Written by Econintersect
Early Bird Headlines 15 November 2016
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
Asia shares mostly lower, dollar strength eyed amid Fed hike expectations (CNBC) Asia markets were mixed Tuesday, as investors eyed the dollar for guidance amid growing expectations of a Federal Reserve rate hike in December.
China’s Real-Estate Frenzy Is Coming to a City Near You (Bloomberg) Motivated by a weakening yuan, surging domestic housing costs and the desire to secure offshore footholds, Chinese citizens are snapping up overseas homes at an accelerating pace. They’re also venturing further afield than ever before, spreading beyond the likes of Sydney and Vancouver to lower-priced markets including Houston, Thailand’s Pattaya Beach and Malaysia’s Johor Bahru.
U.S.
Giuliani is a leading candidate to be Trump’s secretary of state: source (Reuters) Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has emerged as a leading candidate to be U.S. secretary of state for President-elect Donald Trump, a source familiar with the situation said on Monday. The source said John Bolton, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush, was also under consideration to head the State Department.
Trump’s team seeks top-secret clearance for his children: CBS News (Reuters) Republican President-elect Donald Trump’s team has asked the White House to explore the possibility of getting his children top-secret security clearances, CBS News said on Monday, citing unnamed sources. Daughter Ivanka, sons Eric and Donald Jr. and son-in-law Jared Kushner were close advisers to Trump’s campaign and are part of his transition team announced on Friday. The CBS report did not specify for which Trump children top-secret clearance was being sought.
JPMorgan Cazenove: Don’t chase the post-Trump market rally (CNBC) Investors should sell into the post-election market rally and continue cutting their exposure to emerging markets in the wake of Donald Trump‘s election win, JPMorgan Cazenove said in a note Monday.
Why Trump Will Be President for $1 a Year (The Times)
UK
Cabinet split threatens to derail May’s Brexit talks (The Times) Whitehall is working on more than 500 Brexit-related projects and could need to hire 30,000 extra civil servants, according to a leaked memo prepared for the Cabinet Office. Splits within the cabinet also mean that the government may need another six months to decide on its priorities, according to the assessment by a consultant working for the department. The memo, dated November 7 and titled Brexit Update, says that “major players” in industry are expected to “point a gun at the government’s head” after ministers gave assurances that the carmaker Nissan would not suffer when Britain left the EU.
A Brexit strategy that could unite UK’s parliaments – and keep Britain in the single market (The Conversation) The author has argued elsewhere that the UK should seek to remain in the single market by joining the European Economic Area (EEA) and European Free Trade Association (EFTA), which incorporate Norway, Switzerland, Liechenstein and Iceland. This would be subject to agreement by EFTA and the EU. This article discusses various aspects of this strategy and others.
Prime Minister Theresa May warns weight needs to be given to globalisation worries (City A.M.) Prime Minister Theresa May warned tonight that political “change is in the air” throughout western democracies, telling an audience in the City: “globalisation in its current form has left too many people behind“. Speaking at the Lord Mayor’s banquet at the Guildhall, May accepted that liberalism and globalisation continue to have “an overwhelmingly positive impact on our world“, but said that many voters do not believe they are benefitting from the system.
Revealed: Tube drivers take 1,000 days in sick leave per week (City A.M.) Tube drivers took nearly 52,000 days off sick last year, the highest level in five years. Figures obtained by City A.M. show that Tube drivers took almost 1,000 days in sick leave per week or 14 days per Tube driver in 2015, a year plagued with Tube strike threats due to disputes over working conditions and the Night Tube. This compares with an average number of sick days for London workers of 3.5 days annually. UK-wide, the average is 4.5 sick days a year.
Russia
Putin hails new special relationship between Russia and US (The Times) President Putin hailed the idea of a new relationship with the United States based on “equality, mutual respect and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs” after he spoke to Donald Trump for the first time since the US election. During a phone call last night the leaders agreed to a face-to-face meeting – marking a thaw in relations. The Kremlin said that Mr Putin and the president-elect expressed shared concerns about the “extremely unsatisfactory state of Russo-American relations” and spoke about how to get the relationship back on track.
India
No $45 Billion Behind India’s Dry ATMs (Bloomberg) India’s radical move to outlaw 86% of its currency in circulation is one of those bold economic experiments that thankfully don’t occur too often. But because they’re rare, the chaos that follows such events becomes a breeding ground for urban legends. The demonetization of India’s existing stock of 500 and 1,000 rupee notes has spawned a number of such apocryphal tales, one of which is a $45 billion bonanza for the government that can be used to recapitalize the country’s broken banking system, which needs roughly $90 billion to become whole again. This article explains why that just is not true.
Japan
Japan Q3 GDP growth beats expectations, helped by stronger exports (Reuters, CNBC) Japan’s economic growth beat expectations in the July-September period, helped by stronger exports to expand for a third straight quarter, but weak domestic activity cast doubt on hopes for a sustainable economic recovery.The economy expanded by an annualized 2.2% in the third quarter, faster than the 0.9% increase markets had expected, following a 0.7% increase in April-June, Cabinet Office data showed on Monday. This marked the third straight quarter of expansion.
New Zealand
What happened in New Zealand’s magnitude 7.5 earthquake (The Conversation) Preliminary modelling suggests that the earthquake was caused by a rupture of a northeast-striking fault that projects to the surface offshore. But this may be a complex event, involving several faults on the South Island. The northern part of the South Island straddles the boundary between the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates. The jostling between these plates pushes up rocks that create mountains including the Southern Alps and the beautiful Seaward Kaikoura Range, one of New Zealand’s most rapidly uplifting mountain ranges. The plate motion forces the oceanic crust of the Pacific plate beneath the Australian plate on thrust faults and also causes the plates to slide laterally with respect to one another on strike-slip faults. See also next item.
Pictures of fault rupture zone near Waiau, North Canterbury (Twitter)
This is the fault rupture zone near Waiau, North Canterbury. #eqnz pic.twitter.com/bGX7o2vbKd
– Tonkin+Taylor (@TonkinTaylor) November 14, 2016
