Early Headlines: Greece’s Biggest Crisis, Nagasaki Remembered, Chile 20% Renewable in 10 Years, Wal-Mart Raise Makes Workers Unhappy and More

Early Bird Headlines 09 August 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

• The reality of global warming: We’re all frogs in a pot of slowly boiling water (Reuters) This Op Ed says that changes are occurring at a slow enough rate that we don’t notice the change from one year to the next but cumulative effects over decades can pose risk for continued human life as has been experienced for millennia. The analogy is that of a frog placed in comfortably warm water and then the water heated slowly until the from is cooked – which may or may not really happen.
  

U.S.

• Watch Jon Stewart’s Sickest Wall Street Burns (Bloomberg) He will be missed.

• Unintended Consequence of Wal-Mart’s Raise: Unhappy Workers (Bloomberg Business) When Wal-Mart Stores Inc. chief Doug McMillon announced plans to boost store workers’ minimum wage earlier this year, he said the move was intended to improve morale and retain employees. Yet for some of the hundreds of thousands of workers getting no raise, the policy is having the opposite effect. If Wal-Mart doesn’t also give raises to long-time employees who are now paid nearly the same as the minimum wage employees who just received a raise. So far Wal-Mart appears to be staying with the wage compression and both morale and retention may suffer.
• For Harvard MBAs, Congrats on a Bank Job Really Means ‘I’m Sorry’ (Bloomberg Business) Harvard may be Jamie Dimon’s alma mater, but this year they only sent one top graduate to an investment bank this year. Where are best MBAs going in 2015? Into the technology sector and entrepreneurial ventures.

Greece

• Refugee crisis heightens on Greece’s eastern islands (Al Jazeera) The biggest crisis in Greece this summer has nothing to do with debt; The country is being flooded with refugees. On the island of Lesbos alone, up to 1,000 refugees are arriving each day – the majority from Syria and Afghanistan.
• Greece Races to Secure Bailout Deal Amid German Doubts (Bloomberg) Greece faces a weekend of intensive negotiations to tie up a bailout of €86 billion ($93 billion) in time to meet its debt obligations for this month, as German lawmakers cautioned against rushing to strike a deal. Greece and its creditors have set a Monday target to complete the so-called memorandum of understanding that sets out the budget-austerity and economic-overhaul conditions required for a third rescue.

China

• China July producer prices slump to near six-year low (Reuters) See report with graphs at GEI News.
  

Japan

• Japan remembers Nagasaki atomic bomb, 70 years on (BBC News) The Japanese city of Nagasaki is marking 70 years since the dropping of an atomic bomb by the United States. At least 70,000 people died in the attack, which came three days after another bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
• The man who saved Kyoto from the atomic bomb (BBC News) In early June 1945, Secretary of War Henry Stimson ordered Kyoto to be removed from the target list of Japanese cities. He argued that it was of greater cultural importance and than it was as a military target. The military kept disagreeing and Stimson eventually took his case to President Truman and his argument stuck. Later historians speculated that Stimson wanted to spare Kyoto because he had honeymooned there in 1924.

Chile

• SunPower to Spend $1.5 Billion to Expand in Chile Solar Market (Bloomberg Business) SunPower Corp. will spend about $1.5 billion on solar farms in Chile as new rules for power auctions spur investment in the largest solar market in Latin America. The San Jose, California-based company plans to have 1 gigawatt of Chilean solar farms in five years. As significant as this is for Sunpower’s business growth, it is only a small part of the renewable energy revolution in Chile. The country is bringing on line 1.1 gigawatts of clean energy this year, more than half from photovoltaic solar plants. Chile plans to generate 20% of its electricity from renewable energy within 10 years.

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