Written by Econintersect
Early Bird Headlines 09 February 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
Investors dump stocks, seek safe havens as bank fears flare (Reuters) Asian share markets were scorched on Tuesday as stability concerns put a torch to European bank stocks and sent investors stampeding to only the safest of safe-haven assets. As fear overwhelmed greed, yields on longer-term Japanese bonds fell below zero for the first time, the yen surged to a 15-month peak and gold reached its most precious since June. Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso felt moved enough to warn the yen’s rise was “rough”, something of an understatement as the Nikkei .N225 nosedived 5.4%. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS fell 1.2% percent, with Australian shares hitting 2-1/2-year closing low, and would have been lower if not for holidays in many centres. Spread-betters see another weak session in European shares, where German DAX .GDAX is seen falling 0.7% and Britain’s FTSE .FTSE 0.5%.
World’s Largest Energy Trader Sees a Decade of Low Oil Prices (Bloomberg) Oil prices will stay low for as long as 10 years as Chinese economic growth slows and the U.S. shale industry acts as a cap on any rally, according to the world’s largest independent oil-trading house. The average for oil over the next ten years could average in a band around $50, possibly between $40 and $60 for most of that time.
U.S.
Explainer: what is the New Hampshire primary, and why does it matter? (The Conversation) This review of the New Hampshire presidential primary by an University of Oxford Political Science professor has urprisingly little “English accent”.
Here’s What Executives Say About the Possibility of a U.S. Recession (Bloomberg) Eight executives are interviewed. Most think things will be slow but most, but not all, are not expecting an imminent recession.
How Healthy Are Banks Today? (Bloomberg) Crossbridge Capital Head of Investments Manish Singh discusses the outlook for banks with “On the Move” host Guy Johnson.
EU
Four reasons for European businesses to hire migrants (The Conversation) This article discusses why companies that are trying to expand can particularly benefit by hiring migrants.
How Europe’s Banks Got Hit by a Perfect Storm in Five Charts (Bloomberg) One chart tells a lot. European banks are down just shy of 40% in the last 13 months.
UK
Freezing Brits cut back to pay energy bills (City A.M.) Cold weather is forcing Britons to reduce their expenditure in order to afford rising energy bills, with 84%t of households admitting to tightening their purse strings. Almost 23 million households across the UK have cut back to make their energy bills more affordable, new research from Santander Current Accounts has shown. Of these, around 63% said they layer up at home, while 33% drink hot drinks and 22% get into bed instead of sitting on the sofa.
Degrading living conditions for asylum seekers are fuelled by privatisation (The Conversation) What a surprise! A profit seeking organization does not do well providing charity.
In pictures: Storm Imogen’s 100mph winds and 20m waves (City A.M.) A massive winter event, storm Imogen, is battering the UK with heavy rain and winds of up to 100mph. Coastal areas around the south of the UK are bearing the brunt of the bad weather and the Met Office said gusts of 96mph hit The Needles Old Battery on the Isle of Wight. Waves more than 13 metres high were recorded off the coast of the Isle of Scilly and almost 20 metres off the coast of St Ives. Still below taken from satellite video of the storm shown with the article.
Turkey
‘Me or terrorists?’ Furious Erdogan tells US to choose between Turkey and Syrian Kurds (RT) Riled by a meeting between a US official and the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which controls the Syrian town of Kobane, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has told Washington to choose between Turkey and, as he put it, the “terrorists.” A delegation featuring Brett McGurk, the United States’ envoy to the coalition it leads against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), met the YPG over the last weekend in January. The YPG took full control of Kobane late last June, in what was a powerful symbol of Kurdish resistance. Econintersect: The tribal ignorance displayed in the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire after World War I is still troubling the world today.
Syria
More than 1 million are besieged in Syria, new report says (Associated Press) The new Siege Watch report, issued Tuesday by the Netherlands-based aid group PAX and the Washington-based Syria Institute says more than one million Syrians are trapped in besieged areas. This is double the estimates offered by the United Nations, which has been accused by some aid groups of underplaying a crisis.
India
Viewpoint: Will 2016 be a turning point for free speech in India? (BBC News) 2015 was one of the harshest years in memory for India’s journalists, and for free speech in general – local-language newspapers, reporters and stringers had faced everything from defamation suits to threats and detentions, and worse. Reporters Without Borders tracked the cases of nine journalists who had been murdered in 2015 – the most dangerous beats were environmental and political corruption. In Nagaland, newspapers blanked out their editorial spaces in November – an unprecedented gesture, as a protest against military directives that threatened to crush free reporting in the media.
North Korea
North Korea Undeterred as Kim Seeks Rocket Able to Target U.S. (Bloomberg) Kim Jong Un can’t be deterred. The North Korean leader, whose Feb. 7 long-range rocket launch drew condemnation from China, Russia and the U.S., showed again that global criticism and the threat of more sanctions won’t sway him from his ultimate goal: building a missile that can strike the U.S. United Nations Security Council representatives met soon after the launch and vowed to adopt new restrictions on North Korea.
