If you're keeping track, we fell asleep on the week to week coverage, and this is the first Econ V. Idiot in 14 days. While excuses are fun, so is brewing up bath-tub meth, and since we can't rock the latter via the internet, we're going to hold back on the former as well. Safe to say that you missed us, we missed you, and great shakes are a-popping.
-The US is enjoying the focus that an election drags away, as there wasn't too much protesting from the O'Reilly circle regarding the sending of a senior envoy to join the international talks with Iran. Sure would boil the oats of a couple of Presidential candidates if this hot-button issue got resolved before they got a chance to take a swing, but I'll take their hurt feelings over a lack of progress twice on Tuesday, six million times the rest of the week.
-Russia and China may think that Robert Mugabe is sort of a douche in private--in the United Nations, they'd rather make sure that he has plenty of guns and ammo to kill as many innocent people as possible. Go figure!
-Remember how Ireland voted no on the Lisbon Treaty? Nicholas Sarkozy is pretty sure they meant to vote yes, so he's sending them back to the polls to try again. Democrazy style!
-Somebody should tell Susan Sarandon that Canada is now deporting American war deserters. Wasn't she moving there?
-Belgian brewing company InBev bought Anheuser-Busch. Somewhere, a single tear is rolling down Toby Keith's face.
-Someday, there will be positive news about General Motors, probably around the time when they are down to four employees, they don't sell cars, and I live on the moon.
Leaders
-Similar to the oil cover story from a few weeks ago, this issue is all about the continuing financial crisis. The leaders section opens with a succinct one-pager dealing with the current state of Freddie Mac & Fannie Mac, the government bailout to save them, and why it never should have happened in the first place. Oddly, the article doesn't present one of those pie-in-the-sky type "here's how to fix the future" that this publication often drops, instead it focuses on what happened, what's happening, and why that is the right call. A little more pizazz would have been nice, but the article is decently informative. The bail-out wasn't much of a surprise, but I guess that doesn't mean you shouldn't report something just because you accurately predicted it.
-Here's your once a month reminder from The Economist going out to the rest of the world that, while they would vote for Obama, they can't, because they are the rest of the world, and not American voters. They bring this up all the time. Boring!
-This issue also contains a full ten page section on the current state of al-Qaeda, wherein I discovered many things, all of them interesting, the least of which is that unless you use the word to start a sentence, one is not to capitalize the "a" in al-Qaeda. For those of you with any curiosity as to who those people are that wish for you to be dead, this is sort of like reading the back of their baseball card.
-The Economist does one of those "shucks, here's the real world, here's the right world" op-pieces where it points out that, while it's wonderful that the International Criminal Court has requested an arrest warrant for the President of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, since the guy is totally guilty of genoicide in Darfur, the reality of the situation (that it isn't like he's going to surrender, that the UN Security Council could shut it down, etc.) means that it might not be for the greater good to put him on trial. As the article points out, "the heart demands justice"--but reality may need it to wait.
-Piracy hurts a lot of industries--for the most part, industries I could care less if they are being hurt--but this is an interesting enough piece about companies that have found ways to deal with piracy that acknowledge both their inability to combat it and the ways in which accepting it can help them profit from it. Smarts!
-Early on, when this little Econ project was in the gestation period, I considered the idea of doing an "article of the week" type focus, but decided against it due to the idea that it would be more interesting to take a wider shotgun approach to the magazine, making it possible to include all the articles I don't understand. (Which is usually about half of the magazine.) That being said, if I were to focus solely on an article, it would probably be something like this "Briefing" on the contemporary Turkey--it's a really well-written piece that looks at a part of the world that is more on the cusp of massive change then just about anywhere else. From a political, social and historical perspective, this is one of the most important periods of development for Turks, and I can't recall ever reading a publication that covered the situation in such depth. From the point of view of someone whose knowledge of that portion of the world is pathetic, this is an excellent piece of coverage. (This, by the way, is called "over-selling.")
Letters
-I have love for you letter section, and that love is based on the fact that the motherfucking Prime Minister of the Czech Republic wrote in. Sure, he's, telling you that you need to get your facts straight, but hey: it's the Prime Minister of a pretty serious country. Love for you. Love for your letters section.
United States
-This article about the Hispanic vote in America is an interesting one, but it's also a somewhat obnoxious example of the constant pandering American candidates involve themselves with--it's not that Hispanic's shouldn't congregate en masse, it's more the overall scope of a campaign trail that so far has just leapfrogged from pressure group to pressure group. Despite all the claims of "for the people" type speechifying, all McCain and Obama are currently showing is how little any sort of majority opinion exists in the US--they're just going from one group to another, be it the National Council of La Raza, a powerful Israeli lobbying group, Family Farm collectives and anti-NAFTA unions. Then they just produce a speech appealing to each group, tailor made and full of empty rhetoric. It's election by piecemeal, like assembling a world take-over in RISK by collecting all the countries in Australia and South America while leaving the other guy trying to hold onto Asia early in the game. (Never try to hold onto Asia early--the back door is going to be wide open the whole time you're struggling with Europe.)
-As some might have expected but failed to say loudly out of concerns that they might be stabbed by those so in love with "hope" and "change" that they failed to remember that political candidates in search of higher office have pretty much always been willing to say just about anything to get elected, Obama continues to have about four or seventy plans for Iraq, and only one of those is the one where America bails out with a quickness. As The Economist points out, even though he might've earned a nomination and a pretty dogmatic support network with some pretty steep promises, nobody really knows what the fuck his plans are for getting out of Baghdad.
-Mike Bloomberg doesn't get a huge amount of love on a regular basis, but if he continues on his current course of going after poverty with knives out, there maybe some historical recognition a-coming. (The after-you're-out-of-office kind.) Along with NYC, Los Angeles, Miami and Cincinnati agree that it's high time to reassess the federal poverty measure (used to determine how many people are termed technically poor), which is the first step in figuring out how the hell you help the people who have jobs, work like psychopaths, and still live at the bottom of civilization. Whether Congress follows Bloomberg's lead (he's come up with a new calculus and already used it to push ahead his own NYC-based initiatives to combat poverty), he's done something that few mayors can lay claim too: he didn't pass the buck and hope for an angel. Impressive shit.
-The Economist is a regular treasure trove of for collectors of things that are dying on the vine of time--now, in addition to previous articles about the Yellow Pages and college yearbooks, the USA is losing it's last proper paddle-wheeled steamboat. As a previous article about Yellowstone pointed out, there may be a loud bit of complaining on the part of some Americans, the truth is that not enough people give a shit anymore. I'd be a liar to buck that trend--see you in hell, Delta Queen.
-Lexington's article about why McCain and Obama should figure out running-mates with some complimentary and contradictory skill-sets is pretty fantastic, sure, but here's the two quotes that are pure political cocaine, and should have been taught to me when I was in 4th grade, regarding the job of vice-president:
"The most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived."
-John Adams
"[The vice-presidency] isn't worth a pitcher of warm piss."
-John Nance Garner, FDR's first vice-presidency.
The Americas
-Her name is Rio, and when not dancing on the sand, her streets are covered over with blood, often spilled by teenagers with machine guns. There's a new sheriff in town though, albeit a governor less likely to rock a hat and spurs, and he's going after Brazilian crime. Not much of an impact on it yet, but as the article points out, having somebody at least try to deal with the violence is a vast improvement over the past governor--a football commentator turned televangelist turned governor. That's just too many goddamn jobs for one life.
-When the extremist of the extreme left likes to praise Hugo Chavez, they usually ignore the fact that, since he's come into power, Venezuela's homicide rate has tripled in 9 years, giving it the second highest murder rate in the world. (After El Salvador.) Let's ratchet that disgust to puke-level with these little factoids: two out of every 100 prisoners are killed a year, and those deaths don't count towards the tripling. Nor does anybody who is killed by the police while "resisting arrest." Still holding back?
39 suspects killed for every policeman. You know, I think I just figured out how socialism works. Thanks, college!
Asia
-Good god, I'd known that the Ganges river was a stew of excrement and pollution for years, I can't even remember the first time I'd read that, but I had no idea that people where still doing that daily Hindu ritual of drinking it. That's so unsettling and ugh, just fucking gross. I don't buy into Hinduism anymore than I buy into Zeus, but I certainly don't mind if it's what somebody believes--still, don't drink watered down feces and industrial waste. Especially when you've got one thousand Indian children dying from diarrhea every single day. We've got to get past this kind of ABC level stuff if we're going to get to moving sidewalks and robot maids.
-They actually went ahead and arrested Anwar Ibrahim on charges of sodomy! It wasn't enough that they jailed the dude for 15 years for sodomy once before, only to have him released on an overturned conviction, it wasn't enough that they've got photographs showing his current accuser hanging out with the government officials most closely involved with benefiting from Ibrahim's incarceration, it doesn't even matter that the entire world has responded by saying "you know this is total bullshit, right?"--Malaysian courts just went right along with the whole farce! Oh, and in case you were wondering, no, it's not an accusation of rape or anything. It's just an accusation of old school homosexual act of love, and yes, you can go to jail for 15 years for that. So it's a completely victimless crime that carries a horrible sentence, and he's not even guilty of it! Bananas gone crazy!
-Sorry dudes and dudettes who have made it to the top of their sport and are traveling to Beijing for the Olympics--no dog for you. (This little snippet made me realize that, since I'm pretty much an unrepentant meat-eater and a sort of "whatever goes" guy when it comes to local culture, I think I might have to try dog when I finally make it to China. My apologies, weak stomachs and Moby fans.)
Middle East and Africa
-I've said most of what I need to say about Zimbabwe in the past few weeks, and I'm sure the Economist will deal more thoroughly with the current negotiations between Mugabe and Tsvangirai, so I'll keep it quick--this little piece deals mostly with the continuing saga of the Zimbabwean dollar: once more valuable than the American dollar in 1980, it is now somewhere exchanging at 75 billion to one American greenback. That's a 2.2 million per cent rate of inflation a year.
-Hey, guess what's on its way back and has nothing to do with Johnny Depp? Pirates. As in, avast, come starboard, ye scurvy dogs. It would be funny if it wasn't so incredibly dangerous, expensive, and occasionally resulting in death. Good old Somalia--always willing to stretch the boundary of what one imagined the worst possible outcome could be.
Europe
-I think it's safe to say that one of the goals of this publication is to consistently point out what a shit-awful prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is, and how grateful every civilized country should be that they don't have to sit around watching him rewrite every possible law he can find that pertains to him going to jail for being an incorrigible thief, a greedy and obsessive liar, and an overall sleaze-monger. I also think that, at this point, it might benefit me to search out another publications take on Italy--The Economist is pretty set in their ways on this one. (And you should thank me profusely, as I was about sixty seconds away from posting a full nude pic of Berlusconi that some paparazzi snapped at a beach trip he took, until I finally just figured--hey, you've got Google image too.)
-An interesting little article about the conflict between France and French Muslims, pointing out that some woman are choosing the burqa upon their arrival to a country less respectful towards their religious practices then the ones they left behind. The whole burqa thing is a bed of thorns to think about--while I find the behavior of certain Muslim sects towards women to be horribly backwards and sexist, it does seem to me that the best course of action is rarely one where non-Muslims and angry white people start telling immigrants how they should behave and what they should wear. Whereas it's easy, and for me, totally agreeable, to outlaw incinerating wives and killing spouses for infidelity, I can't see the argument in deciding what women should be allowed to wear as one that should be determined by anyone other than the women directly involved. (Which is another difficult thing, because how many are like Faiza M, who chose the headscarf because she was uncomfortable with leering Frenchmen, and how many are in fear of a domineering husband?)
-Polish dockworkers may have changed the world at one point, but now all they're doing is showcasing how a union can destroy, almost completely, the ability for an industry to profit during a shipbuilding boom. Like the aforementioned paddle-wheel boat, it would be a better world if the power of the Polish labor movement was able to succeed at more than being nostalgic. (Like turning a profit.)
-Charlemagne points out an upcoming test of people's environmental mettle: the majority of Europeans have said for years that they were willing to suffer through serious changes in lifestyle for the sake of cleaning up the planet and lowering pollution, and now the intensely popular (and only a decade old) cheap flights that connect European cities will serve to see if they meant it. If they want to keep these flights, then they may (if the new greenhouse targets are approved) have to help cover expensive carbon taxes, and a cheap trip to Amsterdam will become an expensive one. We'll see. This is walk the talk time.
Britain
-There's another article about the economic woes of Britain that opens the section, read it if you're really antsy and need some naptime, it's a snooze, but the second piece, about the wave of strikes going on in Britain--now that's a wake-up. While the wages of those on strike have been going up at a stronger rate then those who can't strike (because they work in non-unionized jobs), unions keep going back to the well, seeming to miss the point that they're rapidly losing any public sympathy at all. While it's understandable when labor protests the lack of respect shown them during a boom, the non-stop decline of the British economy points to a fundamental disconnect with reality: if nobody else has gotten a raise since mid-2002, why should they give a shit about people who have continually been kowtowed to for the last six years? Wake up, school support staff, Land Registry officials, teachers, immigration bureaucrats and coast guardians: ain't no happiness nowhere.
-Bagehot, as Jason pointed out, will have to remain man or woman, which is totally fine with me, as I was disappointed to find that he/she wrote a column that I didn't find that enjoyable. It's about shitty cities in Britain, and it made me want to change these weekly round-ups to a different magazine. 2000AD or something. Maybe In Style.
International (Nothing smart-alecky, I think I'm still embarrassed about missing a week)
-Are Russia and China vetoing sanctions about Mugabe to cover their own ass in the future? This long article sort of says yes, maybe and then resolves itself in the delightfully complicated work of "I don't know, broheim." I kid, but don't we all wish super-complex international negotiations could just result in the outcome we all want? Like Mugabe in jail, or on fire?
-Guess what prevents the poaching of elephants? Not a bunch of commercials with celebrities and pledge drives! The legal sale of ivory, from legally killed elephants! While I don't particularly believe in the killing of elephants personally, it does seem that killing elephants prevents rampant poaching of elephants, so if you want more elephants, you should support people killing elephants. Ah, real world logistics: they're all about clashing with optimistic fantasy.
Business
-The two companies not suffering from any sort of credit crisis? Boeing and Airbus, but mostly because they are slower than shit, and all the orders they've received over the past years have them producing planes past 2015. Good for them, industry that I sort of hate more than most industries.
-Hey, where's the rest? I can honestly tell you that I barely understood the Finance & Economics section this week, was bored to tears by the Science section, and figured that you wouldn't be mad at me, dear reader. After all, if you've made it this far, even if you're just skimming, you've already realized that I love you, madly, deeply and purely. Like a monkey kissing a dolphin on the edge of the galaxy. That much.
Books and Arts
-Bottled water is one of the more farcical success stories--it's a consistently profitable and growing industry that will, like the internet, become one of those things that the children of today will grow to have no memory of a time when there wasn't anything particularly wrong with tap water beyond claims of fluoride additions. If you're interested in more about it, then Elizabeth Royte wrote a book about it.
-It's rare that the Economist convinces me to rush out and pick up a book they review--mostly because of the various "i'm too busy" excuses used to conceal how much time I dedicate to watching Joel McHale make fun of people that I hate--but I'm definitely going to keep an eye out for any of the four books mentioned in this article about the current Russian climate, which is cold with an 80% chance of murder.
-You just know that these book reviewers are the last people on Earth who are going to give an objective review of a book on the history of trade, especially when said history is as ridden with praise as William Bernstein's A Splendid Exchange. While they make a decent case for the book, there's still a certain level of exhaustion I've begun to experience getting the daily dose of The Economists "Trade Fixes Everything" mentality. It's one of the few subjects in the magazine that they don't seem to consider debatable.
Obituary: John Templeton
-John Templeton certainly sounds like an interesting individual--a guy who first hit the map buying everything he could in 1939, eventually proving that, for him at least, buying when everybody else sold, and selling when everybody else bought, could make you rich. The oddness of devoting a decent portion of that to individual achievements in "life's spiritual dimension" only makes him that much more of a "is there a good biography on this dude" kind of...dude? He's the multi-millionaire (billionaire?) opposite of that Randi guy who pays to prove frauds--Templeton liked to spend money finding proof for God's performance in real-world issues. (Is water fine-tuned to promote life? Templeton's millions will help scientists find out! Weird!) I sometimes wonder if it's a mite ghoulish and in poor taste to write somewhat sarcastically about people who just died--but this guy was power-walking three weeks ago, and died at 95 after what sounds to be a pretty satisfactory life. The world can take it.
-Next week in The Economist--I get back on schedule, the publication confuses me, and readership of this never-say-die feature continues to drop like a stone.
I love you too, Tucker.
Posted by: hugh stewart | 2008.07.26 at 11:41
My friend had eaten a dog. I asked her what it was like, she said "yellow fur with a pink nose."
By the way, are you really expecting us to believe that your real names are "Tucker and Nina Stone"? Cause I'm sorry but that's really unlikely.
Posted by: n. | 2008.07.26 at 12:01
Yeah, so says a guy named "n". Glad to see you still going, Tucker. I missed this feature while it was gone. Good reading, as always.
Posted by: Matthew J. Brady | 2008.07.30 at 17:29