket sales for “The Croods” and stronger-than-expected DVD sales of “Rise of the Guardians.” Shares of DreamWorks Animation rose more than 5 percent in after-hours trading, to about $26.

In a conference call with analysts Wednesday, DreamWorks Animation executives sought to underscore the work they were doing to diversify away from movies. They discussed new theme park deals with companies like SeaWorld; growth at their newly acquired YouTube channel, Awesomeness TV; expansion in original television programming, including the hiring of two senior Nickelodeon executives; and plans for a more robust toy and merchandise business.

Mr. Katzenberg said consumer products would soon start to become “an ongoing business as opposed to one that is simply event-driven.”

The studio has hired 35 people in its toy and merchandise unit since Jan. 1 and on Wednesday announced the arrival of a senior executive to lead “retail development and entertainment.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/01/business/media/the-croods-helps-dreamworks-animation-increase-quarterly-profit.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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