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.”
