The US Postal Service, despite benefiting from being the only “company” able to ship first class mail, will be facing a $238 billion budget by 2020 according to recent estimates. This is, of course, largely due to the rise of email and decline of traditional snail-mail.

The Postal Service has 36,500 retail locations, more than twice as many as McDonald’s Corp. and more than triple the number of Starbucks Corp. outlets, New York-based McKinsey said.

“The Postal Service urgently needs a more flexible business model to best meet America’s changing mailing needs and consumer patterns,” said Sue Brennan, a Postal Service spokeswoman. “The volume of mail that funds the organization is declining at such a rate that we need to be able to adapt, and without flexibility we cannot.”

So lets hear it readers, should the Post Office cut hours? Should it be privatized? Discuss.

There have long been fears in the West, especially in the United States, of China’s growing economic power. In recent years that fear has excellerated because of an incredibly high GDP growth rate in that nation. The current growth rate is the highest it has been since 2007. However, there has been some speculation that this rapid growth could be reckless and dangerous to the Chinese economy. The gross domestic product rose 10.7% since this time last year, an incredible growth rate.

This news could effect long term policy for the central bank in China.

“Today’s data suggest that tighter policy is just around the corner,” said Brian Jackson, a Hong Kong-based strategist on emerging markets at Royal Bank of Canada. “Policy makers will need to move soon to stop the economy from overheating,” he said, forecasting officials will end an exchange-rate peg and boost interest rates starting this quarter.

More here.