USA Today (June 20)
“Rather than blaming the Fed for this week’s market fall, people should thank it for nursing stocks back to health since the sickening market bottoms of March 2009. Dr. Bernanke’s challenge in his remaining months as Fed chairman will be to taper off the medication without harming the patient.”
Tags: Ben Bernanke, Blame, Federal Reserve, Health, Market fall, Stocks, U.S.
Wall Street Journal (June 18)
“It is easier to get on the bull than to get off.” Financial markets have been lurching at the mere hint of change by the Federal Reserve. “The biggest question about the Fed’s policy of near-zero interest rates and unlimited quantitative easing has always been: What happens when the music stops?… Our view is that the sooner the Fed begins to unwind, the better.”
Financial Times (June 17)
“From chemicals and cement to earthmovers and flatscreen televisions, Chinese industry is awash with excess capacity that is driving down profits inside and outside the country and threatens to further destabilise China’s already shaky growth.”
Tags: Cement, Chemicals, China, Excess capacity, Growth, Industry, Profits, Televisions
Euromoney (June Issue)
Portugal successfully raised €3 billion through a 10-year sovereign issue. This “might or might not amount to a return to full market access, but it is certainly a positive development.” Portugal still has a way to go, though, with “progress on its economy and the state of its banks… equally crucial.”
Tags: Banks, Economy, Full market access, Portugal, Sovereign
New York Times (June 16)
“The biggest problem in the labor market is not a skills shortage; rather, it is a persistently weak economy where businesses do not have sufficient demand to justify adding employees.” There is no shortage of skilled workers, but businesses haven’t been trying very hard to recruit them. Recruiting intensity “has been low in this recovery. Employers may be posting openings, but they are not trying all that hard to fill them, say, by increasing job ads or offering better pay packages.”
The Economist (June 15)
“Now Mr Abe’s eagerly awaited “third arrow” of structural reforms has fallen well short of the rings, let alone the bull’s eye. Indeed, it is so wide of the mark that one is left wondering if Abenomics has failed before it even properly began.” The disappointing third arrow consisted mainly of “old-fashioned industrial policy which has been tried, and has failed, before… Meaningful deregulation, labour-market reform and steps to make agriculture competitive in order to prepare for the TPP were all shelved. Truly bold measures, such as boosting immigration or changing the electoral system to give proper weight to young and urban voters, are off the agenda entirely.”
Tags: Abe, Abenomics, Agriculture, Deregulation, Electoral system, Immigration, Industrial policy, Japan, Reform, Structural reforms, Third arrow, TPP
Washington Post (June 12)
“The world is wildly off-target in its effort—if you can call it that—to limit global temperature rise to only 2 degrees Celsius relative to pre-industrial levels. Last year saw the highest level of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions ever, and the Earth is on a path to warm between 3.6 and 5.3 degrees, an outcome the World Bank recently warned would be very disruptive to human civilization.”
Tags: CO2, Earth, Emissions, Energy, Global warming, Temperature, World Bank
Los Angeles Times (June 12)
“China will almost certainly pass the United States in the total size of its economy within a decade or so. But if one looks also at military and “soft power” resources, the U.S. is likely to remain more powerful than China for at least the next few decades.” But “the U.S. has to get away from thinking just about power over others and think about power with others. We do not want to become so fearful that we are not able to find ways to cooperate with China” in solving transnational challenges.
Tags: China, Cooperation, Economy, Military, Resources, Soft power, Transnational challenges, U.S.
Wall Street Journal (June 11)
Unemployment has been slowly trending down in the U.S. but still remains too high. The Federal Reserve has been doing everything it can to improve the situation, but there are limits to monetary policy. In contrast, “the fiscal cupboard is not bare. There are things we could be doing to boost employment right now. That we are not doing anything constitutes malign neglect of the nation’s worst economic problem.” Instead of complacency, “policy makers should be running around like their hair is on fire…. Congress could make a good start on faster job creation simply by ending what it’s doing—destroying government jobs.”
New York Times (June 10)
“Those who see Japan’s performance over the last decades as an unmitigated failure have too narrow a conception of economic success. Along many dimensions—greater income equality, longer life expectancy, lower unemployment, greater investments in children’s education and health, and even greater productivity relative to the size of the labor force—Japan has done better than the United States. It may have quite a lot to teach us. If Abenomics is even half as successful as its advocates hope, it will have still more to teach us.”
Tags: Abenomics, Children, Economic success, Income equality, Investment, Japan, Labor force, Life expectancy, Productivity, U.S., Unemployment
