7/16 Issue
“To win their fight for the status they deserve, the BRICS must choose their targets more shrewdly” asserts Bloomberg, referring to the impending creation of their own new currency reserve fund and development bank. “Neither invention is much needed, but for the inventors, this is beside the point.”
Also in need of shrewder target setting, writes the Los Angeles Times, is the United States with its surveillance program that is causing many Germans to “view America as a militaristic rogue state.” A growing rift between the countries could “deliver a blow to American national security that no amount of secret information could possibly justify.”
Within the United States, there is also a need for perspective in California, which, the New York Times reports, is experiencing a historic drought, though “you wouldn’t know it” by looking at the state’s water consumption.” Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration needs to “think a lot bigger” and “focus on longer-term policies that encourage people to alter their lifestyles and businesses to change how they operate.”
82 shootings in 84 hours in Chicago called attention to the magnitude of another U.S. crisis. This was “not in some far-flung war zone but on the streets of a major U.S. city,” the Washington Post notes, nor was it “the only city to experience gun violence over the holiday weekend.” “We can only hope that the bloody numbers help in tipping the balance toward eventual enactment of common-sense gun laws.”
In USA Today, Bill Gross, founder of PIMCO, also argues for perspective and common sense to guide “our economic future,” instead of “the race for short-term corporate profits.” “Income equality is good for business,” but wages are down to 42.5% of GDP. “Minimum-wage law increases, while seemingly anti-capitalistic and undemocratic, might be necessary for the common good — workers and corporations alike.”
The Wall Street Journal takes up the related issue of the proliferation of part-time work offering “lower pay, diminished benefits and little job security.” Although 288,000 jobs were reportedly created in June, this is not the whole picture, since 523,000 full-time jobs were actually lost. “There’s no point pretending that the sky is blue when so many millions can attest to dark clouds.”
And Japanese electronics firms may be owning up to their own dark clouds, The Economist writes, after “years of denial that surgery was needed” while continuing to “obsess about fancy hardware…. and failing to spot consumers’ changing tastes.” New business reorientation is a good step, but “visionary leaders” are still lacking. “It will take a lot more than a few whizzy new gadgets to fix the Japanese electronics firms.”
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To see the overseas media’s takes on these and other developments, you can browse the Global News highlights in app or at http://www.irken.jp/gn/. Links to the original sources are provided above, but please note these are frequently updated. Links that were valid at publication may later be broken.
Bloomberg (July 15)
“Cross-border private capital is so readily available for good emerging-market borrowers that multilateral lenders such as the World Bank are having to explain why they’re needed any longer. To justify their existence, they’re trying to recast themselves as repositories of development expertise.” With the BRICS poised to create their own new currency reserve fund and development bank, the proposed institutions look anachronistic. The BRICS just “don’t need their own bank.”
Tags: Borrowers, BRICS, Capital, Cross-border, Currency reserve fund, Development bank, Emerging market, Lenders, World Bank
