What We Read Today 30 July 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 (and sometimes longer ones) 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.

• Aging Water System in U.S. is a Catastrophe Waiting to Happen (Crystal Shepeard, Care2) Much of the metropolitan water for older U.S. cities is brought by water mains that are approaching or already past their life expectancy. There are nearly a quarter of a million water main breaks a year. It sounds like the catastrophe may not be waiting. For more on national water problems see ‘behind the wall’.

• Obama announces expanded sanctions against Russia as E.U. aligns (Griff Witte and Karen DeYoung, The Washington Post) On Tuesday the EU finally agreed on economic sanctions against Russia with sanctions on arms, access for Russian banks to capital markets and banning of technology exports related to energy exploration and drilling. Within hours President Obama by announcing new U.S. sanctions that aligned with those by Europe.

• Obama mulls large-scale move on immigration (Erica Werner, Associated Press, MSN News) This article reports that the president is considering issuing millions of work permits and Republicans are considering impeachment.

• Argentina v holdout creditors: no deal as yet (Fast FT) Today is the day. Either a deal will be worked out with the holders of a very small percentage of Argentina’s national debt or the restructuring that all the others worked out with Buenos Aires will fall by the wayside and nobody will get anything when the country defaults. For some background, read Elliott Morss and Jeffrey Frankel at GEI Analysis. Mohamed El-Erian (The Paradox of the Argentine Debt Drama, Bloomberg) has reviewed the issues in this case and concludes:

It would be truly ironic if the holdouts’ long campaign to extract payment from Argentina, a country with one of the world’s worst records of defaults, ended up weakening creditors’ rights rather than strengthening them.

There are 11 articles discussed today ‘behind the wall’.

The first three articles discuss droughts and water management.

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