New York Times (January 9)
India’s “man-made currency crisis” has had real costs and limited benefit. Two months after the surprise move to invalidate over 80% of existing currency, “the manufacturing sector is contracting; real estate and car sales are down; and farm workers, shopkeepers and other Indians report that a shortage of cash has made life increasingly difficult.”
Tags: Benefit, Car sales, Contracting, Costs, Crisis, Currency, Farm workers, India, Manufacturing, Real estate, Shopkeepers, Shortage
Institutional Investor (January 9)
“Tiger-related funds are not celebrating the market’s 2016 surge.” While some “stock market investors have been whooping it up after the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index posted an unexpectedly strong 9.5 percent gain last year,” Tiger funds were left licking their wounds. Wrong-footed by the election of Donald Trump, many Tigers tumbled far into the red, undoing solid performance earlier in the year.
Tags: 2016, Election, Investors, Performance, S&P 500, Surge, Tiger funds, Trump, Wrong-footed
Wall Street Journal (January 7)
“Does Donald Trump understand business?” He might know real estate and branding, “but the President-elect’s Twitter assaults on auto companies make us wonder if he understands cross-border supply chains, relative business costs, regulatory mandates, or anything else about building and selling modern cars and trucks.”
Tags: Automakers, Branding, Business, Cars, Costs, Cross-border supply chains, Real estate, Regulatory mandates, Trucks, Trump, Twitter
The Economist (January 7)
“Voice has the power to transform computing, by providing a natural means of interaction…. Being able to talk to computers abolishes the need for the abstraction of a ‘user interface’ at all. Just as mobile phones were more than existing phones without wires, and cars were more than carriages without horses, so computers without screens and keyboards have the potential to be more useful, powerful and ubiquitous than people can imagine today.”
Tags: Cars, Computers, Computing, Horses, Interaction, Interface, Keyboards, Mobile phones, Voice
Washington Post (January 5)
“It’s an existential moment for all of Europe’s leaders, most of whom are only just beginning to grapple with the fact that Russia wants to destroy the Euro-American alliance.” Alas, with the inauguration of Donald Trump, they may “have to prepare for an American government that wants to do so too.”
Tags: Destroy, Euro-American alliance, Europe, Existential, Government, Leaders, Russia, Trump, U.S.
Bloomberg (January 5)
“From goods leaving the factory floor in China’s industrial towns to gasoline at the pump in Europe and America, prices that stayed low for years are finally going up.” The reflation narrative leaves most policymakers hopeful and a few giddy, but doubts linger about the durability of the recovery.
Tags: Doubts, Durability, Europe, Factories, Gasoline, Policymakers, Recovery, Reflation, U.S.
Time (January 4)
“Sea surface temperatures have risen globally in recent years as a result of man-made climate change,” but not uniformly. Though more hurricanes are being spawned in the middle of the Atlantic, temperatures along the U.S. coast “have remained relatively cool,” providing protection. Many storms “hit Caribbean islands hard but leave the U.S. largely unscathed.” Alas, the favorable “surface temperatures that protect the U.S. could easily disappear.”
Tags: Atlantic, Caribbean, Climate change, Coast, Hurricanes, Man-made, Sea, Temperatures, U.S.
Financial Times (January 4)
Whether “Abenomics remains a relevant force…may depend heavily upon the performance of the Nikkei 225 Average over the next six weeks.” If the “huge dip that savaged the benchmark” last year during the same period can be avoided, many analysts believe “we may be looking at a market with enough foreign buying and other support to sustain the current bull run.”
Tags: Abenomics, Analysts, Benchmark, Bull run, Dip, Foreign buying, Market, Nikkei 225, Performance, Relevant force, Support
Chicago Tribune (January 3)
“Nothing significant happens in Russia, and no action is taken by Russia, without the knowledge of the man who has held total power there for 17 years, first as president and later as unchallenged dictator.” Putin has essentially “eliminated every form of real political and social opposition in Russia.” In short, the United States “doesn’t have a problem with Russia — it has a problem with Putin.”
Tags: Dictator, Opposition, Power, President, Putin, Russia, U.S., Unchallenged
LA Times (January 1)
Americans want Trump to succeed. In a recent “Pew poll, most voters who supported Hillary Clinton said they were willing to give Trump a chance. But he’s on thin ice. Even among his voters, Trump’s honeymoon could turn out to be short.”
