News from the New Rules Project

Amazon Terminates Affiliates in a Bid to Intimidate State Lawmakers

smitchell — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:00:00 -0600

Amazon is treating its Colorado sales affiliates as "human shields," to use the words of one Denver Post columnist, in what has become a aggressive campaign to overturn a new Colorado law and scare other states away from extending sales taxes to large online retailers.

Big Banks Want You Back

smitchell — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:12:24 -0600

Those who wonder whether public anger at big banks and the Move Your Money sentiment sweeping the country is substantial enough to impact these giants need only look at the banks' own marketing over the last few weeks to see the proof.

In a spate of new advertisements and PR maneuvers, the nation's largest banks are working hard to win us back. They are, in effect, standing on our doorstep, flowers in hand, trying to convince us they've changed.

They're using words like "local" and "community," because they know quite well that there's a rival for our affections. A recent Zogby poll found that nearly one in ten Americans had moved at least some of their business to small banks or credit unions.

Eastern States Resist Paying for Delivery of Midwest Wind Power

jbailey — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:43:29 -0600

A coalition of utilities have announced their opposition to a series of 765-kilovolt transmission lines, more than double the capacity of the current 345-kilovolt lines. The lines are proposed as a way to send electricity from the Dakotas, Iowa and Minnesota to Chicago and points east. "If Iowa wants to build a transmission line for their energy, we have no objection. But Iowa or the Midwest should pay for it," said Ian Bowles, secretary of energy and environmental affairs in Massachusetts. New England states want to produce their own wind energy from offshore farms.

New York Times Maps Bank Concentration by County

newrulesstaff — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 07:51:13 -0600

Noting that "despite the power of big banks, small institutions still dominate huge swaths of the country and hold nearly half of bank deposits overall," the New York Times, using data supplied by Institutional Risk Analytics, published this revealing map, which shows the share of deposits in each county held by banks over and under $65 billion in assets.

Putting Wal-Mart's Green Moves in Context

smitchell — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 07:18:58 -0600

What journalists and even environmentalists so often fail to do in reporting on Wal-Mart's sustainability announcements is to provide some context.

Context is everything. Consider Wal-Mart's latest announcement: It will push some of the factories that supply its stores to cut their greenhouse gas emissions. That's a good thing in and of itself, but what happens when we measure it against Wal-Mart's overall impact on the production of goods?

New Wind Data Finds a Windier, More Self-Reliant Midwest

jfarrell — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 07:48:25 -0600

Five Midwest states (Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio) could get nearly all their electricity from wind, according to updated maps from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR). New data from Wind Powering America mean that 32 states could get all of their electricity from in-state resources, even more than initially revealed in ILSR's ground-breaking report last fall, Energy Self-Reliant States. The revised estimates come from the National Renewable Energy Lab's Wind Powering America project and are the first nationwide update since the early 1990s.

John Farrell Explains the Benefits of Decentralized Energy on KBOO

admin — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:36:07 -0600

The Obama administration's energy policy jumps the shark: why nuclear is a bad deal and carbon-captured coal is anything but clean. Senior Research John Farrell discusses this and the smarter strategy of a decentralized renewable energy future with KBOO host Bill Resnick.

The rules we make now will decide our energy future. Listen to the interview here.

Move Your Money and Save

smitchell — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 09:33:05 -0600

This article was originally published on Huffington Post as part of a partnership with their Move Your Money campaign.

Bigger banks were suppose to lower costs for consumers. That was the promise made repeatedly in 1994 and again in 1999, when Congress dismantled laws that had long restricted the size and scope of banks, ushering in a wave of mergers that left the industry dominated by a few financial giants.

Just seven years after the Glass-Steagall Act was abolished in 1999, the fees consumers were paying on their checking and savings accounts had skyrocketed, rising from $21 billion to $36 billion. (And these amounts do not include credit card and ATM fees, which also shot up.)

Today, new data show that big banks still impose much higher costs on their customers than small banks and credit unions do. Not only are fees lower, but several studies have found that smaller banks and credit unions pay higher interest on savings accounts.

Moving our money to these local institutions could save us billions of dollars a year.

Chart: Average Consumer Fees by Size of Financial Institution in 2009

smitchell — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 08:38:39 -0600

Chart: Consumer Services Available at Community Banks

smitchell — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 10:42:46 -0600