What We Read Today 20 May 2014

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.

• Why the U.S. Is Charging China With Cyberspying on American Companies (Dustin Volz, National Journal) Spy on people? That’s okay. Spy on companies? Not so much. See next article.

• 5 in China Army Face U.S. Charges of Cyberattacks (Michael S. Schmidt and David E. Sanger, The New York Times) Hat tip to Rob Carter. Specific members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army have been charged by the U.S. Department of Justice of hacking into the networks of Westinghouse Electric, United States Steel and “other companies“. The hackers are accused of trying to steal commercial secrets and “intellectual property“. The indictment did not include any allegations associated with the Department of Defense or U.S. defense contractors, perhaps because the U.S. would not want to open the possibility of “Chinese revelations about American attacks on similar targets in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong“.

• Narendra Modi gets going, babus asked to list what went wrong in the past few years (Saubhadra Chatterji, Hindustan Times) Modi wants to hit the ground running when inaugurated as India’s next Prime Minister. In Saturday’s Econintersect exclusive by Sanjeev Kulkarni (which we would modestly like to enter in the contest for best post-election coverage article if there were such a thing) one of the sections focused on this topic: “Over zealous babus have to be firmly dealt with.”

• Credit Suisse to plead guilty to criminal charges in US tax evasion scheme (Dominic Rush, The Guardian) The second largest bank in Switzerland will become the first bank in more than a decade to admit to a crime in the US. But no one will go to prison – regulators are expected to impose a fine of $2.5 billion. And the charade of the criminal fraudsters goes on.

• Uncapping education fees and unleashing the unscrupulous (John Rice, The Conversation) The Australia federal budget proposal to uncap university fees could be taken as a blank checkbook for both universities and self-accrediting colleges offering higher education services. Oz will be on track to duplicate the abuses resulting from similar actions taken in the U.S. to “make higher education subject to market forces” with a similar disregard for regulation. The author details some of the fraudulent activities that have occurred in the for-profit higher education schemes foisted on the American public in the last couple of decades. And the Australian proposal has the government backstopping the fraud to make sure the fraudsters don’t lose money. See also GEI Opinion.

• House, Senate lawmakers promise review of AT&T-DirecTV deal (Jim Puzzanghera, Los Angeles Times) The merger, worth almost $50 billion, would be the fourth largest telecommunications merger in history and raise lots of questions about competitive forces in that space. See the next article (repeated from ‘behind the wall’ yesterday) and see further discussion on the related net neutrality issue extensively discussed ‘behind the wall’ today.

• AT&T to Buy DirecTV for $48.5 Billion in Move to Expand Clout (Michael J. de la Merced and David Gelles, The New York Times) With this new proposed deal added to the proposed Comcast – Time Warner merger the control of information distribution and delivery is condensing down to a very few strong hands.

Today there are 13 articles discussed ‘behind the wall’.

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