WHAT IS THIS?

Enterprise is on break this week, and that separation anxiety we mentioned yesterday isn’t getting any better. That’s why we’re back today with a little collection of stories we thought you might enjoy, plus a handful of links that might give you a chuckle.

Today’s links are stories that have made us think about the economy, from natural gas imports from Cyprus and Israel to why you could be more afraid of China’s shadow debt market than you are of a Grexit.

We’ll be back tomorrow, then off again on Thursday in observance of the 23 July Revolution. By Sunday, 26 July, we’ll be back to our usual format and schedule, offering a roundup of the news and views that will set the day’s business agenda in Egypt, delivered to your inbox before 7am CLT.

WORTH READING

Egypt as a natural gas import market: Last week, the German Marshall Fund Foundation produced a policy paper by Nikos Tsafos on Egypt’s viability as an export market for Cypriot and Israeli gas. The first half of the 19-page report charts how Egypt got to where it is today as a net importer, then goes on to dispute Petroleum Minister Sherif Ismail’s projection that Egypt will stop importing by 2020. Tsafos estimates that Egypt will continue to import oil for the foreseeable future stretching out to 2025 and possibly beyond. Tsafos closes by giving cost estimates on the requisite infrastructure and development required to make the venture feasible, and what risks are involved. (Download Egypt: A Market for Natural Gas from Cyprus and Israel? as pdf)

Refugees, humanitarian aid workers, and jihadists: Turkey’s open border with Syria: The story of displaced Syrian refugees in Turkey is approached from an interesting angle, told through a soccer coach and his inner struggle between setting a permanent diaspora in Turkey, or hanging on to hopes of going back home. The article also goes on to consider what 4 mn displaced Syrians means for their surrounding economies, especially that of Turkey’s, the Boston Globe reports.

Germexit doesn’t have a nice ring to it, though: Foreign Policy rides the contrarian ship to suggest that Berlin is “dragging down the European economy” in stating the (economically obvious fact) that Germany’s trade surpluses were in fact financing the Greek trade deficit. “Germany’s chronic trade surpluses lie at the heart of Europe’s problems; far from boosting the global economy, they are dragging it down … With an aging population, perhaps it’s understandable why Germans want to save… The ‘growth’ Germany generates by funding unsustainable trade imbalances — inside and outside the Eurozone — is an illusion. It is growth that is borrowed, for only a while. For Germany, and for the world, it’s a bad trade.”

It’s not a Grexit you should fear, but a meltdown of China’s debt market in general and its so-called “shadow banking” system in particular. Not sure what shadow banking is? Bloomberg’s got your back with a quick primer that notes it includes “risky investment products, lending between individuals, pawnshop and loan-shark operations in emerging markets, as well as more respectable activities like derivatives, money-market funds, securities lending and repurchase agreements at financial institutions in Europe and the U.S.” The FT’s Simon Rabonovitch issued a prescient warning on the subject back in January 2014 in “Economic danger lurks in China’s shadow banks,” while Brookings has a lengthy take on how shadow banking works in China (pdf download) that argues the risks are overblown.

China is strengthening ties with Central Asia as it plans to revive ancient trade routes. The region is integral for China’s plans for Silk Road projects in an aim to improve infrastructure links between Asia and Europe — a plan that could boost trade by USD 2.5 tn in a decade. The Telegraph, however, alerts its readers to the repercussion of China’s stock market’s nosedive in “that if the state fails in its attempts to ease the panic, there is some danger of a full-blown crisis that spreads to the ‘One Belt, One Road’ spending spree.”

WORTH WATCHING

Emerging markets face a wide array of challenges across the world, some of them familiar and other unlike anything most people ever experience. Kazakhstan faces a grim problem of its own: From 1949 to 1989, the Soviet Union detonated more than 450 nuclear bombs in Kazakhstan in an area known as the Semipalatinsk Test Site. Thousands suffered from the nuclear tests with some not only exposed to radiation, but also having it became part of their DNA. Vice News recorded a shocking documentary about the region explaining why a doctor there is calling for the area’s residents to be issued special “genetic passports” as deformities continue to plague the area. (Watching time 14:43)

++ Learn how Vice turned from a Montreal punk magazine with a taste for the nasty into a global media icon with, well, a tasty for the (slightly less) nasty.

ON YOUR WAY OUT

Wonder at “Incredible photos of some of the 150 U.S. WWII aircraft lying in the Airplane Graveyard in the Pacific” (The Aviationist). Or go check out where U.S. military aircraft go to die in this documentary (runtime: 23:37) or explore the “boneyard” in Google Maps.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver brings you this “Slow moving car crash” — freshman Rep. Curt Clawson misidentifies two senior U.S. government officials as representatives of the Indian government.

History of the internet, Vol. II: The Crazy Nasty [redacted] Honey Badger. At 74.3 mn views since the video was first posted in 2011, the narrator (referred to only as Randall) takes footage from a 2007 National Geographic special ‘Snake-killers: honey badgers of the Kalahari,’ with references to the parody video making their way not only to National Geographic itself, but to the US Senate floor as well. The honey badger, of whose existence most people are unaware before watching the video, is itself a remarkable creature. Eschewing the dignified and detached observations of standard nature programs, here the narrator “Randall” is the antithesis of David Attenborough, offering a stream of commentary centered on the disgust, disbelief and sometimes awe that only watching the honey badger can evoke. A, uh, language advisory is in effect — don’t be opening the Honey Badger in front of the kids. (Watch, running time: 3:20)