| | |
| | | Smart Reads August 21, 2013 | | | By Catherine Contiguglia - Trouble continues in emerging markets. The imminent tapering of the US Fed’s bond-buying programme against the backdrop of high levels of credit in Asia have some worried that the stage is set for another 1997-98 style financial crisis.
- Speaking of the Fed, Larry Summers has had a lot of bad press in his run to succeed Ben Bernanke as governor of the Federal Reserve, and so "his friends from the White House years wanted to help him," writes Zachary Goldfarb in the Washington Post, teaming up to ramp up his strategy for the "hottest political campaign in 2013."
- While the NSA/Snowden/Greenwald-Miranda/surveillance row rumbles on, the US department of homeland security is testing a crowd-scanning surveillance system that would automatically identify people by their faces, which has privacy advocates calling for the implementation of limitations before the technology outpaces existing legislation.
- More EM pain: the Sapphire – the tallest addition to Istanbul's skyline – was funded by cheap loans denominated in dollars that poured into emerging markets as major central banks engaged in quantitative easing. Now, as monetary policy tightening looms on the horizon, "Istanbul's skyline could well be a harbinger of an emerging-market bust brought on by unpaid loans, weakening currencies, and, eventually, the possible failure of developers and banks."
Continue reading » | | | | |
