Economist Versus Idiot: Nobody Brings You Pandas Anymore

The World Last Week (Besides Myanmar)

-It's totally balls out amazing that when Hu Jintao makes the first Chinese state visit to Japan in a decade, he promises Japan a new pair of panda bears.  You can't make that kind of shit up.

-How much does diplomatic recognition from Papua New Guinea cost?  More than 30 million, Taiwan!  Have fun in jail, Mr. Foreign Minister!

-It's either a sign of progress that the Iraqi foreign minister is the voice of reason between Iranian and American talks over security in Iraq, or it's the worst possible news since the Throbbing Gristle reunion.  Either way, why the Economist felt the need to head this paragraph "Jaw-jaw is better than war-war" remains a mystery.

-Zimbabwe, still laying out the gasoline, apparently in hopes that it will burn longer than Kenya.  In other Mugabe news, his mustache?  Still fucking creepy.

-How much is the Sundance Channel worth?  496 million, but it probably would have been more if they'd promise never to show shitty talk shows hosted by Henry Rollins.  On a lighter side, that does sound like enough money to buy diplomatic recognition from Papua New Guinea.  Look into it, Cablevision.

-Some Goldman Sachs analyst predicted three years ago that oil would breach $100 a barrel, which it has, but that leads this reader to wonder who, exactly, thought it wouldn't?

Leaders

-Joining the choir of saying Hilary should drop out of the race, the Economist piece about Obama's win in North Carolina still continues to avoid the newspaper throwing their support behind him.  Non-Economist readers who like to label the publication as stoutly conservative often make the mistake of assuming that being pro-capitalist makes it automatically Republican.  At this point, they're still not a big fan of McCain either.  (Also, British.)  Still, while they're remaining neutral for now (I don't think they actually chose their candidates in the last US election until closer to the conventions) this article doesn't really deserve to be a leader, and it has zero business being the cover story.  It's just a retread of the same shit--Obama delivers empty rhetoric with a lot of flair, he handled the Jeremiah Wright blow-up 2.0 well and it's admirable how little interest he has in playing the race card.  Got it the first thousand times.

-One of the most excellent parts of the cursory analysis they're able to give Myanmar under what had to be a relatively tight deadline is this:  "When so many are in such need, the humanitarian imperative overrides qualms about giving handouts to a repugnant regime."  It's beyond sickening how poorly the military junta in Myanmar have failed the Burmese people, but even if they are going to levy import taxes on emergency supplies, it will (at this early stage of the disaster) be worthwhile if even a fraction of aid makes it to any of the people who desperately need it.  Hopefully, there will be some way for the exploitative and criminal behavior of the junta to become more common knowledge among the Burmese when this settles down--it's high time for them to be made fully aware of how ugly their government has behaved.

-From there, the leaders sections becomes the remainder bin:  Gordon Brown is a tool and no one cares, there's a op/ed about Palestine that could have been written at any point between 1967 and yesterday, the Economist still feels the need to offer some nigh-on socialist solutions that will never, ever happen with the US foreclosure crisis and a mildly interesting write-up about Dmitry Medvedev.  (His name means "bear!"  Who knew?)

Letters

-Somebody was in middle school in Houston, Texas at some point in the last 30 years, and they had the opportunity to kick Tony Welsh in the face, and they didn't.  And now Tony Welsh is all grown up, and he's a big fucking nerd who points out math errors via letter.  Also, John Dowlin in Philadelphia?  Your charity or whatever it is that you're doing for classic cars with fins in Cuba?  It's so completely unnecessary that it's almost physically repugnant.  That is all, useless letters section. I hate you.

United States

-Here's the reason Obama made the cover--a sober, free of rhetoric article on African-Americans.  While it's more than a little pointless that they use Obama's successful campaign efforts as the art and bookend of this report, that's only because it's completely unnecessary--the piece itself is strong enough not be shoehorned in with more Obama fannishness.  Articles on race in the US are usually a lot more palatable when they focus less on anecdotal moralizing and, unsurprisingly, when they aren't written by Americans.  Here, the author(s) are able to sink back into the background enough that the complicated (and divisive) issues of imprisonment, voting rights, affirmative action and discrimination aren't contained within some kind of pundit packaging.  It's, for the most part, just facts, figures and neutral analysis.  The sort of stuff that doesn't make for sound bites, but demands thought.  (Which is why it isn't the sort of thing you'd read in newspapers that give Miley Cyrus front page duties.)

-James Carville was pretty great on Soderbergh's K-Street.  Still, saying "If she gave him one of her cojones they'd both have two."  Why do people hire you?  To be gross?  That doesn't even make sense.  So you're saying that Hilary Clinton has three testicles, and that Obama only has one?  Think about it first.  That doesn't make anybody want to vote for Hilary, it doesn't even make people want to vote at all.  It just makes you want to give it all up to chance and check in with Niko Belloc.

-The six books a week plan is pretty intense, but how does a teacher actually prove that a parent didn't do it?  (Harlem Success, a charter school that requires parents read six books a week to their kids.)  And do you kick out kids who's parents phone it in?  How does that even work?

-In Utah, there's no law for real estate developers to preserve or even reveal the existence of archaeological remains.  I want to feel worse about this, yet I find myself wondering when the last time was that I went and looked at actual fossils of anything.  Ruins are great, but the best ruins are all in other countries.  At the same time, I like the concept of criticizing Utah, as I know nothing about the state.  It's a struggle amongst multiple things, all of which I care little about.  In the end, I'll go with my gut and take the opportunity to criticize people I don't know.

-Lexington's column is another ball-out-park win.  One of the best and most focused analysis of Americana available--this time, she/he focuses on Freedom House, a "liberty watchdog" founded in 1941.  I never find myself in total agreement with Lexington's politics, but the talent for exposition and description is undeniably brilliant.

The Americas

-Sorry to the guys and gals who handle this section, but the only thing that jumped for this reader was finding out the one third of the electricity in the Dominican Republic is stolen.  That's awesome, and makes it sound so easy that I should be doing it.

Asia

-What makes the difference between the earthquake in China and the cyclone in Myanmar, besides the death toll?  Oh, maybe that China will at least attempt to look after their citizens.  The Burmese junta doesn't even pretend that it cares.

-Hey, just in case you've got a good mood that natural disasters and uncaring governments haven't destroyed, people in North Korea have added treebark and grass to their diet.  In other news, Kim Jong Il still claims to have super-powers.

-Wasn't aware that the Dalai Lama actually did support a "one-China" policy.  This article fails to tell us whether he told the Beastie Boys before they did all those terrible music festivals with Blues Traveler.

-One more time, in case you missed it above.  China meets Japan, brings the promise of panda bears.

Middle East and Africa

-There's a nice long article here about the Americans and the Iraqi's trying to play "guess what i'm wearing" with Iran, but it would have been far more preferable to just say "What the fuck do you want, Iran?"  Then again, I don't write foreign policy.

-Let's put it this way:  Yemen has 22 million people.  They also have 17 million guns.  It's not ready for a tourism industry yet.

-The most irritating surprise about Zimbabwe's currently dismal state of affairs isn't that people are getting killed and beaten in hopes of changing their vote if and when the second round of electioneering begins, no, that's just awful. It's not surprising.  What's surprising is how long countries like Botswana, Tanzania, Zambia and others are planning to lay back in the cut and express "impatience."  Fuck impatience.  This is one of the best opportunities for a lot of stable African countries have had to prove to the ignorant and racist rest-of-the-world that what happens in Africa doesn't need to be fixed by white people and their money.  Mugabe has to go, and the hands that pull him off the podium should be African hands.

-While they may not be as hip and trendy as Mossad agents, Spetznaz dog-killers and Deltas, the South African vigilante force turned police special unit "The Scorpions" may be just about the most bad-ass group of motherfuckers on the planet.  These guys are the equivalent of dropping an ethical Vic Mackey into a swamp of corruption and organized crime and giving him weapons. 

Europe

-Considering that May 7th was the day that Dmitry Medvedev was inaugurated, it's kind of disappointing that this article doesn't have any real new information in it--it's pretty much a retread of last weeks piece.  That's not really anybodies fault, per se, but it is part of what makes the Russian change-over a bit nerve-wracking--the feeling that the rest of the world is just reverting back to those days when no one really knew what the hell was going on with that part of the world.  It's 2008, and the best the Economist can offer is the same routine prognostication that we don't really know how, or if, a new Russian president is going to change the declining state of affairs.  It would be less disconcerting if it wasn't for last years stories about the Kremlin's involvement in the murder of Russian journalist, but even then, not so much.

-The income-tax returns for 2005 of the entire Italian people, on sale on Ebay.  That's interesting enough.

-Charlemagne's look at what Ireland might do with the upcoming referendum on the EU's Lisbon treaty is fascinating enough to read in the abstract, but it's mostly a testament to the disgusting behavior of the Irish farmers' union who are are blackmailing the Irish government to maintain high import tariffs if they want the 10,000 strong membership to vote yes.  Democracy allows for that sort of behavior, sure, and it's a constant irritation in American politics as well, but the scope of this one is particularly audacious.

-It's not particularly worth cheering when a government goes after journalists, secular or not, but it's always worthwhile to point out that a 78 year old hardcore religious columnist was arrested for raping a 14-year-old girl.  Turkey has a ways to go before the progress it's made in recent years gets acknowledged, but they should be applauded for going after a popular Muslim columnist for a crime that undoubtedly gets swept under the table far too often.

Britain

-Another week, another attempt by the Economist to get me to care about the Tories.  Look, here's the deal.  I'll read it.  But don't expect me to...oh god, how would the country be different under David Cameron?  I think I might want to know, maybe sometime next never.

-Wendy Alexander may pull off what overwrought Mel Gibson vanity pictures couldn't, and actually bring Scottish independence to the table.  Doubtful, but still pretty gutsy.

-Keep it up Gordon Brown, and the legacy of your time in office will be a bunch of empty corporate warehouses where the British people's jobs once existed.  Welcome to the flipside of the global economy.

-Bagehot has no stories about monkey suits this week, and I find myself disappointed.  Instead, it's one of those columns where he/she points out all the things that Gordon Brown and the New Labor party have done well, what they should look to do now, and she/he does it all without sinking into the morass of self-indulgence that the Nation lives in, where the writers seem to think that their suggestions while be acknowledged and put into practice.  A genius piece of writing, as always.

International (Why Does This Section Exist)

-Ethanol based fuels:  good.  Pushing low-income farmers to use agricultural land for ethanol based fuels for use in the US and Europe?  Quick update:  starving people can't eat ethanol based fuels.  Bike about that, San Francisco.

-New York passed this "Libel Terrorism Protection Act" last month.  This article tells you why, but it boils down to this:  don't talk smack about rich Ukrainians with a taste for legal theatrics, unless you like telling your fellow journalists that, yes, the newspaper closed because of your article.  (And poorly thought out British libel statutes.)  Wait, what do British libel law, aggressively named New York actions and a rich Ukrainian have to do with one another?  Is this the one about the parrot and the basketball coach?

Business

-Wow, drilling for oil is nothing like that Daniel Day-Lewis movie.  Due to all the export taxes and corporate interference, Russia keeps 92% of the profits.  Even though the country sits on some of the largest untapped reserves, nobody wants to roll in and start pumping.  That won't last, but for now...pretty surprising behavior, considering how tied in the current Russian successes are with the oil profits.  Maybe they should stop jailing tycoons and assassinating people with radioactive isotopes.

-Hey Yahoo?  Remember all that time before May 3rd, when your stock kept going up?  Yeah, those days are pretty much over.  Enjoy feeling some stockholder boot, Jerry Yang.

-Eventually, Africa will probably become a great untapped market for mobile-phones.  Don't know if we'd agree with Bharti Airtel that time is now, though.

-The Economist is clever enough to point out that Chinese automaker Great Wall Motor is "easy to poke fun [at]".  But then they don't do it!  This company makes vehicles with names like Deer, Hover, Wingle, Sailer and Socool!  The cars themselves look as if you could trade Frosted Mini-Wheats for them!  Poke!  Poke away!  They have a car named Socool!  (To their credit, they do give the article the same name as a Duran Duran song.)

-Australia, after 25 years, still cannot escape Crocodile Dundee.  Seriously, that's what this article is about.

-You can patent "business methods" that don't require equipment, technology--hell, they don't even need actual methods.  Then you can sue somebody who does the same thing.  Like sell something a certain way, or buy something a certain way.  You can patent thought.  Growth market?

-He's young, rich, smart as hell, successful, and gutsy!  Yet 32-year old John Elkann, the new chairman of Turin based investment firm IFIL has one strike against him.  (He looks like Josh Groban's sickly younger brother.)  Hey, I kid, I kid.  He could buy and sell us all.

Briefing: Energy Efficiency

-Next on the list of things you can do to save the planet?  Buy a better fridge and turn off your lights.  I wish there was an expensive (and sexy) ad campaign about this.  But until Jeff Bridges tells me, in his most dulcet tones, I like to come home to an air conditioner constructed in the late 70's that's been running for eight hours.  There's an inconvenient truth for you, you capitalist running dogs.

Finance and Economics

-As always, the throw-some-coffee-on-your-brain section, where it may get boring, but it always gets important.  First off on the homework pile is a snapshot of Ben Barneke's color coded map of the housing situation in America--red means "holy shit a lot of people are losing their homes."  As with any study of statistics, housing-price indicators are difficult to manage a cogent analysis out of--both the Federal Reserve and the National Association of Realtors have their own methods and motives, and those don't always boil down to the most reliable of data.  But these guys need something, because they've got to figure out how to climb out of the pit that Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac kicked the US into.  That's the best you'll get out of us--there's a lot more in the article, including a depressing conclusion:  thing's are going to get worse.

-Buttonwood, still the Economist's favorite columnist to hide in an unattractive and less respectable position in the paper, focuses on Al Gore and the various Eco-friendly investment groups who are all attempting to figure out how to maximize profits in a field that is as full of ups and downs as one would imagine when you're dealing with the companies that used to push solar power down Californian throats.  There's a poor comparison made to the dotcom bubbles of the 1990s, one that ignores the basic difference between the founding of a dotcom (a nickel and a prayer) and the pursuance of alternate energy sources (oh, you know...team of scientists, location, supplies, a whole lot of time).  Buttonwood distances himself from that poor analogy to skip to one he/she apparently finds more palatable--telecoms.  Neither really work, and this week we remember why this column never gets a full page.  Still, some interesting stuff here, mostly for rich people wondering if this is a stable enough market to consider taking the investment plunge.  (Shouldn't!)

-Ah, sharia-compliant financial institutions are trying to make inroads into Africa, or at least the parts of Africa that aren't currently soaking in the blood and indifference of the world.  This article fails to mention that it sounds a lot like those articles about Asian-based banks attempting to make inroads on Asian-American immigrants that the Economist wrote about a couple of years ago.  It didn't happen on the scale they imagined then, and will doubtfully happen on the scale they're imagining now.  Still, it's always pleasant to remember that, if the Congo, Kenya, Somalia and Zimbabwe can jettison themselves from their current entanglements, there will be a raft of money-hungry zealots prepared to offer them shitty loans and credit cards.  Oh shit i just puked blood

-One more time, first verse, same as the first:  the entanglement of the sale of American Treasury bonds to China and Gulf oil exporters helped fuel the past housing boom, brought about low bond yields and the next thing you knew, formerly risky investments in mortgage-backed securities.  It's great when things like "people shouldn't have taken them dern loans they couldn't pay" help the ignorant sleep well, but it's always a bit more complicated when the truth comes a-knocking.  Entangling American fiscal policy works for the best sometimes, but for the current housing crisis, it sometimes goes the other direction.  What's even more awesome is that it takes even more than China and OPEC nations buying bonds--thankfully, this article mostly just goes after the next phase of this difficult situation--how quite a few countries are starting to disengage their currencies from the dollar, in hopes of dodging the effect of the slashing in interest rates.

Science and Technology

-To all lazy, stupid people--you have two new words to memorize:  Myalgic Encephalomyelitis.  What's that?  Well, it's the excuse you're going to use when you can't miss a Mets day game.  We all know you don't have food poisoning.  Nobody gets food poisoning that much--and M.E. is the go-to medical condition that is still unverifiable through testing.  It's also known as chronic fatigue syndrome, or, when someone is feeling particularly nasty, "yuppie flu."  But you better jump on this train now, because it's finally getting the research it deserves.  God forbid people sleep too much and develop joint pain while being anxious and irritable.  It's not like there's worse problems in the world.

-Didn't we all already kind of know that beating your kids screwed them up in a fashion that would affect their adult lives?  Well, now there's genetic evidence for maybe the most obvious thing on the planet.  Medical research is awesome.

-Your twice yearly reminder that, regardless of what television and the miserable behavior of Midwestern prosecutors tell you, lie-detectors are as reliable as horoscopes, the Atlanta Hawks, and Taoism.

-Cuckoos don't just irritate normal people in the morning.  They also piss off meadow pipits, dunnocks and reed warblers.  And they're constantly adapting their ingenious methods.  Just like David Archuleta's dad.

-Hopefully, someday, one of those people who decry video games as the death of culture, society, life-as-we-know-it, etc., will have their life saved by a secluded fat kid who stays up all night designing proteins online.

Books and Arts

-Yes!  Another book on Nixon!  An 896 pager that the Economist read...so you don't have to!  Then again, considering that the book includes such tasty tidbits of fact like Nixon saying "Could we please investigate some of the cocksuckers?" regarding the Democratic Party, maybe we should.  But for $37.50?  Is there a guarantee that there will be more about how Nixon wore a necktie along while relaxing in his dressing gown?  Because if there's not, then we'll rely on Conrad Black's non-stop insanity festival of a biography from 2006.

-Julie Salamon may feel like she got off easy for the Economist not giving her shit about her book having a ridiculous title.  But not here--calling your recap of a year in the trenches of an emergency room Hospital: Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity, Plus Red Tape, Bad Behavior, Money, God, and Diversity on Steroids?  That smacks of a healthy slice of self-indulgence, and makes this reader wonder if Penguin didn't offer you the services of an editor.  Title-wise, you clearly needed one with a firmer grip on what doesn't suck.

-I'll read a book about Meinhard Goerke, the guy who took a bunch of rich white snobs for suckers when he produced bottles of wine that he passed off as remnants of Thomas Jefferson's private supply, when that book takes the point of view that Meinhard Goerke is a pimp extravagant.  But not before, Benjamin Wallace.

-The guy the Rhodes scholarships are named for?  Well, his name was Rhodes, but he didn't get very good grades.  He was rich though, and he "believed that the Anglo-Saxons were the finest of all races."  Yikes!

Obituary: Albert Hofmann

-Didn't know this one either, but unlike last weeks Uber-Bishop, Hofmann's specialty wasn't really part of our purview--he is, after all, the Dr. Bob to Tim Leary's Bill Wilson--the guy who did all the scientific research on lysergic acid diethylamide, but also wore a suit and didn't ride on buses.  Still, because the Economist carries a Brit humor sometimes veers into the immature, the accompanying image has Hofmann in a "Who me?" picture accompanied by a kaleidoscopic background--you know, because it would look cool when tripping balls.  We'd say the man deserves a better legacy, but that thought begins to dissipate when you read his quote at the end of the article:  "Go to the meadow, go the gardens, go to the woods.  Open your eyes!"

-Next week's Economist has one of those long focus sections, this one will be about banking.  I will probably need to use some amphetamines that a little Irish lad brews in a broken toilet to make it through that, which means I may revert to just using expletives.  God knows it's going to be full of depressing articles about...well, fill in the blank.  And to Sharif and Matthew, yes, this is a weekly feature.  It will last as long as ER, which is apparently still on.  Thankfully, we will not feature Uncle Jesse in a suicidal dig for ratings.

Comments

[Hugh Stewart]

Do this more.

ALSO: Good news. Conrad Black's writing another memoir while he's in jail!

[Dirk Deppey]

Thank you for this. I used to be a devoted Economist subscriber in the 1990s, but fell away when Fantagraphics called, my income got cut in half and funnybooks ate my life. I should probably start reading it again, but these reviews are a nice half-step.

[Rob]

Ah, so much good stuff in this blog, and then you come out with something as mindnumbing as this:

"God forbid people sleep too much and develop joint pain while being anxious and irritable. It's not like there's worse problems in the world."

Sure, there are worse problems in the world.
There are things that are worse than having a 100% requirement for 12 hours sleep every day, lest you are no longer able to walk downstairs or wash and bathe yourself. There are things that are worse than having to have a wheelchair if you want to walk more than 200 yards. There are things far worse than having a mind which feels like it's had influenza constantly for the last 15 years.

There are, in fact, things far, far worse than having everyone think that you're just making it up, and treating it like a joke illness that applies only to lazy people and hypochondriacs who want a day off work to watch the football.

But, you know what? Not every single person who is capable of making some progress on the treatment of M.E. is going to be capable of sorting out those things which are "far worse", so they're doing what they can for people like my wife, so that she doesn't have people telling her that "it's all in her head", or that she should "snap out of it".

Which, is of course, far less important than writing a blog largely about comics and their failings. Because there are, clearly, not things in the world which are worth spending more time on than that.

[Matthew J. Brady]

James Carville comes up with ridiculous, nonsensical sayings, Cajun style!

Good to see that this will be a regular thing. I'll keep reading, and try to add silly comments when they come to me. Also, I'll take credit for the Miley Cyrus comment, since I brought her up last week. It's not like you've heard about her anywhere else, right?