The optimists are hanging on to the positive comments from Beijing and Washington. The pessimists are analysts who cite previous failures in trade talks as reasons to believe the two economic powerhouses are still too far apart on major issues to reach a trade deal over the near-term....
(Bloomberg) -- Texas wildcatters, after years eye-rolling at shale skeptics, are now saying global analysts are underestimating just how severe the industry’s slowdown is.What’s ticking folks off these days is how the International Energy Agency in Paris and the Energy Information Administration in Washington still predict robust U.S. production growth next year, despite the dire reality on the ground. The IEA expects an increase of 900,000 barrels a day, while the EIA forecasts 1 million, which would mean practically replicating this year’s expansion.Those projections don’t jibe with the vibe in Texas, home to about half of U.S. crude output. Capital-hungry producers are being starved of funding, stocks have plunged and there’s been zero appetite for public offerings, making the downturn potentially more enduring than previous price-related busts.“All I know is, after 47 years, they’re usually wrong.” Frank Lodzinski, an industry veteran of almost five decades who’s chief executive officer at shale...
Investing.com - The U.S. dollar posted gains on Wednesday after the latest measure showed the U.S. economy grew more than expected in the third quarter....
(Bloomberg) -- Sign up to our Next Africa newsletter and follow Bloomberg Africa on TwitterNigeria’s central bank is in no mood to loosen its grip on the naira.Governor Godwin Emefiele said there was no reason to fret over a fall in foreign reserves to their lowest level in almost two years and vowed to continue defending the currency.“A marginal drop in reserves below $40 billion is not enough to create fears in any mind,” Emefiele said to reporters Tuesday in Abuja, the capital, after the central bank held its base rate at 13.5%. “Our policy of sustaining the stable foreign-exchange regime will continue.”The bank has burned through $5.3 billion of reserves -- about 12% of the total -- since early July to meet demand for foreign exchange from importers in Africa’s biggest oil producer. It has also backed the government’s closure of land borders to stem smuggling of food into Nigeria...
Plummeting cranberry prices and the country's ongoing trade wars have America's cranberry industry eyeing a possible new savior: solar power. Some cranberry farmers in Massachusetts, the nation's second largest grower after Wisconsin, are proposing to build solar panels above the bogs they harvest each fall. It's a novel approach to blending renewable energy technology with traditional farming that has been researched across the world but not tried before on large-scale, commercial crop cultivation, according to solar power and agricultural industry experts....
