Early Headlines: China Calls For Global Role for BRICS, Europe’s Last Act?, MERS Outbreak Spreads in South Korea, HSBC to Cut 50,000, India Ponzi Schemes and More

Early Bird Headlines 10 June 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

• China’s top legislator calls for closer BRICS cooperation (China Daily) China’s top legislator Zhang Dejiang on Monday urged the world’s five leading emerging economies to boost cooperation and play a constructive role in addressing global issues and promoting world peace and development.
• Asia shares wallow near three-month lows on Fed anxiety, Greece (Reuters) Asian shares made a tentative rebound from three-month lows on Wednesday though the specter of higher borrowing costs in the United States and concerns about the apparent lack of progress in talks between Greece and its creditors sapped confidence. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS rose 0.3% after hitting a fresh three-month low, though it is down almost 9% from the seven-year peak hit in late April.

U.S.

• Convicted killer in New York prison break on third escape attempt (Reuters) A daring weekend escape from a New York state maximum-security penitentiary, the facility’s first prison break, marked at least the third time convicted murderer Richard Matt had moved to bust out from behind bars. As authorities searched for a fourth day for Matt, 48, and his fellow convicted killer David Sweat, 34, details emerged showing that the older inmate had twice tried to escape prison, once successfully. Large numbers of officers converged on Tuesday on the town of Willsboro, New York, about 40 miles (64 km) south of the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, from which they had escaped, following a reported sighting of the pair. This break was the first successful escape in the 170-year history of the maximum security facility.
• Texas policeman resigns after video shows him toppling teen (Reuters) A Dallas-area policeman seen in a viral video tossing a bathing suit-clad teenage girl to the ground has resigned from the McKinney Police force, the city’s police chief said on Tuesday, calling the officer’s actions indefensible.

Click to watch video.

EU

• Europe’s Last Act? (Joseph Stiglitz, Social Europe)

European Union leaders continue to play a game of brinkmanship with the Greek government. Greece has met its creditors’ demands far more than halfway. Yet Germany and Greece’s other creditors continue to demand that the country sign on to a program that has proven to be a failure, and that few economists ever thought could, would, or should be implemented. …The troika’s forecasts have been wrong, and repeatedly so. And not by a little, but by an enormous amount. Greece’s voters were right to demand a change in course, and their government is right to refuse to sign on to a deeply flawed program.

UK

• HSBC to axe up to 50,000 jobs in 2 years (Financial Times) The number of layoffs has grown ten-fold in two days. But the bank is not planning to get smaller. To the contrary, maybe it will get larger. HSBC plans of shrinking investment banking operations, selling its Brazilian and Turkish operations and shifting resources to more promising Asian markets. According to FT, investors have not been impressed as shares sold off modestly on Tuesday
  

India

• Banks should share blame for Ponzi schemes: Mundra (Business Standard) Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Deputy Governor S S Mundra stressed on the need for a stronger regulatory framework to deal with the menace of Ponzi schemes across the country. He agreed the system also needs to shoulder the blame for such fraudulent investment schemes.
  

South Korea

• South Korea’s Park postpones U.S. trip as MERS cases rise (Reuters) Two more people died and 13 new cases were reported, lifting the total number of patients to 108. Thousands are in quarantine and the number of schools closing has risen to 2,474, including 22 universities. MERS is Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, a corona virus from the same family as the one that triggered China’s deadly 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). There is no cure or vaccine.
• Korea’s key rate poised to be lower than that of U.S. (The Korea Herald) When the 2008-09 subprime mortgage crisis hit the United States, a great volume of global equity funds flowed into the South Korean bond market amid the widened gap between interest rates of the two countries. But the current situation is reversing the trend as the rate gap has continued to narrow over the past few months, stemming mainly from the U.S. move to hike its benchmark rate and Korea’s expected monetary easing policy.
  

China

• MSCI delays including China ‘A’ shares’ in benchmark index (Reuters) U.S. index provider MSCI Inc said on Tuesday it will hold off including China-listed shares in one of its key benchmark indexes, but expects them to be incorporated once outstanding market accessibility issues are resolved, possibly in 2016.
• Negative list talks can smooth BIT road (China Daily) The negotiations between China and the United States on the proposed Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) are at a crucial juncture, as the two sides deliberate on the negative lists. The most difficult task for the two sides is to finalize and reach a consensus on the size of the negative list, Henry Paulson, the former US Treasury secretary, said during a news conference in Beijing on Monday. The negative list details those Chinese companies that are not allowed to accept foreign investment and, until recently, it was not revealed to the rest of the world. Paulson says the key now is to make the list as short as possible.

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.