Early Headlines: Obama’s Clemency Splurge, Greek Plan Not Cutting It, Saudi’s Losing Market Share in Asia and More

Early Bird Headlines 02 April 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.

Global

• Why the AIIB should not be governed like the World Bank and IMF (the interpreter) This column maintains that it is time to reform the politically driven existing world banking institutions and the new AIIB might be able to push in the right direction.
  

U.S.

• Why Obama chose the Iran talks to take one of the biggest risks of his presidency (The Washington Post) Hat tip to Sig Silber.
• Prolific Pardoner? Obama Grants Clemency to 22 Prisoners This Week, But Has Denied Thousands (ProPublica) In April 2014, the Justice Department announced a new initiative to fast-track clemency petitions for prisoners who, under today’s sentencing laws, would have received a substantially lower sentence for the same offense. The president has started to take action on this initiative.
  
• 10 things you need to know to really understand RFRA in Indiana and Arkansas (The Washington Post)

UK

• Leaders’ tactics in first week show they know this will be a marathon, not a sprint (The Conversation) Both the Tories and Labour opened the campaign by addressing their Achilles’ heels.
  

Greece

• Greece Presents More Detailed Bailout Plan (4-Traders) The plan proposes a suite of measures to raise new revenue, such as new value-added taxes and fighting tax evasion and proposes new spending on pensions and other government programs. The spending proposals, among others, are red lines for Greece’s creditors and drew swift rebukes from eurozone officials. If the additional funds are not forthcoming Greece will delay repayments to the IMF in favor of domestic spending.
• Buffett Says Greek Exit From Euro ‘May Not Be a Bad Thing’ (Bloomberg)
  

Nigeria

• Buhari wins as Nigeria turns its back on Jonathan (The Conversation) Stephen Chan says that wherever Buhari takes Nigeria, the end of the Jonathan era is something to celebrate.
  

Saudi Arabia

• The Saudis Are Losing Their Lock on Asian Oil Sales (Bloomberg) Latin America is picking up market share in Asia.
  

China

• China’s Big Stock Market Rally Is Being Fueled by High-School Dropouts (Bloomberg) See also GEI Investing late yesterday: Shanghai Rally: Trend or Blip?
• Chinese oil demand to peak around 2017 (China Spectator) Clean energy is coming on line faster than many expect.
  

Brazil

• How Brazil’s President Plans to Get the Country and Herself Out of This Mess (Bloomberg)
• Rousseff: Petrobras Will Take Dramatic Measures (Bloomberg Business)
  

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