-Mahmoud Ahmadinejad demanded that Barack Obama apologize for "American crimes" against Iran. Obama was like "Oh, sure, I'll get right on that. Can you run me off a list? Because that's really my top priority. No, I'm serious! Joe, stop giggling. .... What's that? No, somebody told Biden a joke about umbrellas. Now, what were you saying? I want to write this down. JOE. You gotta stop man, I'm on the phone!"
-The International Criminal Court got going with Thomas Lubanga, one of those Congolese types who used children as soldiers to "kill, pillage and rape." I don't think this is one of those trials that anybody wants to ever have to be involved with on a specific basis, as I'm sure that the evidence is all really terrible shit to deal with, guilty or not. Glad somebody has the stomach for it. What a horrible job.
-Kim Jong Il--remember how everybody was thinking he might be dead, and then North Korea released a doctored photograph that had a bunch of greenery in the background despite the government claiming that it was a recent picture, which meant that the crop appearance didn't make sense? Well, he showed up and met some Chinese official. His kid told everybody that his dad was fine, but all I want to know is: was it the kid who is obsessed with Eric Clapton?
-Japan joined all the other superpowers that have provided naval ships to protect commercial ships off the coast of Somalia, meaning there is a whole lot of expensive military equipment full of soldiers patrolling the coast of a dangerous country where the power is mostly in the hands of some pretty hardcore extremist groups and gangs. Remember Yemen? Hopefully somebody does.
-Afghanistan's elections have been postponed from May to August, mostly because it's been terribly unsafe for voters to be registered.
-Doesn't seem to be a full article on this, but I imagine there will be soon: Iceland's government collapsed due to street protests! Okay, well, the collapse of the Icelandic economy, which motivated the protests, probably had a little bit to do with it. But still! Street protests, mostly peaceful, bring down government! It's like that Gandhi movie, only it's a true story!
-The Mexican army arrested a guy who was the one man acid shop when it came time to dissolve bodies for druglords. His total? 300 bodies destroyed. Jeez.
-Here's some job cuts for you: Starbucks: 6700. Sprint Nextel: 8000. Philips: 6000. Pfizer: 8300. Microsoft: 5000. ING: 7000. Home Depot: 7000. Caterpillar: 20,000. 65,000 people lost their job on the same day. The worst case scenario imagined is one where the unemployment level worldwide is 50 million people.
-John Thain was in charge of Bank of America--he's not anymore--and he admitted spending $1.2 million dollars on fixing up his office wasn't the best idea he'd ever had. (One might argue that quitting takes the prize.)
-Here's an aspect of the whole billion dollars in bonuses that most people might ignore until they realize that it does, actually, impact them in a weird way: New York State lost $1 billion in tax revenues and New York City lost $275 million, all from the lost tax money they would've received from year end Wall Street bonuses.
....and that's it? Yes, unfortunately, despite this being one of the best issues of the year thus far--although next week's clearly takes the cake in covers--the Factual Opinion's Econ-Idiot had to spend the majority of writing team dealing with the actual for-pay work at New York's I Fight For You, Nerd God Festival. Some of that will be dealt with here in the coming week with a special Virgin Read, as well as a couple of surprise appearances at a few other websites, and be sure to keep an eye on comiXology, where some more silliness--some audio, some of the written word type--will be available. Comics of the Weak, as is its wont, will be here as well.
As always, the entire issue of this past weeks Economist is available for your perusal at their website. The best article for my money this week had to be the one about how the world defines "failed states", but there's also some excellent stuff on the latest developments in Zimbabwe, and, of course, the current state of finance in Asia. It's a great, great issue, and I'm sorry there wasn't more time to deal with it here.
On a side note, to the regular readers and comment leavers that I got a chance to meet this past weekend: You guys and gals are the absolute best. Thanks for keeping up with the site, and thanks for taking the time to stop by and say hello.
Bummer about the truncated coverage, but I can forgive you, since you have a good reason. I just wanted to ask: what's up with that cover? It looks like a close-up of a King Tut statue, going all googly-eyed. I don't understand.
Posted by: Matthew J. Brady | 2009.02.08 at 12:30
That cover is somewhat niftier than the 'generation kill' version we got in the UK.
That estimate of the credit crunch costing 50 million jobs actually doesn't sound THAT bad if, (big IF, of course) it proves to be true. When you consider the world population isn't far short of 7 billion. That's well under one percent of the world's poplulation...
Posted by: tam | 2009.02.08 at 13:57
That's presumably a Buddha eye. Or at least it's in the same style as a Buddha eye bookmark I have.
Posted by: matthew | 2009.02.09 at 01:28
The cover--actually, I was kind of fascinated by it. It's a Buddha eye, yes, but it's a Buddha eye that's been adjusted to express concern--which is something I doubt you could get away with if you did it with just about any other major religious figure. If the cover was about the American economy, and it was a pic of Jesus looking upset/freaked out? Or if it was about the Mideast and you had the prophet doing the same? There's a potential that a future issue of the magazine might have some letters complaining, obviously I'm keeping an eye out for it.
And Tam--yes, you're absolutely right. At the same time...it does sort of depend on who the 50 million are. In the case of the bonuses getting cut down, that loss of tax revenue can create a sort of downward spiral type problem, where budget cutbacks force city/state employees out of their jobs. (I'm thinking of Alabama a few years back, and how tax shortfalls forced major cutbacks in education and law enforcement, which led to crime increase, both immediate and in the future.) If 50 million Starbucks employees lose their job, obviously that has less of a global impact. But if the 50 million results in global or national shortfalls, all while most major governments are committing to such massive bailout and stimulus programs, that's the sort of thing that can take this recession thing into something that slogs along for decades.
As always though--I'm operating off pure opinion here, based off a couple of brief sentences. I'm sure there is a reason why the Economist hasn't written a longer article about the exact thing I'm mentioning, and I'd wager it's because they don't think there's enough information to make that assumption. You can be guaranteed that if it's something I'm thinking of, and it's not referenced by article...that means it's probably not very accurate, or it's just not time to look at it yet. But yeah--I had the same reaction. 50 million sounds ugly, but it doesn't make up a huge global number.
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2009.02.09 at 08:05