Japan Idles Last Nuclear Reactor, Blackouts Predicted This Summer

Tokyo (CNN) — As Japan began its workweek Monday morning, the trains ran exactly on time, the elevators in thousands of Tokyo high rises efficiently moved between floors, and the lights turned on across cities with nary a glitch.

What makes this Monday so remarkable is that for the first time in four decades, none of the energy on this working day is derived from a nuclear reactor.

Over the weekend, Japan’s last remaining nuclear reactor shut down for regular maintenance. In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, reactors have not been allowed back on. Japan is now the first major economy to see the modern era without nuclear power.

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Prior to the Fukushima disaster, Japan relied on nuclear for approximately 30% of its energy. As reactors have come off-line, the country has increased its imports of fossil fuels.

Japan’s government predicts it won’t be able to keep up that pace, and the void will result in an energy crunch this summer, possibly leading to rolling blackouts.

The national government’s ruling party, the Democratic Party of Japan, has been urging local communities to allow reactors to return to operation.

The DPJ’s deputy policy chief, Yoshito Sengoku, bluntly said without nuclear energy the world’s third largest economy would suffer. “We must think ahead to the impact on Japan’s economy and people’s lives, if all nuclear reactors are stopped. Japan could, in some sense, be committing mass suicide,” said Sengoku.

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Crude oil’s slide accelerated on Friday, as a poor jobs report added to a list of concerns on energy traders’ mind, ranging from the European debt crisis and OPEC’s increased output, to the looming higher margin requirements.

Crude is trading at $97.89 a barrel at Nymex, down 4.5%. Friday’s plunge will extend oil’s loss to a third session, leaving the market with a total loss of 8%.

The selloff started on Wednesday as the EIA weekly report showed a record level of oil in storage, and later intensified as CME Group, which operates the Nymex exchange, said it would hike margin requirements for speculators from next week. The fears didn’t phase out, even after CME said it had received a 90-day reprieve from the regulator. Adding to downward pressure on oil prices was the revelation by OPEC secretary general Abdullah al-Badri on Thursday that the organization is “not happy with prices at this level because there will be (demand) destruction.” Oil exporting countries are working hard to bring down oil prices by pumping much more oil than its official target, he added.

The last straw for oil bulls came Friday morning as the Labor Department reported that job growth slowed again in April to 115,000 jobs, the smallest increase since October, which has further stoked worries over energy demand.

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Americas’ obesity epidemic and continuous struggle to shed pounds has been a boon to some weight-loss outfits, not to mention NBC’s “The Biggest Loser.” The biggest beneficiary is arguably Michael Johnson, CEO of the nutrition company Herbalife (HLF), who was paid $89.4 million in 2011, making him the highest-paid CEO, according to a report from research firm GMI Ratings.

Last year was the second year of double-digit pay increases, according to GMI. On average, pay to CEOs of companies in the Russell 3000 went up by more than 15% in 2011.

The top 10 highest-paid CEOs thus far in 2011 earned about 77% of their total realized compensation through stock option exercises and vested equity. A not-so-close second behind Johnson in terms of total 2011 compensation are some familiar names: IBM’s (IBM) Sam Palmisano ($63.2 million); Tyco International’s (TYC) Edward Breen ($63.1 million); Honeywell’s (HON) David Cote ($58.2 million). Compensation includes base salary, bonuses and profits on vesting their stock options. Walt Disney’s (DIS) Robert Iger had the highest base salary, of $2 million, with a $15.5 million bonus and nearly $1 million in perks.

Most of the CEOs who made the top 10 are there largely because of their companies’ very generous stock option grant policies. Johnson exercised 1.8 million options for a profit of almost $77 million last year. GMI reported that most of the options that were exercised in 2011 were awarded between 2003 and 2005, when Herbalife’s shares traded below $10. Since then, the stock price has done well: The stock is up by 179.1% over the last five years, and 401.6% over the last three years. During 2011, it was mostly trading in the $50-plus range.

Interesting timing for Herbalife given that the stock has stumbled this week, falling over 25% since Monday after hedge fund manager David Einhorn questioned its disclosure policy on the company’s conference call. On Thursday Herbalife said it would purchase $427.9 million of its common shares. This week Herbalife reported net income of $108.2 million, compared to $88.7 million compared with a year ago.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook has set a price range of $28 to $35 for its initial public offering of stock.

At the high end, this could raise as much as $11.8 billion. If the underwriters sell the extra stock reserved for overallotments, the IPO will value Facebook at $79.3 billion at the high end of the price range.

That’s much higher than any other Internet IPO in the past, even Google Inc. in 2004.

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Republican Rep. Darrell Issa has circulated a lengthy pair of documents making the case for holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress over his “refusal” to cooperate in an investigation of the ill-fated Fast and Furious operation.

Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, on Thursday sent to every member of his committee a 64-page draft contempt order against Holder, as well as a 17-page memo outlining the history of the scandal.

“Operation Fast and Furious’ outrageous tactics, the Justice Department’s refusal to fully cooperate with the investigation and efforts to smear and retaliate against whistleblowers have tainted the institutional integrity of the Justice Department,” Issa wrote.

The committee is not citing Holder or holding the attorney general in contempt at this point. However, the documents lay out the case for contempt should members be called to vote.

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The boss of Spirit Airlines isn’t about to cave in to a dying former Marine, and he doesn’t lose sleep knowing his company leads the industry when it comes to customer complaints, he told FoxNews.com.

“That’s an irrelevant statistic,” Spirit CEO Ben Baldanza said when told his airline generates gripes at two-and-a-half times the rate of the next most complained about carrier.

Spirit racked up 8.27 complaints per 100,000 passengers in January, while United finished a distant second-worst, registering 3.5 complaints per 100,000 fliers, according to U.S. Department of Transportation statistics. By comparison, Southwest notched just 0.2 complaints per 100,000 fliers.

Spirit is generating complaints at a much faster clip on Facebook, where a “Boycott Spirit Airlines” page has seen its number of “likes” soar to more than 21,000 from about 700 since the carrier denied a $197 refund to Jerry Meekins. The 76-year-old Vietnam veteran and former Marine tried to get his $197 back after learning his esophageal cancer is terminal and being told by his doctor not to fly from Florida to Atlantic City. Airline officials told him to forget it, and Baldanza reaffirmed the company’s hardline in an exclusive FoxNews.com interview.

“A lot of our customers buy that insurance and what Mr. Meekins asked us to do was essentially give him the benefit of that insurance when he didn’t purchase the insurance,” Baldanza said. “Had we done that, I think it really would’ve been cheating all the people who actually bought the insurance … and I think that’s fundamentally unfair.”

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What country does this describe?

The country’s banks are short of capital and will have to go to the financial markets to raise more this year — and in 2013.

Bank balance sheets have ballooned as a result of lending to real-estate developers.

Everyone believes that banks’ official accounts seriously understate the number of bad loans on their books.

And, finally, it’s just about impossible in this country to separate bank and government finances.

Spain or Italy? Of course. And you can work your way around Europe adding other names to the same list of guesses.

But the country I had in mind was China.

China’s banking problem isn’t as far along as those in Europe. Notice that I’m calling it a “problem” rather than a “crisis.” But China’s banking sector is headed toward a crisis — and the government’s efforts to head off that escalation will be a major driver in China’s economic and monetary policy this year and next.

Want to understand how much stimulus Beijing will pour on its economy — and therefore whether you should be putting money into Chinese stocks or taking it out (and when)? Take a long look at China’s banks.

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NEW YORK (AP) – Americans’ spending – much like the economy – continues to yo-yo.

Major retailers such as Costco and Macy’s reported on Thursday that April revenue rose less that 1 percent in the worst performance since 2009 when the U.S. economy was just coming out of a bad recession.

The disappointing results follow two consecutive months of strong sales that were boosted by positive economic news about the job and housing markets.

“The economy is growing in fits and starts, and we are seeing sales shoot up and down,” said Michael P. Niemira, chief economist at International Council of Shopping Centers. “We’re in a choppy period.”

A small group of merchants representing roughly 13 percent of the $2.4 trillion U.S. retail industry report monthly revenue at stores open at least a year, a key measure since it excludes results from locations that open and close during the year. Still, the figures offer a snapshot of consumer spending, which accounts for more than 70 percent of economic activity. And recently, it’s shown that Americans’ spending sways with the wave of economic news.

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NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwire -05/03/12)- Last year the Fukushima disaster in Japan started a downward spiral for companies in the Uranium Industry. Approximately one year later the industry looks to be finally recovering as the Global X Uranium ETF (URA) is up nearly 12 percent year-to-date. “Fukushima put a speed bump on the road to the nuclear renaissance,” Ganpat Mani, president of Converdyn, said at a nuclear industry summit. “It’s not going to delay the programs around the world.”

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(CNN) — Israel, by necessity, has developed one of the most able security and intelligence apparatus in the world. There has been no necessity to develop a world-class political apparatus, however, and it shows.

In a single week, the Israeli army’s chief of staff, the former head of internal security and the former head of external security have all publicly questioned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judgment on Iran. While the current army chief spoke narrowly about the Iranian government, the former security officials directed their fire at Israeli politicians. On Friday, the former internal security chief told an Israeli audience, “I don’t believe in a leadership that makes decisions based on messianic feelings” — and he was speaking not of Iran, but of Israel.

Last week was Israel’s independence day, traditionally an occasion of pride and celebration. Instead, Israelis are in a deep funk.

At its founding in 1948, Israel seemed an improbable state. An ingathering of Jews from Eastern Europe, the Arab world and beyond had no real economy, no common language and no common idea of what it was to be an Israeli. Tensions between religious Jews and secular Jews, European Jews and Oriental Jews, and Jews and Arabs simmered for decades. They made accommodations in the name of survival, but few conceded the fight for control of the state.

To hear many Israelis tell it now, their nation has become an impossible state. Politics are more contentious than ever. The Israeli welfare state is in full view, as the religious, the poor and the religious poor make increasing demands on the state. Prices are skyrocketing, and the public feels squeezed. A diminishing number of Israelis serve in the army, which once prided itself on universal conscription.

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Washington (CNN) — Hours before the official announcement that President Barack Obama had landed in Kabul, Afghanistan, for a surprise visit, the media — both social and electronic — were already buzzing with reports about the trip.

Had he indeed landed in-country? Was it just a rumor? Should it be reported anyway?

Some, including those inside the administration, were actively concerned about the safety of the commander in chief as he arrived in a war zone, while others felt any word of the president’s visit was public information and fair game in today’s competitive, instant news cycle.

Before the day began, the administration issued what was later revealed to be a fake presidential schedule, having the president and vice president in meetings throughout the day at the White House.

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The United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), a organization leading the charge for a radical reorganization of “global environmental governance,” has added another item to its list of administrative fiascos: this time, over how it has been protecting the Mediterranean Sea.

According to internal documents obtained by Fox News, a UNEP-administered program to protect the Mediterranean and its coasts overspent its budget by $5.1 million from 1994 to 2011 — equivalent to about a quarter of its entire budget for 2010-2011 — through a rudimentary accounting error that went undetected for most of the 18 years. The cumulative error punched a major hole in the program’s budget.

Despite some frenetic subsequent juggling of accounts and a quiet partial bailout by the European Union, the agency still has the Mediterranean protection program on a budgetary crash diet aimed at getting its books back in balance. UNEP claims that the cash squeeze has not affected any of its actual protection programs.

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KABUL, Afghanistan – A suicide car bomber and Taliban militants disguised in burqas attacked a compound housing hundreds of foreigners in the Afghan capital on Wednesday, killing seven people, officials and witnesses said.

The Taliban said the attack was a response to President Barack Obama’s surprise visit just hours earlier.

At least 17 people were also wounded in the assault, most of them Afghan children on their way to school, the Interior Ministry said.

The second major assault in Kabul in less than three weeks, the attack highlights the Taliban’s continued ability to strike in the heavily guarded capital even when the city is on its tightest security for a combination of events — the Obama visit and Wednesday’s anniversary of the killing of Usama bin Laden in neighboring Pakistan.

The attack started around 6 a.m. in eastern Kabul with a series of explosions and gunfire ringing out from the privately guarded compound known as Green Village that houses hundreds of international contractors. Shooting and blasts continued for hours later as militants who had stormed into the compound held out against security forces, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

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Newt Gingrich is preparing to quit his Republican presidential run, but not without leaving behind a multi-million dollar debt to consultants and other companies across the country.

With the candidate set to make his exit official Wednesday afternoon, a close look at his finance records reveals a free-spending machine that ran up a million-dollar debt in private jet flights alone, along with other services and benefits that left the unpaid bill at a whopping $4.3 million at the end of March, according to the latest filing with the Federal Election Commission (FEC). The campaign says it has paid off $500,000 of that total, which still leaves a $3.8 million tab.

And while huge amounts of money are still owed to a variety of vendors — some of whom might wonder when and if they’ll see their money — the campaign seems to have paid off all its bills to businesses run by Gingrich family members, as well as “reimbursed” the candidate himself with nearly half a million dollars.

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While there is a well-defined set of regulatory measures to address too-big-to-fail, the same cannot be said for the second major challenge revealed by the crisis: the instability of the shadow banking system. Although some elements of pre-crisis shadow banking are probably gone forever, others persist. Moreover, as time passes, memories fade, and the financial system normalizes, it seems likely that new forms of shadow banking will emerge. Indeed, the increased regulation of the major securities firms may well encourage the migration of some parts of the shadow banking system further into the darkness–that is, into largely unregulated markets. And it bears reminding that, just as the fragility of major financial firms elicited government support measures during the crisis, so the runs and threats of runs on the shadow banking system brought forth government programs such as the Treasury’s insuring of money market funds.

Reform measures to date are not wholly unrelated to the shadow banking system, and wholesale funding more generally. Dodd-Frank addresses the associated issue of derivatives trading by requiring central clearing of all standardized derivatives and margining of non-cleared trades by major actors in over-the-counter derivatives markets. Strengthened capital and liquidity standards for prudentially regulated institutions should help by giving increased assurance to counterparties about the soundness of these firms. But in periods of high stress, with substantial uncertainty as to the value of important asset classes, questions about liquidity and solvency could still arise, even with respect to well-regulated institutions. In fact, the supposed low-risk lending transactions–typically secured by apparently safe assets–that dominate the shadow banking system are likely to be questioned only in a period of high stress. It cannot be overemphasized that this systemic effect can materialize even if no firms were individually considered too-big-to-fail.

Interesting and productive academic debates continue over the sources of the rapid growth of the shadow banking system, the precise reasons for the runs of 2007 and 2008, and the possible sources of future problems. The conclusions drawn from these debates could be important in eventually framing a broadly directed regulatory plan for the shadow banking system. Domestically, among member agencies of the FSOC, and internationally, among members of the Financial Stability Board, policy officials are engaged in these debates and their implications for reform. But policymakers cannot and should not wait for the conclusion of these deliberations to address some obvious vulnerabilities in today’s shadow banking system.

Two areas where the case for reform in the short-run is compelling are money market funds and the tri-party repo market. The requirement adopted by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2010 for a greater liquidity buffer in money market funds was a step in the right direction, but the combination of fixed net asset value, the lack of loss absorption capacity, and the demonstrated propensity for institutional investors to run together make clear that Chairman Schapiro is right to call for additional measures. As to the tri-party repo market, there are several important concerns. A major vulnerability lies in the large amount of intraday credit extended by clearing banks on a daily basis. An industry initiative to address the issue led to some important operational improvements to the tri-party market, but, to be frank, fell short of dealing comprehensively with this problem. So it now falls to the regulatory agencies to take appropriate regulatory and supervisory measures to mitigate these and other risks.

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NEW YORK (AP) — The nation’s crude oil supplies increased last week, the government said Wednesday.

Crude inventories grew by 2.8 million barrels, or 0.8 percent, to 375.9 million barrels, which is 2.5 percent above year-ago levels, the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration said in its weekly report.

Analysts expected an increase of 2.5 million barrels for the week ended April 27, according to Platts, the energy information arm of McGraw-Hill Cos.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) – Bill Gross, founder and co-chief investment officer of bond giant PIMCO, told CNBC on Tuesday that the U.S. could be headed toward a credit rating downgrade if it does not tackle its deficit.

Gross cited a U.S. structural deficit figure between six and eight percent greater than any other country besides Japan and the United Kingdom, and added “until we address that structural deficit then yes, we’re headed to AA territory.”

The U.S. is currently rated AA plus by Standard & Poor’s and AAA by Moody’s and Fitch.

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OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) – Hundreds of activists across the U.S. joined the worldwide May Day protests on Tuesday, with Occupy Wall Street members in several cities leading demonstrations and in some cases clashing with police.

In Oakland, Calif., stinging gas sent protesters fleeing a downtown intersection where they were demonstrating. It was unclear whether police fired the gas, but officers took four people into custody.

Black-clad protesters in Seattle used sticks to small downtown windows and ran through the streets disrupting traffic.

In New York, police in riot gear lined the front of a Bank of America, facing several dozen Occupy activists marching behind barricades. “Bank of America. Bad for America!” they chanted. About 50 demonstrators in Chicago rallied outside another of the bank’s branches.

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Facebook will begin marketing its highly-anticipated initial public offering as early as Monday, according to people familiar with the matter, if no last-minute red flags from the Securities and Exchange Commission are raised.

Under the planned schedule, Facebook shares could begin trading as early as May 16 or May 17, according to these people.

The timing could come down to the wire – with an official prospectus not being made publicly available to prospective investors until as late as Monday morning, these people added.

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In a brazen criminal scheme to defraud taxpayers, one of the highest-ranking officials in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court to helping embezzle more than $500,000 from the federal government.

Over three years, James Woosley and at least five other ICE employees scammed the agency by fabricating expenses for trips that were never taken and for hotel, rental car and restaurant expenses that did not exist, according to court records.

His son, also named James Woosley, and live-in girlfriend, Lateisha Rollerson — both ICE employees — allegedly ran the scam out of the elder Woosley’s two Virginia homes.

Here’s how it worked, according to court records:

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