05/22/2012 (10:32 am)

Stocks rebound on Europe hopes

Filed under: Uncategorized, money |

A plunge in Facebook’s stock didn’t faze the broader U.S. market Monday. U.S. stocks bounced back from their worst week of the year on renewed optimism that European leaders would find a way out of the sovereign debt crisis.

The Dow posted its biggest gain in over a month, while the S&P 500 delivered its best performance in over two months. The tech-heavy Nasdaq enjoyed its best gains of the year.

"I think it’s just more of a relief rally after being down so many sessions in a row," said Dave Rovelli, managing director at Canaccord Adams. "People are looking for stocks that have sold off a bit."

Over the weekend, the Group of Eight nations met and reaffirmed their commitment to keeping Greece in the eurozone. And two opinion polls released in Greece reportedly put the pro-bailout New Democracy party ahead of the anti-austerity Syriza party.

The combination of the G8 and the poll results was enough to boost sentiment across world markets, with European and Asian stocks eking out gains and the euro holding steady at around $1.28 against the U.S. dollar.

Paul Zemsky, head of asset strategies for ING Investment Management, said the rally was the result of "a smidgen of good news in an oversold market."

"You had a tremendous amount of pessimism, but nothing bad came out of Greece this weekend," he said. "There’s some optimism that perhaps the Greek people are realizing how damaging it would be for them to leave [the eurozone]."

The Dow Jones industrial average () rose 135 points, or 1.1%. Blue chips, including Caterpillar (, Fortune 500), Boeing (, Fortune 500) and IBM (, Fortune 500) led the gains.

The S&P 500 () gained 21 points, or 1.6%, and the Nasdaq () rose 68 points, or 2.5%.

Shares of Facebook () plunged as much as 13.7%, before finishing down 11% at $34.03, well below the $38 initial public offering price.

The sharp drop "weighed heavily" on markets at the start of trading, said Anthony Conroy, head trader at ConvergEx Group, noting that the tech-heavy Nasdaq briefly slid into negative territory.

What’s next for Greece

But trading might be choppy this week as worries about Europe will continue to dominate. Elisabeth Afseth, a fixed income analyst with Investec in London, said the weeks leading up to Greece’s June 17 election are likely to be volatile for both equity and bond markets.

An informal summit of European leaders is scheduled for Wednesday.

Despite Thursday’s bounce, stocks are still down considerably in May, on track for the worst monthly losses since September. The Dow has finished in the red on all but three of the 15 trading days this month.

The blue chip index and the S&P 500 are off more than 5% in May, while the Nasdaq is more than 6% lower.

U.S. stocks closed lower Friday, after the euphoria surrounding Facebook’s Friday IPO had worn off. All three indexes clocked their worst weekly losses of the year last week.

World markets: European stocks closed with significant gains. Britain’s FTSE 100 () climbed 0.9%, the DAX () in Germany rose 1.1% and France’s CAC 40 () jumped 1%.

Asian markets ended mixed. The Shanghai Composite () edged 0.2% higher and Japan’s Nikkei () ended up 0.3%. The Hang Seng () in Hong Kong shed 0.2%.

Companies: Yahoo (, Fortune 500) and China’s Alibaba Group have agreed to a $7.1 billion deal, in which the Chinese Internet giant will buy back half of Yahoo’s 40% stake in the company.

JPMorgan loss: It’s going to get worse

Speaking at a Deutsche Bank conference, JPMorgan Chase (, Fortune 500) CEO Jamie Dimon said the firm would suspend its stock buyback program but would keep its dividend.

Lowe’s (, Fortune 500) reported better-than-expected earnings but issued mixed guidance. The stock fell 10%.

Campbell Soup (, Fortune 500) posted a slight decline in earnings per share but performed slightly better than forecasts. The stock fell 2%.

Some social media stocks fell along with Facebook, though not as steeply. Zynga () fell less than 1% and LinkedIn () declined just 2%. But Groupon () surged 7%.

Currencies and commodities: The dollar posted modest gains versus the Japanese yen, but slipped slightly against the euro and the British pound.

How Iran could double its oil output

Oil for June delivery rose $1.09 to settle at $92.57 a barrel.

Gold futures for June delivery dropped $3.20 to settle at $1,588.70 an ounce.

Bonds: The price on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury fell Monday morning, pushing the yield up to 1.75% from the 1.70% level late Friday.  

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05/20/2012 (7:28 pm)

Verizon ends standalone DSL service, requires landline bundle

Filed under: economics, online |

Verizon just can’t seem to stay out of hot water.

As of May 6, new, upgrading and moving Verizon DSL Internet users are being required to also purchase a landline telephone service package. That decision is causing a stir on Capitol Hill and with partner DirecTV (, Fortune 500).

Sen. Herb Kohl, chairman of the Senate’s antitrust subcommittee, wrote to Verizon (, Fortune 500) on Thursday, slamming the telecom giant for its new DSL rules.

"The bundling that Verizon now plans could potentially lessen competition, increase rates and lead to less innovation," Kohl said in his letter. "Consumers benefit when one service is competing with another, not when they must buy a package of services."

Kohl’s primary complaint was about the timing of the company’s move. Verizon’s decision comes soon after it struck a deal with rival cable companies Comcast () and Time Warner Cable (, Fortune 500) to sell wireless service to their customers.

Verizon’s move to reduce its competition with its new partners seems a little suspicious.

As Kohl put it: "It appears inconsistent for Verizon to argue, on the one hand, that the joint marketing arrangements and bundling wireless services with cable offerings increases customer choice, while on the other hand the company is tying voice and DSL services, compelling consumers to purchase bundled offerings."

Verizon’s residential DSL and landline telephone businesses is on the decline. In the first quarter, the company shed 89,000 DSL customers and 205,000 landline phone users.

"Our decision to adjust the way we offer DSL service after May 6 more accurately represents the broadband customer base at Verizon," Verizon spokesman William Kula said.

Ending standalone DSL sales lets Verizon "control our cost structure more effectively," he said.

Verizon said it is reviewing Kohl’s letter and "will respond appropriately."

Verizon is still waiting for regulatory approval of its arrangement with Comcast and Time Warner Cable. It agreed to purchase $3.6 billion of wireless spectrum from the cable companies. In return, the cable consortium will be able to bundle wireless service with their triple-play TV, broadband and phone packages.

"We have made a strong case that the spectrum purchase is in the public interest," said Verizon spokesman Ed McFadden.

Verizon’s plan is to take currently unused spectrum and use it to expand its 4G LTE wireless broadband services.

But the deal has raised eyebrows among consumer advocates and other competitors, since Verizon has its own FiOS triple-play package as well as its DSL service. Those both compete directly with the cable companies’ plans.

Related story: Are landlines doomed?

DirecTV, which bundles Verizon’s DSL service with its satellite TV offering, also opposes Verizon’s spectrum purchase. It said in a complaint filed to the FCC on Wednesday that Verizon’s DSL-landline bundling decision is a prime example of why the telecom’s spectrum deal with the cable companies is anticompetitive.

"Even in the short amount of time since the commercial agreements were finalized, Verizon’s behavior offers direct evidence of ways in which the proposed transaction will alter the market to the detriment of competition and consumers," the company said.

The DSL wrangle is just the latest in a recent slew of negative headlines about Verizon.

The company on Wednesday said it was planning this summer to begin forcing smartphone customers with unlimited data plans to switch to tiered plans when they upgrade.

Last month, Verizon said it would begin instituting a $30 upgrade fee when current customers purchase a new phone.

And just before New Year’s Eve, Verizon tried to sneak through a $2 "convenience charge" for customers who make one-time bill payments using a debit or credit card. Met with incredible consumer ire, Verizon abandoned that plan the next day. 

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05/18/2012 (3:40 pm)

Barnes-Jewish will pay in overbilling case

Filed under: Europe, Uncategorized |

Barnes-Jewish Hospital agreed to pay back $725,185 to a Medicare contractor, according to a government audit released Monday showing that the hospital overbilled for patient care.

According to the audit, the hospital received $660 million in 2009 and 2010 for care provided to patients with Medicare, government health insurance for people who are older than 65 or have a disability.

As part of a regular review of those payments, government auditors checked 240 claims that were deemed at-risk for billing errors, including those with payments above $150,000 and inpatient stays of zero or one day. The auditors found errors in 58 of the claims that resulted in overpayments of $392,829 for outpatient and $332,356 for inpatient charges. Barnes-Jewish “did not have adequate controls to prevent incorrect billing of Medicare claims,” according to the report from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General quick payday loans.

The billing errors involved calculation mistakes on dosages of injected drugs, unreported credits from device manufacturers, duplicate or incorrect coding and incomplete doctors’ orders.

The mistakes were attributed to human error and problems coordinating doctor signatures, dates and times on the paperwork.

The hospital refunded the full amount to Wisconsin Physician Services, a Medicare contractor, according to a letter dated March 30 from hospital President Richard Liekweg.

Barnes-Jewish also bought new billing software and trained employees on Medicare coding, Liekweg wrote.

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05/15/2012 (9:52 am)

Stocks close down 1% on bank, Europe worries

Filed under: Europe, legal |

All three U.S. stock indexes closed down roughly 1% Monday. Investors sold out of stocks on worries over the political and economic stability of the eurozone and the safety of the U.S. banking sector.

Over the weekend, Greece’s political crisis appeared to worsen as parties fought to form a government. The lack of resolution heightened fears that Greece could be forced to leave the eurozone.

"Everyone is trying to figure out how much of the possibility of Greece leaving the eurozone is being factored into the market," said Frank Davis, head of trading at LEK Securities.

The Dow Jones industrial average () closed down 125 points, or 1%. The S&P 500 () lost 15 points, or 1.1%. The Nasdaq () fell 31 points or 1.1%.

Meanwhile, JPMorgan’s announcement last week of a $2 billion trading loss continues to drag down bank stocks.

Bears are roaring back

Shares of JPMorgan (, Fortune 500), which were down 9% Friday, lost another 3% Monday, after the bank announced the retirement of chief investment officer Ina Drew, who oversaw the unit responsible for the trading blunder. Fitch Ratings downgraded JPMorgan’s debt after Friday’s closing bell, voicing concern over a "lack of liquidity."

Stocks of rival Wall Street firms Citigroup (, Fortune 500), Wells Fargo (, Fortune 500) and Goldman Sachs (, Fortune 500) all slid roughly 2% Monday, following 4% losses Friday. Morgan Stanley (, Fortune 500) dropped by more than 4%.

"If [JPMorgan CEO Jamie] Dimon is making these mistakes and known as one of the best managers out there, it really makes people wonder again who is controlling the risk situation at the banks," said Douglas DePietro, head of trading at Evercore.

As Greece’s problems heat up, investors made a dash out of European debt securities Monday, with the yield on 10-year Greek bonds shooting up to 27.3%.

The yield on the Spanish 10-year bond climbed to 6.33%. Any rate above the 6% benchmark heightens bailout risk. Italian bond yields also rose, hitting 5.75%.

Meanwhile, the German bund slipped to a record low of 1.45%, further raising the spread between Germany and the weaker nations’ yields.

Investors will keep tabs on Germany after German Prime Minister Angela Merkel’s party lost elections in the nation’s largest state on Sunday. Merkel is due to face national elections next year.

U.S. stocks finished lower Friday and were down for the second straight week.

World markets: Major European stocks closed sharply lower. Britain’s FTSE 100 () lost 2%, while the DAX () in Germany tumbled 1.9%, and France’s CAC 40 () plunged 2.3%.

The Shanghai Composite () lost 0.6% in trading Monday, while Hang Seng () in Hong Kong ended down 1.2%. But the Nikkei () in Tokyo finished up 0 short term personal loan.2% for the day.

The People’s Bank of China took action Saturday to stimulate slowing growth, as it cut the amount of reserves banks are required to hold. The move came a day after economic readings showed inflation, industrial production growth, spending and lending in the world’s second-largest economy all slowing.

Companies: Yahoo (, Fortune 500) CEO Scott Thompson left the company Sunday, after it was found he padded his resume with an embellished college degree, ending his term there after just four months.

The web-portal company also reached a deal with activist shareholder and Third Point CEO Dan Loeb, who had initially disclosed the problems with Thompson’s resume, by agreeing to nominate three of four directors he had put forth for its board.

Beauty company Avon Products (, Fortune 500) said that it would consider the most recent buyout offer from Coty Inc., which upped its offer last week. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (, Fortune 500) is helping to finance the bid and said it would back the purchase.

Shares of online deal site Groupon () rose nearly 11% in after-hours trading, following its release of first-quarter results, which showed narrowing losses and better-than-expected sales. In recent months, Groupon has seen accounting problems, shareholder lawsuits and an examination by the Securities and Exchange Commission, but shares moved up 19% Monday ahead of earnings.

Wall Street betting as big as ever

Shares of Chesapeake Energy (, Fortune 500) rebounded Monday from their Friday sell-off, which was sparked by news that Chesapeake might have to delay some asset sales, which are necessary to pay down its debt.

After Friday’s close, the company announced it had arranged for a $3 billion unsecured loan from Goldman Sachs (, Fortune 500) and affiliates of Jefferies Group (). On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that activist investor Carl Icahn is expected to reveal he has increased his stake in the company to more than 5%.

Shares of Best Buy (, Fortune 500) rose after the retailer said former Chief Executive Brian Dunn’s relationship with an employee was inappropriate but didn’t involve "misuse of company resources" or "misuse of aircraft."

Currencies and commodities: The dollar was stronger against the euro, but fell versus the Japanese yen and the British pound.

Oil prices for June delivery slid to a five-month low, losing $1.96 to $94.17 a barrel.

Gold futures for June delivery lost another $26.30 and reached $1,557.70 an ounce.

Bonds: The price on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury rose, pushing the yield down to 1.78%. 

Source

05/12/2012 (3:56 am)

Japan Pledges Liquidity in Case of Global Emergency Arising - Bloomberg

Filed under: UK, management |

Japan

05/05/2012 (2:04 pm)

Oil ebbs on heels of weak job report

Filed under: money, online |

The price of oil plunged to its lowest level in nearly six months Friday, falling below $100 per barrel for the first time since February. A drop in gasoline prices can’t be far behind.

It’s a welcome trend for motorists, with the summer driving season just around the corner. And it eases some pressure on the U.S. economy, which has shown only agonizingly slow growth in the nearly three years since the Great Recession ended.

Oil fell $4.05, or 4 percent, to $98.49, after a weak U.S. jobs report offered the latest evidence that the global economy is weakening, possibly reducing demand for oil. At the same time, there is mounting evidence that world oil supplies are growing.

For the week, oil fell more than $6 and is now about $12 below its February high. U.S. gasoline prices have fallen to $3.80 per gallon from a peak of $3.94 in early April.

Now they could go as low as $3.50 per gallon by July 4, according to Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service.

The picture of the oil market is the reverse of just a few months ago. Then, world oil demand looked to be rising quickly at the same time that world supplies were threatened by a host of small production outages and the potential for drastically reduced production from Iran, the world’s third-biggest exporter.

Those developments raised the prospect that world supplies would be at their most tenuous just as the summer driving season arrived in the developed world. The price of U.S. benchmark oil rose to about $110. The price for international oil used to make most of the gasoline in the U.S. spiked even higher, to $128 per barrel.

Gasoline prices in the U.S. appeared to be on track to soar past $4 per gallon nationwide, another burden for U.S. consumers already suffering from high unemployment and pitiful wage growth.

Now the worst of those price fears have melted away for a number of reasons:

• Falling demand: A spreading recession in Europe and slow growth in the U.S. suggests energy consumption, which fell 0.4 percent worldwide in the first quarter, will remain weak.

• Growing supplies: Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members are pumping more oil. Energy companies are employing cutting-edge drilling technology to ramp up production across the globe. World oil supplies grew on average by 1.35 million barrels per day in the first quarter, and producers should easily meet demand in the coming months.

• Easing political tensions: The West’s nuclear standoff with Iran appears to be cooling off. The threat of conflict — and less Iranian crude on the market — helped push oil prices past $100. But now Iran and the West are planning talks.

The price of oil hasn’t dropped this much since Dec. 14, 2011, when it fell by $5.19, or 5.2 percent, to $94.95 per barrel.

Oil prices may drift even lower in coming weeks.

Source

05/02/2012 (10:20 am)

Polish GDP Risk Sparks Rate-Increase Doubt, Kazmierczak Says - Bloomberg

Filed under: News, UK |

Poland

04/25/2012 (2:32 pm)

Romney campaign spent $18.50 per vote

Filed under: Finance, UK |

Well, it’s over. Mitt Romney has amassed a nearly-insurmountable delegate lead, and is on track to become his party’s nominee for president.

The road to victory hasn’t been easy for the former Massachusetts governor. The primary campaign stretched on for months, and at least 10 different candidates topped the national polls at some point.

So how much did victory cost?

Romney spent a total of $76.6 million, far more than any other campaign. That total is, for example, more than the combined spending of Ron Paul, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich.

Now, money isn’t everything in politics — but it sure doesn’t hurt. And in this field, Romney dominated.

"The Romney team was putting a lot of money out there," one Santorum adviser told CNN when the former Pennsylvania senator called it quits earlier this month. "The budget was a factor."

More money, more votes: The billion dollar campaign

At the end of March, the Romney camp had captured 607 delegates and 4.1 million votes. That means the candidate, who has cultivated a reputation as a penny-pincher, spent $18.50 per vote, and $126,000 per delegate.

The money was used to cover various expenses like hotels, food, equipment, accounting services, rental cars, air travel, event consultants and online advertisers.

For instance, in March, the campaign spent $871 on Poland Spring water, $1,966 on office supplies from Apple (, Fortune 500), more than $50 at Applebee’s, $48 at Arby’s, $9.57 at Panda Express, $11,000 in payments to the Waldorf Astoria hotel and $70,165 at law and lobbying firm Patton Boggs.

But at least two of Romney’s contenders had a better votes-to-expenditure ratio.

America’s Choice 2012

Gingrich, for example, spent $21 million through the end of March, collecting 141 delegates and 2.2 million votes. That works out to just under $10 per vote and around $150,000 per delegate.

Santorum spent $18.7 million on 264 delegates and 2.9 million votes for a per-vote expenditure just north of $6.50 and a cost-per-delegate of about $71,000.

Paul, meanwhile, got the worst return on his money of the final contenders. The Texas congressman spent nearly $35 million, but received only around 1.1 million votes and 72 delegates. The math works out to $32.40 per vote and roughly $485,500 per delegate.

And that’s just the official campaign spending. This cycle, the influence of super PACs should not be ignored. While technically prohibited from coordinating with campaigns, the new spending vehicles acted as a supplement, and in some cases, became campaign linchpins.

When super PAC money is factored in, overall spending on Romney’s behalf jumps to $122 million, bringing his cost-per-vote to just under $30. By this measure, each delegate cost more than $200,000.

Gingrich also saw a significant jump when super PAC money is included. Adding in the $18 million spent by the Winning our Future super PAC, the former House speaker’s cost-per-vote jumps to over $17.75, while spending per delegate tops $275,000.

The Santorum super PAC added around $8 million in spending. That pushed him to almost $9.50 per vote and $101,500 per delegate. Less reliant on super PAC spending, Paul’s figures were little changed.

Moving ahead, Romney faces the challenge of ramping up fundraising efforts, while investing a healthy percentage of that money in the kind of ground game that will be able to get out the vote in November.

One candidate has a jump on Romney in that category: President Obama. The Obama re-election campaign has brought in $191 million, and already spent just less than half — or $89 million — of that total. 

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04/23/2012 (11:36 pm)

Oil hovers near $103 amid EU economy worries

Filed under: Loans, management |

Oil prices hovered near $103 a barrel Tuesday in Asia amid investor worries that Europe’s debt crisis will undermine economic growth and crude consumption.

Benchmark oil for June delivery was down 13 cents to $102.98 a barrel at midday Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 77 cents to settle at $103.11 in New York on Monday.

Brent crude for June delivery was up 15 cents at $118.87 per barrel in London.

Traders are concerned fiscal austerity measures designed to lower European debt levels may trigger a recession this year. On Monday, a survey showed the eurozone’s manufacturing and services sectors unexpectedly fell in April.

“Developments in the euro area continue to drive sentiment,” said Gerald Lyons, chief economist at Standard Chartered. “The biggest threat facing the world economy is a collapse of one or more euro area economies.”

Crude has traded between $100 and $110 for most of this year as the U.S. economy improved more than expected but crude demand remained weak business card.

Some analysts are optimistic that crude demand in the U.S. and China, the world’s two largest oil consumers, is about to rebound. Economic sanctions by Western powers against Iran may also cut crude output from the OPEC member, tightening global supplies.

“We’re looking at the bottom in U.S. gasoline demand, the bottom of the China slowdown and we are just starting to feel the pinch on Iranian sanctions,” said Carl Larry at Oil Outlooks and Opinions. “Outside of another economic meltdown, there’s not much that we can see that is going to bring this oil price back down.”

In other energy trading, heating oil was down 0.4 cents at $3.14 per gallon and gasoline futures fell 0.4 cents at $3.14 per gallon. Natural gas rose 1.2 cents at $2.02 per 1,000 cubic feet.

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04/22/2012 (6:40 am)

In ‘72, EPA battled pollution; now it’s politics

Filed under: marketing, term |

A polluted drainage ditch that once flowed with industrial waste from Lake Charles, La., petrochemical plants teems with overgrown, wild plants today.

A light-rail line zips past the spot where a now-defunct Portland, Ore., gasoline station advertised in 1972 that it had run out of gas.

A smoking Jersey City, N.J., dump piled with twisted, rusty metal has disappeared, along with the twin towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan that were its backdrop.

Forty years after the Environmental Protection Agency sent an army of nearly 100 photographers across the country to capture images at the dawn of environmental regulation, The Associated Press went back for Earth Day this year to see how things have changed. It is something the agency never got to do because the Documerica program, as it was called, died in 1978, the victim of budget cuts.

AP photographers returned to more than a dozen of those locations in recent weeks, from Portland to Cleveland and Corpus Christi, Texas. Of the 20,000 photos in the archive, the AP selected those that focused on environmental issues, rather than the more general shots of everyday life in the 1970s.

Gone are the many obvious signs of pollution _ clouds of smoke billowing from industrial chimneys, raw sewage flowing into rivers, garbage strewn over beaches and roadsides _ that heightened environmental awareness in the 1970s, and led to the first Earth Day and the EPA’s creation in 1970. Such environmental consciousness caused Congress to pass almost unanimously some of the country’s bedrock environmental laws in the years that followed.

Today’s pollution problems aren’t as easy to see or to photograph. Some in industry and politics question whether environmental regulation has gone too far and whether the risks are worth addressing, given their costs.

Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney has called for the firing of EPA chief Lisa Jackson, while GOP rival Newt Gingrich has said the EPA should be replaced altogether. Jackson has faced tough questioning on Capitol Hill so often the in past two years that a top Republican quipped that she needs her own parking spot.

“To a certain extent, we are a victim of our own success,” said William Ruckelshaus, who headed the EPA when it came into existence under Republican President Richard Nixon and was in charge during the Documerica project. “Right now, EPA is under sharp criticism partially because it is not as obvious to people that pollution problems exist and that we need to deal with them.”

Environmental laws that passed Congress so easily in Ruckelshaus’ day are now at the center of a partisan dispute between Republicans and Democrats. Dozens of bills have been introduced to limit environmental protections that critics say will lead to job losses and economic harm, and there are those who question what the vast majority of scientists accept _ that the burning of fossil fuels is causing global warming.

In the 1970s, the first environmental regulations were just starting to take effect, with widespread support. Now, according to some officials in the oil and gas and electric utility industries, which are responsible for the bulk of emissions and would bear the greatest costs, the EPA has gone overboard with rules.

For instance, Documerica photographers captured a wave of coal-fired power plants under construction. Republicans and the industry now say environmental regulations are partly to blame for shuttering some of the oldest and dirtiest coal plants.

Jim DiPeso of ConservAmerica, a group that recently changed its name from Republicans for Environmental Protection, says the EPA is caught in the center of a perfect storm. “This time of greater cynicism about government, more economic anxiety and the fact that the problems are not immediately apparent, has created this political problem for EPA,” he said.

In an interview, Jackson said she believes that people in the United States still want to protect the environment. “There’s a large gulf between the rhetoric inside the Beltway to do everything from cut back on EPA to get rid of the whole place, and what the American people would actually stand for,” she said. “It’s very easy to make rash statements without thinking about what that means to the health of everyday Americans.”

A 2010 Pew Research Center survey showed that 57 percent of those questioned held a favorable view of the EPA, compared with a 1997 poll that showed 69 percent with a positive view of the agency. A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll taken last year found that 71 percent of people surveyed said that the government should continue provide money to the EPA to enforce regulations to address global warming and other environmental issues.

“We are not done. We still have challenges we have to face,” Jackson said.

The agency last year began a volunteer photography project called State of the Environment. More than 620 people have participated and submitted 1,800 photographs, but only a few are at the same sites at the 1970s project.

Images always have spurred environmental consciousness. A 1980s satellite picture of the ozone hole helped lead to a ban on the chemicals in aerosol cans and refrigerants that were responsible. Underwater video of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 opened the public’s eyes to the gravity of the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

But a second Documerica project, with professional photographers, would be impossible today, given budget cuts facing the agency and the wariness of industry barring access by photographers.

Lyntha Scott Eiler, 65, shot photographs for Documerica around her then-home in northern Arizona, as well as one of the early emissions testing sites for automobile exhaust in Hamilton County, Ohio. At the Navajo Generating Station in Arizona, Eiler got right down in a strip mine “where the shovels were.”

“They weren’t afraid of the EPA, so it was, `What else you do you want to get a photograph of?,’” Eiler said. “You probably would have a hard time doing that today.”

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