Early Headlines: Dr. Oz Under Attack, Berkshire TBTF, China Bonds Default, Greece as a Banana Republic and More

Early Bird Headlines 21 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.

U.S.

• New WikiLeaks documents reveal the inner workings of the Dr. Oz Show (Vox) Hat tip to Roger Erickson. Wikileaks email releases show a TV personality seemingly preoccupied with parlaying his audience exposure into personal profits. For more on this see The making of Dr. Oz and Dr. Oz launches his counterattack against the doctors questioning his credibility.
  

• For These 55 Marijuana Companies, Every Day is 4/20 (Bloomberg) Legalized marijuana is creating investing heaven or hell, depending on which times you play with these mostly penny stocks.

EU

• Central banks prepare to flood FX markets with euros (The Business Times) Several analysts, mostly in conjunction with bearish forecasts on the euro, said they expect central banks’ euro-denominated reserves to fall below 20% of overall holdings over the coming quarters from around 22%.

• Up to 1m migrants waiting to enter Europe, warns Italian prosecutor (Financial Times) Up to 1m Syrians and sub-Saharan migrants are waiting in Libya to cross to Europe, an Italian official said on Monday as European ministers pledged to increase the funding and range of the EU’s task force in the Mediterranean. Econintersect: The potential exists for tens of thousands of deaths in the Mediterranean in 2015 because the “migrant season” has not really started yet.

• What the EU must do now to halt this tragedy on its shores (The Conversation)

UK

• British regulator challenges US over Berkshire scrutiny (Financial Times) Headline is not correct: It should read “lack of Berkshire scrutiny”. The Bank of England has written to the U.S. Treasury asking why one of the world’s most powerful reinsurance enterprises is not subject to ‘too big to fail’ (TBTF) supervision.
• A political party is threatening the union – and it’s not the SNP (The Conversation) The future of the United Kingdom as a unified nation is firmly on the table this election. This is not merely a question of the Scottish National Party’s policy on independence for Scotland, however. A far more pernicious influence is coming from the centre-right.

Greece

• Greece’s Varoufakis warns of Grexit contagion (Reuters) Good points made but the analyst is hardly a neutral observer.
  
• Greece Without Europe Is a Banana Republic: Amoroso (Bloomberg Business)

Italy

• Dreams of Europe Elusive for Those Who Wash Up in Italy (Bloomberg Business) Thousands have died in the attempt to cross the Mediterranean but those who make it to Europe alive often go missing, highlighting the fraught future facing migrants even once they reach the other side. Increasingly the refugees are children. Of the 12,000 children who arrived at so-called welcome centers in Italy this year, about 3,500 have disappeared without trace
  

Libya

• Four years after West bombed Gaddafi, chaos rules in Libya (The Conversation)
  

India

• Jaguar Accuses Chinese Automaker of Copying Cars (Bloomberg Business) The luxury car subsidiary of India’s giant Tata Motors charges that Chinese companies are producing knock-offs of their Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles.

China

• Does the Collapse of a Chinese Developer Signal the Start of More Defaults? (Bloomberg Business) Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd., once a darling of investors, is buckling under its debts as a slumping real estate market weighs on the entire Chinese economy. After missing $52 million in interest payments, Kaisa now confronts an uncertain future with a potential default which could total into the billions. This is the first default in China’s $43.2 billion market for U.S. dollar denominated bonds. The watch is now on for other empty shoes to hit the floor.
• China bank move stokes global worry (The Sydney Morning Herald) China’s biggest cut to bank capital requirements since the financial crisis has left experts speculating whether the outlook for the world’s second-biggest economy is worse than outsiders thought.

Japan

• Shinzo Abe, Japanese Premier, Sends Gift to Contentious Yasukuni Shrine (The New York Times) Asian countries occupied by Japan in World War II are riled by a gift to commemorate Japan’s WW II dead in the 60th year after the war ended.
• Japan Says Economy on Recovery Path (Nasdaq.com) The Japanese government stuck to its view that the economy is on a moderate recovery path, helped by an improvement in corporate profits, in its monthly economic report for April. The government expects lower energy costs will also support the recovery trend although a slowdown of overseas economies could pose a downside risk.

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