-Everybody is still waiting for the Irish to go to the polls for the second time to prove they really meant it when they first voted "no" to the European Union's Lisbon treaty, and by everybody I mean countires like the Czech Republic and Poland, because they are making the Irish people the barometer for how they handle the treaty. They don't describe it in those terms exactly, but hey: that's exactly what they're doing.
-Kosovo is going the ingenious route of joining whatever clubs will accept them as a member to shove the "we're a soverign nation whether you like it or not" statement down the throats of any country who disagrees; this week they joined the IMF. That got Saudi Arabia on board the whole "recognition" team. I bet a Rotary Club card will convince Russia to let them print their own money. Try that next.
-Hillary Clinton apologized about that accidental bombing of Afghan civilians. It went over better on radio, because she was standing in front of a picture of a smoking World Trade Center in the video broadcast, and somebody let out a bunch of doves right when the camera zoomed in on the single tear falling from her cybernetic eye.
-I'm a little unnerved by the tone in the passage about Canada's new trade deal with the European Union--if the Economist goes the sarcastic blurb route, that's going to make these blogs even more pointless than they already are. Anyway, Canada and the EU made a trade deal within minutes of the European Parliament banning all seal-related products from the Canucks due to that annual bash-em-on-the-head thing.
-Jacob Zuma's party won a landslide victory, so if they really are going to go after that cartoonist guy for being courageously spot-on, they're going to have a hard time proving he accomplished his secondary goal of convincing South Africans to think seriously about electing a corrupt moron. (The primary goal of getting the world to laugh hysterically at Zuma? Total success.)
-It's been a while since there was some good news out of Zimbabwe, so it's tempting to treat the release of 18 human- and political-rights campaign workers on bail as a bright light: it isn't, since this is the second time they've been realeased on bail, and it's part of an obvious power struggle between the supposed unity government. A power struggle involving sending people back and forth to jail. For the crime of not being criminals. Oh, and "unity" is still supposed to mean team-up.
-Israel's new prime minister is willing to "resume negoitations with Palestine", but considering the guy has no serious interest in a two state solution, one wonders how useful that talk will be. What do they do? Just sit around and say "It would be great if you would move away. Now, will you move away? No? Well, good talk."
-It would be pretty great if Washington DC recognized gay marriage, just because...oh, just because. They've got 30 days to sign it into law.
-Volkswagen teams up with Porsche, which brings the day when you might be able to buy a Porschewagen that much closer. And don't lie to me: you know you would in a second.
-Remember the Tata Nano? They can only make 60,000 a year right now--and they've got 203,000 orders already. Wake up, American auto manufacturers--there's plenty of people willing to buy your product, you just have to make the one they want instead of what you think they should want.
-Ugh, what a cover. Why can't the Economist hire a fuck-around-with-Photoshop person whose skills extend beyond the computerized equivalent of a 3rd grade art class? This week's opening article is one of those two-fold punches: an op-ed describing the French model of economics and how it's currently trumping Germany's "we save money and depend almost totally on exports" and humiliating Britain's "sort of like America, with less guns and fewer dollars" ideologies. The Economist holds the line, believing that Germany and France will eventually taste the bitter fruits of an over-regulated economic model, but they still are willing to go to bat for Sarkozy and crew in the follow-up article, a three-page briefing on what the French are doing right. There's some great tidbits of info scattered throughout, and it's good to see the Economist is willing to back off their inherent distaste for French economic policy long enought to do some objective anaylsis. Jumping out to me were two: first, that the American complaint that nationalizing banks will "make us French" ignores the fact that France has been pulling out of state ownership for the last 15 years, and it's even stupider to say considering that France hasn't nationalized a bank yet, nor have they had any major bailouts. The second was that French fast food restaurants usually have about 2/3 the staff of their European and American counterparts. There's reasons why, but I won't remember what they are in six months, so why not start forgetting them now?
-Here's one to scream at each other about: those people that Barack Obama and various newspapers are calling "speculators" for condemning the Chrysler and GM bailout and bankruptcy negotiations? They are speculators, that's totally true, but what they were doing wasn't illegal, and it's a normal part of financing. They loaned money at a far cheaper interest rate to Chrysler and GM, and in return they were supposed to be at the top of the repayment que in case of bankruptcy or financial collapse. The American government's deal stripped those agreements in a completely illegal fashion--to please the newspaper reader, mostly--and gave them anywhere between 5 and 28 cents on the dollar. Why isn't it a bigger deal? Beause the people who got the better repayment deal, despite being lower down the scale, are health-care trust funds related to employees. So yes, sounds nice...hell, sounds "right" from a populist point of view. Doesn't change one thing though: it's illegal, and it's the same kind of interference--with better motives, sure--that Russia was using when they strip-mined companies throughout the early parts of the decade.
-Hey, guess what you have to do if you're going to run Nepal and make a bunch of promises to the Maoist guerrillas in exchange for laying down their arms? You're going to have to keep your promises. Otherwise, the guerrillas have no reason to keep theirs.
-On May 4th, Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman wrote a New York Times article saying that America was going to experience deflation if something didn't change. Federal Reserve historian Allan Meltzer wrote a piece that America was going to experience a period of inflation if something didn't change. Both articles were published on the same page. Now, I don't know about you, but I think that's just mean as hell. I wonder if there was an old school Rock-em Sock-Em graphic along the header.
-The Economist throws a bone in PETA's direction and says "It would be wonderful to live in a world where no one experiments on rats and stuff" and then goes on to say that the European law restricting animal testing should never have been passed. I'll let you blow off your steam on your own with this one, although I find it kind of interesting that America doesn't count mice and rats when they come up with the total number of animal experiments they perform. (I assume there's a specific reason, otherwise--well, what? Mice and rats are still animals, last time I checked. And I live in New York, so I have to check all the fucking time.)
Letters
-Hey, who would have guessed that a physics professor at a French university would write a really snobby letter about casinos? Oh wait. The answer is everybody, isn't it?
-The opening article here is about the recent announcement that David Souter will be retiring from the Supreme Court, which wasn't much of a suprise if you read Jeffrey Toobin's The Nine, which I happen to think is a spot-on must read, regardless of what you think of the current squad. It's great stuff. Souter is an odd bird, and the Economist touches on this a bit--he's a solo dude who lies on his own in a shitty little house in New Hampshire, he doesn't have a television (and he didn't have a telephone for a long time either), he never really goes anywhere publicly--I could go on, his diet is odd as well, but that's not really the point of the article. He was picked because George Bush Sr had been promised he was a hard-line conservative that could be pushed through confirmation hearings because of his anonymity and lack of record. That was true, and he was pushed through. But then he turned out to be a rather reserved kind of guy who wasn't that easy to peg, although modern day Republicans just label him liberal from where he's fallen on various rulings. Either way, the search is on for a replacement. It might be a Hispanic woman (a first for the Court), but if confirmation hearings have taught us anything over the last twenty years, it's that these things never play out the way we expect them to.
-Cuban-Americans who have been in America since the 60's aren't the biggest fans of Cuban-Americans who started coming over in the mid-90's, after the uptake in how many Cubans could be granted visas. The old school doesn't like that the new school is so hot to trot to fly back to Cuba to visit relatives. I get the argument, but with all the empathy in my heart, I think telling a woman that being desperate to get medicine to her grandparents "That's not right" because it betrays a lack of political will is the height of fucking arrogance. So yeah: shove it up your ass, Joe Garcia. I mean that with love.
-The new crackdown on the corporate tax code brought forth by the White House: you can only deduct the cost of foreign investments if you pay tax on any ensuing foreign profits. While the Economist acknowledges that it makes great political sense--taxing rich companies always does--they point out that adding more rules to a system with too many already isn't very bright, and that this is another strike against why corporate desire to maintain strong footholds in America. Points are good all around, but this one needs some more time to play out, I'm thinking.
-Huh. Here's an interesting little fact to choke down your throat--the top five debtors in America are, in order, California, New York State, New York City, Massachusetts, and the Metropolitan Transport Authority. For those who don't know, the MTA is the New York subway system, the commuter trains, and bus routes. Besides being a surprise--I'm assuming this list ignores banks and auto manufacturers?--to see MTA up there with California, I gotta wonder about the Massachusetts thing too. Cali and NY make sense, but Massachusetts? Really?
-Hey, they used a picture of some fat guy with a giant cigar for their boring article about the Kentucky Derby. It's not online, but you should track it down. He looks like a cartoon version of a pig, but he's totally a real person. Rush Limbaugh, I think.
-He didn't get the back-page, but there's a nice little write up about Jack Kemp here, one of those rare guys that got called a "bleeding-heart conservative."
-Lexington still holds his ground: no decision of Barack Obama will go without scrutiny, and while I'm still gettting the sense that he wasn't all the way behind the Economist's support of the current US president, you can't fault him for writing a pretty solid piece on Arne Duncan, the current education secretary. I'd quibble with the unsourced praise for the No Child Left Behind Act, but hey, I'm a dick.
The Americas
-Out of the initial 149 swine-flu deaths reported in Mexico, it turns out only 50 of those were the actual swine-flu, which is leaving many Mexicans asking whether the massive shutdown was the best route to take. Ah, hindsight: will you ever be anything less than 20-20?
-Huh. France still has a piece of empire left, totaling 6,000 souls off the coast of Newfoundland. Now that the area--Saint Pierre & Miquelon--is laying a claim on some of the off-shore oil and gas that Newfoundland makes serious cash off of, it's time to do one of those "hey, what the fuck are you doing running some island on the other side of the Atlantic anyway" discussions. Expect it to be long and boring. I never want anybody to die brutally over stupid bullshit...at the same time, I'm kind of just reading this and going "C'mon! Hit him in the nose! Do it!"
-If your knowledge of socialism stops where Howard Zinn's writing does, you might think that labor unions and commies run hand in hand through fields of gold, but hey, that's why we need Zinn to talk more about Venezuela, where socialism is the word of the day and labor unions are the enemy of the people. Damn it Hugo Chavez: will you ever stop eviscerating your enemies?
-Peru has figured out a whole new business: print counterfeit American currency, passports, visas and all the sundry needed to emigrate and travel. Oh, counterfeiting: you aren't a victimless crime, but you'll always be my favorite.
-Has America ever had a president who used be called the "Supermarket King?" If not, that means we've missed the opportunity for a title Panama just stole form under our noses.
Asia
-After spending a healthy majority of years dependent on the British or Americans for their naval secuirty, Australia is taking on the gigantic expense of expanding their own military, supposedly to deal with the the vague possibility of a confrontation with "a major-power adversary." No surprise who they're talking about here, but you still gotta wonder if a barely concealed implication of Chinese threat is going to go over well with their biggest trading partner, who is, of course, China itself.
-The guy in charge of rooting out Indonesian governmental corruption--who was actually doing a semi-okay job--got arrested for "masterminding" a drive-by shooting of a pharmaceutical giant. His anti-corruption organization dumped him immediately, and they seem to be going ahead with their work without too many hiccups. Guilty or no, this is one tremendously fucked up story.
-Yeah, Hamid Karzai probably isn't going anywhere, despite his 15% approval rating. Boy, this guy really turned out pretty bad, didn't he? It would be one thing if he was just a shitty American crony that the Afghan people can't stand, but he's something even worse. A shitty American crony that disappoints the Americans as much as he does the Afghan people. You'd think the US would've learned how to prop up leaders of their own design, considering how often they do it.
-While everybody is up in arms about that whole clubbing baby seals thing, don't go hoarse screaming at one rally alone. You'll need to make time to protest Egypt's decision to slaughter every single pig in the country. Even the World Health Organization--the people who ramped swine-flu to one-notch-below pandemic status--called it a "drastic overreaction."
-A lot of Iraqi prisoners are going home, one prison near Kuwait will drop from 22,000 to 7,400 over the next year. Some will be released outright, others will be turned over to Iraqi authorities to handle as they see fit. Interesting tidbit here--apparently Iraqi prisons are still toxic with corruption as well as rumoured human-rights abuses. Worse than those pictures you're not allowed to see? The article doesn't say.
-Could Iran finally be sick of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? The Economist seems to think that it's a possiblity, althought the meat of this article doesn't read that much differently than the previous ones on the same subject. Oh, that should read "previous ones on the same subject that turned out to be completely wrong."
-Hey, after weeks of hating on Berlusconi for his actual political views and decisions, the Economist gets a chance to get wet in the sea of personal controversy, because his wife has decided she wants a divorce due to his unrepentant lothario ways, as well as his proclamation tha the would put up a bunch of showgirls as candidates for his political party in the next election. In the Economist's defense, Berlusconi has used his personal life as fodder to win elections and make policy decisions before, so he's already opened the door to this kind of gross scrutiny. Still, this kind of reporting is pretty sleazy.
-While I don't read every newspaper in the universe, it's kind of curious that the Economist refers to the German export model as "coming under fire". Besides the Economist, by whom is it coming under fire? If you say bloggers I'm going to poke you with a stick.
63% of possible voters participated in the 1978 European Parliamentary elections. In 2004, it had dropped to 46%. Estimates for this year put the figure at a probable 34%. Charlemagne gives over his column to examining why this week, and he of course finds a delightfully sardonic "Because it's fucking boring" answer in the process. God, Charlemagne just sets the tone. Guy should write greeting cards.
-While there's plenty to criticize about the heavy-handed way in which Jacqui Smith keeps adding new names to her list of people who aren't allowed to visit Britain, it's still kind of hard to feel sorry for Michael Savage, who once told a "sodomite" that he "should only get AIDS and die, you pig." Don't get me wrong: I say something to that effect about four times a day, but never just because somebody is a "sodomite." I try to reserve that bon mot strictly when dealing with people who like Green Lantern. You gotta have principles.
-There's a wild chart to go along with this article about the way British Muslims view the world and how it compares to Muslims in France & Germany. It's a Gallup poll, so bear that in mind, but I wonder if margin of error can really explain away the startling difference between the two groups. The Muslims of Germany and France agree on just about everything, while the Brits have a lot more in common with America's Southern Baptists. (Homosexuality, abortion and premarital sex: all unacceptable.)
-Gordon Brown sucks. Seriously, we get it Economist. You'd like to punch him in the nuggets. New point, please.
-Are there any good arguments for these stupid ID cards? Because they really should start advertising what those are as soon as possible, because this just sounds like a shit-whore of a plan.
International
-Nobody wants to deal with pirates in international courts, nobody wants to deal with pirates by going to Kenya (because that means naval warships leaving their posts to fuck around in Kenyan court), so the common response is to chuck their weapons in the ocean and put them back on their boat. The more you read about these Somalian pirates, the more it seems that it's the best job available. Money is good, punishment is nil (as long as you avoid Americans), and you get the fringe benefit of not having to be in Somalia, where life has somehow figured out a way to be worse than a suicide inducing awful.
-The credit crunch is, unsurprisingly, having a terrible effect on charitable giving. While rich charities still lag far behind your Western Union style "remittances" handled by hand-to-mouth immigrant types, those remittances are dropping as well. Oh, and because we don't get to mention it enough, America is still the absolute shittiest when it comes to charitable giving amongst other rich countries. It's not even a contest, and it never has been.
-Face Value, the Economist's weekly "bio-in-a-page-for-someone-not-dead" feature goes after a subject this time that looks like it could've been better served with an actual article. Paragraph after paragaph about Anne Lauvergeon, the boss of nuclear giant Areva, leaping back and forth from praise to blame to anecdote all the way cringing futurism, this just might be the worst one of these I've read. Get it together, kitty cat.
-And we're back in antitrust fights one more time--although the amount of last weeks European Commison fine against Intel was released after press time (it was 1.44 billion), that's just a hint of the fight going on here. All the players are getting back in the ring (hence the article's cartoon), and it's all the familiar names: Google, Microsoft, IBM, AMD, Intel, so on, so forth. Last verse, same as the first.
-Everybody gets ready for the announcement that Time Warner is finished with the AOL partnership, but this Business article isn't just a look at that--it's also a ground view shakedown of hte differences between television money and online video, which makes it a neccessary read for certain individuals who won't read it because it's not written in crayon on the side of Little Mermaid DVD by a fucking monkey. Probably my favorite article this week, and I'll bet you the coming articles about Time Warner's divorce will be just as good.
-Rolls Royce had a record year in 2008, selling 1,212 cars. I'm thoroughly impressed, because I was under the impression that car companies moved more product than Canadian comic publisher Drawn & Quarterly. I stand corrected.
Finance and Economics
Obituary: Hans Holzer
-I've made my own fascination with what Fiat's Sergio Marchionne plans to do with Chrysler known before, and if you didn't care then, you won't care now. But for those of you who might have the smallest inkling, this two page article regarding the merger is a great breakdown of the story thus far. Although a lot of people will be losing their jobs, Fiat's business model seems to be far more realistic and likely to survive then that whole "hold your breath and pray for rain" thing that Chrysler was doing for the past decade.
-The banks of the Middle East may look like fearsome giants, but many of them have very little in the way of assets. Due to the collapse in oil prices, the area is finally seeing the oft-predicted consolidation that's currently in vogue amongst the techonology and pharmaceutical industry. It can't come soon enough for an area seeing the growth of sharia-compliant banking, which is taking off faster than the Economist predicted when they first started talking about it last year.
-Buttonwood plays the "you better check yourself before you wreck yourself" card this week in his piece on the return of optimism to the bucket list of investor-types. I guess I should let go my disdain stemming from that gross piece he wrote late last year about making money off the backs of the bruised--he's been a lot more reflective lately. Oh, and I still don't know if it's a he or she, but I've taken to assumption with a higher frequency. Makes cooking easier.
Science and Technology
-Here's an interesting footnote problem to electric and hybrid cars: blind people, pedestrians and cyclists can't hear them coming. A company called Lotus has been working on a solution for a while now, and some other companies are getting involved. Happily, it'll probably be a directional based noise system that won't contribute to keeping people up at night.
-If you want to know why it's so hard to respond rapidly to an influenza pandemic, here's the hard science article to explain it. Short answer? They have to make new vaccines in live chicken eggs, and that happens about as quickly as your brain just imagined it taking.
Books and Arts
-Although blogs technically allow people to trawl the archives to find instances where the writer contradicts themselves on a frighteningly consistent basis, nobody ever seems to do that. I'll still own up to the obvious fact that I usually talk shit about books like A Single Swallow: Following an Epic Journey from South Africa to South Wales, which is about swallows, flying from Point A to Point B. For some reason--maybe it's the picture attached to the article--I kind of thought it was cute.
-Do you want to read short stories about "striving, privileged New Yorkers"?
For the love of a dead God, why?
-If you only read one article about contemporary jewelry this year, I feel sorry for you. Because I've only read one article about contemporary jewelry this year, and brother, let me tell you: that article was one too many.
-Since I don't take the time to figure out the demographic breakdown of who reads this blog due to not giving a remote fuck, I may alienate and disgust a reader by saying this: I think Hans Holzer wasted the majority of his life doing something that's complete and utter bullshit. I hope he enjoyed it, and it sounds like he did, he did apparently get laid a lot. He was a "ghost hunter", which I initially hoped meant that he was some kind of Nazi hunter with a less cool job title (nothing beats "Nazi Hunter"). I'm not sure how you celebrate a man's life when he does something so patently ridiculous with the hero's portion of it. Sorry dude--but what the fuck? Ghosts? Are you five? Oh never mind. He can't read this anway, becasuse there's No Such Thing As Fucking Ghosts.
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All art from the Economist, unless otherwise noted...here: Marcel Gotlib's cartoons belong to Marcel Gotlib, Jeffrey Toobin's The Nine belongs to Toobin, the art piece "Hindsight" belongs to Mary Tsiongas, AWARE's logo belongs to AWARE, the bandwagon usage of Miss Piggy to illustrate a swine-flu article results in a credit to Disney, Kramer Vs. Kramer belongs to Columbia, and Columbia is owned by Sony, so that's who owns Kramer Vs. Kramer, nice message from Green Lantern, thanks Time Warner, and all weird Fiat concept cars belong to Fiat.
Obama should nominate Bork for the Supreme Court. It doesn't have to be Robert Heron Bork, any Bork will do. I just want to watch newscasters say Bork over and over again...
Plus I bet The Daily Show would do some bit where they mash together a bunch of people saying Bork to sound like a Muppet Swedish Chef...
Posted by: LurkerWithout | 2009.05.17 at 03:00