viernes, 12 de agosto de 2016

2016/08/11 Political Anticipation - A Press Review by LEAP

US presidential campaign: an indicator of the state of the country
With the approaching election, it has become impossible to hide the problems that were previously buried under the good national news or the foreign news – because election campaigns usually force nations to talk about themselves and recognize their own problems. Strangely, it is precisely at this time that monthly statistics on employment start to dive , with a worst month of May since 2010 for job creation (while March and April were revised sharply down), causing some panic just before a Fed meeting which planned to raise its key interest rate , but finding now a good excuse to wait a little longer. The financial world is also beginning to worry openly... Over 10,000 billion dollars of sovereign bonds currently have negative rates ... (GEAB No 106 / June 2016)

Trump Sees Wide-Ranging ‘Clinton Machine’ Conspiracy to Steal Election
Donald Trump smells a far-reaching conspiracy. With fewer than 100 days until Election Day, the Republican presidential nominee’s campaign has posited a simple and nefarious explanation for recent damaging stories about intra-party turmoil over Trump’s feud with Gold Star parents, his deteriorating standing in national and swing-state polls, a positive U.S. jobs report in July, and his wife’s plagiarism: The “Clinton machine” is orchestrating them all... (Bloomberg)

Fascism returns to Europe as the west looks away
The German word Vergangenheitsbewältigung is a mouthful, but the reluctance of some nations to address and condemn their fascist past has the ability to leave one tongue-tired. Vergangenheitsbewältigung is generally translated to English as ‘overcoming the past’. Whilst the word originates in the former West Germany, both post-war German states educated their population so that they could learn from the past rather than ignore it, wish it away or worse yet, embrace it... (The Duran)

Ankara and Kremlin in charm offensive
Relations between Turkey and Russia are thawing after a state visit on Tuesday (9 August) by Turkey’s president to St. Petersburg. “Turkey-Russia ties have entered into a very different and positive phase,” said Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin... (EUObserver)

Turkey may seek non-NATO options for defense industry cooperation: foreign minister
Turkey may seek other options outside NATO for defense industry cooperation, although its first option is always cooperation with its NATO allies, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday. In an interview with private broadcaster NTV, Cavusoglu also said that a political transition in Syria with President Bashar al-Assad was not possible... (Reuters)

UK will want to do business with China, regardless of Hinkley Point outcome
Though the Chinese ambassador has called the UK’s decision on Hinkley Point C nuclear plant a “crucial historical juncture” for bilateral ties, it barely registers in the long sweep of the relationship. As any schoolchild in China could tell you – but probably rather fewer adults here – the nadir came a couple of centuries ago, when Britain sent in gunboats to protect its drug sales. Those events colour Chinese perceptions of the UK to this day... (The Guardian)

West backs terrorists and plotters, says ErdoganTurkey has accused the West of supporting terrorism and backing the failed coup to overthrow the government. In a fiery speech delivered at his 1,150 room palace in Ankara on Tuesday (2 August), president Recep Tayyip Erdogan demanded the United States hand over his bitter foe Fethullah Gulen. Gulen, a 75-year old cleric who has lived in Pennsylvania since 1991, has been accused of masterminding the 15 July coup... (EUObserver)

Norway may block UK return to European Free Trade Association
Norway could block any UK attempt to rejoin the European Free Trade Association, the small club of nations that has access to the European single market without being part of the EU. Senior Norwegian government members are to hold talks with David Davis, the Brexit minister, in the next few weeks. Some Brexit supporters have suggested that Efta would be one way of retaining access to the single market while honouring the referendum mandate to leave the EU... (The Guardian)

Negotiations underway to form a government in Spain
There are signs of movement on the political gridlock in Spain. At a meeting in the Spanish congress, Albert Rivera of the liberal Ciudadanos party said that he would support a government led by Conservative Mariano Rajoy if a package of reforms is agreed upon... (Euronews)

Saudi construction bust traps thousands in desert nightmare
Riyadh: First they had no pay, and then no work. For a time, there wasn’t even food in the squalid, concrete camps where they had been abandoned to live in the searing heat of the Saudi Arabian desert. Medical supplies dried up two months ago. Owed weeks and weeks of back pay from construction companies squeezed by the kingdom’s economic slowdown, thousands of foreign labourers from South Asia... (Livemint)

EU imposes anti-dumping duties on China and Russia
The EU on Thursday (4 August) imposed anti-dumping measures against some China and Russia steel following industry complaints from the European Steel Association. “They will be in place for five years and for the first time will also be levied retroactively,” EU commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva told reporters in Brussels... (EUObserver)

Brazil Is Still the Country of the Future
Brazil, it is often and not quite fairly said, is the country of the future and always will be. As the Olympics focuses global attention on the country, it's worth exploring the various ways in which this maxim is -- and may not be -- true. The puzzle with Brazil is neither its successes nor its failures, but rather the combination of the two... (Bloomberg)

The Nauru files: cache of 2,000 leaked reports reveal scale of abuse of children in Australian offshore detention
The devastating trauma and abuse inflicted on children held by Australia in offshore detention has been laid bare in the largest cache of leaked documents released from inside its immigration regime. More than 2,000 leaked incident reports from Australia’s detention camp for asylum seekers on the remote Pacific island of Nauru – totalling more than 8,000 pages – are published by the Guardian today. .. (The Guardian)

Insurance sector: Questioning of the economic model
Everyone remembers the images picturing floods, hail storms, mudslides, tornadoes and other disasters that have swept Europe, Germany, France, and Belgium recently, but also those of other continents (America, Australia, and Canada, where huge fires are still raging in Alberta). The estimated damage is reported to be in billions of Euros: 1.4 billion estimated in France and several billion in Germany and Canada; Great Britain and Scandinavia have also been affected by similar phenomena lately (almost 2 billion Euros, if we tabulate all of them)… (GEAB No 106)

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