lunes, 31 de agosto de 2015

2015/08/27 LEAP/E2020 Press Review on the Global Systemic Crisis

China – The potential financial meltdown (an extract from GEAB No 95 – May 2015)
Many of the funds advanced and loans issued by Chinese commercial banks and other lenders to the LGFVs are deemed to fail. (LGFV = local government financing vehicles). If people start doubting the LGFVs’ credibility, we would see a cascading financial crisis in China, comparable to the 2008 financial crisis in the US, as investors started withdrawing their money from these organizations and the value of their bonds, loans and stocks would crumble. Loans issued by banks are an important part of their assets and their solvability is, in part, determined by the quality of their loan book; if the LGFVs’ credibility collapses, China’s State-owned commercial banks would be severely hit and the result could be a bank crisis. However, China is a State-led command economy and all State-owned financial institutions, including the People’s Bank of China, are responsible to the CPC which decides on investments and defaults with the Chinese financial authorities taking care of bad loans to solve the debt problem. There is no political reason why China’s current debt problem should unravel as chaotically as we saw in the US and Europe, it will be resolved according to the CPC’s wishes. China is in the position that it can solve its debt crisis without harming ...

China's Central Bank Intensifies Assault on Financing Costs With Cash Injections
China’s central bank brought out an array of tools to target stubbornly high financing costs this week, reducing interest rates, offering cheap loans and adding cash to the financial system through open-market operations...

Exchanges, Barclays win dismissal of U.S. high-frequency trading case
Major U.S. stock exchanges and Barclays Plc on Wednesday won the dismissal of nationwide litigation in which pension funds and other investors accused them of rigging markets to benefit high-frequency traders...

How exposed are American households to the stock market?
Should the Federal Reserve worry about tanking stock markets? One reason for calm is that they do not much affect household finances. Just over half of Americans say they are invested in the stock market, but their direct stock holdings are small, making up only 14% of household balance sheets (see chart). That means the effect of this week's stock market falls on household spending, and on the American economy, is probably limited...

Oil Industry Needs Half a Trillion Dollars to Endure Price Slump
At a time when the oil price is languishing at its lowest level in six years, producers need to find half a trillion dollars to repay debt. Some might not make it. The number of oil and gas company bonds with yields of 10 percent or more, a sign of distress, tripled in the past year, leaving 168 firms in North America, Europe and Asia holding this debt, data compiled by Bloomberg show...

Greece’s Alexis Tsipras Struggles to Keep Syriza Party Together
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras faces the growing challenge of warding off the disintegration of his Syriza party even before a September election is called officially. Many lawmakers and party members haven’t decided whether they will run...

Ukraine and rebels to implement Minsk deal by September 1
Kyiv and pro-Russian separatists in its east have agreed to end all violations to the peace deal that was signed in Minsk earlier this year. Both sides blame each other for the ongoing violence...

Serbia and Kosovo sign ‘landmark’ deal
Serbia and Kosovo reached agreement Tuesday (25 August) on key issues for better relations between the two countries, and between Albanian and Serbian people in Kosovo. The deal, brokered in Brussels by EU chief diplomat Federica Mogherini, establishes strong local powers for Kosovo areas with a Serbian majority...

Engagement with China in US' national interest: White House
Facing criticism from the Republican party on inviting Chinese President Xi Jinping for a state visit next month, amid allegations of cyber-attacks and human rights issues, the White House has said that engagement with China is in the national interest of the US...

US increases airforce presence in Europe
The US Air Force will “very soon” deploy F-22 fighters jets to Europe, Air Force secretary Deborah James announced Monday (24 August) as part of a plan to increase Nato presence near Russia, while A-10 tankbusters arrived in Estonia on Saturday...

Putin and Sisi pledge to boost Russia-Egypt ties
Presidents discuss creation of free trade zone involving Eurasian Economic Union and also nuclear power plant in Egypt. Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah el-Sisi have pledged to further boost relations between the two countries at talks in Moscow...

Czech Republic advocates use of army to protect borders
The EU could better protect itself from migrants if it had a common army, Czech president Milos Zeman said Tuesday (25 August), while the Czech finance minister, Andrej Babis, called for the closure of the Schengen area’s external borders and for NATO help...

North, South Korea reach agreement to ease tensions
North and South Korea agreed early on Tuesday to end a military standoff that sparked an exchange of artillery fire and had ratcheted up tension on one of the world’s most heavily-fortified borders. Under an accord reached in the early hours, following more than two days of talks, North Korea expressed regret over the recent wounding of South Korean soldiers in landmine blasts and Seoul agreed to halt anti-Pyongyang propaganda broadcasts...

Erdogan calls on Turks to choose 'stability' in upcoming elections
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday urged Turkey to vote for "stability" in 1 November polls, as three pro-Kurdish MPs were invited into a caretaker government in an unprecedented move...

Venezuela and Colombia hold talks over border dispute
Meeting prompted by Maduro’s move to close two border crossings and deport Colombians citing an attack by smugglers. The foreign ministers of Colombia and Venezuela have promised to increase cooperation following the closure of two major border crossings and a crackdown on migrants and smugglers by Venezuela...

Israeli air strike targets Hamas in response to rocket attack
Israel launched an air strike against a Hamas facility on Thursday in response to a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army said. No one was hurt in the night-time rocket attack on southern Israel, the army said in a statement...
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This special Press Review reviews articles from the French and Engligh-speaking international online media relating to the unfolding global crisis.
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lunes, 24 de agosto de 2015

2015/08/20 LEAP/E2020 Press Review on the Global Systemic Crisis

Towards a Western crash… or not
To return to the stock market crash hypothesis, one must ask oneself if capital flight to Asia will cause a crash in some Western financial centres or not. In fact, in the context of its currency’s internationalization, China has done important work connecting the world to its own economy, with swap agreements, business takeovers, operational clearinghouses for Yuan, etc… Our team anticipates that banks and financial centres directly or indirectly connected to these financial flows will de facto profit from the flood of capital that will begin to flow in the global financial network. Thus we clearly see that the City, Luxembourg, Paris and Frankfurt in Europe, are on the right lines. In the Western camp we also count Sydney, Toronto, and even Tokyo. Which means that Wall Street is the major absentee from the Renminbi network. Consequently, we can well understand that Wall Street capital will fly to Asia ... (extract from the GEAB No 94)

Meet the Man Who Won on Greek Stocks When All Others Failed
MetLife MFC’s Vasileios Antoniadis made money in Greek stocks even as the country’s drawn-out bailout talks with creditors roiled markets. None of his peers did...

Merkel calls for EU-wide approach to asylum policy
Angela Merkel has used an interview to call for greater efforts to cope with a wave of migrants into Germany and other EU countries. She also expressed confidence about IMF participation in Greece's third bailout...

Greek PM calls on European Parliament to join quartet of creditors
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras called for the European Parliament to join the so-called quartet of creditor institutions overseeing the country's 86-billion-euro EU/IMF bailout programme...

Russia hits EU allies with symbolic food ban
The extension covers Albania, Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Montenegro. The ban on Ukrainian agricultural exports is to come into effect on 1 January 2016 if Ukraine implements the trade provisions of its EU association treaty...

The economic myth of robotics and the robot job-ocalypse
Blaming cyborgs instead of bankers and politicians is easy, says Tim Harford. The number of jobs lost to more efficient machines is only part of the problem . . . In the past, new industries hired far more people than those they put out of business. But this is not true of many of today’s new industries.”
Financial Times

Japan’s Economy Contracts as Consumption, Investment Decline
Japan’s economy contracted last quarter as consumers and businesses cut spending and exports tumbled, putting pressure on the prime minister to return his focus to Abenomics...
Bloomberg

Stock futures fall as oil weighs, Fed notes global growth fears
U.S. stock index futures fell sharply on Thursday, a day after minutes from the latest Federal Reserve meeting highlighted concerns over the state of the global economy and as oil prices hit their lowest since 2009...
Reuters Market

Record 107,500 migrants arrived in EU in July
The number of migrants registered at the EU’s borders more than tripled in July to 107,500 compared to the same month last year, figures released by Frontex on Tuesday (18 August) show. It passed the record 100,000 in a single month for the first time since the EU’s border control agency began keeping records in 2008...
EUObserver

L'UE choquée face au souhait de la Slovaquie de n'accueillir que des migrants chrétiens
Le Premier ministre slovaque a annoncé que son pays n’accepterait que des migrants chrétiens. Face à cette déclaration, la Commission européenne a réitéré le principe de non-discrimination qui est au cœur de la loi européenne...
Euractiv

US Sees Space as Next Potential Battlefield With China
United States should revisit its historic reluctance to militarize space, and integrate a space-based layer of defense into traditional defense architecture, a US defense contractor said...
Sputnik News

The Age Of $40 Oil Is Here
On Wednesday, the price of West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark for U.S. crude oil, fell 4.3% to $40.80 a barrel, hitting levels not seen since the depths of the financial crisis more than six years ago. Brent crude, the global benchmark, fell to $47 a barrel...
Forbes

China-Russia joint military drill no reason for concern
As China and Russia started the second phase of an annual joint naval drill Thursday off the coast of Vladivostok, quite a few worrywarts have found themselves attracted to the sensational claim that the two countries are stepping up efforts to forge a military alliance...
China Daily

Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone may be over, say health workers
The long-running Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone is all but over after nearly 13,500 cases and almost 4,000 deaths, those fighting the disease believe. The last case in Sierra Leone was an eight-month-old child, who was hospitalised nearly two weeks ago and died four days later...
The Guardian
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This special Press Review reviews articles from the French and Engligh-speaking international online media relating to the unfolding global crisis.
It is delivered freely on a weekly basis to 60,000 recipients worldwide.

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jueves, 13 de agosto de 2015

2015/08/13 LEAP/E2020 Press Review on the Global Systemic Crisis

The IMF : a thorn in the European Foot
Certainly, this Grexit had been sought, deliberately or not, by some players in the poker game currently being played, and particularly the Washington player. Everyone knows the IMF’s historical position as regards managing sovereign debt. The Greek case is no exception : of the three members of the troika, the IMF is by far the most ideologically exacting in its requests as regards Greece. If the Greek tragedy has lasted so long, it’s not the size of the problem which is in question. To be sure it was necessary to inject around 240 billion€ into the Greek economy – or rather into the Greek banks and financial system, so that they didn’t collapse (which would have risked dragging down the whole European system). An amount which only represents a quarter of the ECB’s QE, for example, or a small part of the European recovery and bank support plans...

Greece and lenders agree new bailout deal, finance minister says
The Greek government announced it has struck an ambitious bailout deal with creditors aimed at securing around €86bn (£61bn) over three years in return for radical economic reforms to be pushed through parliament as early as this week...

Germany sceptical over Greek bailout deal, Varoufakis too
Greek lawmakers will hold an emergency parliament session today for a crucial vote on ratifying a hurriedly-concluded bailout deal, but Germany has cast doubt on the agreement...

Huge blasts at Chinese port kill 44, firefighters missing
Two huge explosions tore through an industrial area where toxic chemicals and gas were stored in the northeast Chinese port city of Tianjin, killing at least 44 people, including at least a dozen fire fighters, officials and state media said on Thursday...

Hillary Clinton relents in e-mail inquiry amid campaign
Hillary Rodham Clinton has agreed to relinquish the personal email server she used while serving as the top U.S. diplomat, as part of an investigation into an issue that threatens to remain a significant distraction for her presidential campaign...

UN chief sacks mission head in Central African Republic
The string of allegations against UN peacekeepers in the country has included rape, assault and murder. UN Secretary General Ban K-moon declares "enough is enough" and says he is angered and ashamed by reports...

US stocks, yields stumble after China lets yuan fall again
Stocks, the US dollar, and emerging market currencies around the world remained under pressure for a second day on Wednesday after China's yuan weakened again, a day after the country devalued its currency...

China central bank tries to soothe global markets, says no basis for yuan to fall further
China's central bank said on Thursday that there was no basis for further depreciation in the yuan given strong economic fundamentals, in a bid to reassure jittery global markets after it devalued the currency earlier in the week...

Phasing out fossil fuel would show true EU leadership
For about 20 years, the EU has been a constructive leader in climate negotiations: benefitting from a growing economy, and support from public opinion. However, in the last few years, the EU’s leadership has been declining due to a series of internal and external factors...

Sundar Pichai, le nouveau patron discret et surdoué de Google
Cet ingénieur de 43 ans d’origine indienne, salarié de Google depuis 2004, a pris les plus hautes responsabilités du géant du web en pleine restructuration. Google n’est désormais plus qu’une filiale parmi d’autres sociétés, regroupées au sein de la nouvelle holding «Alphabet» présentée lundi par Larry Page, cofondateur avec Sergey Brin de Google en 1998...

US Deregulation of Oil Exports Could Hurt North American Refineries
Experts claim that removing the ban on US crude oil exports is likely to benefit producers, but could squeeze the profit margins of North American refineries that will have to pay higher prices for the crude oil they consume and process...
Sputnik International

Indian rapper ‘overwhelmed’ by success of protest song against Unilever
A rapper whose protest song about corporate pollution in an idyllic hill town in southern India has dragged the issue into the spotlight says she is totally overwhelmed by its phenomenal success, which has prompted a personal response from the CEO of Unilever...
The Guardian

« L’UE oblige les migrants à des traversées dangereuses pour obtenir un droit qu’elle leur reconnaît »
L’ONG Médecins sans frontières (MSF) est présente dans les eaux de la Méditerranée depuis le mois de mai pour mener des opérations de sauvetage. L’un de ses navires, le Dignity-I, était présent lors du naufrage qui a fait plus de 200 disparus (près de 400 personnes ont été secourues) mercredi 5 août au large de la Libye...
Le Monde

Europeans Gravitate Toward More Developed EU Countries
The following countries are expected to show a negative population change by 2030: Lithuania (down 24 percent), Latvia (down 18 percent) and Bulgaria (down 10 percent). The Sputnik news agency is releasing data on population dynamics in European countries as part of its Sputnik.Facts project. According to Eurostat, population decline has been plaguing most Eastern European nations as well as the relatively poor "old European" countries such as Portugal and Greece...
Sputnik News
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This special Press Review reviews articles from the French and Engligh-speaking international online media relating to the unfolding global crisis.
It is delivered freely on a weekly basis to 60,000 recipients worldwide.

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2015/08/06 LEAP/E2020 Press Review on the Global Systemic Crisis

The Greek crisis, which the GEAB has been writing about since 2010, laid bare!
Whilst Euroland is just emerging from the most traumatic episode of the indeterminable “Greek crisis”, the LEAP team has thought it helpful to publish a compilation of all its anticipations on this subject since 2010 as an exercise of transparency, evaluation and teaching. This backward look on our anticipated reading on the different stages of the Greek crisis is teaching in more than one way: essentially, the validation, by the facts, of our anticipations on the subject prove the value of our angle from which we read events, yet completely the opposite to the media’s reading; the errors, inevitable, are all in the fact that, despite our poor opinion of our leaders’ capacity to manage this crisis, we are consistently on top of the reality…

Greece's Tsipras says loan deal with lenders close
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said on Wednesday that Greece was close to concluding a deal with lenders on a multi-billion-euro bailout, which he said would end doubts over its place in the euro zone...

Here's what citizens of 11 advanced nations really think of their economies
The economies of advanced nations aren't doing so well. That's what respondents from around the world said when asked by the Pew Research Center if they thought the condition of their national economies was good or bad. A median of 56% of the respondents from advanced nations described their economy as bad, versus 40% who described it as a good. Some advanced countries have become more satisfied with their current economy but..

Small investors flee the market
The number of small investors holding stocks in their accounts slid to 51 million at the end of July from 75 million at the end of June, according to China Securities Depository & Clearing Corp, the government agency that tracks accounts. Shanghai Composite Index plunged 14 percent, a record single month drop in six years...

China’s schools are testing factories. Why is Britain so keen to copy them?
The BBC will carry forward the great myth that Chinese education is “better” than Britain’s. A documentary comparing Chinese and British teachers in a Hampshire school will show Chinese teachers appalled at how disruptive, challenging and idle British pupils could be. That, by implication, is why Chinese children do better, far better, in international tests.

Russia re-submits Arctic claims to UN
Russia Tuesday (4 August) announced it had submitted a revised application to the UN seeking the expansion of its Arctic shelf border, rich in oil and other natural resources. The move is likely to add to the simmering tensions on who has jurisdiction over parts of the Arctic with the US, Canada, Denmark and Norway all in the race.

Kosovo approves war crimes court following EU, US pressure
The EU has welcomed a decision by Kosovo on Monday (3 August) to set up a special war crimes court to prosecute former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). “While recognising that this step by MPs of the Kosovo Assembly was not easy, it is a sign of responsibility and determination to establish the truth and make decisions compatible with Kosovo’s European path,” EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said in a statement...
EUObserver

La France et la Russie trouvent un accord sur les Mistral
Le président François Hollande et son homologue russe Vladimir Poutine ont trouvé un terrain d'entente sur la non-livraison des navires Mistral, dont la France aura «la pleine propriété et la libre disposition»...

US urges halt of land reclamation in South China Sea
Washington will not tolerate navigation restrictions in the South China Sea, US Secretary of State John Kerry said at a summit in Malaysia. China and several Asian countries have disputing claims in the strategic region...
Deutsche Welle

Puerto Rico misses debt payment with string of defaults to come
Puerto Rico is in technical default on a $58-million debt bill due Monday, reflecting an economy in trouble amid an extended drought in the U.S. territory. The island paid just $628,000 toward a $58-million payment due to creditors of its Public Finance Corp., whose debt is mostly owned by ordinary Puerto Ricans through credit unions...
CBC

China knocks on the reserve-currency door
Rarely in their 46-year history have Special Drawing Rights commanded quite so many headlines. SDRs play a mostly arcane role in the global financial system. Technically they constitute an international reserve asset that helps maintain balance between countries with big external liabilities and those flush with cash. In practice, they are more marginal, as countries largely rely on capital markets and hard currencies to cover their obligations...
The Economist

Russia accuses Britain of forcing out its diplomats
Russia has accused the British government of forcing out its diplomats in violation of international law, saying it believes some of the country's politicians have taken a strategic decision to worsen relations with Moscow. In a series of statements and interviews this week, the Russian embassy in London and its ambassador, Alexander Yakovenko, have accused the British government of trying to "degrade" their work by "squeezing out" four Russian diplomats...
Reuters

'Rain of ruin': the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima
August 2015 marks the 70th anniversary of the first nuclear weapons to be used in warfare. On 6 August 1945, the US dropped ‘Little Boy’ on Hiroshima, Japan, flattening the city and killing tens of thousands of civilians. Three days later, ‘Fat Man’ was dropped on the city of Nagasaki...
The Guardian

New Jersey legislator seeks federal loans to bail out state pensions
A top New Jersey Democrat wants the federal government to create a low-interest loan program to rescue states with big public pension problems. State Senate President Steve Sweeney called on Wednesday for a nationwide pension debt restructuring plan under which the U.S. Federal Reserve would offer low-interest loans to state governments to pay down unfunded pension liabilities...
Business Insider
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This special Press Review reviews articles from the French and Engligh-speaking international online media relating to the unfolding global crisis.
It is delivered freely on a weekly basis to 60,000 recipients worldwide.

Subscription / Contact: centre@europe2020.org