Losing value, winning silver

For the first time since the dawn of the Hebrew Media Review in days of yore, the Israeli press focuses on something that has genuinely global consequences — not including the Iran nuclear deal, of course. In this case it’s the global economic downturn, which has afflicted markets across the planet, from Tokyo’s Nikkei to the Dow Jones in New York City, following China’s currency devaluation and subsequent market plummet.

The growing economic crisis hasn’t left Israel unaffected, either. The two Tel Aviv indices both chalked up losses of over 3% in trading on Monday. The papers more or less regurgitate the same facts and figures demonstrating that the past few days have seen the biggest downturn since the 2008 crash. Yedioth Ahronoth reports that among the biggest losers in the two-day drop was Teva Pharmaceuticals, which lost a total of roughly NIS 22 billion (over $5 billion) since the beginning of the week.

The various financial pundits get their moment in the spotlight by weighing in on the crisis and chipping in what’s hopefully not their last remaining two cents. “The markets are crashing across the globe, everyone’s afraid of a new crisis or a global slowdown, and if a crisis like this arrives, Israel will also be harmed,” writes Eitan Avriel in Haaretz. He says that if there’s a global economic slowdown, particularly in developed economies, “Israel will suffer from it as well because of the importance of its exports.”

“The quality of life of each and every one of us, it appears, depends on the way Chinese President Xi Jinping and the rest of the leaders of developed states manage their countries — no less, or perhaps more, than the actions of the local prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu,” he says.

Hezi Sternlicht writes in Israel Hayom that the extreme fluctuations witnessed, for example, on Wall Street on Monday are symptomatic of a major malfunction in the global economy.

“We’re already six years at zero interest rate on the US dollar. Everything is inflated — stock markets broke all time records, real estate markets in largely responsible economies, such as Israel, Canada, Britain and others, saw how the value of apartments can inflate beyond recognition,” he writes. But he warns of an even bigger bubble waiting to burst: national debts, such as the US’s $18 trillion beast, in which, for comparison, “American students alone have debts of $1.16 trillion in loans.”

After dissing the national bank governors for fiddling with the interest rates and buying government bonds in a bid to stave off downturn, Sternlicht’s bottom line echoes the Netanyahu administration’s conservative economic policy: “Perhaps the time has come to decrease the artificial intervention [in the economy] which has only caused more damage.”

For Yedioth Ahronoth, the approach is a basic question and answer article addressing what Israelis would care about: will this affect my pension? Should I panic and sell everything? Can I afford to buy a house yet? The answer to each of them, more or less, being no.

When not panicking about the world economy on the verge of collapse, the Hebrew press surprisingly turns to a much more Jewy subject: sports. Everyone else might be losing their gelt because of China’s economy, but one Israeli just made silver in Beijing — at the World Athletic Championship. Hanna Knyazyeva-Minenko took second place in the triple jump, earning her front-page prestige in the press.

Haaretz calls her medal “a historic achievement for Israeli sport” after she broke the national record and her own personal record with 14.78 meters. The last time an Israeli took a medal home at the games was in 1999, when pole vaulter Aleksandr Averbukh took the bronze. Yedioth Ahronoth reports that Knyazyeva (who it points out isn’t Jewish) previously represented her native Ukraine in the 2012 summer Olympics and narrowly missed the bronze. She immigrated to Israel after falling in love with an Israeli athlete.

In Israel Hayom, the Prime Minister’s Office’s warning to Israelis traveling to Europe and Turkey takes precedence. The PMO warns that senior Islamic State fighters returning to Europe plan to harm Israelis abroad, and issues a travel warning for 41 countries ahead of the Jewish High Holidays, pointing out that in addition to the Islamic State, “the global terror campaign of Israel and Hezbollah continues to be an ongoing threat to Israeli and Jewish targets worldwide.”