-Hilary Clinton made her first secretary of state trip to the Middle East. Not a huge amount of surprises--a call for a two-state solution in Israel, 900 million promised to rebuild the Gaza Strip and the beginnings of a softer relationship with Syria.
-Barack Obama wrote a private letter to Dmitry Medvedev, apparently ignoring that everybody in the world thinks that Medvedev has about as much power in Russia as Mayor McCheese at Burger King.
-The US decided not to participate in the UN conference on racism. Like Canada and Israel, they believe it's just going to deteriorate into everybody bashing Israel.
-That guy who used to own Yukos is going on trial again, even though he's already convicted and in jail, because...oh, who cares what the stated reason is. The guy is no saint, but believing anything that the current Russian legal system has to say is the first sign your brain is constructed out of wet paper towels.
-Hugo Chavez decided to add Venezuela's rice growers to his stable of things he thinks he can run better this week. That guy certainly likes to nationalize stuff. He's a collector.
-The Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka asked for a ceasefire to have peace talks. Sri Lanka told them it was preferable that they just die. Which means they said no.
-If AIG keeps getting billions of dollars every week, eventually somebody is going to make a convincing case for testing the whole "let them fail" theory. Not sure if it's still true as it was last year, but AIG shutting down used to mean that all those helicopters that transport organs around in the US will be grounded. Hope somebody has a back-up plan! (New Orleans claims you never do.)
-Last time anybody paid attention, the current Supreme Court was a pretty business friendly place. However, that might be changing--they just made it okay for drug companies to be sued in state court if something went wrong with one of the drug companies products, regardless of whether the product has federal approval.
-Blockbuster Video isn't stupid enough to ask for bail-out money, right? No, but they did hire a law firm to help it seek out more capital. Give me a break guys. Your day is gone.
-Barack Obama advised long-term investors that now is a good time to buy shares. Does that mean Jon Stewart is going to make fun of him next?
Leaders
-The opening salvo of a leader article about the recent indictment of Sudan's Omar al-Bashir does a decent enough job of broad strokes, but it's back in the International section where the heavy case is laid, with an article that takes up the entirety of that much-maligned section. Bashir has already said that the International Criminal Court can "dissolve their accusations in water and drink them"--while that's effective in getting his point across, it's also a tremendously dumb thing to say. (Which makes me think that it probably correlates to some random old cliche I've never heard, because I'm an American and don't care about other cultures.) All the countries who have ratified the treaty that created the IOC are supposed to help bring Bashir to justice. As the mag points out--which they also did back when the rumors began that Bashir was the next target--the real world truth is more difficult. A lot of countries aren't going to help out. The articles both go into detail about the why, which doesn't really have anything to with Bashir being guilty of war crimes. (Which he is.) It's more that the IOC is intimidating to a lot of countries, and many aren't sure how far they should allow foreigners to dispense justice on their own citizenry--which is pretty much why Obama won't be re-joining the team anytime soon. (Bush took America out during his reign.)
-I find myself at a bit of a loss with this op/ed about Fred Goodwin, the former head of the Royal Bank of Scotland. He's quite the rage in the British press right now--despite the British government having to rescue the bank out from underneath him, in hopes of preventing a collapse, Goodwin may make off with his entire pension ($980,000 a year), which will obviously be paid by the government, since RBS clearly doesn't have it. The op/ed doesn't deny that this is a bad fucking deal, and that Goodwin is scum. He is. But their point is a little hard to stomach nonetheless: that this story is clearly a scapegoating of one particularly noxious man, while the taxpayers fail to focus on what matters. Which, sure, that's true. But is now going to be the time it changes? 14 year old Americans didn't give a shit about Rwanda because it happened the same time as Kurt Cobain's suicide, this kind of misplaced focus happens all the time. People getting heated up about Goodwin means they might take the time to learn about the banking crisis. I can't see why that's not a good thing.
-Like the Coen brothers before them, the Economist believes clean coal is a load of horse-hockey. (Horse-hockey is a nice way of saying the word 'shit' and I used it for the pleasure of my estranged mother, who does not read these blogs because of the language. Or because she doesn't love me unconditionally. Potato/Potted meat.)
-Obama continues to move towards getting America out of Iraq, and while he may not be doing it as quickly as some people want, the Economist supports his decision to take things slowly. Since the comments sections here don't divulge into a lot of hyperbolic party-line fighting, I feel content in expressing the view that this is probably okay. Or an awful betrayal. Or totally sweet news. Whatever you want, just stop sending me those fucking Nation editorials. The day I value Ed Begley Jr's opinion on anything is the same day that I'll start a new Bo Jackson fan club.
Letters
-Oh man, it's a double burn this week! For those who care about really specific nerd-level obsession, i.e., totally fucking me, Guilty As Charged, I haven't seen the Economist respond in print to a letter since I started reading the publication 9 years ago. While there were a lot of breaks in between, including multiple year-long sabbaticals from Giving A Fuck, I've been pretty consistent for the last three. So yes, this is probably pretty rare. Here's the deal: the Economist wrote up some facts and figures about South Korea last week. The South Korean Ministry of Strategy and Finance wrote in to correct these figures by using some creative accounting--ignoring some of the year and excluding long-term debt. How do I know he did that?
Because the editor who responded on the letters page explained why he was full of shit, and re-listed the figures, which had actually gotten worse since the article was written. That, right there: that's how motherfuckers roll. With MATH.
-Like reading about health-care reform? No, I know you don't. But hey, if you're an American, you really have to. Here's the article, which is pretty informative. Like all health care articles, it hinges on the basic problem: Americans want health-care reform. Americans don't want to pay higher taxes. They can't really have both without a massive change in the system, and even then, tough to pull off.
-Will Barack Obama be able to bring America a real cap-and-trade program to deal with emissions? He wants too, but he'll have a real fight on his hands when it comes to Congress and the Senate. Cap-and-trade programs are probably one of America's best methods to deal with emissions--that's me and the Economist thinking that, pure opinion--and it would probably bring in some decent cash--but it's very likely to get brutalized by poorly thought out subsidies if too much is compromised.
-Dollar stores are doing really well in America. I'd be more supportive of dollar stores, but I live in the neighborhood in Brooklyn where that nasty Chinese toothpaste poison scare occurred a few years ago. Still a good place to buy bleach though. I buy a lot of bleach.
-By the way, Louisiana? Sinking. Sinking into the ground. It's sinking. Anybody doing anything about that? Not really.
-And New York. All those bankers? Losing jobs or getting pay cuts, which means no tax money for New York. Anybody doing anything about that? Actually, yes.
-Lexington's article about the quantity theory of anger is pretty goddamn fantastic. It's a play on an old Will Self line, that there's a certain amount of anger available all the times, and as some people get less angry, others get angrier. I can't even pull quotes, I just loved this piece. Not because it's a big fun article--it's mostly about sewage trolls like Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santelli, as well as short-sighted scapegoating. But it's just a fucking fun column, and it's nice to see Lexington take the piss for a while.
The Americas
-Hey, Ecuador is still mad at Columbia for invading Encudaro to kill FARC guerillas and find proof that Ecuador and Venezuela were/are in cahoots with the FARC dudes. Everybody else is kind of cool with it, except for Ecuador. Columbia? Still not really caring about feelings. This story doesn't seem to change much, but considering that stories changing involving nefarious doings and FARC usually translates to "people dying", that's a good thing. The funniest part is how Rafael Correa is angry because Columbia made public all the dirty, illegal shit that Ecuador had going on with the FARC guerillas, all of which comes directly off the laptops they found last year. Like--if it upsets you so much when somebody shows off the proof that you did nefarious shit, it's a pretty simple equation. Don't Do Nefarious Shit.
-Raul Castro fired some guys, as is his wont. Fidel tossed out one of those "Reflections Of The Commander" articles he writes, or pretends to write, or isn't aware of, calling the guys--the foreign minister and cabinet secretary--a couple of greedy skeezes. They probably were, but who knows with Cuba anymore? "Greedy" means something pretty different when there's a bunch of people desperately hoping their family doesn't die of malnutrition.
-Here's your depressing Sri Lankan update for the week, and no, it's not about the attempted assassination of the countries cricket team in Pakistan. (That's a different, almost as horrible article.) Civilians, filed into tiny zones with little food or shelter, treated like criminals--and those are some of the few that are being called "lucky." (The Economist has a nice little riff on the "lucky ones" cliche in the article as well.) The rest--estimated to be 200,000 by the UN, while the Sri Lankan government claims they only number 70,000--still sit in between the collapsing, yet still extremely dangerous, Tamil Tigers and Sri Lanka's maruading military. Just so we're clear, if this is your first time reading one of these Sri Lanka/Tamil Tiger stories: no one really knows what's going on there, including the non-military portions of the Sri Lankan population. The government is keeping the death count a secret from parliament, the International Red Cross is being notably more vocal than they usually are about the believed to be awful humanitarian catastrophe, and the story continues to slip behind financial news and the Pakistan terrorist attacks.
-And yes, here's part two: the Sri Lankan cricket team was attacked by terrorists, most likely a homegrown al Qaeda cell, during a recent visit to Pakistan. The police in Pakistan knew it was coming and ended up dying to protect their guests. Sadly, disgustingly, and stupidly, a bunch of Pakistani youth have become convinced that the violence was brought about by Indian spies in disguise.
-Did you know there was an attempted mutiny in Bangladesh? 74 people, 56 of them military officers, were killed. It's not totally clear what the goal was yet, and it may never be. The Economist even mentions the possibilty that it was a grown up version of a school shooting, with a coupel of crazy gun-toting guys tearing shit apart. While Sheikh Hasina was able to team up with her hair-trigger military for a a while to shut it down, their conflict resumed pretty much as soon as it was over.
-Officially, Hamid Karzai's presidential term is up on May 21st. But since Afghanistan isn't ready (and can't be made to be ready) for their next election until August, nobody is quite sure what's going to happen on May 22nd. Karzai's tried a couple of different things--pushing to stay in power until the election, arguing that they should just do it in April no matter what--and neither have gone over well with the rest of the Afghani government. (It's kind of pointless to mention that the Afghani people don't like him either, since even the most ostrich of human beings has to know that somebody has tried to assassinate the guy roughly every single day for the last few years.) America isn't currently heavily involved, which gives more credence to the widely-accepted belief that the US (who basically created Karzai in a lab) is sick of the dude as well. He's no bloodthirsty warlord, but he's a shit-awful president. Remember the date, I guess. It'll come up again later.
-Probably one of the more popular features that the Economist runs, the Technology Quarterly is exactly what it sounds like. Here's a couple of the many articles that I thought were interesting. (Note: interesting, as always, does not mean "important." And this image isn't from the article. It's a model of a giant forest fire-fighting robot that some guys want you to pay them to build.)
-If you're the couple I was hanging out with last week, you should definitely check into the soon-to-be widespread technological advancement in parallel parking: as simple as pressing a button. (Yes, there's an actual button.) No more fighting!
-Can't stand charging your phone, your mp3 device, your whatever it is you charge? You probably need to reorganize your priorities. While you're figuring that out, here's the continuing development of the various advancements in those battery bay type machines that can charge your shit without wires. (These things have been around for ten years at least now, right? Still can't figure 'em out, I guess.)
Middle East and Africa
-For those who noticed, Morgan Tsvangirai's wife died last week when she and Morgan were in a car accident. It happened after this issue went to print, so that's why there's no mention of it. Morgan believes, or at least claims to believe, that it was an accident. I wouldn't put it past Mugabe or Mugabe supporters, but I have no evidence to believe that whatsoever, and I'm not the least bit objective about Robert Mugabe realted matters. That being said, here's another article about the seizure of white farms in Zimbabwe, which Mugabe was supposed to stop doing. Here's his statement: "The few remaining white farmers should quickly vacate their farms, as they have no place there."
Europe
-The Basque nationalists had their worst election showing in Spain in the last 30 years. I read this article three times, I'm not going at it again. Maybe it's poorly written. Probably it's totally me. Spain, I apologize. In my defense, you have a very confusing system of proportional parliamentary representation allocated by regional majority.
-Nicholas Sarkozy went to the French farm fair and saw a bull that weighed 1.8 tons. This is one of those blue box articles that take up a corner of the magazine. The blue box articles are a cue that the article is sort of airy and pointless. It does have one interesting little fact though--there's 80,000 unfilled farming jobs in France right now. "Unfilled jobs" is a pretty good term you don't hear a lot.
Britain
-Bagehot gives his take on what the relationship between Barack Obama and Gordon Brown will be like, dropping a little trivia on his way. (Did you know Obama had the Winston Churchill bust removed from the Oval Office? Saints be praised, read into that! Read into that until your eyes bleed vomit!) It sounds like they have a lot in common, except for the fact that Barack will still be in charge in 2013, and Gordon Brown will be feeding dolphins at the British version of Sea World. (Wales?)
-UK Financial Investments may sound like your regular old poorly named finance operation, but don't let the name fool you: UKFI is run by John Kingman, who also serves as Britain's treasury godfather. Conflict of interest? Not so much. See, UKFI is the newly created organization that exists to handle all the banks that the British government has taken over, either in totality (Northern Rock, Bradford & Bingley) or in a part (Lloyds and the Royal Bank of Scotland). Things didn't look too good this week for Kingman, as he sat around taking the blame for the fluke-y screw-up involving Fred Goodwin--then again, I'm not sure how the guy could ever have a period of life that looks too good. How the fuck can one dude handle both jobs? Absurd.
-Although the past few days have shown that Britain's new "quantititave easing" policy seems to be working, the Economist doesn't want you to be confused by it. Quantititave easing is a really creative way to go about printing money, which is exactly what you're never supposed to do when the economy is bad. (Because it makes it worse, by and large.) This article goes into more detail, mostly because it has too, because quantitative easing is complex and weird.
-The state of mobile phones right now is both bad and great, as it's in the middle of the transition from the point personal computers are at already--where the hardware is less an interest to the consumer than the software and what that software can do. Mobile operators still have to figure out how to maximize their income without turning into what's being called "dumb pipes", a pretty self-explanatory term that I didn't totally understand at first, because I'm a moron.
-Barbie turned 50 this month, and the Economist had to write an article about her. While they aren't openly hostile, I kind of get the sense they would have liked to be. No matter what anybody ever says, dolls and toys are fucking boring, stupid things to pay attention to when you're not a little kid or the parent of one. I'll never understand, nor do I want to understand, why these are things that any post-puberty individual cares about. Grow the fuck up.
-General Motors has been able to rely on some of their foreign arms for sales, but not Opel, the German car firm they bought 80 years ago. Last week, they offered a low price to the German government for 50% of the company in hopes of saving it. Germany balked. Unlike Saab, another foreign line that GM is looking to lose, Opel is incredibly important to the overall GM line--technology and platforms developed in Opel plants will be the basis for all future GM models--when it comes to "must not fail", Opel is a prime example. But the funding has to come from European sources, and that funding isn't coming. While this article, which is long and fascinating, doesn't go so far as to say that it could be the lash that breaks GM--that would be extreme, and there's enough American problems working faster--it would be a tremendous blow for Opel to fold.
Finance and Economics
-Well, trickle-down economics may not have worked as magnificently as some might have hoped in a positive fashion, but it certainly has no problem working as a negative. Divendend checks are being drastically reduced, and considering how many investors work as dividend re-investors--like Legg Mason, who happen to be responsible for one of my 401ks--this is where some of the more immediate results of the economy can be felt for those of us lucky enough to still have jobs.
-Buttonwood, the columnist I usually make fun of, does an excellent job of examining the lies and truths of efficient-market theory, and while I have to plead ignorance when it comes to summarizing it, I imagine it's a strong article for those with a better understanding of finance then me. (Like high school kids who didn't figure out algebra by stealing Blatz when they restocked the walk-in.)
-Hey everybody, it's an article about bee emergency that doesn't involve claims that 'Killer Bees Are On The Swarm'. That means it's a serious article about pollination, and yes, I know that's important, and 4th graders know it's important, but...man, it's pollination. I just...you feel me? Buzz buzz, bees, flowers, doing stuff, I don't even eat that much honey. I wonder how many times you have to fold a napkin before it splits in half? That's my level of interest here.
-Here's one of those articles that pretends it's going to be all simple and easy only to kick you in the stomach with good old quantum physics. Thanks to books like "...for Dummies" and Gleick's Chaos, this sort of science has some cachet amongst liberal arts graduates unwilling to admit that not having basic math/phsyics skills pretty much guarantees they should shut the fuck up during quantum mechanics conversations. Does reality exist when you aren't looking at it? Apparently so: too bad it also behaves bizarrely.
-Word of advice to all in-womb fetuses: while developing, DO NOT EAT YOUR TWIN. If you've already done so, shame on you! You'll die sooner than those of us who save cannibalism for post-bar mitzvah activities.
-Next time you get turned down for a loan and a friend tells you that you shouldn't take it personally, make sure you have a copy of this article to show them. It's totally personal, because part of being creditworthy is not being ugly. (In a way, this article is just more proof of my long-held theory that unattractive people are of inherently lesser financial value than those who are at least cute, if not semen-curdling hot. Finance, it would seem, agrees with me.)
-There's more than one way to be a vigilante! You could be like Cai Mingchao, who pretended he was going to buy a couple of antique bronze sculptures at a recent Christie's auction, only to bail out when it came time to come up with the promised dough. See, China had been trying to have the pieces repatriated to Beijing for a little while now. (They were stolen by French or English troops back in 1860.) When those government overtures failed, Mingchao took matters into his own hands. Guess what though? That's not even the real story. The real story is this: there were a couple of Chinese sleeper agents also trying to bid on the piece, and if it wasn't for Mingchao, they would have bought the sculptures and given them to China for free. Ah, art auctions: if it wasn't for the Economist and my stupid, silly job, I would never pay any attention to you whatsoever.
-Man, I don't want to read no book about nature's shapes.
-I am kind of intrigued by a book about Iraqi generals, both the good ones that were executed by Saddam and the nasty ones who approvingly rooted him along when he shot "one of his own relatives" in the forehead. Then again, it sounds like it's another "just following orders, didn't want to gas all those Kurds, aw shucks" kind of things. Better up my next chamomile tea order: I've got some crying in my future.
-The lords of hell will fuck you to death, Bear Stearns: here is the book they will use to determine the gauge of thumbscrews. House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street will probably be chock full of all kinds of anecdotal evidence that gets people named Steve saying shit like "Honey, I'm boiling mad! Bring me my gun and mashed potatoes." If you're in the mood for this sort of thing--this sort of "here's some greedy fuckers, being greedy"--this probably belongs on your shopping list. I'm more into roller derby tell-alls, but I might check it out myself.
-Conchita was a successful female bullfighter who retired in 1950 from the sport. In her short career, she killed at least 750 bulls by hand. Tough lady, and while this is clearly sexist on my part, I was surprised to see how petite and feminine she was at the time. Of course, most male bullfighters are lithe little dudes too, so I know it shouldn't be surprising. Oh well, I suck. Interesting little story here, and it's nice to have a break from obituaries of people who died before they made it to 50.
-Lot of whiny personal shit this week, that's unfortunate for both of us. Despite the collapse of computing at the Factual's primary office, corporate assistance came through and provided a substitute machine and the replacement just entered customs in Alaska after primary assembly in Shanghai. Seem to be back on track here, though God knows how long that will last.
Are there many roller derby tell alls? Is that a genre? Sounds like something I'd be into.
Posted by: Sean Witzke | 2009.03.15 at 03:03
Mostly self-published, you have to know someone in the biz. I'll send you my contact, but you have to meet him at 4am in Queens. It's a hand-to-mouth operation.
Posted by: tucker Stone | 2009.03.15 at 14:40
Your "long-held theory that unattractive people are of inherently lesser financial value than those who are at least cute, if not semen-curdling hot" is something that I have heard in the past, either in a social psych class or from my mother (who thinks that I am beautiful). Other things that I learned from social psych (or potentially from my mother):
1) Taller people are more successful than shorter people (on average)
2) Babies respond more positively to attractive people (so if a baby cries when you do your "oogie-boogie" routine, it is not because it is not charming, but more likely because you are not very good looking).
I would like to dedicate that last bracketed thought to the Factual Opinion, who inspired it 5-8 paragraphs up this page.
Posted by: 10FootBongz | 2009.03.15 at 20:19
Economist Versus Idiot is best in life.
Posted by: Zebtron A. Rama | 2009.03.17 at 10:51
You review comics, but you don't understand the appeal of Barbie? Did your sister collect and never let you play with them or something?
Posted by: Oliver Townshend | 2009.03.18 at 02:31
Why's the focus on Fred Goodwin a dangerous distraction? Read this link by Mark Evanier... He's talking about AIG but the principle's exactly the same.
http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2009_03_18.html#016819
Posted by: tam | 2009.03.18 at 14:26