The Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) is meeting for a three-day summit in the United Arab Emirates this week. OAPEC is similar to the larger oil cartel, OPEC, but is made up of only Arab countries.

The meeting comes amid weeks of falling gas prices. Saudi Arabia, the largest petroleum exporter says it won’t cut output to prop oil prices, even if non-OPEC countries do so. Part of Riyadh’s decision to ride out the slump is an attempt to wield regional power. With enough cash reserves and low production costs, the move won’t affect the gulf nation the same way it will hit places like Iraq, Iran, Russia or Venezuela.

On a single day last week, Dubai’s stock market dropped by nearly 8 percent, its largest one-day decline in six years. Analysts say financial markets are overreacting, saying oil prices will return to a high point within six months. Oil has traditionally been a uniquely volatile commodity, one often affected by global political developments.

During Al Jazeera America’s Sunday night segment, “The Week Ahead,” Richelle Carey spoke to Steven Kopits, managing director of Princeton Energy Advisors; and to Max Fraad-Wolff, chief economist at Manhattan Venture Partners.

Fraad-Wolff says, “we are seeing a meaningful global redistribution of wealth to the tune of tens of billions of dollars a day, with wealth being distributed away from producers to consumers.

Kopits say that advanced country consumers such as the United States, Japan, and European nations, will be the primary beneficiaries. He added, though, that US shale producers will likely suffer for a while; and that the companies that could suffer substantially are oil giants like Shell and Chevron.

He also says that the countries who are likely to benefit the most in this situation are Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain. They take in a high percentage of oil imports will likely rebound in a big way this year.

Russia, on the other hand, is being adversely affected by the drop in gas prices. It’s one of the three biggest oil producers in the world, and its economy is heavily dependent on oil production. Around 68 percent of Russia’s foreign export revenues come from energy and around half of its federal budget is made up of taxes brought in from energy exports.

The US and other Western nations are using the situation as an opportunity to pressure Moscow over its involvement in the Ukraine crisis that’s been ongoing since February.

“The question for the Russians is, can they survive the short-term pain escalating fast from political, geopolitical, and military situations to get to the long-term benefits,” says Fradd-Wolff.

Kopits says he expects the status quo for a while on Ukraine, which means Russia will probably face another six months of serious financially hardship, including repercussions from sanctions.

Late Saturday the Senate approved a $1.1 trillion spending bill for 2015 to keep the government running. The bill, however, includes a number of unrelated provisions, many set to go into place this week. Among these are changes to the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill (formally known as the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act).
Dodd-Frank essentially says Wall Street can no longer take risky bets that might require the government to bail it out with taxpayer money when something goes wrong. It was passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and is named for Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) and Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) who are now retired but, at the time chaired the House and Senate committees where it originated. Passing the legislation took nearly two years but was widely seen as a major victory for the Obama administration, which had vowed to bring the U.S. out of the recession it inherited from President George W. Bush.
However, when the bill passed, almost everybody was unhappy with it. Some politicians from both parties said it didn’t go far enough to rein in reckless Wall Street behavior, while Wall Street felt it went too far.
Now portions of Dodd-Frank face potential repeal, an idea that was buried in the spending bill, drafted with language coming directly from Citigroup lobbyists. Critics say that it will let banks take even bigger gambles, but the banks say the new rules are necessary to promote economic growth.
Although the White House did not support the rollback of the protection offered by the Dodd-Frank Act, it was willing to ignore the new rules threatening it just to get the spending bill passed.
During Al Jazeera America’s Sunday night segment, “The Week Ahead,” Thomas Drayton spoke to Richard McGahey, professor of public policy and economics at The New School and a former executive director of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee; and to Peter Morici, a business professor at the University of Maryland, who joined the discussion from Washington, D.C.
McGahey says, “It is surprising to see how easily this was done. The provision is important in and of itself, but it’s equally important as a signal that Republicans are going after Dodd-Frank when they have their full majorities in place next year.”
One person who has been a vocal advocate of the Dodd-Frank Act is Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat. She says there are people on both sides of the aisle who support the act. “Democrats don’t like Wall Street bailouts. Republicans don’t like Wall Street bailouts. The American people are disgusted by Wall Street bailouts. And yet, here we are five years after Dodd-Frank with a provision that would do nothing for the middle class, do nothing for community banks, do nothing but raise the risk that taxpayers will have to bail out the biggest banks once again.”
But Morici says Dodd-Frank took aim at the wrong target. “In the case of Citigroup, what brought the bank down was its reckless lending, the mortgages that it underwrote, not derivatives trading. In fact, the trading helped bail them out. It generated profits which helped them get back on their feet.”
Morici says the Dodd-Frank Act didn’t solve the problem, but just imposed a restriction that didn’t address the problem.
McGahey says, “Regulation may be inadequate, but to simply say we aren’t going to regulate at all, you can’t get away from it.” He says Dodd-Frank is meant to address some of the problems that led to the near global economic meltdown seven years ago, but there will be new crises which require a strong regulatory apparatus.
Morici says that, “Dodd-Frank is so complex, convoluted, and contradictory that a lot of small banks that just can’t cope with it—banks that had nothing to do with the crisis. As a consequence they’ve sold out to bigger banks. So now the five or six largest banks have about 50-60 percent of the deposits. They’re not interested much in making loans on Main Street; they’re interested in gambling on Wall Street. Dodd-Frank didn’t shut down the casino. It gave it a monopoly and made it bigger.

With technology advancing faster than ever before, cybersecurity has become a major concern. Hackers aren’t the only ones, though, who are wreaking havoc online. Governments have also used cyberattacks as weapons against each other.

Stuxnet was a “worm” created in 2007, allegedly by the U.S. and Israel, that attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities. Neither government has claimed responsibility, but Stuxnet is now widely accepted as the first known cyberweapon to cause major physical damage to its intended target. The only problem was that the worm escaped Iranian facilities and spread among the general public.

It’s alleged that Iran launched a cyberattack on the world’s largest oil company, Saudi Aramco, in retaliation for Stuxnet in 2012, but that has not been confirmed. Although the attack was said to be primitive and unsophisticated, it still managed to wipe out the data in much of the company’s main computer network, and it affected 30,000 Aramco personal computers.

Last week in a cyberattack that shut down Sony Pictures for days, hackers released sensitive data from the studio’s network, including employee salaries and high-quality versions of several unreleased films.

Blame is being pointed at North Korea — and although Pyongyang has denied any involvement, it has praised the move nonetheless, citing the movie “The Interview” as offensive for alluding to an assassination attempt on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Previously, North Korea reached out to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to file a complaint, calling the movie “an act of war.”

During Al Jazeera America’s Sunday night segment The Week Ahead, Thomas Drayton discussed cybersecurity and the ramifications of global cyberwarfare with Dan Guido, a hacker-in-residence at New York University’s Polytechnic School of Engineering, and with Allan Friedman, a research scientist at the Cyber Security Policy Research Institute of George Washington University.

Guido said it takes very little effort and small teams to break into major companies. He said, “It’s very simple to gather information about individuals on the Internet,” adding that clicking on the wrong link can give hackers complete control over the targeted computers and access to a company’s entire website, using very few resources.

Friedman said there are a number of different ways to trace the origin of a cyberattack. The forensics level is the most technical, unpacking clues as to who was involved. On an intelligence level, investigating things like who is the most likely to benefit or who may have been talking about an attack before one happens can help point to a culprit. On a national security level, hackers are generally trying to engage in a strategic attack to achieve a political outcome.

He added that there are different types of attacks. Organized crime groups may try to access random people’s credit card numbers. Some hackers engage in economic espionage, trying to steal companies’ secrets.

Al Jazeera’s Jacob Ward said certain hackers have the patience and skills to find vulnerabilities in a system, plant malicious code and comb through the results for what they need. But he said the most common type of hacking happens through social engineering, with predators gathering data from the plethora of information that Internet users give out voluntarily through social media.

Anyone can access personal information about a person’s likes, way of living and family members though sites such as Facebook or a person’s location through applications such as FourSquare. He added that anyone can do it with enough charm and creativity.

As the holiday season begins, not only are retail sales expected to rise, but so are charitable donations. Last year charities took in just over $335 billion — up 4.5 percent from 2012. Donations are important, especially with 49 million American households are living without food security.
In addition to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, a new movement began several years ago called #GivingTuesday. It was started to set aside a day for people to give to the less fortunate. The Blackbaud Index shows that 34 percent of charitable donations are made in the last three months of the year, with 18 percent in December alone.
During Al Jazeera America’s Sunday night segment The Week Ahead, Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, and Ken Stern, author of the book “With Charity for All” (who joined the discussion from Washington, D.C.), emphasized the importance of year-round giving and involvement.
“Most Americans give in the way they’re used to giving,” Berg told Al Jazeera America’s Thomas Drayton. “The wealthy tend to give to institutions that benefit themselves and their families, such as hospitals and cultural institutions.”
He argued that charity is not the answer but ensuring that people have higher wages, more jobs and a more equitable tax system. He said that if billionaires paid their fair share in taxes, there would be more than enough revenue to provide vital social services, adding that too many people give to the charities they know, regardless of whether those organizations are effective.
Stern agreed, saying people give out of habit to brand names without doing proper research of the groups.
Berg pointed out that many organizations spend more money on fundraising and promoting themselves than on providing services. He said organizations should be judged not by how much product they put out but by how much impact they’ve had in fixing the problems they’ve set out to address.
Stern said the most effective way to help is by giving money so it can be put toward the greatest need. He added that donations should be given throughout the year and not just at the end. Many people make large donations at the end of the year to get them in for tax purposes.
The average American household gives $2,974 each year. Statistics show that middle- to low-income people give a higher percentage of their incomes than wealthy individuals.
Berg said engaging in public policy advocacy is also an important way of helping people. “Congress and the president, over the last few years, cut food stamps … by $14 billion,” he said.
Stern agreed, noting that the government is the biggest source of revenue and support for the social sector and that many programs that nonprofits survive on have been cut by the government.
However, Berg says, government food assistance programs are generally more economically efficient than charities because they have more oversight than nonprofit organizations.
There are about 1.1 million charities in the United States. Some of the most popular are education-based, human services and health charities. Charitable donations have increased since the official end of the recession in 2009.
Berg said one way to gauge whether charities are effective is by looking at how much money their executives make in relation to their employees and at the amounts spent on services. He says charities should be transparent and have their tax forms and financial information on their websites.