What We Read Today 16 April 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.

• Turkey’s Rogue Game in Syria (Patrick Cockburn, Counterpunch) Hat tips to Chuck Spinney and Roger Erickson. There are reports that the CIA and Turkey conspired to move Gaddafi’s weapons stores from Lybia to Syrian rebels. This was reported by Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh in the London Review of Books in The Red Line and the Rat Line and was also discussed by GEI contributor Washington’s Blog.

• Japan to Cut Economic View as Tax Rise Bites, Nikkei Reports (Arran Scott, Bloomberg) No surprise here. This was obviously coming even viewing from 9 months ago. See also William Pesek, Bloomberg: Japan’s Reform Drive Goes Into Reverse

• Food Prices Drive Up India’s Wholesale Inflation (Anant Vijay Kala, The Wall Street Journal) Food prices up almost 10% drove India’s wholesale inflation rate higher to 5.7% in March. February had seen a 9-month low of 4.7%.

• CBO sticks with 6M ACA enrollment prediction (Alex Wayne and Gillian Roberts, Employee Benefit Advisor) One detail not given a lot of notice in the latest CBO assessment of Obamacare costs (see GEI News) is the continued use of the 6.0 million number for the number of people covered thus far by the new law. With enrollment numbers reported above 7 million this is likely a hedge against some enrollees not following through with premium payments. Econintersect notes that it is not clear what if any estimates have been made for special enrollments that can occur between open enrollment periods. Special enrollment is available for any change of life event: family circumstance, change of employment, etc. there have been estimates from insurance industry sources as high as 3 million more enrollees from special enrollments between now and the start of the next open enrollment period 15 November 2014. This leads us to conclude that any estimate from the CBO or any other source right now is about as solid as smoke in a hurricane.

• Heartbleed is about to get worse, and it will slow the Internet to a crawl (Brian Fung, The Washington Post) There will be a massive effort to rebuild encryption systems all over the web to correct what is becoming an ever increasing threat. It now appears that hackers are able to mirror any firm’s website and capture valuable personal information the users believe is being given to the trusted firm.

• What are the chances that your dad isn’t your father? (Rob Brooks, The Conversation) There have been estimates between 9% and 30% of all children have biological fathers different than Dad. And that is just counting the ones that don’t know.

Today there are 14 articles discussed ‘behind the wall’.

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