Early Headlines: Death of Patriot Act, China’s Uncertain Growth, India Pollution, Collapse of the Yen, Greece Depression and More

Early Bird Headlines 30 May 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

• Driverless Cars Will Save $5 Trillion, But Cost 10 Million Jobs (Seeking Alpha) And this article ends with what will make the driverless car obsolete.
  

U.S.

• The Patriot Act May Be Dead Forever (The Daily Beast) Barring any last-minute compromises, powerful government surveillance authorities under the Patriot Act will expire at the stroke of midnight Monday. And they may never return. Lawmakers may be unwilling to vote affirmatively for surveillance powers that many of them already dislike and have tried to rein in.
• When it can be illegal to withdraw your own money (CNBC) Hat tip to Marvin Clark. It’s your money, in your account, but that doesn’t mean you can take it out any way you please. Failure to report large cash transactions can often trigger federal investigations, leading to fines or even lengthy prison sentences. It all stems from U.S. law that requires forms to be submitted-both by financial institutions, as well as bank customers-each time a cash transaction in excess of $10,000 occurs. Customers hoping to avoid having to disclose such transactions often seek ways around around the law in a process known as “structuring,” which can lead to serious money laundering charges.

Greece

• Economic Nightmare in Greece is Worse than US in Great Depression (Business Insider)

Japan

• Why the Bank of Japan Can’t Stop a Sudden Collapse of the Yen (Wolf Street) Analyst Wolf Richter sees nothing but pain for the Japanese yen and his story is quite convincing. Econintersect: One thing he does not discuss is whether Japan can effectively monetize most of its debt and then raise interest rates to support the yen. The Bank of Japan owned 24% of all Japanese government debt as of November 2014, is expected to own 31% by the end of this year and 50% in 2018. Following that trendline the BoJ would own 90% of the government’s debt by 2024. Whether it could go that far and still have a working economy is a good question because no country has tried to run on substantially a debt free currency in the modern world – and with 90% of government debt monetized Japan would be coming close. But if they did this – and it worked – this would be an effective demonstration of the separate functions of public money and private credit.
  

India

• Holding Your Breath in India (The New York Times) Delhi’s true menace comes from its air, water, food and flies. These perils sicken, disable and kill millions in India annually, making for one of the worst public health disasters in the world.
  

China

• China’s slowing economy may steady later this year: state think tank (Reuters) A government think tank’s chief economist was reported as saying on Saturday that short term policies could stabilize China’s slowing economy in the second half of this year, but for growth to make a lasting recovery Beijing should foster new sectors and innovation.
• PBOC Sees Increased Downward Pressure on China’s Economy (The Wall Street Journal) China’s central bank urges Beijing to maintain ample liquidity to support growth.
• U.S. defense chief says China’s island-building erodes security (Reuters) U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter warned on Saturday that Beijing’s island-building in the South China Sea was undermining security in the Asia-Pacific and he called for a diplomatic push to solve the territorial dispute that is driving China’s effort.
• The amount of trading going on in China’s stock markets is mind-boggling (Business Insider) As Business Insider’s Mike Bird notes, brokerage accounts in China are exploding and fund inflows from overseas have gone parabolic.

BECOME A GEI MEMBER – IT’s FREE!

Every every afternoon What We Read Today featured column is available only to GEI members.

To become a GEI Member simply subscribe to our FREE daily newsletter.