TOP
STORIES:
Glut of Solar Panels Poses a New Threat to China - (www.nytimes.com) But now China’s strategy is
in disarray. Though worldwide demand for solar panels and wind
turbines has grown rapidly over the last five years, China’s
manufacturing capacity has soared even faster, creating enormous oversupply and
a ferocious price war. The result is a looming financial disaster, not only for
manufacturers but for state-owned banks that financed factories with
approximately $18 billion in low-rate loans and for municipal and provincial
governments that provided loan guarantees and sold manufacturers valuable land
at deeply discounted prices. China’s biggest solar panel makers are suffering
losses of up to $1 for every $3 of sales this year, as panel prices have fallen
by three-fourths since 2008. Even though the cost ofsolar
power has fallen, it still remains triple the price ofcoal-generated
power in China, requiring substantial subsidies through a tax imposed on
industrial users of electricity to cover the higher cost of renewable energy.
Federal
takeover of Oakland cops urged – (www.sfgate.com)
A historic fight over whether
Oakland can reform its own police force began in earnest Thursday when civil
rights attorneys asked a federal judge to take the unprecedented step of
appointing a receiver to ensure the changes are made. The attorneys said a
broken culture in the department had turned a decade-long reform effort into a
"chronic failure," endangering citizens - especially minorities - and
costing the city tens of millions of dollars to settle
police-abuse lawsuits. The lawyers represented more than 100 people who
sued the city after four officers, who called themselves the Riders, were
accused in 2000 of imposing vigilante justice in West Oakland. In a resulting
settlement, Oakland had to implement a raft of reforms - which remain incomplete.
Spain Sees Divorce Driving Breakup of Towns as Recession
Deepens - (www.bloomberg.com) At 10 a.m. on a hot Friday,
Antonio Rodriguez Alvarez and his brother, Francisco, sit outside a bar in
Ecija, Spain, drinking an anise liquor with water.
Unemployed laborers, they visit the job center daily at 9 a.m. in search of
work. When there is none, they repair to the bar and worry. Antonio, 44, is
divorced and living with his mother. He split with his wife partly because of
constant fights about money and his lack of a job. He now weighs going to France,
where he heard there is work picking fruit. His 22-year-old daughter is
planning a move to the Canary
Islands to work in the tourism
industry. He said he doesn’t blame her. “Young people are leaving this town,” he said.
“There’s no hope, no jobs. Days are long. You wake up, it’s the crisis. You go
to bed, it’s the crisis. It’s always the same around here.”
Greek PM says can't manage beyond November without next aid
tranche - (www.reuters.com) Greek leader Antonis Samaras
told a German paper in an interview published on Friday his country could not
manage beyond November without the next tranche of international aid and
suggested the ECB could help by easing the terms of its Greek debt holdings. "The
key is liquidity. That is why the next credit tranche is so important for
us," Samaras told the business daily Handelsblatt. Asked how long Greece could manage without it, he said:
"Until the end of November. Then the cash box is empty."
Debt-laden companies cashing in on ECB pledge - (www.reuters.com) Heavily indebted euro zone firms
are reaping the benefits of the European Central Bank's pledge to pull the
region out of crisis, allowing them to borrow more cheaply and draw investors
back into their shares. In the aftermath of the 2008 credit crunch, Portuguese
power company EDP (EDP.LS) and Italian peer Terna (TRN.MI) were among the companies
refinancing large debt burdens in the face of a complete collapse in faith in
borrowers. That has changed, firstly with the sovereign debt crisis - which
made banks and governments the main sources of lenders' distrust - and now with
central banks' moves to head off the euro zone's turmoil and support economies
with ultra-low official interest rates.
