Financial Times (June 9)
“Shinzo Abe’s gamble to revive Japan’s economic fortunes faces its biggest test so far.” Moving on to his “third arrow” of fiscal/regulatory reform to stimulate the market is essential, but “politically, this is a tall order. Structural changes are bound to affect powerful insiders.”
Tags: Fiscal, Insiders, Japan, Market, Regulatory reform, Shinzo Abe, Structural changes
The Economist (June 8)
The riots in Turkey have less to do with religion and more to do with concerns over unchecked power. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has racked up numerous successes in governing Turkey, but his power has grown to uncomfortable proportions. “The real lesson of these events is about authoritarianism: Turkey will not put up with a middle-class democrat behaving like an Ottoman sultan.”
USA Today (June 7)
Hopefully the top leaders of the U.S. and China can move beyond the recent cyberattacks. “China is fast becoming a dominant world power. The U.S.-China relationship and rivalry will shape the rest of this century. If, as Obama and Xi hold their first summit, both understand this, perhaps they can work out ways to manage and reset the relationship. As with ordinary mortals, there is no better key to success than communication. The more frequent, the more open, the better.”
Tags: China, Cyberattacks, Obama, Summit, U.S., World power, Xi
Washington Post (June 6)
The U.S. stands to benefit if Abenomics succeeds in strengthening its key ally in Asia. Prime Minister Abe’s first two arrows have hit their marks. The third yet-to-materialize arrow, however, has by far the hardest target of tackling the entrenched “source of Japan’s woes: a vast web of regulations, subsidies and trade barriers whose net effect has been to support inefficient sectors, and the voters who live off them, at the expense of growth and innovation. Japanese productivity has remained essentially flat for the past two decades, a dangerous state of affairs in a country with a shrinking labor force and a growing dependent elderly population.”The U.S. stands to benefit if Abenomics succeeds in strengthening its key ally in Asia. Prime Minister Abe’s first two arrows have hit their marks. The third yet-to-materialize arrow, however, has by far the hardest target of tackling the entrenched “source of Japan’s woes: a vast web of regulations, subsidies and trade barriers whose net effect has been to support inefficient sectors, and the voters who live off them, at the expense of growth and innovation. Japanese productivity has remained essentially flat for the past two decades, a dangerous state of affairs in a country with a shrinking labor force and a growing dependent elderly population.”
Tags: Abe, Abenomics, Arrows, Asia, Japan, Regulations, Subsidies, Trade barriers, U.S.
MIT Technology Review (June 5)
Of late, companies have been embracing open innovation contests to pull off low-cost breakthroughs. This approach can succeed. “Open competitions can help find an optimal solution to a well-understood problem,” but typically these contests fail to deliver true innovation for a well-known reason. “Real innovation is always the outcome of ongoing discourse among a small group of innovators who truly understand the importance of what they’re working on. No matter where we look, from the American Revolution to the digital revolution, it’s always a small group of obsessed individuals who know and talk to each other that are responsible for big innovations. As John Stuart Mill observed: ‘Persons of genius, it is true, are, and are always likely to be, a small minority.’”
Tags: Breakthroughs, Genius, Innovation, Innovators, John Stuart Mill, Low-cost, Minority, Open contests, Problems, Solutions
Euromoney (June Issue)
“European policymakers remain in a state of cognitive dissonance—recognizing the need for root-and-branch overhaul of peripheral banks, but backtracking on joint liability plans.” Christopher Flowers, who took over Japan’s filed Long Term Credit Bank in 2000, recently warned that the dithering may end abruptly. “There is a scenario where we have a Lehman-type event: we wake up some Thursday and a big country is in trouble. And the ECB will have to decide to support banks x, y, z. And then the ECB will, in fact, decide to own bank x, y, z. So this leisurely pace will end and we will wake up on a Monday morning with a European banking union.”
Tags: Banking union, Christopher Flowers, Europe, Japan, Lehman, LTCB
New York Times (June 4)
The U.S. has eased sanctions on Iran to allow the export of mobile phones, laptops, encryption software and related technology to individual Iranians. “This should improve the ability of Iranians to circumvent their government’s unrelenting crackdown on dissenting opinion and communicate with each other and the outside world without reprisal.” The move is overdue. “Tensions between Iran and the United States—over Syria and terrorism, as well as the nuclear program—will almost certainly get worse, barring some unexpected new policies in Tehran. But America will be in a stronger position if it is seen as standing with the Iranian people.”
Tags: Crackdown, Export, Iran, Nuclear program, Sanctions, Syria, Technology, Terrorism, U.S.
South China Morning Post (June 3)
“Loose-lipped politicians are a problem for any government. Japan seems particularly bedevilled by them. Rising political star Toru Hashimoto has been especially insensitive, his recent comments on comfort women heightening regional outrage and prompting criticism in Europe and North America. Coming on the heels of a string of incidents involving dozens of right-wing lawmakers, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe most prominent among them, it is not surprising that the nation is again being called on to apologise for its wartime atrocities.”
Wall Street Journal (June 2)
“As some 75 million baby boomers prepare to retire, immigrants will be crucial to keeping the federal pension program afloat.” Without immigration, the U.S. social security program faces an estimated 75-year social security shortfall of over $8.5 trillion (net present value). “Immigration won’t solve all of Social Security’s financial problems…. But immigrants unquestionably narrow the funding gap. More generous immigration is a wise step toward solving the entitlement crisis in Washington.”
Tags: Baby boomers, Entitlements, Immigrants, Pensions, Retirement, Social security, U.S.
Economist (June 1)
“Nearly 1 billion people have been taken out of extreme poverty in 20 years. The world should aim to do the same again.”
Tags: Development, Poverty, World
