Bhinneka News Online: Monday Morning Briefing: Turkish lira's meltdown rattles global markets

Monday 13 August 2018

Monday Morning Briefing: Turkish lira's meltdown rattles global markets

Highlights

Turkey’s lira pulled back from a record low today after the central bank pledged to provide liquidity and cut reserve requirements for Turkish banks. However its meltdown continued to rattle global markets, as concerns mount over President Tayyip Erdogan’s increasing control over the economy and deteriorating relations with the United States.

Emily Wither

@ewither

Turkey's interior ministry says it's taking necessary legal measures against 346 social media accounts that posted about the weakening lira "in a provocative way". Indicating posts that paint the economy in a negative light won't be tolerated. #liracrisis

12:20 PM - August 13, 2018

"The big fear in the market is that we are headed for a full-blown emerging market crisis,” said Ulrich Leuchtmann, FX strategist at Commerzbank in Frankfurt, citing the 1997 Asian financial crisis when even countries with a sound macroeconomic position were sucked into a deep sell-off.

U.S. prosecutors plan to wrap up their tax and bank fraud case against former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, making it likely the case will go to the jury by midweek if the defense decides not to call any witnesses.

For the past two weeks, a wildfire has forced much of Yosemite National Park in California to close, with smoke clouding the summer travel season for one of the largest tourism economies tied to a U.S. park.

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has shown no interest so far in financing Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s proposed $72 billion deal to take the U.S. electric car maker private, despite acquiring a minority stake in the company this year, two sources familiar with the matter said. Musk’s proposal and the company’s failure to promptly file a formal disclosure has raised governance concerns and sparked questions about how companies use social media.

World

North and South Korea agreed to hold a summit in the North in September, another step towards boosting cooperation between the old rivals, even as doubts grow over efforts to end the North’s nuclear weapons program.

Malaysia is seeking to repossess a $35 million private jet owned by financier Low Taek Jho as part of investigations into a multi-billion dollar scandal at state fund 1MDB, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has said.

Bangladesh is the newest frontline in state-backed drug crackdowns in Asia, where more than 200 people have been shot dead by police since May. Critics say the crackdown reflects Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s increasingly authoritarian rule ahead of a general election, due by December.

Commentary: – the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and British politician Boris Johnson – now face media bans and/or ridicule for what they saw as speaking their minds, writes Reuters columnist John Lloyd. “Both have put another brick in a wall they are building to make politics less constrained by either facts or courtesy.”