The Economist (October 11)
Bosses today are under more scrutiny than ever. They still need to worry about the press, but they also run “the risk of being pecked by Twitter’s swarm of angry birds. Thanks to the digital revolution, chief executives now live in glass houses. An ill-judged remark can be broadcast to the world in an instant.”
Tags: Bosses, Digital revolution, Executives, Press, Remark, Risk, Scrutiny, Twitter
Institutional Investor (October 10)
“As refugees from Syria and Iraq flood across the border and, the real economy suffers, Lebanon’s central bank is looking to start-up lending as a way to boost growth.” Despite an influx of 1.3 million refugees (roughly a third of its pre-crisis population), Lebanon’s “economy has remained intact. Growth, while meager, is still projected to reach 1.8 percent this year….Much of this resilience is down to the creativity of the central bank” and the novel approaches it is adopting.
Tags: Border, Central bank, Creativity, Economy, Growth, Iraq, Lebanon, Lending, Refugees, Resilience, Start-ups, Syria
New York Times (October 9)
“Large parts of the world seem to be on the verge of a recession. In many countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America, economic growth has already stalled.” Nevertheless, too many officials “are unwilling or ill prepared to respond.” German officials “continue to insist that countries that use the euro meet restrictive fiscal rules” and “officials in Japan, meanwhile, have hurt that economy by raising a sales tax too fast.
Tags: Asia, Economic growth, euro, Europe, Germany, Japan, Latin America, Officials, Recession, Stalled, Tax
Washington Post (October 9)
The “Ebola virus is a sobering reminder that we live in a world more connected and fluid than at any time in human history…. Viruses and bacteria do not stop at passport control.”
Financial Times (October 8)
Isis looks poised to capture Kobani and much of Syria’s border with Turkey. Will this finally jolt Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, out of his ambivalence? “If he is to retain the confidence of his longstanding allies, Mr Erdogan should move decisively against Isis and put an end to international perceptions that he is willing to dally with this deadly foe.”
Wall Street Journal (October 7)
“The fourth major era of computing” is leaving mainframes, PCs and the Web further behind. “The mobile era began this summer, as there are now more mobile users than desktop users, with 1.8 billion surfing the Web on their smartphones. Having a personal computer in your pocket is changing the tech world because, unlike a computer, a smartphone is always there when you need it.”
Tags: Computing, Desktops, Era, Mainframes, Mobile era, PCs, Smartphones, Surfing, Users, Web
Bloomberg (October 6)
“Eleven days into the Umbrella Revolution, it’s clear Beijing won’t back down. President Xi Jinping won’t accede to the movement’s universal suffrage proposal or sacrifice Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying to ease tensions.” Unless the students “face reality and plot an endgame,” they risk becoming “irritants” to average Hongkongers. If, however, they can win a few concessions, the students “can demonstrate that they gave Goliath a good fight and achieved something substantial.”
Tags: Beijing, Concessions, Endgame, Hong Kong, Leung Chun-ying, Risk, Students, Tensions, Umbrella Revolution, Universal suffrage, Xi Jinping
The Economist (October 4)
The modern digital revolution “is disrupting and dividing the world of work on a scale not seen for more than a century. Vast wealth is being created without many workers; and for all but an elite few, work no longer guarantees a rising income.” The revolution has brought many benefits and has many more to offer, but a bold government response is necessary to ensure workers will be able to benefit from the digital revolution.
Tags: Benefits, Digital revolution, Disrupting, Elite, Government, Income, Modern, Wealth, Workers
Los Angeles Times (October 3)
“Fear of China is not a Western machination.” China likes to blame the West for stirring up trouble, but this year’s “massive protests in Taipei and Hong Kong show that fear of China is most acute along its own borders…. It is the inhabitants of greater China—the ones whom Beijing hopes one day to incorporate into a unified motherland—who fear China the most. They are protesting Chinese encroachments in far greater numbers than either the Vietnamese or Japanese.”
Washington Post (October 2)
In his negotiations on a nuclear agreement with Iran, “President Obama should resist the temptation to make further concessions in order to complete a long-term deal by November. In the absence of a dramatic change in its positions, Iran should be offered, at best, an extension of the existing arrangement, with the current sanctions left in place — and threatened with tougher measures if it does not accept.”
Tags: Concessions, Extension, Iran, Negotiations, Nuclear agreement, President Obama, Sanctions, Temptation
