Good morning, Quartz readers!
What to watch for today
Serious talks about the fiscal cliff begin. In an attempt to hammer out a deal to defuse America’s looming budgetary adjustment, President Barack Obama will meet with leaders from labor unions and other civic groups Tuesday, while planning a separate sitdown with business executives on Wednesday and a confab with political leaders from both parties on Friday. Quartz’s Tim Fernholz explains how Obama and Republican Congressional leader Boehner have laid out their opening offers. Meanwhile, former Romney economic adviser Glenn Hubbard now suggests that raising taxes on the wealthy is a viable path forward. Watch to see which other prominent Republicans start to deviate from the party’s pre-election line.
The Greeks will get more time, but it will cost them. A draft document prepared for the current meeting of euro-zone financial ministers in Brussels indicates that Greece will receive more time to comply with budgetary goals laid out as part of the terms of its bailout funding plan. As it again faces the specter of default, Greece is expected to try to raise more than 3 billion euros by selling Treasury bills in the financial markets Tuesday so that it will be able to meet a scheduled debt payment on Friday.
While you were sleeping
More signs of spreading Syrian unrest. Israeli tank commanders opened up on mobile Syrian artillery units near the disputed Golan Heights Wednesday. Meanwhile, Syrian warplanes attacked a rebel-held village just yards from the Turkish border. Windows in shops and houses in the Turkish border town of Ceylanpinar were shattered on a border where tensions are already running high.
The Petraeus affair continued. More details about the extra-marital affair that prompted David Petraeus to resign last week as director of the CIA have emerged. The former general has told friends he was shocked to learn of the threatening emails his biographer and girlfriend is accused of sending to another woman she saw as a romantic rival. Those emails became the starting point for an FBI investigation that eventually unearthed the relationship between Petraeus and Paula Broadwell. Quartz dug in to how the FBI may have got on to the trail of the emails. And here’s a timeline of the entire mess.
US energy production is going to grow faster than anyone thought. America will become the world’s biggest gas producer (overtaking Russia) by 2015, and the biggest oil producer (overtaking Saudi Arabia) by 2017, the International Energy Agency said in a new report. The US will be an oil exporter by 2030 and self-sufficient in energy by 2035, said the agency, which had previously forecast Saudi Arabia to remain the top oil producer until 2035.
Quartz obsession interludes
Stephanie Gruner Buckley on the euro crunch and the grilling some representatives of major US corporations such as Amazon, Starbucks, Facebook and Google received over paying scant UK taxes. “No one has suggested that the companies did anything illegal—they are simply taking advantage of the tax codes as written. But with debt strangling Europe’s economies, it’s starting to look, even to the lawmakers who made the rules, a little unseemly, and the rules may need changing.”
Matters of debate
Where is the Chinese stimulus happening? If Chinese officialdom is trying to crank up growth, they’re not doing it through the banking system, suggest figures released late last night Hong Kong time. They are, however, dumping billions into railroads.
Uncertainty in China’s leadership transition. One of the few real questions that surrounds China’s leadership transition is whether departing president Hu Jintao will remain on as civilian military chief as his two predecessors Jiang Zemin and Deng Xiaoping had done.
Getting the US budget under control has to include clamping down on the growth of the welfare state, argues one conservative observer of economics.
Fear of capital gains taxes is one factor driving US stocks lower.
Commodities have done truly awfully this year.
Surprising discoveries
Before he became an election-predicting whiz, Nate Silver tried using statistics to pinpoint the best burrito in Chicago. He didn’t succeed.
A foul-mouthed parrot once shocked St. Louis zoo goers.
China’s communist party is still a boys club. (OK, file that under “Unsurprising discoveries.”)
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