1 Fall of king coal hits Kentucky (Kris Maher & Tom McGinty in The Wall Street Journal) Unprecedented pressures on the US coal industry and nearly two years of mine closures and layoffs are reshaping the heart of the Central Appalachian coalfields in ways that many experts believe could be permanent. While the coal industry overall is losing market share to abundant natural gas, mines in Central Appalachia have become increasingly uneconomical. Natural gas is cheaper, and so is coal mined in two other big coal basins centered in Wyoming and Illinois.
A Wall Street Journal analysis of Mine Safety and Health Administration data reveals that the picture is bleakest across a swath of 26 counties in Kentucky's eastern coalfields, where coal has been the lifeblood for more than a century. The number of coal-mining and related jobs in the region remained fairly steady between 2000 through 2011, fluctuating from one quarter to the next by an average of about 400 jobs, but never dipping below 11,400. Since 2011, the area has seen an unrelenting decline that left eastern Kentucky with just 8,000 mining jobs in the second quarter of this year.
The state's eastern coalfields had 161 active mines in the second quarter of this year, down from an average of 256 active mines for the four quarters of 2011, according to the analysis of the federal data. At the same time, competition among mines has heated up. It costs utilities about 40% more to generate the same amount of electricity using the region's coal compared with coal from Wyoming, according to industry analysts. In Central Appalachia, the region's coal seams are thinner, and so are mining companies' profit margins. It typically costs $60 to $70 to extract a ton of coal there, while the current price for coal from the region used by utilities, known as thermal coal, is under $65 a ton.
In interviews with more than two dozen unemployed miners, nearly all blamed President Barack Obama and the Environmental Protection Agency for their plight. They cited a series of regulations to tighten emissions rules for coal-burning power plants, which they said amounted to what has popularly been called a "war on coal."
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304337404579212262280342336
2 Facebook, Google about to overtake TV (Aaron Taube in San Francisco Chronicle) Cable is losing subscribers and television advertising dollars are poised to move to digital media. A recent analyst note from Macquarie Capital should also be worrisome for those making money in the TV advertising ecosystem, but for a different reason. While the pay-TV industry is hurting from losing more subscribers than it ever has before, statistics show Facebook and Google are reaching more people than ever.
What one chart shows is that while television still holds the title of most pervasive mass medium by reaching 294 million Americans, Facebook and Google aren't too far behind at 200 and 235 million, respectively. Combined, they're actually bigger than TV — although of course there is plenty of overlap.
It's especially noteworthy given that US marketers are currently spending about 50% more money on television than they are on all digital media (digital gets 27.9% of ad dollars while TV gets 42.1%, per Macquarie). That's a significant "overspend" on TV.
http://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Facebook-And-Google-Are-About-To-Overtake-All-Of-4655501.php
3 Pope Francis beats politicians at economics (Heidi Moore in The Guardian) In the discussions of why the US is not recovering, economists often mention metrics like economic growth and housing. They rarely mention the metrics that directly tell us we are failing our economic goals, like poverty and starvation. Those metrics of income inequality tell an accurate story of the depth of our economic malaise that new-home sales can't. One-fifth of Americans, or 47 million people, are on food stamps; 50% of children born to single mothers live in poverty; and over 13 million people are out of work. Children are now not likely to do as well as their parents did as downward mobility takes hold for the first time in generations.
The bottom line, which Pope Francis correctly identifies, is that inequality is the biggest economic issue of our time – for everyone, not just the poor. Nearly any major economic metric – unemployment, growth, consumer confidence – comes down to the fact that the vast majority of Americans are struggling in some way. You don't have to begrudge the rich their fortunes or ask for redistribution. It's just hard to justify ignoring the financial problems of 47 million people who don't have enough to eat. Until they have enough money to fill their pantries, we won't have a widespread economic recovery. You can't have a recovery if one-sixth of the world's economically leading country is eating on $1.50 a day.
It's only surprising that it took so long for anyone – in this case, Pope Francis – to become the first globally prominent figure to figure this out and bring attention to income inequality. Income inequality is the issue that will govern whether we ever emerge from the struggling economy recovery and it determine elections in 2014. The support for Elizabeth Warren to rise above her seat in the US Senate, for instance, largely centers on her crusade against inequality. The White House's chirpy protestations that the economy is improving are not fooling anyone.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2013/nov/27/pope-francis-inequality-biggest-issue-our-time
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