Early Headlines: India Easing IPO Rules, Modern Circumlocution Office, New Plan from Greece, Taylor Swift Bests Apple and More

Early Bird Headlines 22 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

• Global Cost of War Was $14 Trillion Last Year (Reader Supported News) Hat tip to Rob Carter, If “global violence were to decrease by 10 percent uniformly, an additional US$1.43 trillion would effectively be added to the world economy.” See also next article.
• Global Economic Impact of Violence in 2014 (Twitter)

Global cost of war reaches $14 trillion, as a report of Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) pic.twitter.com/0rej5PF0Ze

— Musab Yousef (@musabyousef1) June 18, 2015

U.S.

• Williams Says He Expects Fed to Raise Rates Twice in 2015 (Bloomberg Business) The Federal Reserve should raise interest rates twice this year, said San Francisco Fed President John Williams, provided the economy develops as forecast. However, some Fed officials still project either one rate increase or none in 2015.
• Raleigh couple still awaiting money seized by Feds (The Charlotte Observer) Econintersect: The civil forfeiture process, which appears to us to be an unconstitutional violation of due process, can also be a 21st century reincarnation of Charles Dickens’ Circumlocution Department, where all that goes in never comes out. This story appears to be one of the examples of modern Dickensian agency.
  
• Hate violence and the tragedy of the Charleston shootings (The Conversation) The author is a clinical psychologist who has both treated and evaluated hate crime offenders. He says: “While the Charleston shooting strikes most of us as unusually horrifying, many of the themes of this tragedy are symptomatic of the nature of hate violence in our country.”
• Taylor Swift Is Triumphant (Bloomberg) Taylor Swift won a victory in her battle against Apple Inc. as the iPhone maker reversed an earlier decision to not pay royalties during a free trial period for its new music service. Apple will pay artists for streaming, even during a customer’s free-trial period.

UK

• Why onshore wind isn’t as cheap as it should be in the UK (The Conversation) The UK has announced that subsidies for onshore windfarms will end in 2016 because solar is becoming so cheap. (See Tories to end onshore windfarm subsidies in 2016 – The Guardian.) This author claims that onshore windpower is more expensive than it should be in Great Britain which has more favorable winds than do Denmark and Germany where it is much cheaper. The reason? The author says it is government regulation and mismanagement in the UK that has jacked up the price. He says that both wind and solar are needed because they are complementary: (1) the sun doesn’t shine at night but the wind blows then, (2) winds tend to be stronger in stormy weather and (3) the winter months are windier and the summer months are sunnier.

Greece

• Creditors offer Greece six-month bailout reprieve as Tsipras weighs response (The Guardian) Deal may also include up to €18bn in rescue funds, and later debt relief, but EU officials stress Greek prime minister must make concessions. See next article.
• Tsipras Offers New Plan for Greece for Crunch EU Talks (Bloomberg) Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras presented a new plan to stave off default before an emergency summit Monday that could decide his nation’s future in the euro. The new offer “was a good basis for progress at tomorrow’s Euro summit,” European Commission spokesman Martin Selmayr, said in a Twitter posting. He also referred in German to the inception of the plan as “birth by forceps.”

Syria

• Syria’s opposition is trapped in a life-threatening fuel crisis (The Conversation) Both the Assad government and the Islamic State have cut off fuel supplies to Syrian opposition rebels, threatening to reverse gains they have made so far this year,

India

• Sebi may finalize e-IPO rules, easier start-up listing norms (The Times of India) In a new wave of reforms, markets regulator SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India) is set to herald an e-IPO system to allow investors to bid online in the public offers, while the new-age startups will get a separate platform to raise funds and list their shares with an easier set of regulations. The new rules are designed to make it easier for Indian entrepreneurs to access the market. See also next article.
• India set to change listing rules for start-ups (Financial Times) The new regulations attempts to address regulatory restrictions that are pushing Indian start-ups to redomicile abroad, especially to Singapore, in turn increasing the odds that tech groups may eventually choose to list on exchanges abroad. About three-quarters of start-ups receiving early stage financing in India this year will redomicile to Singapore, partly because of regulations making it easier to accept funding from global venture groups, according to iSpirit, a Bangalore-based software trade body.

China

• China stock regulator says official fired for alleged irregularities (Reuters) China’s stock watchdog said on Saturday it has dismissed the head of its share issuance bureau because of suspected illegal stock trading by her spouse. The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), in a statement on its official microblog-style Weibo account, said the official, Li Zhiling, was suspected of criminal activity and had been handed over to police.

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