-The old boss of eBay started one of those exploratory committees people come up with when they plan to run for governor of California. The only real reason to pay attention is because it gives one an opportunity to link to this. Yep, same person.
-You know how the guy who was president of Taiwan up until last year is on trial for corruption charges? Well, after nailing his brother-in-law and some other family members, his wife just joined the club by pleading guilty to "charges of money-laundering and forgery." Not exactly a bunch of tight-lipped organized crime types here. They're either really, really guilty, or they'll all planning to roll on the ex-president, or the Taiwanese judicial system is jacked up. I'm betting on option one, but hey: just picked that randomly.
-Pakistan admitted that some people in Pakistan probably had something to do with the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which was nice of them...but kind of late in the game considering they had already arrested 71 Pakistanis for the attacks.
-Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez had some extremists types arrested--surprisingly enough, they were extremists who actually have some love for Chavez.
-The drug war in Mexico continues--as it has for, you know, ever--with 21 people killed in northern Mexico. The police chief in Cancun, as well as some others, were also arrested for killing a Mexican army general who had been brought out of retirement in an attempt to clean up corruption in the Cancun police force. Oh, and a group made up of three former Latin American presidents, as well as some writers, issued a call to reexamine the current world drug policy since it's been the same for a good long while and, well, absolutely nothing has fucking changed at all, as long as you ignore all of the stuff that has gotten much worse.
-The FARC guerrillas of Columbia--who just released some long-held hostages a little over a week ago--are reported to have killed 17 people.
-Somebody had to set the record for worst economy in the European Union, so Latvia went ahead and took the fall. Thanks, guys!
-In case you didn't already hear about it, and considering that horrible face-eating monkey story, maybe you didn't, two working spacecraft--a Russian and American one--crashed into each other. It's the first time that has ever happened. (Because for some reason it's not as big of a deal that old broken ones apparently smash into each other every couple of months.)
-They don't tell you the guy's name, but a former head of risk at HBOS revealed that he was fired in 2004 for warning his employer that they were "expanding to quickly." That's sort of even more bananas when you realize that this guy's job--head of risk--was something he was obviously really good at, since he "warned" HBOs about a "risk" and that "risk" turned out to be totally accurate. And yet? Fired!
-At some point, we'll probably be reading a nice long article about why everybody should be more like Barclays, the one bank who didn't get any British bail-out money and just recently turned a tidy profit for the last year. (About a week later, we'll read about systematic corruption at Barclays, but for a week at least, in the near future, we'll all be excited.)
-A new record has been set: $579 million. What's it a record for? "The largest combined settlement ever paid by American companies under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act." Way to make America look good, Halliburton and KBR! You guys are the best. The best at being complete assholes, but hey: life's a competition, and you just won! Sort of.
-Nissan plans to fire 20,000 people, General Motors did fire 10,000, will be firing lots more. Intel, on the other hand, will be hiring 7,000. (Is there a cross-over?)
-Live Nation and Ticketmaster are going to team up again, which means we'll probably have to tune in to whatever channel they show the anti-trust arguments on just to see if Pearl Jam is still as completely irrelevant as I'm absolutely sure that they are.
-Nothing like a racist airline! Alaska Airlines--otherwise known as the airline most people refer to as "Alaska has its own airline?"--is asking the government to check and see if Virgin America is allowed to be beating the shit out of it in sales by checking on the companies "citizenship status." I guess you have a lot of free time when you're an Alaskan airline company.
Leaders
-With the Economist joining into the "punish the executives" club that cheers the current pay limits, they also make a great point here: why didn't the shareholders or the boards of these banks step up earlier? Why didn't anybody listen to the risk managers who warned them, and why didn't the positive pollys see the problems in the building of debt cake? As it goes, the Economist agrees that pay needs to be reformed--but scapegoating the top man or woman fails to address that a whole lot of other people screwed up too. (And it's only implied here, but I'll say it outright--some of those people crying horror stories about lost investments should remember that part of investing in a company means taking a portion of the responsibility for what that company is doing with your money. If you don't check the wiring in your house, and it burns down because you're running a Christmas tree through a multi-tap powering an iron lung, it's not all the fault of the electric company. Know your own shit.)
-The Economist Versus Idiot doesn't get shown up by Dirk Deppey's Journalista very often, but it did happen this week, with him overstepping his strictly defined comic boundaries to link to a story about e-book readers and how they can help newspapers. We'll welcome the company for now, but he better steer clear of making fun of the letters section: that shit has a patent on it.
-Time and a love of sleep fought with my desire to link to every article in this weeks excellent section on the middle class (the global one, not just the one portrayed in American Beauty), but it's definitely worth a look if you've got the time. This leader article, where it's pointed out that the middle class has made more progress and carries more transformative economic and social power than any other, is a great introduction. The rest of the articles, which formed the 22 page pull-out section in this weeks issue, begin here.
Letters
-Without a doubt, the best letter ever to be published since the inception of these columns: Daniel Tilles, from Crakow, Poland, who wrote in to thank the Economist for using a different stereotypical picture to accompany articles about eastern Europe. As Tilles so accurately--and hilariously--points out, the Economist finally used a "dentally-challenged villager" instead of the standard "old lady with a shawl wrapped over her head." Future recommendations from Tilles include Roma with horse-drawn cart, elderly veterans in Soviet uniforms, and, for the clincher, "vodka-soaked vagrants."
Mr. Tilles--you win the day. Too bad you live in Poland, or you'd have a kiss on the mouth right now.
United States
-A weird sort of article opens the US section--not a full-on chiding of Obama, but a ruler snap of sorts at least. It's a sort of "you aren't living up to your promise and are too cynical" take on Prezzie, which seems both a little bit accurate while still sounding a little bit soon--either way, it's worth looking at, if you can get around some writing that sounds like it belonged up top in the official opinion section. I'm still not sure what to say about this one. I suppose "say it taint so" always works, as long as you can imagine a wink and nudge because of the way I said "taint."
-Okay, South Carolina--get a better public relations team. How the fuck am I just now finding out that the current governor slept in his office for six years running when he was a congressman? (He refused to take taxpayer money to pay for housing.) Six years! What the fuck is all this internet shit for if nobody nails this story? Seriously, I don't care if the guy isn't qualified to raise a hamster, that Shit Is For The Win.
-The NAACP recently celebrated it's 100th anniversary on Feburay 12th and the Economist gives a quick background on the organization, it's newest and youngest ever president, and a quick statistic check on it's membership numbers, which have dropped from the half a million of the 1960s to only 300,000 today. Whatever, I'm not going to make fun of the NAACP. Not here, I mean.
-Speaking of twitter, some politicians are now using the service to keep their constituents updated on what they're doing--Claire McCaskill, a Missouri senator is pretty active. Interestingly enough, more Republicans use twitter than Democrats, which some dude thinks is because the Republicans are in the minority. So they have less people to talk too? I'm not too sure there's a good reason to believe that. I am sure that this information is more on the side of "who fucking cares" than it is "possibly valuable." Twitter's nice and all, but there's a reason we keep politicians in rooms far, far away from us. Because they suck.
-It's always nice to do a little reality-check on stuff that seems inherently stupid: abstinence-only education for one, which has actually only been around since 1981, despite it sounding like the same sort of retarded shit that people talked about back in the days when chicks on their period had to hide it in a tent away from the village. On top of that, abstinence only education may survive a little longer, despite studies showing that it doesn't work--like at all, in the slightest, which puts it in a different group altogether from comprehensive sex education, which sometimes does. (Oh, and the goal with these programs is to prevent teenage pregnancy mainly, by the way.)
-Lexington takes a look at "the war over Lincoln", wherein both Republicans and Democrats seek to claim the dead president as their own. (Sorry, but it's just a talk-war. No maces or anything.) It's an interesting enough piece, although i'll give you the weirdest fact in it if you don't have the time, or don't care: 16,000 books on Lincoln have been written since his death and a new one is available on average every single week. Does that make Lincoln bigger than Jesus?
The Americas
-Oh, this is interesting stuff: all those cruise ships that go to Antarctica? The Economist is just counting the minutes until they sink and there's a big awful tragedy. Chilean officials aren't happy about it, because their navy--the one that would be expected to jump into action if a bunch of rich Westerners hit an iceberg (which can happen, surprisingly enough, in ANTARCTICA)--isn't really cut out to be the rich world's own search and rescue squad. I imagine we'll be able to rely on whoever Ashton Kucher was supposed to be in that shitty looking action movie about Kevin Costner's helicopter.
-Canada has it's own problems with NAFTA, most of which stem from it not giving a shit about Mexico, like, at all. Now, this article doesn't say that explicitly, but who are you going to trust? Yourself? C'mon, I got you covered on this one. Canadians hate Mexicans. (Also, Canada's border is a bigger danger to the US than Mexico's.)
Asia
-Australia's wildfires continue, and for some reason--the article does not explain, nor did the one Australian person I asked--some of the wildfires have been intentionally set by arsonists. More than 180 people are dead, the number could eventually reach 300--either way, it has set the record for most deaths already. While not as explicitly upsetting as some of the Economist's articles about tragedy, this is a pretty tough situation to read about.
-After reading this extensive two-page article about the current state of America's relationship with Hamid Karzai--the president of Afghanistan, and a man who everybody knows is completely dependent on American support to stay in office--my own reaction was a bit more personal. What other major news publication is willing to do this much anaylsis on Afghanistan? Even the New York Times was dumping their stories into blips and burbles last year. Whomever it is on the ground in Kabul for the Economist, that person deserves some praise. This is a great fucking piece of journalism.
-Wandering out of hell with no shoes on their feet, exhausted and possibly starving, it's weird to call them the lucky ones: but they are, the few Sri Lankan civilians who have got out of the killzone between the military and the Tamil Tigers. As the first sentence puts it, "hundreds" escaped. That still leaves at least 220,000 civilians behind--and we still don't know how many of those are still alive. Whenever this story breaks open, it's going to be one of the worst ones of the year.
-Is Taiwan's economy the worst hit by the global financial crisis? According to this article, the answer is yes. I'd throw you facts and numbers to prove the point, but this article is all facts and numbers, and none of them--not one--is good.
Middle East and Africa
-Although more ink is used for an article on South Africa's economy, which is doing totally fantastic, if by fantastic you mean not well at all, there's a small box article about the recent swearing in of Morgan Tsvangirai as prime minister of Zimbabwe. The position was created for him, supposedly as a way for power to be shared with Robert Mugabe--as has been noted here before, it's with a boatload of skepticism that any of this should be judged. At this point, it's okay to nod a little--but this is just on- paper progress. The best that can be said, right now, is that it's good that Mugabe didn't have Tsvangirai killed, his usual method of operations.
-Here's some promises that Uganda's president made back in 1986: peace, security, democracy, prosperity and frugal governance. Here's how many of those happened: none! Oh, and he just changed the constitution so he could run again in 2011. His name is Yoweri Museveni.
Hey, Yoweri Muuseveni! You suck!
Europe
-Nicolas Sarkozy pulls off what the Jackal failed too, killing Charles de Gaulle. Sort of. It's been a long ass time since de Gaulle decided that France wouldn't be involved in NATO's military command, and it's sort of become a basic tenet to a lot of French citizens. Sarkozy has made it his mission to reverse the decision as soon as possible.
-Italy had it's own right-to-die fight recently regarding a woman named Eluano Englaro. 17 years ago, she was in a car wreck, and her father has spent the last nine years in courtrooms fighting to remove her from life-support. While you might think that you've read this story before--trust me, you really, really haven't. Fighting in the streets, a suspension of television programming, and a prime minister who threatened to change the constitution and government all on his own, even going so far as to claim "Eluana has been killed!" Italy is a weird place.
-Charlemagne's column is one of those bog-standard pieces about how too many people speak English, and that sucks, but that's the way it goes, and we're all missing out on something awesome, but hey, not much you can do about it, let's all be really sad. I'm ambivalent on the issue, but I get to be ambivalent, because I'm a polymath who speaks and reads nine languages fluently, and none of them are related to fucking science fiction shit. Fight amongst yourselves, boring stupid people! Я не забочу!
Britain
-Hey, holy shit! Britain's entire section is one long article subtitled "How awful are Britain's economic prospects?" Before we answer that, here's the answer to a different question: "How boring is this article?" Very! Hahahahahhahahaaaaah aaahh aaaaaaa hhhha aahahaha aaaaaaaha aahgghg.
International
-Although a lot of people in the entertainment industry seem to think they'll ride this storm out, pointing to movies doing well, what they fail to realize is that most of them work for massive media corporations, and massive media corporations are totally fucked up. There is one gang of four who will probably do well, despite many of them also being on the books of faltering empire: sports. Here's an article about that, and although it focuses prettily heavily on cricket, it eventually gets to the NBA. No offense to cricket fans, but sorry bro: I don't get it. If Electronic Arts doesn't care enough to make a video game version of your sport, it gets no love here.
Business
-Although most people I know, all of whom are young and snot-dribbling, consider the Kindle to be A) fucking ugly as shit and B) fucking lame as dick and C) fuckmonkeyshitasscunt, the Economist has class and a willingness to look to the future, which is something I only care about if it involves me fighting robots. Here's your electronic book article, and don't worry: the writer of the article isn't one of those squee squee technology freaks. It's pretty balanced, although nowhere near as interesting as the electronic paper from a few weeks back.
-The last time Stephen Spielberg was in the Economist, it was so their terrible movie reviewer could talk about how cool that Indiana Jones movie was. So this is a bit of a step up for him, showing up in the Business section to be analyzed about the recent move that DreamWorks made over to Disney.
-Although newspapers are hitting cuts, newswires--like Reuters and Bloomberg--are starting to expand. There's still a question of how to profit, as the online advertising model that those two are experimenting with has yet to bear huge fruit, but it's still nice to know that some journalists may have a place to go when the paper sends them packing.
-This article is pretty dumb, but it is kind of funny.
Finance and Economics
-For those who don't remember Japan's economic crisis in the late 80's, the one that resulted in the "lost decade", Barack Obama pointed it as the one to steer clear of in a recent press conference. The Economist took that ball and ran with it, comparing the way Japan dealt with the way America is dealing now, and the result? America's may be worse, and their reaction may be just as bad as Japan's was. That's not the result that anybody wanted to hear, but hey: if happy news is what you want, you would have given up on this article when I wrote the stuff about Sri Lanka anyway. Power through! It gets worse?
-As mentioned in the leader section, here's the balls-to-the-wall explanation of the bank bailout plan, the one that requires the sort of mental heavy lifting that means I should get back to writing about the Economist when it's not really late at night. Short stuff: there aren't enough details in the bailout plan to explain how it will work, which is why the market responded so negatively, the explanation of clearing mortgage-backed securities and leveraged loans isn't explicit, and it doesn't work hard enough to deal with the toxic housing market. Basically, it's fucked up and big, which makes the fucked up parts worse, because, well, because they're fucking big. Brother, I don't know what to tell you. My head hurts too. Again though, and this is just me personally: if it was a bailout program that could be explained in a couple of sentences, it wouldn't work, I get that. Hell, the financial crisis couldn't be explained in a few sentences, the solution won't be either. But the Economist is right about this one, I think--when government economists and terrified bankers can't figure out what the hell Tim Geithner is talking about, and they're asking for more information, than yes, it's a screwed up plan that needs work.
-Although Buttonwood's empathy is questionable, considering that spat of columns where he argued that people with a little bit of money could profit from the carnage, his general point this week is a solid one. Savers, the people who didn't jack up the economy with bad loans, bad purchases and no safety--they're getting screwed right now, and they'll be getting screwed for the near future. This plays right into my own personal philosophy though: people who make good choices are losers. Let's go eat some paint chips!
Science and Technology
-Just an FYI for you that, for some reason, there aren't any heavy lifting articles in the Science section this week. For example, here's a quick one about how smaller bears can run faster and longer than larger bears. I'm no zoologist, but I bet you I could've nailed that one on an SAT test if I'd been asked, and I don't think that the information was going to come up in my life in any other fashion. There's also an article about how animals that break their teeth are probably starving, because you usually break your teeth when you're freaking out and desperate to get some meat off the bone. Again, that's pretty specific and all, but I'm guessing you could probably figured that if you were kidnapped at 12 and dumped in a basement to answer common sense-y sounding science questions. About animals.
Books and Arts
-Not sure I'll check it out anytime soon, as the reading table hit overflow recently, but Securing the City: Inside America's Best Counterterror Force-The NYPD sounds pretty great. Any New Yorker worth their salt will acknowledge that the NYPD hits its share of regular bumps, and it certainly seems like they have some kind of horrifying racist scandal every 24 months, but even a cursory background study of their anti-terror program, built up following 9/11, is a sterling education in success. With teams in London, Singapore and Tel Aviv--NYPD teams--and an excellent foreign language program that outshines certain other federal government organizations, the organization is one that is rapidly becoming a national model for active protection.
-Huh, some general called Abraham Lincoln a baboon. That's the kind of information available in David Reynolds' new 704 page history of America: lots and lots of trivia. Sounds awful.
-Cate Blanchett and her husband Andrew Upton continue striving to make the Sydney Theater Company an even bigger deal than it already is, which is a pretty big deal. From what is reviewed here--a two part version of Shakespeare's history plays (all of them) that's played over the course of two evenings--it certainly sounds like they deserve the acclaim. Brooklyn fans take note: Bergman's best muse, Liv Ullman, will be bringing her Sydney born version of Streetcar Named Desire, also starring Blanchett, to BAM sometime this year.
Obituary: Rose Davis
-This is one of those obituaries of someone who was most well-known in Britain, but it's an interesting enough story--as well as being, you know, an obituary of someone who died a couple of weeks back--that I'm certainly not going to complain about it. Rose was married to a man who was wrongfully imprisoned, and she ended up becoming the voice of the East End, a woman who fought hard to get her husband out of jail. And although she succeeded once, it eventually become clear the guy wasn't cut from holy cloth--he went back to jail a year later, for a bank robbery he was a part of--she certainly deserves nothing less than respect. Not much to say about this--Rose sounds like a damn fine woman.
All art belongs to the Economist, except for the logo from Read The Stimulus, the goony picture from the Clemson website,day of the jackal is totally forsyth's, e. honda is e. honda, he belongs to e. honda, and just because the belongs-to-fx shield doesn't have anything to do with it, i miss it and wanted to think about it.
The bank bailout plan, not the stimulus.
Posted by: David Weman | 2009.02.22 at 08:51
Agh, i let the two segue together. Well, that's a bad one, not sure what to say. Shit.
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2009.02.22 at 13:42
Well, I sort of fixed it. Gotta stop doing the financey articles late at night.
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2009.02.22 at 13:46
Alaska Airlines functions all along the West Coast. They're actually a good-sized company, comparable to Southwest Airlines.
Posted by: Dirk Deppey | 2009.02.22 at 20:41
Not that my experience is universal or anything, but speaking as a product of abstinence-only high school education, it always seems like a mistake to ponder whether or not the education itself works... I mean, it doesn't, and I seriously doubt a lot of the folks teaching it believed it did, but that's not totally the point. By settling 'abstinence' into the sex ed part of the schedule, it prevents anything else from getting in there, which I daresay is the more important aspect... in other words, it's not defensive but offensive -- anti-teaching teaching, more or less -- ensuring that the parents retain the authority to give or deny instruction as per details of contraceptives or whatnot beyond the classroom. I don't even think we heard the word condoms, let alone anything girls can take, oh no no no.
Which... yeah, that wound up costing a billion and a half dollars over the last 30 or so years. I know it differs from program to program... I went to Catholic school, so it had the added benefit of fitting in neatly with Catholic teachings on sexuality (like, even in speech/debate class you weren't allowed to select a topic that directly opposed the Church's teaching), although it wasn't seamless... masturbation was kind of a big conflict, whether it was ok or not. I don't think the non-Catholic programs had those problems...?
Posted by: Jog | 2009.02.22 at 21:23
I think you might be viewing the abstinence only thing a bit differently than the article looks at it--they seem to carve a pretty hard line, focusing mainly on whether or not a program results in lower teenage pregnancy rates. They mention sexually transmitted diseases in the first paragraph, but the only statistics that are included as factor are whether or not a sex education program (abstinence or comprehensive) brings down the pregnancy rate. i'm not saying I disagree with any of what you're saying, but that it does seem like the purse string decision is based on that factor primarily.
The concept of it being offensive is interesting though--I just don't believe that's something that is used as an argument to determine whether or not abstinence only programs continue to receive federal funding, which is the main focus of the article.
Dirk: I don't believe that for a second, but nice try.
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2009.02.22 at 21:56
That's it -- I'm totally seizing the Economist letters section in the name of Journalista. This means war!
Posted by: Dirk Deppey | 2009.02.22 at 22:25
Well, I'll always have my live stand-up readings of Rutgers Centurion at the local Borders. You and Fantagraphics can't take that away from me, Arizona!
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2009.02.22 at 22:56
I have to be honest, I don't know how you get through the entire magazine so quickly! I bought a subscription for myself based solely on your weekly write-ups - I wanted to read through the magazine on my own, draw my own conclusions, and compare them to yours. But I can't do it. I can't read the whole thing as fast as you do. I'm still working on the last 20 pages of "The Return of Economic Nationalism," how am I supposed to read last week's and next week's in time for your next summary?
Anyway, phenomenal work, as always.
Posted by: Kenny | 2009.02.23 at 09:21
Kenny, Tucker doesn't read The Economist.
It's all automatic writing based on his visits with a kid from the Make a Wish Foundation.
Posted by: seth hurley | 2009.02.23 at 11:14
If you want more anecdotal evidence on the abstinence education, I also was raised pretty religious, and I went to a Christian (but not Catholic) school from first through twelfth grade. We didn't get too much in the way of sex education, but it was definitely abstinence-only. I don't think much of anything in the way of birth control was discussed, and there definitely wasn't a lot of explanation of reproductive systems or anatomy. In fact, I'm trying to remember what we DID talk about; I think it was related to Bible studies, so it mostly involved love and commitment and honoring God and that sort of thing. But the main message was "don't have sex unless you're married".
Anyway, it was a very small school (five students in my graduating class, although one year I think the class numbered twelve), and I know there were at least three girls that got pregnant (and were then kicked out of school; that's some great Christian values there). So I would think that the program was pretty much a failure.
Posted by: Matthew J. Brady | 2009.02.24 at 10:14
Just how good is The Economist, would you say?
I haven't read it in a long while, but The Economist has a pretty bad rep among leftleaning people. It's said to have been increasingly wingnuttified over the last decade and to be glib and uninformed.
Some lefties will always hate a rightwing paper, but I'm thinking of people who respects for example the Financial Times.
Posted by: David Weman | 2009.02.24 at 14:27
I mean, I presume you don't think it's worthless, but I guess there aren't really any good alternatives if you're doing a feature like this.
Posted by: David Weman | 2009.02.24 at 14:28
I have to say that I don't think it's earned that reputation at all.
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2009.02.24 at 15:23