Emerging market foreign exchange, Amazon’s experiment and pub economics

Emerging market forex reserves are shrinking. From a peak $8tn in mid-2014, cash kitties have been whittled back as the China carry trade unwinds and the end of ultra-easy monetary policy in the US lures funds out of other emerging markets. That’s bad news: the world will “sorely miss” the recycling of emerging market reserves when the west’s easy monetary policy turns tighter, says one economist.

In the news

Nigeria’s historic election Muhammadu Buhari, the 72-year-old former military ruler, won the presidential election – the first time in the country’s history that an opposition candidate has beaten an incumbent leader. William Wallis explains the significance of this peaceful vote and the delicate process of the handover. (FT)

Tripoli ousts prime minister The self-declared authority in Libya’s capital sacked its prime minister. The reasons are unclear but Omar al-Hassi had become a liability after publicly praising Isis precursors, which has taken root in several Libyan cities. Libya has been split by a civil war for 10 months and is in the middle of UN-brokered peace talks. (FT)

Day of chaos in Turkey A prolonged power cut closed the Istanbul and Ankara metros, grounded flights and may have provided cover for a hostage crisis , which ended in a fatal shootout. While half the country’s provinces were without power from mid-morning to early evening, the banned Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front captured a prosecutor in Istanbul’s Caglayan courthouse. The two hostages were killed in a shootout late last night and the prosecutor died later in hospital. (FT)

HP sues Autonomy founder Hewlett-Packard is seeking damages of $5.1bn over an alleged fraud that occurred during Mike Lynch’s leadership of the UK software group. In November 2012, HP took an $8.8bn writedown on Autonomy, which it acquired the previous year. Some $5.5bn of that was due to alleged “accounting misrepresentations”. (FT)

Amazon’s home experiment Customers can now book a plumber or gardener on Amazon, while simultaneously replenishing supplies of kitchen roll. The ecommerce group’s latest wheezes in their quest to be the Everything Store include a push-button device to reorder household essentials, like laundry detergent, as soon as they run out. This will be available by invitation only to Prime customers. (FT)

It’s a big day for

Palestine , which joins the International Criminal Court today. This means the ICC can now investigate and prosecute alleged crimes in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Al Jazeera looks at what can be expected and what ICC prosecutors will tackle.

GoDaddy Shares in the web hosting company are expected to start trading today. The listing has been priced at $20 per share, valuing it at about $4.5bn. At this price, the IPO would raise $440m. (Reuters)

Iran Talks over its nuclear programme missed the deadline for a deal so meetings are continuing today and negotiators are rushing to salvage what they can to come to an accord. (FT)

Food for thought

Pub economics Is the benefit of structural reform just a case of pub economics – something that everyone believes in that actually isn’t true? Some labour market reforms may be marginally detrimental to short-term growth , particularly in severely depressed economies. (Bruegel)

Soumission Michel Houellebecq’s novel about a Muslim takeover of France was hailed by the right as a prophetic warning and attacked by the left as a gift to Marine Le Pen. Adam Shatz thinks it’s reactionary but not Islamophobic, saying that he writes about Islam with curiosity and fascination. “For Houellebecq, France’s dilemma resembles his own: France has attempted to replace God with the secular religion of republican citizenship and laïcité, but at the price of leaving deeper questions unanswered.” (LRB)

Indulging in job porn Giant career leaps such as leaving banking for baking are rare and people are often unwilling to take even small steps in their current jobs, says Lisa Pollack. But she reckons there’s no substitute for personal experience so if careers are like jungle gyms – people should swing around more. (FT)

At the coalface in India Critics say Narendra Modi’s plan to double production at Coal Indiawithin five years is impossible but failure will hurt his goal of turning India into a manufacturing powerhouse. (FT)

Video of the day

Martin Wolf on Grexit The Greek state is running out of cash and there may be no rescue this time. Martin Wolf talks about what happens in the case of a default. (FT)

This article is published in collaboration with The Financial Times. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

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