October 22, 2012 The most important energy developments of 2012: how countries are planning for Independence Day First, a few updates: � It looks like sub-2.5% global GDP growth is showing up in the weak outlook provided by some bell-weather cyclical companies that reported so far (AMD, APD, BHI, CAT, ETFC, GE, GOOG, IBM, MCD, MSFT, PH). We’re about to see how resilient an equity market is when one of its key selling points is how expensive bonds are. The recent pick-up in leading indicators suggests that earnings expectations may stabilize early in the new year. � September US retail sales were strong and US housing data continue to improve, although as noted last week, the degree of housing’s contribution to growth remains the big question. There will be economic headwinds next year even if the fiscal cliff is negotiated down. See October 9 th EoTM for the full Monty on the fiscal cliff mechanics. � We modeled the President’s tax proposals on various demographics of high net worth taxpayers 1 . The results: increases in effective tax rates (as % of adjusted gross income) from 4% to 12%, depending on income, investible assets, stock-bond ownership, state of domicile, etc. It’s unlikely to be enacted as scripted unless there’s a Democratic sweep, but its contours probably indicate where HNW taxation is eventually heading. We don’t have enough info to analyze Romney’s tax plan in comparable detail. On the latter, the Tax Policy Center released a study indicating that capping itemized deductions at $25k for all taxpayers only offsets 32% of the estimated revenue loss from a 20% reduction in income tax rates. � Production, capital spending and export data from China show improvement from the weak pace over the summer, although details reveal a continued decline in manufacturing growth offset by rising gov’t infrastructure spending. China ran a 600 billion RMB budget surplus through September, and targets an 800 bn RMB budget deficit this year. I wouldn’t argue that al