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Washington Post (May 27)

2014/ 05/ 28 by jd in Global News

The EU’s many achievements have been “accompanied by an ever-expanding bureaucracy and a loss of any purpose higher than crisis management, as if the powers that be in the European Union see ‘Europe’ as an end in itself, independent of its actual impact on the daily lives of ordinary people.” It is this disconnect that must be fixed, “otherwise, the very real benefits that union has brought will be at risk.”

 

5/28 Issue

2014/ 05/ 28 by jd in IRCWeekly

The EU elections dominated much of the news cycle. Leading up to the event, the New York Times worried that voter apathy would allow “the election of fringe parties whose ultimate goal is to dismantle the very union they’re supposed to be serving.”

Populist candidates did ultimately do very well, especially in France. The Wall Street Journal lamented that France “produced a spectacle of nihilism that damages the West and delights Vladimir Putin.”

The Washington Post said the vote should serve as a wakeup call to a bureaucracy bogged down in crisis management. They need to rediscover the EU’s higher purpose to ensure “the very real benefits” of the union continue.

The Financial Times perceives that Asia has also been transformed by elections. “Each of Asia’s four most powerful nations is now led by a combative nationalist.” And the move from multilateralism to power struggles may likely have global implications as well.

Despite all the talk of oligopolistic pricing, Euromoney finds that customers are benefiting as increased competition and other changes in trading fixed income, currencies and commodities tighten margins and squeeze banks, who are not surprisingly less enthusiastic about this transformation.

According to Institutional Investor, upstart businesses that succeed in disrupting traditional businesses target “multiple industries at once.” Companies like Tesla and Uber leave traditional companies threatened as they “seek to fill customers’ every need.” They skirt barriers and “work themselves into new markets however possible.”

China is also trying to skirt barriers. The New York Times asserts China bears responsibility for “the most aggressive effort by any country to steal secrets from some of the most prominent and successful American companies.” And the recent U.S. indictment of five PLA members appears to have done little to thwart China’s economic espionage.

The more things change… well sometimes they don’t. The Economist finds that despite the turbulence of the Great Recession, the Great Moderation has resumed as volatility returns to extremely low levels. This raises a troubling question. Will this prompt “a return of the sort of risk-taking that produced the crisis” in the first place?

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To see the overseas media’s takes on these and other developments, you can browse Global News highlights below or at http://www.irken.jp/gn/. Links to the original sources are provided above, but please note these are frequently updated. Links that were valid at publication may later be broken.

 

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