CM Y K Composite

* * * * * FRIDAY, APRIL 17, 2015 ~ VOL. CCLXV NO. 89 WSJ.com HHHH $3 .00

DJIA 18105.77 g 6.84 0.04% NASDAQ 5007.79 g 0.1% NIKKEI 19885.77 À 0.1% STOXX600 410.93 g 0.8% 10-YR. TREAS. À 6/32 , yield 1.878% OIL $56.71 À $0.32 GOLD $1,198.00 g $3.50 EURO $1.0762 YEN 119.01

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CONTENTSBooks........................... D2,4Business News B2,3,5-7Global Finance............ C3Heard on the Street C8In the Markets........... C4Opinion.................. A17-19

Sports.............................. D8Technology................... B4Television.............. D2,4,6Theater....................... D5,7U.S. News................. A2-5Weather Watch........ B7World News......... A6-16

s Copyright 2015 Dow Jones & Company.All Rights Reserved

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What’sNews

Lawmakers reached a dealaimed at paving theway forObama to conclude a trade pact,but themeasure has sparked afight amongDemocrats.A1AnOhiomanwas accusedof traveling to Syria to supportan al Qaeda affiliate and re-turning to the U.S. with plansto launch a terrorist attack. A1 Syrian forces have killedover 100 people in Aleppowithshrapnel bombs after a sheikcalled for annihilating rebel ar-eas, opposition groups said.A15U.S. defense officials said aprovincial capital in Iraq couldfall to Islamic State, but theJoint Chiefs headminimizedthe city’s importance. A15 E-cigarette use tripled andhookah use doubled amongU.S. teens in 2014, but fewersmoked regular cigarettes. A3The House voted to repealthe estate tax, largely alongparty lines. Obama has said hewould veto themeasure. A5 A California plan to cutwater usage by 25% is meet-ing with resistance from somecities and water districts. A3AU.S. appeals court sug-gested it might be too early fora legal challenge to an EPAcarbon-emissions plan. A5China is set to unveil a $46billion infrastructure plan inPakistan as it seeks to opentrade routes across Asia. A6China is building an airstripon land around a disputed reefin the South China Sea. A6The pope is considering avisit to Cuba in Septemberaimed at backing efforts by theU.S. and Cuba at detente.A6

Soft economic reports havecreated uncertainty at the

Fed about when to start rais-ing rates, dimming the chancesof a move as early as June. A1Goldman’s earnings surged,boosted by its trading desks.Citigroup and Blackstone alsoposted blowout profits thattopped expectations. C1U.S. oil outputmay be at ornear its peak, new data andforecasts suggest, includingone Thursday from OPEC. A1 Schlumberger is cutting11,000more jobs as it posted a39% profit drop amid a slow-down in oil-and-gas drilling. B1Verizon’s FiOS servicewilloffer newTV packages aimed atgiving customers flexibility topurchase only certain groups ofchannels theywant towatch. B1The Justice Departmenthas stepped up an antitrustprobe of agreements that limitthe number of theaters allowedto show certain movies. B7The Fedwill allow big banksto use somemunicipal bondstomeet new liquidity require-ments,marking a policy shift.C1 Etsy, Party City and Virtudrew strong demand in theirstock-market debuts. C4U.S. stocks stalled aftertwo days of gains. The Doweased 6.84 points to 18105.77.C4Yahoo is establishing thegroundwork to become a big-ger player inWeb search. B4Saudi Arabia will open its$530 billion stockmarket toforeign investments in June. C3 Cirque du Soleil’s founderis in talks to sell most of hisstake to a TPG-led group. B1

Business&Finance

World-Wide

Federal officials accused a Co-lumbus, Ohio, man of travelingto Syria to support an al Qaedaaffiliate and returning to the U.S.with plans to launch a terroristattack, the first such known caseagainst an American citizen.

Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud,23 years old, allegedly trainedwith extremists in Syria last yearas part of that country’s civilwar before receiving instructionsto attack police officers or mili-tary targets in the U.S., accord-ing to an indictment releasedThursday. No such attack ap-pears to have taken place.

The case stands out amongrecent charges against Ameri-cans accused of trying to join Is-lamic State or other extremistgroups because the Justice De-partment says Mr. Mohamud ac-tually got to Syria and receivedtraining in explosives, weaponsand hand-to-hand combat.

Defendants in nearly all theother cases were arrested at U.S.airports as they attempted toleave the country. In many ofthem, the terrorist recruiter theythought they were working withwas an undercover Federal Bu-reau of Investigation agent.

In February of last year, Mr.Mo-hamud, who is a native of Somalia,obtained his U.S. citizenship, theindictment says. A week later, hesent in an application for a pass-port. Then, in April of 2014, Mr.Mohamud bought a one-way planeticket to Athens, with a layover in

Please see ARREST page A15

BY ANDREW GROSSMAN

BY JON HILSENRATH

Fed Shies Away From June Rate HikeWeak economic datacausing some officialsto rethink timing of firstincrease in over 6 years

THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.Source: the companies Photos: European Press Agency (Goldman); Bloomberg News (Blackstone)

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Wall Street’s key businesses arebooming again. Banks earned theirhighest fees in more than five yearsfrom advising companies on deals.

Goldman Sachs’s returnon equity — a keymeasure of profitability— is at a multiyear high.

Blackstone, a huge WallStreet client, is payingits biggest dividendsince the private-equitygiant went public.

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Bank of AmericaJ.P. Morgan ChaseGoldman Sachs

Citigroup

Dividend payouts

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Advisory fees

BY RUSSELL GOLD

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BOUNCING BACK: Some of Wall Street’s biggest names, including Goldman Sachs and Blackstone Group, posted blowout earnings Thursday. C1

NEVER FORGET: A girl wears the Israeli flag Thursday at Auschwitz-Birkenau, a former Nazi death camp in Poland, on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

James A. Baker IIIIran Deal NeedsA Lot of Work

OPINION | A19

Houses of ScandalThe fate of luxury propertieslinked to notorious white-collar crimesMANSION | M1

TradeBill TriggersDemocrats’ Discord

present argued about whether torent a theater, whether to pub-lish a report, whether to servebagels or doughnuts, andwhether, in fact, the agency evenhad an anniversary worth noting.

“Actually, the FEC isn’t really40, having been declared uncon-stitutional not once but twice,first in 1976, and as recently as1993,” said Don McGahn, whoserved as a Republican commis-sioner from 2008 to 2013. “So,

Washington is gridlocked. Butnothing in Washington is asgridlocked as the Federal Elec-tion Commission. That includesparty planning.

This year is the 40th anniver-sary of the FEC, which wasfounded in the wake of Water-gate. In figuring out how to markthe occasion, officials past and

BY REBECCA BALLHAUSAND BRODY MULLINS

Party Politics: Agency Can’t Agree on How to Celebrate Anniversaryi i i

Federal Election Commission at loggerheads on food, venue; The Great Bagel Compromisehaving turned 21, itis barely old enoughto drink.”

Regulating elec-tions is a pretty par-tisan business andthe FEC is often atloggerheads overhow to regulatemoney in politics. Making mat-ters worse, the FEC, unlike otherfederal agencies, was structuredto be equally divided between

Republicans andDemocrats, threeapiece, and the com-missioners oftendeadlock.

In the last fiscalyear, the FEC, sty-mied in its ability tomake decisions, col-

lected just $200,000 in penaltiesfor cases it deemed more com-plex, one of the lowest in 30

Please see PARTY page A4

Nonpartisan pastries

Ohio ManIndictedOn TerrorCharges

A patch of soft economic datahas created uncertainty insidethe Federal Reserve about whento start raising short-term in-terest rates, dimming the

chances of a move as early asJune.

Recent reports showed a slow-down in U.S. hiring in March,tepid growth in consumer spend-ing at retail stores, a big drop inindustrial output and softer-than-expected home building, re-inforcing a view the economydownshifted in the first quarterand didn’t have great momentummoving into the second.

Fed officials want to see con-tinued improvement in the job

market and want to be confidentinflation is rising toward their2% goal before they raise ratesfrom near zero. Most of them seethe first-quarter growth slow-down as temporary, but they willneed time to make sure a re-bound is in store.

“Data available for the firstquarter of this year have beennotably weak,” Dennis Lockhart,president of the Federal ReserveBank of Atlanta, said Thursday ina speech in Palm Beach, Fla. That

“is giving rise to heightened un-certainty about the track theeconomy is on.”

Mr. Lockhart often reflects amiddle ground among Fed offi-cials when they are divided onpolicy questions. In February, Mr.Lockhart said he wanted to keepopen the possibility of a rate in-crease by June. He made no men-tion of a June move in his speechThursday and said “affirmativeevidence” that the Fed is reachingits goal of 2% inflation isn’t likely

in the very near term. Speaking toreporters after his speech he saidJune wasn’t off the table but italso wasn’t his preference.

For Fed officials, the turn ofevents is somewhat of a recurringnightmare. Economic growth hascontinually fallen short of their ex-pectations in an expansion nearlysix years old. The disappointments,in turn, have consistently forcedthem to recalibrate their plans.

Many officials entered thisPlease see FED page A2

Wave of Deals Powers Profits for Wall Street

Low PricesCool BoomIn U.S. OilProduction

World Pauses to Remember the Holocaust

WASHINGTON—A deal reachedby lawmakers Thursday wouldpave the way for President BarackObama to conclude a major Pa-cific trade agreement with rareRepublican help, but the measureis triggering a fight within a Dem-ocratic Party increasingly op-posed to liberalizing trade.

The bill, introduced in Con-

gress Thursday, is a compromisebetween Republicans and Demo-crats on the Senate FinanceCommittee, and is meant to easepassage of the Trans-PacificPartnership—a pact with Japan,Canada, Vietnam and other Pa-cific nations that the WhiteHouse sees as central to thepresident’s economic legacy.

But first the president willhave to persuade a sufficient

number within his own party tojoin a large majority of Republi-cans in supporting the so-calledfast-track legislation. In recentweeks, administration officialsfeared they may have the out-right support of fewer than adozen House Democrats.

The challenge faced by Mr.Obama was crystallized Thurs-day by the immediate oppositionof New York Sen. Charles

Schumer, likely the next Senateminority leader, who came outsharply against the president’strade ambitions as currently pro-posed.

“I don’t believe in theseagreements anymore,” said Mr.Schumer, who has backed many

Please see TRADE page A5

BY WILLIAM MAULDIN

McConnell vows ‘big fights overfunding the bureaucracy’......... A4

The relentless increases inU.S. oil output appear to becoming to an end.

Crude production remains ro-bust, but new data and fore-casts, including one Thursdayfrom the Organization of the Pe-troleum Exporting Countries,suggest the U.S. is at—or veryclose to—an oil-output peak.

Starting in 2008, drillersraised U.S. oil production fromfive million barrels a day to 9.3million barrels a day as of De-cember. The U.S. surge ac-counted for nearly all thegrowth in crude output globally,and it contributed to the glutthat sent oil prices tumbling50% last year.

Now there are growing signsthat lower crude prices are fi-nally prompting American en-ergy companies to cut back theircrude output. North Dakota saidearlier this week that outputfrom the Bakken Shale—one ofthe newest and most prolificshale-oil fields—declined in Feb-ruary for the second month in arow.

The federal Energy Depart-ment predicted this week that

Please see OIL page A16

Schlumberger is eliminating11,000 more jobs........................... B1

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