Financial Times (August 29)
How long will Japan’s new Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, the sixth in 5 years, last? “To do better, Japan badly needs political stability,” and yet “Japan’s recent crop of leaders has underwhelmed.” Thankfully, the bureaucracy does a competent job of managing the country, but Japan remains “strategically adrift. The big questions of how it rebuilds after the tsunami, how it manages its debt, how it eradicates deflation and how it deals with China have been postponed or fudged.”
Washington Post (August 29)
Officials took Hurricane Irene very seriously, issuing evacuation orders and taking extensive measures to avoid injury and damage. The measures seemed to have paid off. Of course, “some of that is luck: a shift a few miles to the west, a tick more ferocity in the winds, and the results might have been far different…At least 15 people in six states were killed in the storm, and as always the casualties seem heartbreakingly random: an 11-year-old Newport News boy dead when a large tree crashed into his apartment; a 15-year-old girl killed in a North Carolina car crash; a Maryland woman struck fatally when a tree toppled the chimney of her house.”
Officials took Hurricane Irene very seriously, issuing evacuation orders and taking extensive measures to avoid injury and damage. The measures seemed to have paid off. Of course, “some of that is luck: a shift a few miles to the west, a tick more ferocity in the winds, and the results might have been far different…At least 15 people in six states were killed in the storm, and as always the casualties seem heartbreakingly random: an 11-year-old Newport News boy dead when a large tree crashed into his apartment; a 15-year-old girl killed in a North Carolina car crash; a Maryland woman struck fatally when a tree toppled the chimney of her house.”
Los Angeles Times (August 28)
“Politicians who dismiss the risk of climate change like to talk about the uncertainties of the science.” They’d spend less time talking and more time working to halt climate change if they took their cues from professionals who deal with risk. “The real economic costs of mispricing this risk have caught the attention of a good segment of the business community, from commodity traders to insurers. Reinsurers in particular (companies that insure the insurers against catastrophe) see risks on a global scale.”
Tags: Catastrophe, Climate change, Global warming, Politicians, Risk
The Economist (August 27)
The U.S. economy is missing the usual drivers of an economic recovery, but it is equally missing the usual triggers of a recession. Whether the U.S. double dips or not will depend on the generally competent Fed, an unpredictable Congress and quite a bit on luck. In the end, there may be little difference between weak growth and a weak recession. “Although the absence of obvious imbalances or financial strains does not eliminate the risk of recession in America, it does militate against a long, deep downturn. Indeed, it may be hard for most people to distinguish a shallow recession from lacklustre growth.”
The Boston Globe (August 26)
Steve Jobs is stepping down from Apple. The Boston Globe believes his visionary leadership provides a model for U.S. companies. “As US companies confront competitors around the world, Jobs offers a useful lesson—a focus on short-term matters is much less important than a vision for the future and the confidence to bet big on it.”
Tags: Apple, Leadership, Steve Jobs, Vision
New York Times (August 25)
President Obama should push to see that underwater homeowners, whose home values are less than the balance of their loans, are able to refinance their mortgages at lower rates. There will be opposition, but “the public benefit from fewer defaults and foreclosures—along with the impact of more consumer spending—should trump any benefit derived from squeezing every last penny of interest from homeowners.”
Tags: Consumer spending, Economy, Homeowners, Mortgage, Obama, U.S.
Financial Times (August 22)
“It is premature to celebrate the end of the fighting while Colonel Gaddafi remains at large and diehard supporters of the regime continue to fight in Tripoli. But the outcome now seems clear…. the regime is – thankfully – finished.” While this is just the beginning, so far the rebels have performed in an encouraging manner. For example, “the Benghazi-based National Transitional Council has been largely successful in maintaining order in the towns and cities that it has liberated from Col Gaddafi.”
Tags: Gaddafi, Libya, Rebels, Regime change
BBC (August 20)
Global warming is directly impacting many species. “Animals and plants are shifting their natural home ranges towards the cooler poles three times faster than scientists previously thought.” The study of 2,000 species found that “on average organisms are shifting their home ranges at a rate of 17km per decade away from the equator.” In addition, it appears the quest for suitable temperatures is driving some species upward to higher elevations.
Tags: Climate change, Global warming, Species, Temperature
The Economist (August 20)
Europe’s leaders and, in particular, Angela Merkel correctly sense the lack of domestic support needed to fix the euro zone crisis. What they overlook is the need to cultivate this support. Half-measures will not work and a euro zone collapse would be damaging. “The current rescue plan for the euro is just not working. The markets continue to price in default…. A year ago it was said that the euro zone could take care of two or three small countries but that Spain was too big to fail. Today, with Italy and even France looming into the picture, the very survival of the euro is coming into question.”
Fortune (August 19)
As for the European debt crisis, you can “expect more trouble.” Leaders have failed to provide “action that’s a step ahead of the markets…. Time has been wasted defending the indefensible before giving in to the inevitable…. Solutions that might have worked a few months earlier become insufficient as the contagion hits more countries.” All of this means the problems keep growing and “a wider, more expensive response is required.”