Written by Econintersect
Early Bird Headlines 18 December 2018
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, published Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 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
- Asian stocks decline following Wall Street slump (CNBC) Stocks in Asia were lower on Tuesday following an overnight sell-off on Wall Street sparked by concerns of a slowdown in the global economy. A key speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping did not help lift market sentiments in Asia. The dollar index was marginally lower at 97.08 after losing 0.4% on Monday. Brent crude oil futures were at $58.90 per barrel at 0340 GMT, down $0.71(1.2%) from their last close. Brent has fallen more than 4% in the past three sessions so far. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were down $0.60 cents, or 1.2%, at $49.27 per barrel. Spot gold was up 0.2% at $1,248.14 per ounce at 0436 GMT.
U.S.
- Alan Dershowitz: Did Michael Flynn lie? Or did the FBI act improperly? (The Hill) Ace defence attorney Allen Dershowitz is presenting what could be part of a closing argument before a jury:
The media is asking the wrong question about the Michael Flynn case. They are asking whether Flynn lied or the FBI acted improperly, as if the answers to those two questions are mutually exclusive. The possibility that both are true, in that Flynn did not tell the truth and that the FBI acted improperly, is not considered in our hyper partisan world where everyone, including the media, chooses a side and refuses to consider the chance that their side is not perfectly right and the other side not perfectly evil.
- Stone admits to publishing false statements on InfoWars (The Hill) Roger Stone, a former informal adviser to President Trump, on Monday settled a defamation suit that sought $100 million in damages over material he published on InfoWars.com, according to The Wall Street Journal, admitting that he made false statements on the far-right website. The settlement includes an agreement that mandates Stone run ads in newspapers apologizing for making defamatory statements about Chinese businessman Guo Wengui. The agreement also requires Stone to post a retraction of the false statements he made on social media. Acting on the requirements will reportedly exempt Stone from paying any damages.
- The stock market is on pace for its worst December since the Great Depression (CNBC) Both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 are on pace for their worst December performance since 1931, when stocks were battered during the Great Depression. The Dow and S&P 500 are down 7.8% and 7.6% this month, respectively.
- For Trump, the economy is a potential 2020 storm cloud (Associated Press) The greatest threat to President Donald Trump’s re-election bid may not be the slew of investigations closing in on his Oval Office but a possible economic slowdown. And the president knows it. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell again Monday, the latest dip in the roller coaster markets amid the strain of Trump’s trade war, rising interest rates and worries about a slowing global economy.
- Early Benchmarks Show ‘Post-Millennials’ on Track to Be Most Diverse, Best-Educated Generation Yet (Pew Research) Hat tip to Sig Silber. The latest generation may be the last white-majority generation in America. A new Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data finds that the “post-Millennial” generation (born 1997-2012) is already the most racially and ethnically diverse generation, as a bare majority of 6- to 21-year-olds (52%) are non-Hispanic whites. And while most are still pursuing their K-12 education, the oldest post-Millennials are enrolling in college at a significantly higher rate than Millennials were at a comparable age.
UK
- A No-deal Brexit is tantamount to Britain’s unilateral repudiation of the Good Friday Agreement (Edward Harrision, Credit Writedowns) EH has contributed to GEI. The end of a police-patrolled border was a main feature of the Good Friday Agreement which ended sectarian violence in Northern Ireland twenty years ago. An exit from the EU will create an untenable situation for the Island of Ireland by putting the Republic of Ireland in a different trading relationship to the rest of the EU than Northern Ireland. Ed says:
I would go so far as to say that a No-deal Brexit is tantamount to the UK’s unilateral repudiation of the Good Friday Agreement. So, forget about all the other issues and focus in on this for now. What this effectively means is that a No-deal Brexit forces Northern Ireland to ‘choose sides’. Do they want continued free movement across the island or do they want to remain a part of a United Kingdom that is no longer a part of the EU’s single market?
Turkey
- Trump did not tell ErdoÄŸan he would extradite Gülen: White House official (Hurriyet Daily News) President Donald Trump did not commit during a meeting with Turkish President RecepTayyip ErdoÄŸan (picture below) at the G20 summit two weeks ago to extradite Fethullah Gülen, a senior White House official said on Dec. 17.
NBC reported last month that the White House was looking for ways to extradite Gülenin order to placate Turkey over the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, in a development that followed the release of U.S. Pastor Andrew Brunson. But, Trump had denied the report stressing the U.S. administration was not considering the extradition of Gülen.
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Russia
- Russia targeted black voters in attempts to suppress Democrat turnout in presidential election, Senate report says (Independent) Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election included targeting African-Americans across all major social media platforms and attempting to suppress Democratic voter turnout, two reports have revealed. The US Senate commissioned both studies to better understand Russia’s interference operations during the presidential vote. The first report was compiled by private researchers and was expected to be released on Monday by the Senate Intelligence Committee. It says “active” Russian interference operations exist on social media platforms and the Russian operation discovered after the 2016 election was much broader than once thought. See also next article.
- Report: Russia still using social media to roil US politics (Associated Press) Russia’s sweeping political disinformation campaign on U.S. social media was more far-reaching than originally thought, with troll farms working to discourage black voters and “blur the lines between reality and fiction” to help elect Donald Trump in 2016, according to reports released Monday by the Senate intelligence committee. And the campaign didn’t end with Trump’s ascent to the White House. Troll farms are still working to stoke racial and political passions in America at a time of high political discord.
India
- India is ‘planting forests’ to forestall the impending water crisis. It is a fool’s errand (Scroll.In) India is again wasting valuable time, effort and resources on a national scale as it races to forestall an impending water crisis. The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change is conducting massive afforestation drives, planting native species. But a forest is a self-sown, self-regenerating community of plants and dependent organisms, from microbes to elephants. A forest, by definition, cannot be “planted”. Since afforestation is interpreted to mean the planting of forests, it is an oxymoron. What is created when one plants trees, native or exotic, is a plantation.
- India cancels plans for huge coal power stations as solar energy prices hit record low (Independent) Hat tip to Warren Mosler. India has cancelled plans to build nearly 14 gigawatts of coal-fired power stations – about the same as the total amount in the UK – with the price for solar electricity “free falling” to levels once considered impossible. See IEEFA Asia: India’s Electricity-Sector Transformation Is Happening Now (Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis).
Japan
- Japan warned the G-20 major economies against focusing narrowly on the trade balance in addressing global imbalances, with its top currency diplomat on Tuesday calling on them to settle trade disputes through a multilateral framework.
- Masatsugu Asakawa, Japan’s vice finance minister for international affairs, said slapping tariffs against each other would do little to fix the imbalance between nations with large current account surpluses and those with deficits.
- Japan to buy more U.S.-made stealth jets, radar to counter China, Russia (Reuters) Japan will accelerate spending on advanced stealth fighters, long-range missiles and other equipment over the next five years to support U.S. forces facing China’s military in the Western Pacific, two new government defense papers said.
China
- China green-lights tougher auto investment rules amid capacity crackdown (Reuters) China’s state planner has approved tougher new regulations on investment in the auto industry, a draft of which had spooked carmakers earlier this year, as it tightens the screws on firms adding manufacturing capacity. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) also said it would ban the establishment of new independent enterprises that make only traditional combustion engines, amid the country’s a wider push towards new energy vehicles (NEVs). China has been overproducing cars in the face of aneconomic slowdown and now they sit of vast “car parks” like the one below in Yantai, Shandong province.
- China’s Xi urges implementation of reform but offers no new measures (Reuters) Chinese President Xi Jinping called on Tuesday for the unswerving implementation of reforms on Beijing’s terms but offered no new specific measures in a closely watched speech marking 40 years of market liberalization.
- China will ‘never seek hegemony,’ Xi says in reform speech (Associated Press) Chinese President Xi Jinping has promised that the country will “never seek hegemony” even as it approaches the center of the world stage. Xi gave a speech Tuesday to mark the country’s 40 years of reform and opening up. The address credited former leader Deng Xiaoping’s market reforms with saving the country from the brink of economic collapse following the tumultuous Cultural Revolution. Xi also expressed support for a multilateral trading system, but he did not directly address ongoing trade friction with the United States.
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