Australian Financial Review (November 28)
“Mr Trump will not reverse America’s relative decline. The chances are he will drastically accelerate it…. The US-led international order as we knew it for 70 years is over. “ While much focus will be “on Mr Trump’s dealings with Mr Putin,” that’s strictly short term. “The long-term trajectory is towards China.” Going forward, things “will not be pretty. Europe will be the loser. So too will American prestige.”
Tags: China, Decline, Europe, International order, Long term, Prestige, Putin, Short term, Trump, U.S.
Washington Post (November 27)
“Japan is engaged in a national crisis over nuclear power, but the country has embraced natural gas. The United States, by contrast, is seeing a roiling national debate over natural gas and fracking, but concerns over nuclear power are muted. Each country is half right.” As countries invest in renewable energy, they “should keep their options open.” To successfully phase out the deadliest energy sources, e.g. coal, “the world needs fracking – and nuclear power.”
Tags: Coal, Crisis, Fracking, Japan, Natural gas, Nuclear, Renewable energy, U.S.
The Economist (November 26)
“Britain is in a state of unprecedented uncertainty. The government is unclear about what sort of Brexit it wants. Economic forecasting is, as a result, as good as guesswork. The outlook for the public finances is similarly uncertain.” Nevertheless,“this year’s Autumn Statement, in sum, hinted at how painful Brexit is going to be.”
Tags: Brexit, Forecasting, Government, Guesswork. Outlook, Painful, UK, Uncertainty, Unprecedented
Nikkei Asian Review (November 24)
So-called slow trade, “in which global trade volumes grow more slowly than the world economy” and, for that matter, shipping capacity, is playing havoc with shipping companies. “With weak industry fundamentals likely to persist, the world’s shipping lines seem to be entering a war of attrition, with a focus on achieving economies of scale through acquisitions. It is a war in which further casualties seem inevitable.”
Tags: Capacity, Economies of scale, Global trade, Shipping, Slow trade
Bloomberg (November 24)
“Youthful optimism can be hard to find in Japan, where millennials rank as the gloomiest of those in the world’s biggest economies.” Less than 40% of Japan’s millennials are optimistic about the future, “making them the most pessimistic in 18 countries surveyed by ManpowerGroup. They’re even more downbeat than young Greeks, who have suffered Great Depression-like conditions and political upheaval in recent years.”
Tags: Downbeat, Future, Gloomiest, Great Depression, Greeks, Japan, ManpowerGroup, Millennials, Optimism, Pessimistic, Upheaval
Financial Times (November 24)
“A careful, calibrated fiscal adjustment to return a government to sustainability is one thing. A brutish insistence on running surpluses well into the future is quite another.” The EU should avoid “choking off a nascent recovery in the Greek economy and setting back the cause of reducing its debt burden.”
Tags: Calibrated, Careful, Debt burden, EU, Fiscal, Government, Greek economy, Recovery, Surpluses
Institutional Investor (November 23)
“After the global financial crisis of 2008-’09, a burgeoning gap in financing for long-term investments pushed many governments to take matters into their own hands. In fact, 17 new strategic investment funds have launched since 2008.” So far, these funds have received little scrutiny, but a recent World Bank study now suggests that these SIF’s “can promote economic growth” while delivering viable commercial returns: fulfilling their so called double-bottom-line mandate.
Tags: Commercial returns, Double-bottom-line mandate, Economic growth, Financing, Global financial crisis, Governments, Long-term investments, SIF, World Bank
Wall Street Journal (November 20)
“South Korea would benefit most from a thorough investigation that prompts political reform rather than a rush to impeachment.” Furthermore, securing President Park’s resignation or impeachment “could reverse many hard-fought decisions that the Korean electorate gave her a mandate to make,” like closing down the Kaesong Industrial Complex, deploying a U.S. missile-defense system and sharing intelligence with Japan to counter the North Korean threat.
Tags: Impeachment, Intelligence, Investigation, Japan, Kaesong Industrial Complex, North Korean, Political reform, Resignation, South Korea, U.S. missile defense
LA Times (November 20)
“Obama’s final foreign trip was his last chance to warn the world about Trump, and to warn Trump about the world.”
Tags: Foreign trip, Last chance, Obama, Trump, Warn, World
The Economist (November 19)
“Reagan’s America was optimistic: Mr Trump’s is angry. Welcome to the new nationalism. For the first time since the second world war, the great and rising powers are simultaneously in thrall to various sorts of chauvinism. Like Mr Trump, leaders of countries such as Russia, China and Turkey embrace a pessimistic view that foreign affairs are often a zero-sum game in which global interests compete with national ones. It is a big change that makes for a more dangerous world.”
Tags: Angry, Chauvinism, China, Compete, Dangerous, Foreign affairs, Nationalism, Optimistic, Pessimistic, Reagan, Russia, Trump, Turkey, Zero-sum game
