Washington Post (April 19)
For fifty years Moore’s Law has shown remarkable resilience in predicting the growth of computing power. It has also served as “a quiet rebuke to those who think we control our destiny. The historical reality is that technological, commercial and intellectual upheavals — often unforeseen — set in motion forces that create new opportunities and threats. We struggle to master what we haven’t anticipated and often don’t understand.”
Tags: Commercial, Computing power, Destiny, Intellectual, Moore’s Law, Resilience, Technological, Upheaval
The Economist (April 18)
“Fears are rising that, after three soaring decades, China is about to crash. That would be a disaster. China is the world’s second-largest economy and Asia’s pre-eminent rising power.” But the fears of the pessimists are overstated. “China is not only more economically robust than they allow, it is also putting itself through a quiet—and welcome—financial revolution.”
Bloomberg (April 16)
“Japan overtook China as the top foreign holder of U.S. government debt for the first time since the global financial crisis amid signs of economic and policy shifts in Asia’s two largest economies.”
Institutional Investor (April 15)
“As a demonstration of China’s growing economic and political clout, few things rival the launch of the Asian Infrastructure Investment bank, Beijing’s challenge to the U.S.-dominated international financial order…. In the end, only Japan among major economies sided with Washington in shunning the AIIB.”
Forbes (April 15)
It’s easy to underestimate the loss of Greece. “While it may be true that the economic damage of a Greek collapse would largely be confined to Greece itself, it nonetheless would undermine the great post-WWII dream of a united Europe that would never experience another catastrophic war….. Thanks to remarkably bad leadership, Europe’s post-WWII order is in mortal danger, threatening unimaginable political and economic repercussions.”
Tags: Collapse, Danger, Economic damage, Europe, Greece, Leadership, War, WWII
Financial Times (April 14)
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) released its biannual forecast. Among the predictions, “India is expected to outperform China in growth for the first time in 16 years.”
New York Times (April 14)
“Progress in closing the gender pay gap has basically stalled over the past decade.” In the U.S., women make roughly 80% of what males receive, up from 59% in 1963 when the Equal Pay Act was signed. “The longer the gap persists, the less it can be explained away by factors other than discrimination.”
Tags: Discrimination, Equal Pay Act, Gender, Pay gap, Progress, U.S., Women
Wall Street Journal (April 13)
“We need to get used to slower Chinese growth,” writes former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. He adds that “if, as Beijing has promised, the slowdown is accompanied by deep and serious structural reform that opens up new growth opportunities, such as allowing the private sector to compete against state monopolies in service sectors like banking and telecommunications, then China will still grow robustly compared with all other major economies.”
Tags: Banking, Beijing, China, Competition, Growth, Monopolies, Paulson, Private-sector, Slowdown, Structural reform, Telecommunications
The Economist (April 11)
“Radical measures are needed” in Japan. These “will have to include getting elderly Japanese to pay more for their medical care. A health system that keeps too many people in hospital beds for too long needs to be overhauled. And the retirement age needs to be increased further.”
Tags: Elderly, Health system, Hospital, Japan, Medical care, Overhaul, Radical, Retirement
Bloomberg (April 10)
“Hong Kong is set to overtake Japan as the world’s third-largest stock market, spurred on by surging Chinese demand for shares in the former British colony.” At $5 trillion, Japan’s listed market cap is still a hair above Hong Kong’s $4.9 trillion, but “turnover in Hong Kong surpassed Japan on both Wednesday and Thursday.”
