Econintersect: Every day our editors collect the most interesting things they find from around the internet and present a summary “reading list” which will include very brief summaries of why each item has gotten our attention. Suggestions from readers for “reading list” items are gratefully reviewed, although sometimes space limits the number included.
- Carney tells UK to prepare for rate rises (Chris Giles and George Parker, Financial Times) Bank of England governor Mark Carney announced in a speech that interest rate hikes “could happen sooner than markets currently expect“. The FT says that markets currently expect the first increase in the spring of 2015 and this could bring the expectation in to late this year. BoE guidance has been that rate increases will be gradual and to levels lower than the 5% “standard” of earlier times. Read the speech here.
- Iraq Wants America Back to Fight Insurgents With Air Strikes (Eli Lake, The Daily Beast) The Baghdad government is pleading for air support and drone attacks. Another military test lab? See also Obama says Iraq going to need more help (CNN News) Hat tip to Alun Hill.
- Militants Advance Toward Baghdad as Kurdish Forces Seize Kirkuk (News brief, Foreign Policy) Is the tri-partition of Iraq around the corner? Kurdistan, Sunnistan and Shiastan? See CNN video above.
- Japan’s Abe Is the World’s Best Leader (Noah Smith, Bloomberg) Smith says he is the best because (1) he listened to Milton Friedman; (2) he is attacking sexism in the workplace; (3) he is reducing Japan’s high corporate tax rate; (4) he has upgraded the investment profile for Japan’s government-run pension plan; (5) he has launched a number of deregulation efforts; (6) he is curbing the long-entrenched bureaucracy; (7) he is proposing an immigration plan to blunt Japan’s terrible demographic outlook and shrinking population; and (8) he is being more assertive in foreign affairs.
- Japan to keep printing money for years to come, so learn to enjoy it (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Telegraph) Evans-Pritchard calls the Japanese monetization program “the world’s most radical economic experiment“. John Mauldin calls it “a bug in search of a windshield“.
- David Brat Thinks Economics Is a Sham (Jordan Weissmann, Slate) David Brat who unseated House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in last night’s giant election shocker, thinks mainstream economics suffers from a mass delusion of scientific impartiality. This seems a little strange to Weissmann but, in Econintersect‘s opinion, Brat is spot on. He is quoted as saying that economics is “actually grounded in unexamined moral and philosophical assumptions-especially utilitarianism, which generally holds that our goal should be to do the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people.” Well, Econintersect would say that the unfounded assumptions are much deeper, extending even to assumptions about facts.
Today there are 13 articles discussed ‘behind the wall’.
Six of the articles discussed today are related to investing topics.
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