Financial Times (April 18, 2013)
“The revival of Japan will be beneficial to the rest of the world, since it is also a process of evolution into a mature economy that can build win-win relationships with its economic partners,” writes Finance Minister Taro Aso. He continues, “the Bank of Japan has fired a monetary bazooka at deflation,” aiming to achieve 2% inflation. A “second bazooka” will seek to create private demand with flexible fiscal policy and the aim of boosting real GDP by 2%. Already, there is a dramatic improvement of economic and market sentiment. This “momentum must now be turned into a recovery.”
Tags: BOJ, Deflation, Economy, Finance Minister, Inflation, Japan, Market sentiment, Recovery, Taro Aso
Wall Street Journal (April 18, 2013)
“Gold’s Plunge Is Cause For Optimism.” Gold investors may not feel the same after watching their asset lose over 15% of its value since February. Still, the plunge could signal a promising trend if capital is redirected from dollar-devaluation hedges “toward investments in what has been called ‘the economy of the mind’—that is, new entrepreneurial endeavors and industries.”
Tags: Devaluation, Dollar, Economy of the mind, Gold, Investors, Plunge, Trend
Bloomberg (April 17, 2013)
The response to the Boston bombings has been “admirably calm.” The “measured and purposeful reaction is the worst possible news for the perpetrators, whomever they turn out to be. Rupturing the psyche is what terrorism is supposed to achieve. If it fails to do that, it fails, period.”
Tags: Bombings, Boston, Calm, Measured, Perpetrators, Purposeful, Reaction, Terrorism
Boston Globe (April 16, 2013)
“It happened when we had almost stopped thinking it could. We had come to believe we were safe, that terrorist attacks of this sort were a relic of our unprepared past, something that wouldn’t happen again.” The explosion in Boston was “a tough blow,” but Boston is “a tougher town… Life here will go on. We won’t be paralyzed by fear.”
Tags: Boston, Explosion, Fear, Safe, Terrorist attack
Washington Post (April 15, 2013)
“The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) faces a financial death spiral. Burdened by excess infrastructure, outmoded regulations and high labor costs — not to mention facing digital-age obsolescence — USPS posted an operating loss of $15.9 billion in fiscal 2012 and is on course to lose an estimated $7.9 billion in fiscal 2013.”
Tags: Digital age, Infrastructure, Labor, Operating loss, Regulations, U.S., USPS
Financial Times (April 15, 2013)
“An era of relatively slower growth in China is welcome news–both for the country and the global economy. The government’s previous insistence that it must achieve growth of at least 8 per cent a year betrayed a neurotic insecurity about social unrest. It has also involved increasingly unacceptable environmental and social costs–as anybody breathing the choking Beijing air can testify. President Xi Jinping’s statement last week that ‘China’s model of development is not sustainable” was a sign of political maturity.’”
Tags: Beijing, China, Environment, Slower growth, Social costs, Xi Jinping
The Economist (April 13, 2013)
“Mr Abe must be absolutely clear that Mr Kuroda’s boldness has to be met with even greater boldness on the government’s part in freeing the economy. He should tackle head-on the corporate sector’s excessive savings, for instance, by taxing retained earnings that are not invested. He needs to do more to get more women into the workforce. He must (against all his nationalist instincts) promote immigration. He must open up protected sectors—electricity, health care, farming—to competition.”
Chicago Tribune (April 12, 2013)
“Imagine a world with not one rambunctious and nuke-emboldened North Korea, but two…. On the day that Iran declares to the world that it has defied Western red lines and is capable of building its first nuclear bomb, the Middle East will become immensely more dangerous and unstable.” The time has come for “a complete banking and trade embargo against Iran.”“Imagine a world with not one rambunctious and nuke-emboldened North Korea, but two…. On the day that Iran declares to the world that it has defied Western red lines and is capable of building its first nuclear bomb, the Middle East will become immensely more dangerous and unstable.” The time has come for “a complete banking and trade embargo against Iran.”
Tags: Iran, Middle East, North Korea, Nuclear bomb
Washington Post (April 12, 2013)Washington Post (April 12, 2013)
“One unlikely benefit of the North Korea crisis is that the world may be getting fed up with the country’s pugnacious young leader, Kim Jong Un. In his belligerent talk of war, Kim appears to have crossed a line, upsetting traditional allies such as China and Russia as well as the United States and South Korea.”
Tags: China, Kim Jong Un, North Korea, Russia, South Korea, U.S.
Wall Street Journal (April 10, 2013)
South Korea should capitalize on the North’s latest threat to boycott the Kaesong special economic zone. It’s time to say “good riddance” to a zone which “merely props up the Kim regime…. South Korean President Park Geun-hye should seize this opportunity to declare Kaesong a misguided experiment and shut it down for good.”
Tags: Boycott, Kaesong, North Korea, Park, Shut down, South Korea, Special economic zone
