October, 2017

• 3 October

  UK plans 15-yr jail for viewing terror online

  Bloomberg Extremists who repeatedly watch terrorist content online could be jailed for as long as 15 years, UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd said on Tuesday, announcing an update of counter-terrorism laws. The move will expand the existing offense of possessing information likely to be useful to a terrorist so it does not only apply to downloaded or stored information. UK ...

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• 3 October

  Palestinian authority pressing for full Gaza rule, says premier

  

  Bloomberg The Palestinian Authority cabinet met in the Gaza Strip for the first time in three years as its members began to take charge of ministries from Hamas, and said they would start talks next week on the contentious issue of security forces. The government is “ready to take complete responsibility and extend its full control over Gaza, without exceptions,” ...

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• 3 October

  Spain can blame itself for Catalonia’s defiance

  

  Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy stuck stubbornly to his script on Sunday night while the rest of the world watched an entirely different movie unfold in Catalonia. “There was no referendum. What we have seen was a mere dramatization,” Rajoy insisted. He sounded a little like a Kremlin spokesperson brushing aside a separatist uprising in, say, Chechnya. Nothing to see ...

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• 3 October

  Democrats turn to an unlikely ally

  

  The relationship between the Democratic Party and big business this year has all the makings of a good romantic comedy. Based on their histories and values, these two couldn’t be more different. And yet, the fates seem to be drawing them together. All that’s missing is one party walking in, drenched from the rain, exclaiming, “You had me at ‘$15 ...

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• 3 October

  There’s a better way to make economic forecasts

  Economists are famously bad at predicting growth. A new technique might help them get a little better. When assessing a country’s potential to prosper, economists typically look at aggregate measures such as education, investment or national debt. This hasn’t worked particularly well: China’s economy, for example, has kept growing at a fast pace even though they’ve been predicting a slowdown ...

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• 3 October

  Trump administration’s betrayal of Obamacare

  Annoyed by Congress’s failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the Trump administration is redoubling its efforts to undermine the law. The latest act of sabotage: Top federal health officials have been told not to help states sign up Americans for insurance policies as part of this fall’s open enrollment period. Reducing the number of people who buy policies will ...

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• 3 October

  Why Germany’s shakeup won’t help Greece at all

  

  Those cheering the looming departure of Wolfgang Schaeuble from the German Ministry of Finance should not do much. His successor may not be as ornery, but southern Europeans—and above all Greeks—shouldn’t expect any better treatment. Schaeuble has held a wide range of positions since he was first elected to the German parliament in 1972; he’s been interior minister, chief of ...

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• 3 October

  Energy security and the meaning of technology

  

  This past week, I gave a lecture to a Georgetown University graduate seminar. The instructor’s challenge to me was to talk about technology as integral to energy security. Here is the argument I laid out for these students. In wind and solar energy—which only significantly depend on hydrocarbons during manufacturing and transport—technology is a relatively simple lens on energy. For ...

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• 3 October

  Japan has to spend a little less on well-off elderly

  

  When discussing Japan’s debt, most people get caught up in the issue of fiscal solvency. As everyone by now knows, Japan has a very high level of debt versus gross domestic product: This attention-grabbing number—about twice the level of the US—often gets people asking whether Japan will default. Some believe a default is likely when the country runs out of ...

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• 3 October

  Stocks mixed, dollar falls as tax reform hits bump

  

  Bloomberg US equities fluctuated near records, while the dollar’s rally stalled near a two-month high as investors assessed the prospects for tax reform after a Republican senator raised concern it could inflate the deficit. The S&P 500 Index traded in a tight range close to all-time highs along with other US gauges. The dollar retreated after touching the highest level ...

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