There have been some pretty stupid ideas floating around about how to deal with this purported gasoline crisis we’re experiencing. (See, e.g., here.) Here’s one that might sound crazy at first, but is, I submit, crazy like a fox.

Read the full piece here.

Back in February, I criticized the SEC’s rules regarding how energy companies must disclose their oil reserves in securities filings. My main point was that the conservative way the SEC measures reserves is quite different from the measurement approach the oil companies themselves take when deciding how to invest billions of their own dollars.

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Today’s Heard on the Street column in the W$J reports that utilities are moving away from low-sulfur coal in favor of the dirtier, high-sulfur variety. This might seem odd, given that the Clean Air Act operates on sort of a “ratchet” principle — i.e., when air quality improves, degradation is generally forbidden. One might expect that, absent some change in relative prices, the trend would always be toward cleaner-burning fuels.

Read the full piece here.

In today’s W$J, Holman Jenkins stands up for short-sellers, and rightly so. Those folks have taken a bit of a beating lately. They’ve been sued by companies like Biovail and Overstock.com and trashed on talk shows like CBS’s 60 Minutes.

Read the full piece here. 

Today’s W$J reports on an odd lawsuit the Australian government is pursuing against Citigroup. According to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, a smoke break conversation between Citigroup employees resulted in illegal insider trading. Citigroup, it seems, was representing bidder Toll Holdings, Inc. in a yet-to-be-announced hostile bid for Patrick Corp., Austrialia’s largest port cargo handler. Someone from Citigroup’s investment banking operation allegedly shared information about the deal with one of Citigroup’s proprietary traders (i.e., someone who trades securities for Citigroup’s own account). The trading that followed, Australian regulators say, violated the law.

Read the full piece here. 

I’m really starting to worry about the lawyers for former Qwest CEO, Joseph Nacchio. (I first expressed concern here.) Mr. Nacchio has been charged with 42 counts of criminal insider trading. The charges are based on allegations that Mr. Nacchio learned, after Qwest had made some rosy public statements, that business wasn’t going as well as predicted, and he then sold $101 million worth of stock on the basis of that non-public information.

Read the full piece here.

In a recent speech at the Brookings Institution, Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) bashed what he called “a laissez-faire energy policy that relies on market evolution.” Under such a policy, he says, “life in America is going to be much more difficult in the coming decades.” He insists that “[w]hat is needed is an urgent national campaign led by a succession of presidents and Congresses who will ensure that American ingenuity and resources are fully committed to this problem.”

Read the full piece here.

It drives me nuts when the government attempts to justify rules mandating particular business practices on grounds that they reduce costs for the businesses being regulated. My favorite recent example of this is OSHA’s ultimately repealed (thank goodness!) ergonomics standard. The agency sought to justify the extraordinarily intrusive rule on grounds that it would save employers $9.1 billion per year (after compliance costs) in reduced sickdays and workers’ compensation costs. Of course, the agency never bothered to explain why, in light of these cost-savings, the government needed to force compliance.

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Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and co-owner of Landmark Theatres, has been blogging about equity-based CEO compensation and the problems it purportedly creates. Cuban’s theory is that paying CEOs in company stock does not tend to align their interests with those of shareholders; instead, it leads CEOs to pursue excessively risky business ventures.

Read the full piece here.