This U.N. Thing Is Better Than a Conference Call

It’s conference-palooza this week. First came Monday’s climate change confab at the United Nations. Presidents of various nations—both developed and developing—gave speeches from the U.N.’s famous green marble lectern in New York vowing to help curb the effects of climate change. But how will it happen? Still largely unclear, according to the New York Times. Both Barack Obama and Chinese president Hu Jintao were “guarded in their positions,” opting to go big on rhetoric instead. Hu did say China would increase the share of nuclear and nonfossil fuel in its energy portfolio to 15 percent by 2020. Obama didn’t offer many new details, despite an opportunity to push the stalled cap-and-trade bill in Congress, the passage of which would remake the American economy. The Washington Post wonders whether the lack of details means that there won’t be one overarching pact on climate change, but rather a quilt comprised of different countries’ self-motivated efforts.

There are more conferences still to come. This week we’ve still got the classic, more broad-ranging U.N. summit, the Clinton Global Initiative, and the G-20 meetings to go. The financial press is already looking ahead to the latter, with WaPo calling the G-20 “the leading international agenda-setting body.” In an informative curtain-raiser, the Post recognizes that G-20 nations have worked together to avert a global financial disaster but outlines the group’s new issues now that the crisis has ebbed: stimulus spending, regulatory reform, and inflation fears. Elsewhere, AFP drills deep and describes the nuanced discussions that will take place over bank-saving regulations. How much should a bank have in reserve in preparation of another crisis? The Wall Street Journal discusses the delicate debate over that question, offering a nice supplement to the AFP report. And as a supplement to their supplement, the Journal also offers a glimpse into Tim Geithner’s growth strategy for the global economy that he’ll unveil at the G-20.

Citibank (C) and Bank of America (BAC), meanwhile, are playing a game of follow the leader. Per the New York Times, both banks have decided to “drastically overhaul their debit card programs by lowering or eliminating fees.” The most newsworthy changes center on the elimination of some overdraft charges, which the WSJ reports range between $10 and $38. The Journal offers this paraphrase of a BofA bigwig: “While Mr. Moynihan said the changes, effective Oct. 19, aren't in response to political pressure, other U.S. banks could face scrutiny from lawmakers if they don't follow BofA's lead.” When the king supplicates, the peasants must follow suit.

We shift from Wall Street to Capitol Hill, where Congress is quietly pushing through legislaton to extend unemployment benefits. CNNMoney reports that the House passed a bill that would help 1 million of the unemployed keep some type of income stream. Those whose unemployment is set to extinguish this year would get an extra 13 weeks of unemployment benefits if they live in a state with an unemployment rate higher than 8.5 percent (27 states and the District of Columbia as of now). For a primer on how unemployment benefits vary by state, see this Journal report published in June. The extension bill now rests with the Senate.

To the endowment beat, where Yale has put “an exclamation point on a period of downturns in U.S. campus fortunes,” according to the Journal. Yale’s endowment was down 25 percent this fiscal year, seven points more than the median drop among all large endowments. The Times uses the announcement as a launching point for a larger discussion about the colleges’ risk portfolios. Despite getting burned in high-risk investments, any change is likely to be gradual, the Times writes, but “making minor adjustments could lead to broader shifts.”

And to wrap things up, a bunch of nice stories that didn’t merit a full paragraph. Bankers are making a boatload of money off of the wild swings in AIG’s (AIG) stock, according to the Journal. The Washington Post chronicles the efforts to make noiseless electric cars more noisy (for safety reasons). And the Journal somehow makes it through an entire story about Internet capabilities being baked into new televisions without nostalgically mentioning WebTV, Microsoft’s failed attempt at putting TV on the Internet in the '90s.