Written by Econintersect
Early Bird Headlines 07 May 2017
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.
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Global
Technician makes shocking call: Expect crude to hit $90 (CNBC) Crude is on track to double its price per barrel, according to one technician whose bold call had CNBC‘s “Futures Now” traders scratching their heads this week. Crude saw its worst day in 2 months last week, plunging more than 4 percent alone on Thursday. The commodity also dipped below $46 a barrel for the first time since November 30 of last year, and is down more than 15%. Bill Strazzullo, chief market strategist at Bell Curve Trading – who correctly called for crude’s plunge to the $30 range back in 2013 – said oil could be on the verge of a massive rally that would send the commodity to levels not seen in three years, “$80- to $90 per barrel“.
U.S.
Buffett calls Obamacare replacement ‘a huge tax cut for guys like me’ (Reuters) Berkshire Hathaway Inc Chairman Warren Buffett on Saturday fumed that healthcare costs are eating away at the U.S. economy like “tapeworm” and said the Republican approach to overhaul Obamacare is a tax cut for the rich. The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday narrowly approved a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, a victory for Republican President Donald Trump who has called the 2010 law a “disaster“. Speaking at Berkshire’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Omaha, Buffett said his federal income taxes last year would have gone down 17% had the new law been in effect.
GOP rep: ‘Nobody dies’ from not having health care (CBS News) Idaho Republican Rep. Raul Labrador sparked outrage from his audience and online after saying “nobody dies” for lack of health care access in a town hall Friday night at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho.
Labrador made the comments the day after the U.S. House passed a GOP-led health care bill repealing and replacing chunks of Obamacare. Labrador, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, was responding to an audience member who expressed concern about how the bill would affect Medicaid recipients.
House Republican ‘bewildered’ by ObamaCare vote (Fox News) Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs said Saturday he’s ‘bewildered’ by fellow House Republicans not keeping their promises on health care, following their vote Thursday to replace ObamaCare. He told Fox News’:
“They just passed a bill and they’re claiming it’s a repeal, but it’s not a repeal. And they’re going to send it to the Senate knowing it’s going to be changed.”
How one U.S. state is leading the charge to dismantle Obamacare (Reuters) For nearly three years, Democrats and former President Barack Obama pointed to Kentucky as one of the Affordable Care Act’s biggest success stories. A poor, rural state that straddles the North and South, Kentucky was an early adopter of the healthcare law commonly known as Obamacare and saw one of the country’s largest drops in the uninsured rate. Now Kentucky is poised for a new distinction: to be the first state to save money by reducing the number of people on Medicaid, the government health insurance program for the poor and disabled and a central tenet of Obamacare.
If successful, Kentucky would provide a roadmap for other states who are worried about paying an increasing share for people on Medicaid.
A new Republican health law that passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday, along with state initiatives like Kentucky’s, would dramatically change the national healthcare system and cut more than $800 billion from Medicaid over the next 10 years.
Trump questions whether key funding source for historically black colleges is constitutional (The Washington Post) on Friday after the White House released a signing statement connected to the recently approved federal funding measure. Tucked away in the last paragraph, the White House announced that it would treat a program that helps HBCUs (historically black colleges and universities) get low-cost construction loans “in a manner consistent with the (Constitutional) requirement to afford equal protection of the laws“.
People in higher education circles worried that the statement meant that the president was planning to get rid of a capital financing program that helps historically black colleges repair, renovate and build new facilities. Congress approved the program in 1992 after finding that “HBCUs often face significant challenges in accessing traditional funding resources at reasonable rates,” according to the Education Department.
UK
UK PM Theresa May maintains strong election lead in weekend opinion polls (Reuters) British Prime Minister Theresa May maintained her strong lead in opinion polls ahead of next month’s national election, with one analyst saying she was on course for the kind of huge success Margaret Thatcher enjoyed over 30 years ago. May is asking voters to strengthen her hand as she seeks a mandate for her plan to implement the result of last year’s Brexit referendum by quitting the European Union’s single market.
Her Conservative Party made big gains in local elections last Thursday at the expense of the main opposition Labour party and polls published at the weekend, conducted beforehand, showed her with a commanding lead of up to 19 percentage points.
France
U.S. far-right activists, WikiLeaks and bots help amplify Macron leaks: researchers (Reuters) U.S. far-right activists helped amplify a leak of hacked emails belonging to leading French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron’s campaign, some researchers said on Saturday, with automated bots and the Twitter account of WikiLeaks also propelling a leak that came two days before France’s presidential vote.
The rapid spread on Twitter (TWTR.N), Facebook (FB.O) and the messaging forum 4chan of emails and other campaign documents that Macron’s campaign said on Friday had been stolen recalled the effort by right-wing activists and Russian state media to promote hacked documents embarrassing to Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton last year.
China
China forex chief says no intention of competitive currency devaluation (Reuters) China has no intention and no need to carry out competitive currency devaluations, the head of the foreign exchange regulator said. In a weekend piece in Chinese magazine Modern Bankers, Pan Gongsheng said the central bank’s supplying of liquidity to the market was to prevent excessive fluctuations of the exchange rate and prevent a “herd effect“, to maintain market stability.
More Civil Servant Vacancies Staying Open in China (Soxth Tone) In the past few decades, becoming a civil servant in China has become highly competitive, with thousands of people sometimes competing for the same job. But increasingly, some job openings are not receiving any applicants at all.
The number of vacancies in danger of going unfilled has risen in each of the past three years, with authorities now calling for previously unsuccessful candidates to go through a second application round to fill the leftover posts. Government departments currently have about 4,100 openings without applicants, according to the State Administration of Civil Service, in charge of recruiting and supervising civil servants.
Most of these so-called red-collar jobs are highly sought-after, as they promise job security and benefits, and are seen as a ladder for ascending in the professional hierarchy. As such, China’s civil service examinations, also known as guokao, are highly competitive. Last year, nearly 1.48 million applicants contended for some 20,700 posts
Canada
U.S. Commerce chief says Canadian trade threats ‘inappropriate’ (Reuters) U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Saturday that threats of retaliatory trade actions from Canadian officials “are inappropriate” and will not influence final U.S. import duty determinations on Canadian softwood lumber. On Friday, Canadian Prime Minster Justin Trudeau said his government would study whether to stop U.S. firms from shipping thermal coal from ports in the Pacific province of British Columbia in response to the lumber duties. Ross said in a statement issued by the Commerce Department:
“We continue to believe that a negotiated settlement is in the best interests of all parties and we are prepared to work toward that end.”
