Early Bird Headlines 10 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
- Desal Prize: Teams compete to make salt water drinkable (CNBC) U.S. government is offering a prize to the inventor of a system that will desalinize seawater in large volumes at costs much less than the current $0.01 gallon. See also article under China.
U.S.
- How Wall Street captured Washington’s effort to rein in banks (Reuters) How lobbyists are gutting Dodd-Frank.
- Translation For J&J Sixpack: “No, Really. You’re Better Off If You Let Us Rich Control Frauds Own Everything. TRUST US. YOU Don’t Know How To Manage Your Country Anyway.” (Roger Erickson, Mike Norman Economics) Roger Erickson contributes to GEI. This is a scathing rebuttal to the proposals for public-private partnerships for building infrastructure. Roger sees these ideas as a deceptive scheme to extract more money from taxpayers to enrich private investors.
- Tornadoes destroy swathes of Midwest, but spare many lives (CNN) Massive damage, vast devastation but few deaths.
Saudi Arabia
- Saudi Arabia Just Delivered Another Strike in the “Oil War” (Kent Moors, Oil & Energy Investor) Dr. Kent Moors has contributed to GEI. The Saudis are really hurting Russia, the U.S. not so much. They recently cut the price of Arabian oil in Asia (Russia’s primary market) and now have increased production.
Iran
- Differences emerge in US, Iran interpretations of nuclear deal (Al Monitor) The differences between the the U.S. and Iranian summaries of the “agreement” are far-reaching, and some could, if unresolved, seriously jeopardize the ongoing negotiations. Econintersect: In other words, it looks like “No Deal”.
Russia
- Putin’s Surprising New Ruble Problem Threatens Russian Coffers (Bloomberg) The ruble collapsed last year and that allowed Russia to collect more as the dollar price dropped by half. But this year the ruble is strengthening and the government’s ruble revenue is dropping. To fund domestic programs Russia needs a weak ruble.
China
- China Turns to the Sea for Fresh Water (Bloomberg) Government plans to increase desalinization 4x in five years.
Indonesia
Nicaragua
- The Billionaire Behind the Canal (Al Jazeera) Wang Jing’s megaproject furthers China’s aims in Latin America and deflates economic importance of Hong Kong.
Cuba
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