USA Today (July 14)
“Raising the minimum wage can lead to higher corporate earnings,” writes Bill Gross, the founder of PIMCO. “Main Street is Wall Street’s best friend…. It is time to let common sense as opposed to the race for short-term corporate profits guide our economic future.”
Tags: Bill Gross, Common sense, Earnings, Economic future, Main Street, Minimum wage, PIMCO, Short-term corporate profits, Wall Street
Wall Street Journal (July 14)
Upbeat U.S. employment figures belie the fact that full-time jobs actually fell by 523,000 in June. “Way too many adults now depend on the low-wage, part-time jobs that teenagers would normally fill. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen had it right in March when she said: ‘The existence of such a large pool of partly unemployed workers is a sign that labor conditions are worse than indicated by the unemployment rate.’” Stripping the nearly 800,000 new part-time jobs out from the employment figures removes the feel-good factor and reveals “why the June numbers are so distressing.”
The Economist (July 12)
“Electronics companies in Japan are starting to turn themselves around, but they are a shadow of their former selves…. After years of denial that surgery was needed, optimism is rising that Japan’s consumer-electronics firms are facing up to their steady loss of global market share.”
Tags: Consumer electronics, Denial, Electronics, Japan, Loss, Market share, Optimism, Surgery, Turn around
Los Angeles Times (July 11)
A rift is growing between the United States and Germany, “which largely sees Snowden as a hero, particularly for his revelations about the extent of American surveillance in Germany.” A recent poll shows “a mere 27% of Germans regard the U.S. as trustworthy, and a majority view it as an aggressive power.”
Tags: Aggressive, Germany, Revelations, Rift, Snowden, Surveillance, Trustworthy, U.S.
New York Times (July 10)
“California is in the third year of its worst drought in decades. But you wouldn’t know it by looking at how much water the state’s residents and businesses are using.” Nearly half a year ago, the State called for a 20% reduction in water use, but so far actual savings have been closer to 5% and, “in some parts of the state, like the San Diego area, water use has actually increased from 2013.” California needs to urgently take “much stronger conservation measures.”
Tags: California, Conservation, Drought, Reduction, Residents, San Diego, Savings, Water, Water use
Washington Post (July 8)
“Maybe Chicago’s death toll will help stop the madness on gun access.” Over the Fourth of July weekend, Chicago “was scarred by what tragically has become another American tradition: gun violence. In the course of 84 hours this past weekend, 82 people were shot in Chicago, 16 of them fatally. One person an hour, not in some far-flung war zone but on the streets of a major U.S. city.”
7/9 Issue
“Politically nuts” is how the Wall Street Journal describes a proposal in Germany to ban certain forms of fracking until 2021 “just when the Ukraine crisis makes clear the need to diversify Europe’s gas supplies couldn’t be greater.” The country has a reported 2.3 trillion cubic meters of domestic shale gas.
Speaking of other sleeping resources, Kathy Matsui, who coined the term womenomics, is quoted in Institutional Investor, saying “Japan’s GDP could rise by nearly 13 percent if the employment rate of women rose to match that of men,” but considerable barriers to women persist. In light especially of the country’s shrinking population, new governmental policies are aimed at pushing forward necessary but difficult change.
That’s not the only unavoidable change awaiting Japan. The Financial Times writes “Japan has too many banks.” While banks have been reluctant to merge, competition for fewer customers means dwindling margins, while more aggressive banking could have broader benefits: “Shake up the banks, and you shake up Japan, Inc.”
The U.S. jobs report, meanwhile, brought good news for that country’s economy: 288,000 jobs added in June and the unemployment rate hit 6.1%, the lowest since September 2008. “Behind the good news, however,” the New York Times writes, “there is still enormous slack in the economy,” as wages lag, human capital is “wasted” and part-timers are on the rise.
The United States faces additional challenges overseas. USA Today asserts that the country needs an approach to ISIS that is “much less limited and much more strategic.” The threat in the region is growing wider than just Syria or Iraq, and “addressing it requires support from our traditional Arab friends.”
Writing separately, USA Today reports that ISIS has re-established the caliphate, last abolished in 1924, hoping to “provide a visible symbol of unity for the world’s Muslims.” But, lacking an agreed upon succession process, “there are bound to be rivals…. ISIS has vastly raised the stakes and conceivably made itself a target for some fanatical and well-armed enemies.”
And in a different corner of the Muslim world, another, secular leader will soon take the stage. The Economist describes Prabowo Subianto and Joko Widodo, who are facing off in Indonesia’s July 9 presidential election. “Deutsche Bank reports that if Mr Prabowo wins, 56% of investors surveyed would sell their Indonesian assets and just 13% would buy, while a Jokowi win would cause 74% to buy and just 6% to sell.”
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To see the overseas media’s takes on these and other developments, you can browse the Global News highlights in app 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.
Financial Times (July 8)
“Japan has too many banks in the same way as it has too many manufacturers of televisions, fridges and microwave ovens. Yet while chronic oversupply has been one of the main forces depressing prices for consumer electronics over the past couple of decades, the influence of the merger-wary banks has been–arguably–more malign.” It would benefit everyone if the reluctant banks were to “find a partner, and get on with it.”
Wall Street Journal (July 8)
“Just when the Ukraine crisis makes clear that the need to diversify Europe’s gas supplies couldn’t be greater, Germany wants to ban fracking.” If Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks gets her way, “most forms of hydraulic fracking will be prohibited until 2021,” cutting Germans off from the estimated 2.3 trillion cubic meters of shale gas that lies within their border.
USA Today (July 7)
ISIS has revived the caliphate last abolished in 1924. While ISIS may have hoped to “provide a visible symbol of unity for the world’s Muslims,” reintroducing the caliphate might prove “the very worst thing it could have done.” Lacking an agreed upon succession process, “there are bound to be rivals. Already, ISIS is literally at daggers drawn with al-Qaeda and other Islamists…. ISIS has vastly raised the stakes and conceivably made itself a target for some fanatical and well-armed enemies.”
