From the Times….

A coalition of leading American exporters, including Boeing, Caterpillar and General Electric, is trying to stop a “Buy America” clause being included in President Obama’s $825 billion stimulus package.

The American Steel First Act would ensure that only US-made steel was used in $64 billion of federally funded infrastructure projects.

The money, earmarked for roads, bridges and waterways, is aimed at kickstarting the economy, but the initiative by steelmakers, which secured support last week in the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee, is opposed by American exporters, who fear retaliation by foreign governments.

Their concern is given credence by the European Commission and by Eurofer, the association of European steelmakers, which said that it would urge the European Union to challenge the “Buy America” clause at the World Trade Organisation.

Also from the Times…

The head of the International Monetary Fund turned up the heat on China over its exchange rate policies on Monday, arguing that it was clear that the Chinese yuan was “significantly undervalued”.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF’s managing director, said that it was in Beijing’s clear interest to allow the yuan to strengthen on foreign exchanges and insisted that the fund had been straightforward on the issue and had repeatedly spelled out this assessment.

Mr Strauss-Kahn’s intervention stepped up pressure on China over its currency only days after Tim Geithner, President Obama’s nominee as US Treasury Secretary, sent a tremor through markets as he signalled a potential shift to a harder line from Washington over the yuan.

From Slashfilm…..

Following up on our previous news regarding Monty Python material on iTunes, Mashable is now reporting on a staggering increase of Monty Python DVDs sold on Amazon soon after the Python crew made some of their their more popular material free on Youtube. And by staggering, I mean 23,000% worth. Mashable notes that Monty Python’s DVDs climbed to the #2 spot on Amazon’s Movie’s and TV Bestseller List, and you don’t have to be a genius to follow that the sales were probably influenced by the Amazon links found on all of their Youtube clips.

You also don’t have to be a genius to note that people who figure out ways of making Youtube work for them make more money then those who spend their time worrying about how Youtube is being used to pirate their clips.

From the Times….

ING, the Dutch financial giant, announced the departure today of its chief executive and 7,000 job losses as it posted a fourth-quarter deficit of €3.3 billion (£3.1 billion)

It also said that it had reached an agreement with the Dutch Government over €22 billion of state loan guarantees for its troubled mortgage loan portfolio.

From the Times…

President Obama is considering another massive injection of cash into America’s stricken banking system, a move that will be deeply unpopular with the public but is being forced upon him by the speed at which the US economy is unravelling.

With the collapse on Saturday of the third US bank this month – the First Centennial Bank of California – Mr Obama is under pressure to spend hundreds of billions more to rescue the financial system. It would come on top of last year’s $700 billion (£515 billion) Wall Street rescue package that was opposed by a most of Americans. They viewed the plan as a bailout of the bankers that they blame for the financial crisis.

Any additional move to ease the crisis afflicting America’s banks will be separate from Mr Obama’s $825 billion economic stimulus package that senior aides spent the weekend trying to sell to a growing number of Republican sceptics and the US public.

Does anyone remember that California needs money soon before it goes under? The problems are happening faster than they can handle them.

From the Utica Observer…..

A recent cold weather snap and low fuel prices might be the reason why some area retailers had to travel to Syracuse for home heating oil recently.

Some began commuting to Syracuse and other locations last week after they were told by regional distributors that more home heating oil would not be available here through the Buckeye Terminal pipeline until Wednesday.

Some consumers who use heating oil to warm their homes might have seen a short-term rise in costs as retailers tried to offset their traveling costs.

The article goes on to explain the errors of forecasting and greed (some people held off buying until it was too late because they thought that prices were going to fall even further) that led to these problems.

But I think they may be missing something. I know of a certain hospital in upstate New York that has what they call interruptable gas supplies. What this means is that they are charged a lower price for their natural gas in exchange for guaranteeing that they have enough oil on hand to switch over to fuel oil at a moments notice.

Well, it just so happen that they had a problem with a pumping station on one of the natural gas pipelines that serves the upstate area in late December. This necessitated shutting down the pipeline for an extended period of time (it just recently got back on line). So this hospital and every one else who had interruptable gas supplies were told they had to switch to fuel oil as fast as they could be required to by contract. And the hospital was told that if it was at all possible for them to switch faster they should pretty please do so. This was done so that the natural gas suppliers could insure that there would be enough gas for those with uninterruptable gas contracts.

What this meant is that the hospital suddenly started burning thousands of gallons of fuel oil a day during the coldest part of the year. Naturally the hospital had enough fuel oil on hand that this was no problem. But they did not want their stock of fuel oil to shrink because nobody knows what is going to happen in the future. Thus, tractor trailer loads of fuel oil were being delivered to this hospital every couple of days.

Multiply this by all the other places that had interruptable gas contracts and you had a huge hit to local oil supplies at the same time a cold snap hit the area.