{"id":141496,"date":"2014-11-05T17:47:43","date_gmt":"2014-11-05T17:47:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=141496"},"modified":"2014-11-05T20:53:51","modified_gmt":"2014-11-05T20:53:51","slug":"federal-reserve-policy-keeps-fracking-bubble-afloat-may-change-soon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/politics\/federal-reserve-policy-keeps-fracking-bubble-afloat-may-change-soon\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal Reserve Policy Keeps Fracking Bubble Afloat and That May Change Soon"},"content":{"rendered":"

In August 2005, the U.S.<\/span> Congress and then-President George W. Bush blessed the oil and gas industry with a game-changer: the Energy Policy Act of 2005<\/a>. The Act\u00a0exempted the industry from federal regulatory enforcement of the\u00a0Safe Drinking Water Act<\/a>,\u00a0the Clean Water Act<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0National Environmental Policy Act<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While\u00a0the piece of omnibus legislation is well-known to close observers of the hydraulic fracturing (\u201cfracking\u201d)<\/a> issue \u2013 especially the \u201cHalliburton Loophole<\/a>\u201d \u2013 lesser known is another blessing bestowed upon shale gas and tight oil drillers: near zero-percent interest rates<\/a> for debt\u00a0<\/a>accrued during the capital-intensive oil and gas production process<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Or put more bluntly, near-free money from the U.S.<\/span> Federal Reserve Bank. That trend may soon come to a close, as the Federal Reserve recently announced an end to its controversial $3 trillion bond-buying program<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In response to the economic crisis and near collapse of the global economy,\u00a0the Federal Reserve dropped interest rates to between 0 percent and .25 percent<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0December 16, 2008, a record low percentage<\/a>. It also began its bond-buying program, described in a recent Washington Post article asimplemented to provide a \u201cbooster shot\u201d to the economy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Federal Reserve will employ all available tools to promote the resumption of sustainable economic growth and to preserve price stability,\u201d the Fed stated in a press release<\/a> announcing the maneuver. \u201cIn particular, the [Federal Reserve]\u00a0anticipates that weak economic conditions are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for some\u00a0time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Read more http:\/\/www.desmogblog.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In August 2005, the U.S. Congress and then-President George W. Bush blessed the oil and gas industry with a game-changer: the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The Act\u00a0exempted the industry from federal regulatory enforcement of the\u00a0Safe Drinking Water Act,\u00a0the Clean Water Act\u00a0and the\u00a0National Environmental Policy Act. While\u00a0the piece of omnibus legislation is well-known to close […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":109658,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,17,18],"tags":[825,778,824,826],"class_list":{"0":"post-141496","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-politics","9":"category-latest-news","10":"tag-collin-eaton","11":"tag-mark-keywords","12":"tag-occupy-wall-street","13":"tag-quantitative-easing"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}