Wall Street Journal (April 29)
The cable industry is “panicked over the looming breakup of its business model” as fewer traditional linear customers want big bundles and younger viewers increasingly opt for video on demand subscriptions. Cable operators benefitted from local monopolies that allowed them to “dictate packages and pricing, markets be damned.” Though “cable bills have grown at almost triple the rate of inflation over the past two decades,” the gravy train may be coming to an end.
Tags: Cable, Customers, Inflation, Markets, Monopolies, Packages, Pricing, Video on demand, Viewers
Institutional Investor (April 27)
“For decades Washington politicians have evoked the dream of a North American energy alliance that would deliver Mexico’s abundant hydrocarbons to factories and motor vehicles in the U.S.” Today’s reality “is confounding expectations. It’s the booming U.S. energy sector that is powering Mexican factories and cars.”
Tags: Cars, Energy alliance, Factories, Hydrocarbons, Mexico, North America, Politicians, U.S., Washington
Financial Times (April 27)
While Japanese companies benefit from currency gains on overseas sales, U.S. companies are feeling the heat. “A surge in the US dollar has already wiped more than $20bn from first quarter sales at the largest US companies, a sum larger than revenues generated by Intel, Caterpillar or Goldman Sachs in the first three months of the year.” The figure could potentially double as Q1 reporting in the U.S. was still near the halfway mark.
Tags: Caterpillar, Currency gains, Dollar, Goldman Sachs, Intel, Japan, Overseas sales, Q1, U.S.
New York Times (April 26)
“Fixes for ‘third-world’ airports” are desperately needed, but the airports the New York Times has in mind are all located within the United States. “Like the rest of the nation’s transportation system, aging airports need renovation.”
Tags: Aging, Airports, Fixes, Renovation, Third world, Transportation system, U.S.
Washington Post (April 25)
“The government should eliminate energy subsidies of all kinds — for fossil fuels as well as renewable energy. Then Congress should put a significant tax on carbon-dioxide emissions and set it to rise over time. The resulting market forces would decide how the economy would move to a greener state.”
Tags: CO2, Congress, Economy, Emissions, Energy subsidies, Fossil fuels, Government, Market forces, Renewables, Tax, U.S.
Bloomberg (April 24)
“European Union leaders have been unequivocal in their insistence that Greece has been ring-fenced, and that the common-currency project can survive the departure of its weakest member. They may be right; but we won’t know for sure whether contagion is alive or dead unless and until Greece bows out.”
Tags: Contagion, Currency, EU, Greece, Ring-fenced
Wall Street Journal (April 23)
North Korea’s nuclear arsenal may be larger than previously thought,” as many as 40 warheads by the end of next year, according to Chinese nuclear experts. “A well-stocked nuclear armory in North Korea ramps up security fears in Japan and South Korea, neighboring U.S. allies that could seek their own nuclear weapons in defense.”
Tags: Allies, China, Defense, Experts, Japan, North Korea, Nuclear arsenal, Security, South Korea, U.S., Warheads
Financial Times (April 23)
“The closeness between America and Japan, forged in the ashes of war, goes beyond the ideological…. Theirs has been one of the closest and most enduring of postwar relationships. They stand shoulder to shoulder on most issues from terrorism to intellectual property.”
Tags: Enduring, Ideological, Intellectual property, Japan, Postwar, Terrorism, U.S.
Institutional Investor (April 20)
“Like an old couple that can’t seem to stop fighting, Greece and its European Union partners are wondering if it’s time to head for divorce court.” The long-running saga has “been threatening to undermine the single currency for more than five years. Yet the Greek crisis appears to be entering a new, and potentially fatal, phase as exhaustion and mutual recriminations push both sides to the brink of an irrevocable rupture.”
New York Times (April 20)
“The high season of migration from Africa to Europe has begun, bringing with it a new wave of tragic drownings in the Mediterranean…. Unless Europe acts to reform its policy on migration, 2015 could be the deadliest year yet for the thousands of people who fled to Libya from conflict-torn regions across the Middle East and Africa, only to find Libya equally dangerous.”
Tags: Africa, Conflict, Dangerous, Deadliest, Drownings, Europe, Libya, Mediterranean, Middle East, Migration
