Wall Street Journal (August 22)
Bo Xilai, the former political powerhouse of Chonqing, is approaching trial. He has already “undermined three core claims of the Communist Party. First, that the national leadership is unified. Second, that the process of selecting the next generation of leaders is institutionalized. And finally that open struggle for power like that seen during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution can never happen again.”
Wall Street Journal (August 21)
The senseless killing of an Australian exchange student by 3 Oklahoma teenagers should leave Americans wondering just how to fix “a culture that produces teenagers for whom the prospect of shooting an innocent man in the back on a Friday evening apparently raised not a scintilla of conscience.”
Tags: Australia, Conscience, Culture, Exchange student, Innocent, Killing, Oklahoma, Senseless, Shooting, Teenagers
Financial Times (August 19)
Auditors bear some blame for the financial crisis, yet little has been done to improve the quality of their audits. The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) has now proposed more detailed disclosure to highlight items of concern, even when a company passes the audit. “The Securities and Exchange Commission, which has the final say, should adopt the PCAOB’s proposal. This would match similar rules passed by the UK’s Financial Reporting Council…. Pass-fail cannot distinguish accounts that pass with flying colours and those that barely scrape by. Investors deserve better – and investors are auditors’ true constituency even if managers are their employers.”
Tags: Auditors, Audits, Disclosure, Financial Crisis, Financial Reporting Council, Investors, Pass-fail, PCAOB, Quality, Rules, SEC, UK
New York Times (August 18)
“Some of the images from NASA’s flagship Terra and Aqua satellites are downright heartbreaking. They seem to make the case that we’re inexplicably intent on engineering our own expulsion from the garden, in a kind of late-breaking, self-inflicted Old Testament dismissal… Having dodged the bullet of cold war nuclear annihilation, we face a new threat just as global, man-made and potentially lethal. A sense of emergency is what is urgently needed.”
Tags: Cold war, Emergency, Global, Heartbreaking. Expulsion, Lethal, Man-made, NASA, Nuclear annihilation, Satellites, Self-inflicted, Threat
Euromoney (August Issue)
According to economists, Indonesia’s economy may face a “double blow” from China and the U.S. “Indonesia is the emerging market most vulnerable to the consequences of the US Federal Reserve’s tapering of quantitative easing and to China’s economic slowdown.”
Tags: China, Economic slowdown, Emerging markets, Fed, Indonesia, Quantitative easing, Tapering, U.S., Vulnerable
The Economist (August 17)
“The web is beginning to fit into the media world’s oldest script: a new technology rides into town, the moguls try to destroy it, but it survives and becomes part of the town’s future. Hollywood loathed the VCR (comparing it to the Boston Strangler); the networks hated cable TV; sheet-music publishers feared the phonograph…. Yet nearly always two things happen: the old media survive (people are still buying vinyl records and even the odd printed magazine), and the new media expand the market.”
Tags: Cable, Hollywood, Magazine, Market, Music, Networks, New media, Old media, Phonograph, Print, Publishers, Records, Technology, TV, VCR, Vinyl, Web
Institutional Investor (August Issue)
“Investors confront the risk of a carbon bubble fueled by stranded oil and gas assets” should major governments decide to impose strict carbon legislation to combat climate change. One recent report asserts that “to limit the rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius between now and 2050, only 20 percent of the world’s fossil fuel reserves can be extracted and burned.”
Tags: Carbon, Climate change, Extraction, Fossil fuel, Gas, Global temperatures, Governments, Investors, Legislation, Oil, Reserves, Risk
Washington Post (August 15)
The “refusal to take a firm stand against massive violations of human rights is as self-defeating for the United States as it is unconscionable. Continued U.S. support for the Egyptian military is helping to push the country toward a new dictatorship rather than a restored democracy.” The U.S. should suspend all aid until “the generals end their campaign of repression and take tangible steps to restore democracy.”
Tags: Aid, Democracy, Dictatorship, Egypt, Human rights, Military, Repression, U.S., Violations
Financial Times (August 13)
“Japan’s public diplomacy hovers between the ludicrous and the sinister. In recent months, the country has specialised in foreign policy gaffes that seem designed to give maximum offence to its Asian neighbours while causing maximum embarrassment to its western allies.” Japan’s newly unveiled naval destroyer, which looks a lot like an aircraft carrier, is the most recent offense. It shares the name “Izumo” with “a Japanese warship that took part in the invasion of China in the 1930s.”
Tags: Aircraft carrier, Allies, Asia, China, Destroyer, Diplomacy, Embarrassment, Foreign policy, Gaffes, Invasion, Izumo, Japan, Warship
New York Times (August 11)
“In a welcome development for the planet, the cars on American streets are becoming much more climate-friendly much sooner than many had expected. Consumers are increasingly buying fuel-efficient hybrid and electric vehicles thanks to breakthrough innovations and supportive government policies…. Increased fuel efficiency helped reduce carbon dioxide emissions from passengers cars by 16 percent from 2005 to 2012.”
Tags: Breakthrough, Cars, Climate-friendly, CO2, Consumers, Emissions, EVs, Fuel efficiency, Fuel-efficient, Government policies, HEVs, Innovations, Planet
