Washington Post (February 9)
“The big demographic trends shaping the world are mysterious and often overlooked.” The dramatic Arab Spring has largely overshadowed one of these. A flight from marriage has caused birth rates to drop precipitously. Over the past three decades, “twenty-two Muslim countries and territories had fertility declines of 50 percent or more. The sharpest drops were in Iran, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Bangladesh, Tunisia, Libya, Albania, Qatar and Kuwait, which all recorded declines of 60 percent or more.” The current youth bulge in many Arab societies will quickly give way to the graying society characteristic of Japan and Europe.
Tags: Arab, Demographic trends, Europe, Fertility, Graying society, Japan, Marriage, Muslim countries, Youth bulge
Wall Street Journal (February 8)
“Is there a better tutorial in government failure than a monopoly that loses about $25 million every day, like the U.S. Postal Service now?” With first-class volumes down a quarter in six years, drastic change is needed. The USPS wants to restructure, but is largely hamstrung by Congress. The latest plans will end Saturday delivery to save about $2 billion a year, but this would “still only solve about one-eighth of its financial problem.”
Tags: Congress, First-class, Mail, Monopoly, Restructure, Saturday delivery, U.S., USPS
Financial Times (February 8)
“At last Europe is moving forward.” Or rather might be, for “there is still much that could drive it into reverse.” Several unexpected breakthroughs are the latest cause for hope. “It is encouraging that even though Europe still struggles with questions that will determine its future, leaders have kept talking. As long as they do so there is still hope. And as this week shows, they might find agreement where they least expect it.”
Forbes (February 5)
“The U.S. Justice Department announced plans to file civil fraud charges against Standard & Poor’s (S&P) relating to the atrocious ratings that Standard & Poor’s gave to toxic subprime mortgage-backed securities…. This is a welcome—if long overdue—development for investors who have been waiting for years for the Feds to take decisive action against those responsible for crashing the world economy.”
Wall Street Journal (February 4)
China’s media hacking is spreading overseas. In the U.S., the hacking is fast becoming “a national security issue. It’s also a plain-old crime, undertaken by a government that fancies itself the world’s next superpower but acts like a giant thievery corporation.” The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News are among major outlets that have been infiltrated. “The Middle Kingdom might once have been the center of human civilization. But in the digital world, the Chinese are the barbarians at the gate. Whatever they think they’ve learned about us by sneaking around our inboxes, the world has learned a great deal more about them.”
New York Times (February 3)
“The idea that guns are essential to home defense and women’s safety is a myth. It should not be allowed to block the new gun controls that the country so obviously needs.” Guns kept at home are more often fired “in accidents, criminal assaults, homicides or suicide attempts than in self-defense. For every instance in which a gun in the home was shot in self-defense, there were seven criminal assaults or homicides, four accidental shootings, and 11 attempted or successful suicides.”
Tags: Accidents, Criminal assaults, Guns, Home defense, Homicides, Suicide, Women’s safety
Financial Times (February 1)
“Europe enjoyed the first month of 2013 in a mood of relative optimism – a relief after years where one financial near-death experience followed the other. The fissile market pressures on the eurozone are slowly going into reverse, with private money leaving havens and returning to the periphery. Yet clouds continue to clump over the region’s banks. Even if the debt crisis gradually abates, Europe is far from done with cleaning up its banking system.”
Tags: Banks, Debt crisis, Europe, eurozone, Optimism
Institutional Investor (January 31)
“A platform war is intensifying in the global foreign exchange market, with more than half a dozen entrants jumping into the space in the past few months. It’s still too early to know which platforms will emerge as winners, but the proliferation of venues is already sparking declines in already-low trading costs, with banks earning less on each trade, in a situation similar to what’s happened in equity markets over the past decade. One banker estimates that revenue per trade has dropped by about 9 percent over the past year through a narrowing of bid-offer spreads.”
Barrons (January 30)
“Fracking is creating a new source of cheap energy. By 2020, the U.S. is expected to become the world’s largest energy producer. And the falling cost of natural gas (now about a third of Europe’s and less than a quarter of Japan’s) is attracting corporate attention. “After decades of outsourcing… companies like Apple, Caterpillar, Ford Motor, General Electric, and Whirlpool are making more of their goods on American soil again. It isn’t just U.S. companies that are drawn to our cheap energy, weak dollar, and stagnant wages. Samsung Electronics plans a $4 billion semiconductor plant in Texas, Airbus SAS is building a factory in Alabama, and Toyota wants to export minivans made in Indiana to Asia.”
Tags: Airbus, Apple, Caterpillar, Energy, Ford Motor, Fracking, General electric, Samsung, Toyota, U.S., Whirlpool
