Early Headlines: Could EU Lose Greece to Russia?, Mideast Meltdown, China Slowdown and More

Early Bird Headlines 30 March 2015

Econintersect: Here are some of the headlines we found to help you start your day. For more headlines see our afternoon feature for GEI members, What We Read Today, which has many more headlines and a number of article discussions to keep you abreast of what we have found interesting.

U.S.

• Let The Game of Whack-A-Mole Begin: Feds Put Forward New Payday Rules (ProPublica) New rules put forward by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would have a major impact on the high-cost loan industry. But if history is any guide, lenders will quickly find some loopholes.

EU

• Eurozone warned of complacency over impact of potential Greek exit (Financial Times)  QE might temporarily mask the damage of a Grexit.
  

Greece

• Could Europe lose Greece to Russia? (BBC News)  For a related Op Ed see GEI Opinion.
• Greece struggles to accommodate lenders as cash dwindles (Financial Times)  Athens haggled with its lenders through the weekend to try to narrow differences over economic reforms, but remaining gaps suggested that there would be no immediate relief.
  

Nigeria

• Boko Haram’s six years of terror have revealed the depth of Nigeria’s troubles (The Conversation)

Yemen

• Middle East prepares for meltdown as Sunni states bomb Yemen (The Conversation)
  

China

• China Central Bank Governor Warns of Deflation Risk (Reuters, The New York Times)  GEI News has been tracking Producer Price deflation in China for almost three years.
• China industrialist criticises US over visa rejection (Financial Times)  Ren Jianxin, the chairman of state-owned ChemChina dubbed China’s “merger king”, has orchestrated half-a-dozen acquisitions in countries including France, Norway, Israel and Australia, but has yet to do a major deal in the US in part because his visa applications are routinely rejected.
• China’s big banks double their write-offs (China Spectator)  Faced with growing numbers of bad loans, China’s biggest banks are ramping up efforts to get rid of them.  A further slowdown could hit the lenders even harder this year, as they face letting bad loans rise or pursuing more write-offs that would further crimp profit growth.
• China’s steel hub reels from Beijing cuts (The Australian)  Steel cities have unemployed men on the streets as China is in the midst of a reduction in steel production of 80 million tonnes over the next two years.
• Chinese developers build into bust (Macro Business)  Developers maintained (and some increased) revenue last year but profits fell sharply, a sure sign of the glut many are proclaiming.

Japan

• Japan reports inflation, household spending, wages soften in Feb in sluggish recovery (Fox News)
  

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