The Economist

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  • Politics this week

    The Economist: The world this week
    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am

  • Politics this week

    The Economist: The world this week
    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am

  • Politics this week

    The Economist: The world this week
    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am

  • Politics this week

    The Economist: The world this week
    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am

  • Seen and thus believed: Britain falls back in love with its dutiful, tireless monarch

    Bagehot's notebook
    26 Jan 2012 | 3:59 pm
    TO his slight surprise Bagehot was recently asked to review all the new biographies of Queen Elizabeth II being published to mark 2012, her 60th year on the throne. It was a bit like asking an agnostic to be Vatican correspondent, but five books, 1500 pages and a lot of corgi anecdotes later, I finally surfaced. At moments it felt a bit like eating a banquet entirely consisting of cakes and pudding, with Turkish delight to finish. But in amongst the cloying fluff there were some good stories. It was striking to be reminded how shabby and poor war-broken Britain was (there were nice details…
 
 
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    Bagehot's notebook

  • Seen and thus believed: Britain falls back in love with its dutiful, tireless monarch

    26 Jan 2012 | 3:59 pm
    TO his slight surprise Bagehot was recently asked to review all the new biographies of Queen Elizabeth II being published to mark 2012, her 60th year on the throne. It was a bit like asking an agnostic to be Vatican correspondent, but five books, 1500 pages and a lot of corgi anecdotes later, I finally surfaced. At moments it felt a bit like eating a banquet entirely consisting of cakes and pudding, with Turkish delight to finish. But in amongst the cloying fluff there were some good stories. It was striking to be reminded how shabby and poor war-broken Britain was (there were nice details…

  • To the barricades, British defenders of open markets!

    26 Jan 2012 | 3:27 pm
    MY new column looks at today's seemingly distinct debates about British capitalism, executive pay, welfare caps, the squeezed middle and immigration, and concludes that behind them lies something bigger, simpler and more dangerous. Without properly acknowledging it, Britain is having a row about globalisation.WITH your back to the open sea, an island can feel encircled, even claustrophobic. Turn to face the waves and an island feels like a starting point, a place surrounded by a variety of bracing possibilities, both good and bad. Britain has the politics of an island. At worst, its political…

  • Alex Salmond, little Englander

    19 Jan 2012 | 10:51 am
    MY RECENT interview with Alex Salmond, the leader of Scotland's pro-independence party and head of the Scottish government, forms the basis of this week's print column. Here it is:ALEX SALMOND, leader of Scotland’s pro-independence party and first minister of the Scottish government, has a revelation to share. Over the years, he confides, there has been a tendency among some people in Scotland to blame things that go wrong on the English. He adopts a sorrowful air, as if pondering—for the very first time—man’s capacity for grievance. Happily, Mr Salmond has a plan. He intends to hold…

  • David Hockney, national treasure

    17 Jan 2012 | 8:26 am
    THE English have cause to feel flattered. David Hockney, the Yorkshire-born artist who fled his "boring, stifling" home country aged 24 for southern California, seeking fierce sunlight, strong shadows, heat, space and greater sexiness than that available in 1960s Bradford, will open a big new show in London on January 21st, celebrating the English landscapes of his boyhood.This huge show fills all the exhibition rooms of the Royal Academy, just off Piccadilly, but it is not a retrospective. Though Mr Hockney is now 74, most of the work is new and fresh. Scores of the images reveal the…

  • Now come the calls for the English to be given a say

    16 Jan 2012 | 4:40 pm
    BANG on cue, after a week of calls for the Scottish people to be given their say on the future of the United Kingdom, come the calls for the English to be given their say, too. These calls to heed the will of England divide into a couple of categories.First, assertions that if the Scottish minority are to be offered a referendum, it is glaringly obvious that the English majority (with 85% of the population) must have one as well. The Daily Mail seems especially keen on this argument, giving it both barrels with a blast from Simon Heffer "Hang on, Mr Salmond. The English MUST have a say on…
 
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    Buttonwood's notebook

  • The export league

    27 Jan 2012 | 9:54 am
    PATRICK Artus, the chief economist at Natixis, was telling me how Spanish exports were booming so I thought it was worth looking up the data. With austerity on the menu in many countries, the hope is that export growth can compensate for sluggish domestic demand. Of course, since the biggest export market for many European nations is other EU nations, this might seem a lost cause. But at least, there was a general export increase last year.Top marks to Estonia. The performance of Greece may seem surprising given that it has a huge current account deficit. My colleague who is just back from…

  • Portuguese peril and official obstinacy

    27 Jan 2012 | 3:13 am
    WHILE Italy and Spain are enjoying a welcome breather from debt pressures, Portugal is still under the cosh. Two-year yields were 16.1% yesterday and five-year yields were 20.8%. It all looks like an ominous replay of Greece's problems. The strategists at Rabobank comment this morning thatPortugal’s ongoing weakness, however, acts as a reminder that contagion is spreading and that aggressive liquidity provisioning serves to obscure its symptoms rather than address the illness itself.The ever-thoughtful Jim Reid at Deutsche Bank comments thatThere are more market concerns that Portugal could…

  • Things are terrible. Whoopee!

    26 Jan 2012 | 4:07 am
    SO THE Federal Reserve has indicated that it will need to keep interest rates low until late 2014 (rather than 2013). Should that really be the cause for an equity market rebound, as occurred last night?Otherwise intelligent people tend to reason as follows. The price of a stock should equal the discounted value of future cashflows. If the discount rate is lower, then the present value is higher (one heard this argument a lot during the dotcom bubble). This is true if other things are equal. But other things aren't equal. Why is the Fed keeping rates low for so long? Clearly, it is worried…

  • A cause for celebration

    25 Jan 2012 | 12:25 pm
    PUT aside your worries about the financial markets and the euro-zone economy for a moment. Consider what Steven Pinker, in his magnificent new book The Better Angels of Our Nature, describes as "the most significant and least appreciated development in the history of our species" - the decline of violence. It may be that, when you first consider the idea, you experience a visceral rejection of the concept (that was my instant reaction). Wasn't the 20th century incredibly violent? What about the Holocaust or Mao's famine? But Mr Pinker builds his case, logically and convincingly, over 700…

  • What's to blame?

    25 Jan 2012 | 6:34 am
    FIGURES released today show that the UK economy contracted 0.2% in the fourth quarter of 2011, with many people predicting a further decline in the current three months. That would meet the technical definition of a recession and would not be good news for the government's austerity strategy.So what's to blame? The temptation will be to look at Europe so it's unfortunate that Germany's Ifo survey, also released today, shows the third consecutive rise. Britain may export a lot to Europe but so does Germany, which is performing a lot better.So is it all down to cuts? The public finance numbers…
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    Charlemagne's notebook

  • At bursting point?

    26 Jan 2012 | 6:31 pm
     THIS grotesque map of the world, depicting Europe as a bloated balloon, caught my eye this week, and powerfully illustrates one of the factors in Europe's debt crisis. It depicts the countries of the world sized according to the amount of government spending*. that they spend on social protection, from pensions to health, education and unemployment benefits. In the words of the World Bank, which published it in a report issued this week ("Golden Growth: Restoring the lustre of the European Economic model", here), Europe is the world's “lifestyle superpower”. As opposed to America,…

  • That clever Mr Legal

    18 Dec 2011 | 1:43 pm
    THIS will be my last blog post this year. But although Charlemagne is taking a break, the EU machinery, perhaps unusually, is working overtime over the festive season. It is trying to gift-wrap the new treaty that leaders agreed to draw up over the head of Britain's prime minister, David Cameron.   My piece this week on the British row argues that the bust-up could yet go either way: towards a progressive deterioration in relations that might ultimately see Britain leave the union, or towards a reconciliation that sets aside the rancour of the night of December 8th-9th. The past few days…

  • Europe's great divorce

    9 Dec 2011 | 2:03 am
    WE JOURNALISTS are probably too bleary-eyed after a sleepless night to understand the full significance of what has just happened in Brussels. What is clear is that after a long, hard and rancorous negotiation, at about 5am this morning the European Union split in a fundamental way. In an effort to stabilise the euro zone, France, Germany and 21 other countries have decided to draft their own treaty to impose more central control over national budgets. Britain and three others have decided to stay out. In the coming weeks, Britain may find itself even more isolated. Sweden, the…

  • Pope Mario in the euro-bordello

    8 Dec 2011 | 8:05 pm
    AT LEAST there is hope. Grim-faced European leaders gathered in Brussels on December 8th for their summit to save the euro with the news that Pope Benedict XVI was praying to the Virgin Mary for the sake of Italy and Europe. He should also spare a prayer for Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank.As the dinnertime negotiations stretched into the wee hours of Friday morning, leaked drafts of a communiqué indicate that the summiteers intend to agree to a “fiscal compact” to ensure the stability of the euro zone. These words matter: they are the same ones that Mr…

  • Behind the smiles

    5 Dec 2011 | 12:57 pm
    ANGELA MERKEL and Nicolas Sarkozy have come a long way since their walk along the seafront at Deauville in October last year. That meeting produced a compromise that, some hoped, held the promise of resolving the euro zone’s debt crisis. That deal envisaged tougher monitoring of countries’ budgets and economic policies, and a rapid amendment to the European Union's treaties. Many thought treaty change was unnecessary but went along for Mrs Merkel's sake. Sounds familiar, no? That is because, a year on, “Merkozy”, as the Germano-French duo are now known, are once again pushing for a…
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    Democracy in America

  • Dead man moonwalking

    M.S.
    27 Jan 2012 | 2:44 pm
    THE dream appears to be dead, thank goodness; Newt Gingrich, having failed to achieve orbit velocity in yesterday's debate, is in all likelihood not going to be the Republican nominee for president. This would seem to resolve the discussion in political-science circles over the past few days about whether the current presidential primary fits the accepted model of party elites testing out candidates and settling on a consensus (as laid out in Marty Cohen, David Karol, Hans Noel and John Zaller's "The Party Decides"), or whether something else, something more populist and media-driven perhaps,…

  • Swinging for the fences

    E.G. | AUSTIN
    27 Jan 2012 | 1:09 pm
    WE SOMETIMES indulge in the charming idea that every state counts in the context of a presidential election, but really it comes down to the states that swing. Barack Obama has, accordingly, embarked on a five-swing-state tour that will take him to Iowa, Nevada, Colorado, Michigan and Arizona. That last, of course, is a real long-shot on this year's Democratic wish list. Mr Obama lost it last time by a 53.8%-45.0% margin. Ruth Marcus reports that the campaign's reasoning is that it would have been closer if not for the fact that the Republican on the ticket was the state's longtime senator,…

  • Live-blogging the Republican debate

    The Economist online
    26 Jan 2012 | 6:57 pm
    (Photo credit: AFP)

  • A doleful turn for Newt

    W.W. | IOWA CITY
    26 Jan 2012 | 5:37 pm
    TONIGHT's debate ought to be fun, folks. On Tuesday, at the time of the last Republican debate, Newt Gingrich had almost drawn even with Mitt Romney in Florida, and seemed to try on the role of even-keeled front-runner. Of course, the evenness of Mr Gingrich's keel is not among his attractions as a candidate, and Mr Romney's attacks on Mr Gingrich's sullied congressional ethics record and history of lobbying seemed to have done some damage. Meanwhile, the barrage of anti-Gingrich ads seems to be working as intended in Florida; polls released yesterday show Mr Romney's lead opening up again.

  • Class war and maritime disasters

    M.S.
    26 Jan 2012 | 2:14 pm
    I PROPOSE that all disputes over class and values be settled from now on by reference to survival statistics from the ship's roster of the Titanic. Via Andrew Sullivan, I see that Mark Steyn, in typical Götterdämmerung mode, opined the other day that the undignified scramble to leave the sinking Costa Concordia exemplifies the deterioration of Western values since that noble night to remember in 1912 when men of all classes and stations chivalrously ushered women and children first into the lifeboats and went unflinchingly to their watery graves. "[T]he social norm of 'women and…
 
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    Free exchange

  • Who has the most wiggle room?

    27 Jan 2012 | 4:36 am
    BOTH the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have recently warned that if the euro-area crisis worsens it could drag the world into another deep recession. If so, emerging economies would once again be hurt by falling exports and a drying up of capital inflows. This week’s Free exchange column examines which countries have the most fiscal and monetary firepower to boost their domestic demand.The good news is that whereas most rich countries have little or no room to cut interest rates or to increase public borrowing, emerging markets as a group still have lots of monetary and…

  • The Fed acts without acting

    26 Jan 2012 | 8:43 am
    ONE truth that emerges clearly from the recent history of Federal Reserve monetary-policy action is that changing central bank policy goals is like steering the Titanic. You can see where the ship ought to go, and the captain himself might do his best to pilot it there, but the nature of the beast is that it simply won't turn on a dime. There are too many extremely cautious people influencing policy decisions and too much political and market scrutiny for that.All the same, the ship has turned and is likely to continue altering its heading. Early in the crisis, the Fed reached for the…

  • Hot times in Silicon Valley

    25 Jan 2012 | 11:26 am
    THE San Francisco Bay area is undergoing one of its periodic tech booms on the back of the flourishing of social networking firms. That boom, the Wall Street Journal tells us, is very good for local tech workers:Tech-jobs website operator Dice Holdings Inc. said salaries for software and other engineering professionals in California's Silicon Valley rose 5.2% to an average $104,195 last year, outstripping the average 2% increase, to $81,327, in tech-workers' salaries nationwide. It was the first time since Dice began the salary survey in 2001 that the wage barometer broke the $100,000…

  • The weekly papers

    25 Jan 2012 | 10:11 am
    THIS week's interesting economics research:• Time as a trade barrier (David Hummels and Georg Schaur)• Oil prices, exhaustible resources, and economic growth (James Hamilton)• Getting up to speed on the financial crisis: a one-weekend-reader's guide (Gary Gorton and Andrew Metrick)• What explains trends in labor supply among U.S. undergraduates? (Judith Scott-Clayton)• The Nixon Shock after forty years (Douglas Irwin)• International capital flows and house prices (Jack Favilukis, David Kohn, Sydney C. Ludvigson, and Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh)

  • Angela Merkel would consider a euro-zone fiscal stimulus

    25 Jan 2012 | 8:56 am
    A RECENT survey by the French research institute IFOP found that in the eyes of the French, Angela Merkel represents those values that are commonly associated with Germans (serious, disciplined, hard-working, sincere and so on). The study, which was commissioned by the German embassy in Paris, also reported that 62% of respondents thought that France should learn from German economic and social policies—although I am not sure about the framing of that question in French.Ms Merkel herself disagrees with such stereotyping, as she reveals in a forthcoming interview with several European…
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    Lexington's notebook

  • One morning's emails

    24 Jan 2012 | 10:40 am
    FOR those lucky enough not to be on the list, here are the headlines of just a few of this morning's press mailings from the Romney and Gingrich campaigns:"Romney's crony capitalism"."Romney for President releases new video: 'Mr Washington Insider'"."Newt Gingrich: part of the problem"."Politifact: Newt Gingrich 'took pains to avoid being subject to the rules' of lobbying.""Missing: Newt's Freddie Mac papers"."Mitt Romney's Top Conservative Achievements". (This mailing from the Gingrich campaign is blank.)"Romneycare and Obamacare: what's the difference"?"New York Times: Gingrich 'did many of…

  • Perry exits

    19 Jan 2012 | 8:56 am
    THE almost certain departure of Rick Perry from the Republican nomination race this morning was not a terrific surprise. The real wonder was why the Texas governor changed his mind about giving up after Iowa. And even before the Iowa caucuses it had become embarrassingly clear that he lacked the qualities required to run for president. Though his horrible "oops" moment in November (when he couldn't remember the third government department he wanted to abolish) was the beginning of the end, there was a lot more to it than that.In a series of debates Mr Perry showed a comprehensive and…

  • In the up-country

    15 Jan 2012 | 11:35 am
    HAVING overdosed on campaign events in New Hampshire, I decided to skip South Carolina's GOP debate and tea-party fest in Myrtle Beach this weekend and headed instead for the Palmetto state's conservative up-country. As the home of Bob Jones University, Greenville seemed a good place to start, and turns out to be a very pleasant place to visit. On the way here I was told by local journalists and academics that the town's Main Street shows hints of cosmopolitanism, thanks to the arrival in recent  years of big foreign companies such as BMW, Michelin and Fujifilm. I was told that I might…

  • As an historian ...

    19 Dec 2011 | 12:22 pm
    I'M ON holiday, but can't resist flagging up a long post from my friend the Liberal Curmudgeon taking down Newt Gingrich's argument on politicians and the judiciary. The substance of his argument is here, and this is his delicious introduction:Professor Gingrich was at it again last week flashing his Official Historian's Membership Badge, this time to explain why President Historian Gingrich, "just like Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and FDR,"  would "take on the judiciary." Before examining the professor's historical analogies, could I point out that unlike, say, being a chemist,…

  • Looking forward to it

    17 Dec 2011 | 9:24 am
    ACCORDING to Gallup, most Americans are not looking forward to the 2012 election campaign. Though 26% can't wait for it to begin, fully 70% can't wait for it to be over. For my part, I can't wait for it to begin. From the point of view of a journalist covering such a race for the first time, there is a lot to look forward to: a chance to travel the USA widely, the clash of larger-than-life personalities, and, in this cycle, a race that really is too close to call. It also helps to be a foreigner. Writing about a country that is not your own provides a degree of detachment, a luxury that…
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    The Economist: Letters

  • Letters: On Mitt Romney, India, Switzerland, common law, "The Iron Lady", executive pay, theme parks, walking, the Olympics

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    Letters are welcome via e-mail to letters@economist.comThe American civility war SIR – America’s protracted love affair with anti-intellectualism has found its latest expression during the Republican presidential nomination contest (“Mitt Romney marches on”, January 14th). Jon Huntsman elicited groans from the Republican audience at a debate for, of all things, speaking Mandarin, a linguistic accomplishment most people would consider laudable. A superPac supporting Newt Gingrich launched an attack on Mitt Romney for, among other character flaws, speaking French, the implication being…

  • Letters: On the City, productivity, sin taxes, Bolivia, nuclear power, Kolkata, euphemisms

    19 Jan 2012 | 10:07 am
    Letters are welcome via e-mail to letters@economist.comBalancing the ledger SIR – Your leader on how to “Save the City” (January 7th) as the world’s premier centre for global finance mentioned the potential for damage from political attacks, and you drove home your argument by pointing out that “California doesn’t talk down Silicon Valley”. Maybe so, but then Google, Facebook and Twitter have not plunged the world into the biggest recession since the Depression, demanded taxpayer bail-outs and then used the money to pay executives exorbitant bonuses. The St Paul’s Institute…

  • Letters: On oil, the Republicans, shale gas, the East India Company, suicide, Tilbury port, Belgian beer, the rich

    12 Jan 2012 | 10:04 am
    Letters are welcome via e-mail to letters@economist.comOil and trouble SIR – Lexington’s column on the “wretched Middle East” (December 10th) seemed to take comfort from the fact that America “no longer imports more than 10% of its oil from the Middle East” and that “America buys most of its oil elsewhere”. Given the latest bit of brinkmanship between Iran and the West, a few points are in order. America has notably reduced its dependence on imports (net imports fell from 57% in 2008 to 45% in November 2011) and in addition significantly increased its domestic production…

  • Letters: On religion and America, Britain and Europe, Canada, "free cities", Martin Luther

    5 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am
    Letters are welcome via e-mail to letters@economist.comAmerica’s founders SIR – Although informative in many respects, your article on religion in America at the time of independence (“The faith—and doubts—of our fathers”, December 17th) seemed to suggest that “freedom of conscience was first established” in post-independence Virginia. But in 1682 William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, provided for the absolute right of religious freedom in his framework of government for the new colony. As an English Quaker who had often been imprisoned in England for his writings and…

  • Letters: On the euro zone, Irish banks, India, veterans, women, jobs, seasteading, Vladimir Putin

    28 Dec 2011 | 10:03 am
    Letters are welcome via e-mail to letters@economist.comTime to sell the family silver SIR – If over a long period of time a family borrows more money than it is able to earn, it will find debt collectors at the door. The situation of the weaker countries in the euro zone is not any different (“A comedy of euros”, December 17th), and thus there is a simple, logical and efficient solution for their predicament. Just as the family will go bankrupt unless it can repay its debts by selling the car, the table silver and other luxury items, so must the overburdened euro-zone countries give up…
 
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    The Economist: Leaders

  • China: The paradox of prosperity

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    IN THIS issue we launch a weekly section devoted to China. It is the first time since we began our detailed coverage of the United States in 1942 that we have singled out a country in this way. The principal reason is that China is now an economic superpower and is fast becoming a military force capable of unsettling America. But our interest in China lies also in its politics: it is governed by a system that is out of step with global norms. In ways that were never true of post-war Japan and may never be true of India, China will both fascinate and agitate the rest of the world for a long…

  • The Republican nomination: Not so fast, Newt

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    THERE is a lot to like about Newt Gingrich, who won a stunning 13-point victory in South Carolina’s Republican primary on January 21st and is now ahead in some polls for the next state, Florida, on January 31st (see article). He is a ferociously intelligent one-man ideas factory, gushing forth an endless stream of new policies and arguments.As Speaker of the House of Representatives after he led his party to victory in the 1994 mid-term elections, his clever “Contract With America” made him a tea-partier before there was ever a tea party. He fought against excessive spending, to the…

  • The euro crisis: What to do about Greece

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    GREECE, progenitor of the euro zone’s debt drama, is back at centre-stage. The reason is a battle between the Greek government, its European and IMF rescuers, and the holders of Greek bonds over the terms of a “voluntary” reduction in its private debts. Greece’s economy is in far worse shape than when the outlines of a deal were put together last October, so there is a bigger financial hole to plug. Germany and other rescuers don’t want to offer more money, not least because Greece’s politicians have broken so many of the promises they made to reform. Bondholders don’t want to…

  • Syria’s uprising: Hold your horses

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    “I STICK my neck out for nobody,” drawls Rick in “Casablanca”. “A wise foreign policy,” says Captain Renault. But is it? Over the past ten months Syria has slid to the brink of civil war. Firefights, ambushes, massacres and bombings take place almost daily. Defying international sanctions, the regime kills protesting citizens by the dozen. The opposition, once hostile to all violence, has started to take up arms that increasingly pour in from neighbouring Lebanon. Aided by army defectors, it gains and loses control of small patches of territory, but it will not soon win the upper…

  • Private equity: Monsters, Inc?

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    THE public has never loved the way that private-equity titans make a buck—or billions. But now that Mitt Romney’s career at Bain Capital, a buy-out firm, is fodder for his Republican rivals, it has become fashionable to demonise private equity as “vulture” capitalism and “worse than Wall Street”. Do Mr Romney and his ilk deserve such opprobrium?Two charges are generally made against private equity. The first is that it plunders companies and slashes jobs. The other, underscored this week when Mr Romney released his tax returns, is that private-equity executives are obscenely rich…
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    The Economist: Briefing

  • Energy in India: The future is black

    19 Jan 2012 | 10:07 am
    STAB a finger at the middle of a map of India and you will hit Nagpur. Some 20 miles (32 kilometres) north-west of the city is a sloping tunnel bored into the rock. Ride two miles down into the gloom, hanging from a wire, and after a torch-lit hike past underground streams and conveyor belts you arrive at a black wall. Sweating men are rigging it with tubes of explosives and wire detonators. Soon they will blast it apart, and down should tumble tonnes of India’s most important commodity: coal.In coal India has something as abundant as people. As more Indians enjoy the trappings of…

  • Natural disasters: Counting the cost of calamities

    12 Jan 2012 | 10:04 am
    THE world’s industrial supply chains were only just recovering from Japan’s earthquake and tsunami in March when a natural disaster severed them again in October. An unusually heavy monsoon season swelled rivers and overwhelmed reservoirs in northern Thailand. The floodwaters eventually reached Bangkok, causing a political crisis as residents fought over whose neighbourhoods would flood. But before that the economic toll was being felt farther north in Ayutthaya province, a manufacturing hub. The waters overwhelmed the six-metre-high dykes around the Rojana industrial estate, one of…

  • The semiconductor industry: Space invaders

    5 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am
    LAS VEGAS is a city of fast bucks, fast food and fast marriages. It could also be the place where a long war was declared. On January 10th Paul Otellini, the boss of Intel, will address the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), a vast gathering of gadget-makers, sellers and aficionados in Sin City. He will introduce a phalanx of products showcasing the chips the world’s largest semiconductor company most wants to hype.Up on the stage with Mr Otellini will be not just PCs of the sort that the company has powered for decades, but also new slimline PCs known as “ultrabooks”, which…

  • Heterodox economics: Marginal revolutionaries

    28 Dec 2011 | 10:03 am
    POINT UDALL on St Croix, one of the US Virgin Islands, is a far-flung, wind-whipped spot. You cannot travel farther east without leaving the United States. Visitors can pose next to a stone sundial commemorating America’s first dawn of the third millennium. A couple named “Sigi + Ricky” have added a memento of their own, an arrowstruck heart scrawled on the perimeter wall in memory of “us”.Warren Mosler, an innovative carmaker, a successful bond-investor and an idiosyncratic economist, moved to St Croix in 2003 to take advantage of a hospitable tax code and clement weather. From his…

  • Lessons of the 1930s: There could be trouble ahead

    8 Dec 2011 | 10:17 am
    “YOU’RE right, we did it,” Ben Bernanke told Milton Friedman in a speech celebrating the Nobel laureate’s 90th birthday in 2002. He was referring to Mr Friedman’s conclusion that central bankers were responsible for much of the suffering in the Depression. “But thanks to you,” the future chairman of the Federal Reserve continued, “we won’t do it again.” Nine years later Mr Bernanke’s peers are congratulating themselves for delivering on that promise. “We prevented a Great Depression,” the Bank of England’s governor, Mervyn King, told the Daily Telegraph in March…
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    The Economist: Special report

  • Something old, something new

    19 Jan 2012 | 10:07 am
    IN SEPTEMBER 1789 George Washington appointed Alexander Hamilton as America’s first ever treasury secretary. Two years later Hamilton presented Congress with a “Report on Manufactures”, his plan to get the young country’s economy going and provide the underpinnings for its hard-fought independence. Hamilton had no time for Adam Smith’s ideas about the hidden hand. America needed to protect its infant industries with tariffs if it wanted to see them grow up.State capitalism has been around for almost as long as capitalism itself. Anglo-Saxons like to think of themselves as the…

  • A choice of models: Theme and variations

    19 Jan 2012 | 10:07 am
    IT IS EASY for a casual visitor to China to be fooled into thinking that he is in a normal capitalist country. The big cities are dotted with Starbucks and Kinkos. The newspapers run stories about small businesspeople falling prey to loan sharks. Business executives are whisked around in Mercedes cars with blackened windows. Their wives and mistresses idle their afternoons away in doga classes—yoga that includes the pet dog.But the form of capitalism on display is highly idiosyncratic. Company bosses are routinely moved to rival companies without any explanation. Company headquarters have…

  • Going abroad: The world in their hands

    19 Jan 2012 | 10:07 am
    IT IS FITTING that China’s national symbol should be an animal that spends 16 hours a day eating bamboo. China is an energy panda that is obsessed by the question of where its next mouthful of bamboo will come from. The Chinese elite sees the world in terms of brutal competition for limited resources. And it has no truck with Western ideas about relying on the market. (“Western countries can feel secure purchasing oil internationally because they created the system,” says one diplomat. “China did not.”) China is utterly convinced that it needs to use all the elements of national…

  • State capitalism’s global reach: New masters of the universe

    19 Jan 2012 | 10:07 am
    THE HEADQUARTERS OF China Central Television, designed by Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren, looks like a monstrous space invader striding across Beijing. The headquarters of the China National Offshore Oil Corporation resembles an oil tanker emerging from a shimmering sea. It was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox, an international firm of architects, and sits directly opposite China’s ministry of foreign affairs. All over central Beijing you see state companies erecting giant monuments to themselves, reflecting their huge power and their vision of themselves as agents of modernisation.That vision…

  • Pros and cons: Mixed bag

    19 Jan 2012 | 10:07 am
    THE HIGH-SPEED train journey from Beijing to Shanghai is a revelation to a visitor used to Britain’s dilapidated railway system. Young women in neat red uniforms take pity on a foreigner and guide him to his seat. The train quickly accelerates to its cruising speed of 300km an hour and reaches Shanghai, 1,318km (820 miles) away, in under five hours. The new station there is a festival of sweeping curves.The feeling of travelling so fast for so long is disconcerting. The countryside whizzes by in a blur, though the ride is impeccably smooth. Even more disconcerting for a Westerner is the…
 
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    The Economist: Britain

  • Professional and business services: Unsung heroes

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    THE court battle between Roman Abramovich and Boris Berezovsky, which centres on years-ago dealings in a Russian oil company, has kept London’s high court busy for the past three months. It has provided amusement to Russian journalists, who are keen to peek inside the lives of two rich men. And it has plumped British lawyers’ pockets by an unknown, but surely considerable, sum. Law seems to be defying wider economic trends: according to the latest official figures, turnover has grown by about 10% in the past five years. Two of the world’s top five firms are based in London, and last…

  • The mortgage market: Home truths

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    SOMETIMES it takes the interaction of powerful forces for things just to stand still. So it is with Britain’s housing market, which lenders expect to remain characterised this year by low levels of transactions and stable prices. But, quietly, the property market is being transformed.The forces bearing down on housing are obvious enough. Home sales have fallen sharply since the start of the financial crisis, to around half their 2007 levels. That reflects greater conservatism on the part of lenders—“We don’t assume that home prices will go up, a mistake everyone made in the past,”…

  • The economy: Squeezed

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    THERE was never any doubt that Britain’s economy was destined for a stormy close to 2011. Its proximity to the tempest engulfing Europe guaranteed that. All told, the economy’s fourth-quarter performance—a contraction of 0.2%—is a bit worse than expected, but hardly surprising. Is worse to come?The answer depends overwhelmingly on whether Europe’s crisis deepens or is resolved. A sharp decline in European industrial production from September hit both demand and confidence among British businesses. In the fourth quarter British industrial output sank by 1.2%. Yet the euro-zone…

  • Scottish independence: More than just words

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    But who will call the tune? “DO YOU agree that Scotland should be an independent country?” If Alex Salmond gets his way, that will be the main question confronting his compatriots in the autumn of 2014. Scotland’s Nationalist first minister set the timing of the referendum on the nation’s independence earlier this month. But its wording, which was announced in a consultation document on January 25th, will be more important to the eventual result.Unionists want Scots to be asked simply whether they wish to stay in the United Kingdom or to leave it. Mr Salmond’s main question does…

  • Bagehot: Global Britain, SOS

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    WITH your back to the open sea, an island can feel encircled, even claustrophobic. Turn to face the waves and an island feels like a starting point, a place surrounded by a variety of bracing possibilities, both good and bad.Britain has the politics of an island. At worst, its political debate can be parochial, even tin-eared about the world outside. Yet Britain is an outrider for openness, standing out among large European nations for its faith in free trade, liberalised markets and undistorted competition. In many neighbouring countries, calls to reject free trade and embrace protectionism…
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    The Economist: Europe

  • Germany’s coalition: Merkel at the top

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    SUMMITS are good for Angela Merkel. Germans like to watch the chancellor hobnob with the world’s most powerful men. She stands out, for braininess and for bringing a flash of colour to the dark-suited scrums. But she undoubtedly belongs. Thanks to the euro crisis, summits happen almost as often as Republican presidential debates, giving Mrs Merkel frequent opportunities to press Germany’s case, in her quietly insistent way. She was the opening speaker at the Davos powerfest on January 25th. On January 30th she will meet fellow European leaders in Brussels for yet another summit on the…

  • Turkish foreign policy: Problems with the neighbours

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    Dreams and nightmares for Davutoglu ONE recent night in Ankara Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, woke up drenched in sweat. “I had a nightmare about a crisis in Libya,” he recalls, speaking on his way to Brussels. “The real crisis was in Syria, though, and I was unable to fall back asleep.”The bloodbath in Syria is only one headache afflicting the architect of Turkey’s policy of “zero problems with the neighbours”. This week the French Senate passed a bill to make it a crime in France to deny that the mass killings of Ottoman Armenians in 1915 constituted genocide.

  • Italy’s reforms: The Iron Monti

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    Taxi drivers, pharmacists—who is next? MARIO MONTI, Italy’s prime minister, is set fair to become his country’s Margaret Thatcher. But who will play the role of the miners, whose strike represented the most serious challenge to the Iron Lady’s free-market reforms?Angry victims of Mr Monti’s legislation have queued up for the honour ever since his government approved a wide-ranging package of liberalisation measures on January 20th. Taxi drivers held a one-day national strike to protest at a scheme to increase the number of licences. Chemists, who have a similar objection to a rise…

  • Swedish Social Democrats: In the dumps

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    JUST when Sweden’s opposition Social Democrats thought things could not get worse, they have. Indeed, Europe’s most successful political party is in the throes of the worst crisis in its history. Hakan Juholt has quit as leader after only ten months, following a seemingly endless stream of blunders that led many party districts to call for him to go. The opinion polls are sending shivers through the party, with support hovering around 25%, its lowest ever.This is not entirely Mr Juholt’s fault. The Social Democrats, who ruled Sweden for most of the 80 years until 2006, lost the…

  • Croatia and the European Union: A cautious yes

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    NO FIREWORKS, no flag-waving crowds: just a champagne toast and a sigh of relief. That was the response on January 22nd, when Croats voted to join the European Union. The “yes” camp won a two-thirds majority, far more convincing than anyone had expected. True, the reported turnout of 43% was low. But Croatia’s voting rolls are out of date. Guessing at the real number of eligible voters and subtracting the diaspora, especially Bosnian Croats, the turnout may have been a respectable 60%, says Vesna Pusic, the foreign minister.Croatia’s EU accession was negotiated by the Croatian…
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    The Economist: United States

  • American coal: A burning issue

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    A FREIGHT train, its dozen cars loaded with coal covered in a light dusting of snow, snaked through the narrow valley, sometimes following the two-lane highway and sometimes crossing it. The valley was silent and snowy, and though it was two days into 2012 it could easily have been 1982, 1942 or 1922: coal has been mined in Appalachia and carried out by rail for well over a century.And by some measures, coal is still going strong. It provides more of America’s electricity than any other fuel. Production has fallen off since 2008, but it remains high, as do prices, for which thank the…

  • Immigration laws: Caught in the net

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    ALABAMA’S immigration law, boasted Micky Hammon, an Alabama legislator and one of its co-authors, “attacks every aspect of an illegal immigrant’s life. They will not stay in Alabama…This bill is designed to make it difficult for them to live here so they will deport themselves.” It is not, however, designed to introduce visiting executives from Mercedes-Benz, which employs thousands at its factory in the state, to the pleasures of Alabama’s jails. But that is what happened to Detlev Hager, who was caught in November driving in Tuscaloosa with only German ID on him.Alabama’s…

  • Lexington: The union’s state is dire

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    IT IS becoming hard to remember that Barack Obama’s speeches were once described as inspiring, visionary and transformational. His state-of-the-union message on January 24th was none of those things. Then again, circumstances were against him. He said, as presidents must, that the state of the union was “getting stronger”. But everyone knows that the true state of the union is dire: 13m Americans are unemployed, the recovery is fragile and at any moment the economy could be blown sideways by a new gust of bad economic news from Europe. Nor, frankly, was this speech a useful guide to the…

  • California’s ports: The fickle Asian container

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    INTO San Pedro Bay they pull, the huge ships from Asia, each with thousands of containers full of lawn chairs, toys or iPads. As they enter the bay they go left, to the Port of Los Angeles (America’s largest), or right, to the Port of Long Beach (the second-largest): geographically and logistically, the two are one harbour, even though rival cities operate them in competition. Gantry cranes then unload the containers onto trucks. About half go to consumers in the urban sprawl of southern California. But the other half are driven a few miles to a railway yard, where they are put on eastbound…

  • Rick Perry quits the race: Back in the saddle

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    That way, dear IT WAS a well-earned thumping. When Rick Perry, governor of Texas, entered the race for the Republican presidential nomination last August, he was instantly considered a heavyweight. But within weeks he had cheerfully threatened the head of the Federal Reserve with personal harm, and had forgotten his own reform proposals in a televised debate. After a fifth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses he said he would consider withdrawing, but then thought again. To no avail; and when the end came at last, on January 19th, few were surprised or sorry.“I know when it’s time to make a…
 
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    The Economist: The Americas

  • Crime in Nicaragua: A surprising safe haven

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    LYING between Colombia’s coca bushes and Mexico’s cocaine traffickers, Central America is a choke point on the drugs trail. In 2010 the smugglers ensured that Honduras, El Salvador, Belize and Guatemala were among the world’s seven most violent countries. Costa Rica and Panama are richer and safer. But since 2007 their murder rates have respectively risen by a third and nearly doubled.Amid this inferno Nicaragua, the poorest country in mainland Latin America, is remarkably safe. Whereas Honduras’s murder rate in 2010 was 82 per 100,000 people, the world’s highest in over a decade,…

  • Race in Brazil: Affirming a divide

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    The shadow of the past IN APRIL 2010, as part of a scheme to beautify the rundown port near the centre of Rio de Janeiro for the 2016 Olympic games, workers were replacing the drainage system in a shabby square when they found some old cans. The city called in archaeologists, whose excavations unearthed the ruins of Valongo, once Brazil’s main landing stage for African slaves.From 1811 to 1843 around 500,000 slaves arrived there, according to Tânia Andrade Lima, the head archaeologist. Valongo was a complex, including warehouses where slaves were sold and a cemetery. Hundreds of plastic…

  • Ecuador’s retirement capital: Going gently

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    What’s the Spanish word for dentures? THE double-decker tour buses leaving the centre of Cuenca, Ecuador’s third city, rarely carry even ten passengers. Yet when Andrés and Rocío Molina held a viewing of their two-bedroom house for interested Americans, some 30 boarded a bus provided by the estate agent.For three straight years this city of 330,000 people has topped International Living magazine’s ranking of retirement spots. American diplomats say some 5,000 expatriates from the United States, mostly over 55, now live in Cuenca, which has enough colonial and 19th-century architecture…

  • Mexico’s do-nothing legislature: The siesta congress

    19 Jan 2012 | 10:07 am
    AFTER a fortnight of Christmas fiestas, Mexicans groggily returned to work two weeks ago. Or rather, most of them did. For the 500 deputies and 128 senators of the national Congress, the holidays roll on until February. Mexico’s lawmakers sit for only 195 days a year, the fewest among Latin America’s bigger countries. (Their $11,200-a-month pay, however, is the highest after Brazil’s.) When they do stir themselves to vote, it is more often to block rivals’ bills than to pass reforms.Gridlock in the palace of San Lázaro partly explains why Felipe Calderón’s presidency, which ends…

  • Guatemala’s new president: Quick march

    19 Jan 2012 | 10:07 am
    “THE change has begun. The change has arrived,” declared Otto Pérez Molina as he donned Guatemala’s presidential sash on January 14th. Quoting Mayan astronomers who set the start of a new 5,125-year epoch in 2012, Mr Pérez, a former general, vowed to save the country from its “crisis” of crime and poverty.Guatemala has grave problems and feeble means to combat them. Its murder rate of 39 per 100,000 people, partly spurred by drug gangs, is among the world’s highest. Slow violence is done on a bigger scale by malnutrition, which stalks half the country’s children, the worst…
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    The Economist: Middle East and Africa

  • Libya’s recovery: Better than it sounds

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    LIBYA’S interim rulers had their first serious wobble on January 21st when a crowd of several thousand massed outside a government building in Benghazi, the country’s second city, where members of the National Transitional Council were meeting. They hurled grenades and Molotov cocktails, yelled angry slogans and demanded more support for rebel fighters now out of a job.Their discontent had been building for some time, particularly in the east of the country, which fell swiftly to rebel forces early last year. As war raged further west until the fall of Tripoli, the capital, in August and…

  • Yemen’s president: Another one bites the dust

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    ALI ABDULLAH SALEH ended his 33 years as president of Yemen on January 22nd and boarded a plane to Oman and may go on to America. This has brought to a close, at least temporarily, a violent power struggle.Riven by civil strife for many years, opposition groups rose up in open revolt a year ago, following the example of youths in Tunisia and Egypt. Mr Saleh, weakened by an injury from a bomb attack in June, clung to power. For months Yemen appeared in danger of sliding into bloody chaos. Mr Saleh’s loyal troops fought not only student protesters but also tribal bands and defecting soldiers,…

  • Kenya and the ICC: Brace yourself

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    THE International Criminal Court (ICC) on January 23rd announced the prosecution of four well-known Kenyans for crimes against humanity. The charges date back to a post-election spree of violence in 2008, which killed 1,500 people and displaced 300,000 more. Among those facing trial are Francis Muthaura, the country’s top civil servant, and Uhuru Kenyatta, the finance minister. Both men resigned three days later. They are from the Kikuyu tribe, while the other accused are from the rival Kalenjin: William Ruto, a former cabinet minister, and Joshua Sang, a radio-show host.Politics is likely…

  • Syria’s crisis: It looks like civil war

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    THE breezy hilltop resort of Zabadani is usually occupied by rich Syrians in second homes and Gulf tourists enjoying the picturesque mountains on the Lebanese border. But for much of January the town of some 40,000 people has been a rebel enclave. After several days of fighting by daring but lightly armed opposition forces, the army, equipped with tanks and heavy weaponry, was forced to pull back on January 18th. Residents hailed their “liberated city” and hung pictures of the dead in a tree. They waved placards and shouted slogans ridiculing the regime. Civilians guarded checkpoints…

  • Books in Arabic: Revolution between hard covers

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    A novel habit THE Middle East has a bad reputation when it comes to books; nowhere else do so few people read them. But that might change as censorship rules are relaxed and new books begin to dissect the popular uprisings that felled despots in Egypt and Tunisia—along with other delicate subjects. Eye-witness accounts, jeremiads and self-congratulatory memoirs jostle for space at the Cairo book fair, which coincides this month with the first anniversary of the revolutions.The fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt is chronicled by Abdel Latif al-Menawy in “Tahrir: The last 18 days of Mubarak”.
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    The Economist: Asia

  • Censorship in India: Unfunny gags

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    The baying mobs EVEN a magical realist would struggle with the unlikely tale that unfolded this week at the Jaipur literary festival. Salman Rushdie, an author whom Islamists revile, stayed away, warned by police that two assassins had been dispatched by a Mumbai mafioso to prowl among the literati and murder him.When it turned out that the police story was more inventive than most novels, Mr Rushdie offered to speak by video link. Yet the plug was pulled on that, amid implausible talk of baying mobs of Muslims. The festival organisers, prodded by the authorities, also sent other writers…

  • Gaming and politics in Australia: Ms Gillard’s gamble

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    Dennis’s mum plays the pokies too IN AUSTRALIAN politics, “pokies” loom large. These gambling machines (poker machines, or pokies in Oz-speak) crowd the country’s pubs and clubs. Australians lose more than A$19 billion ($20 billion) a year gambling, about two-thirds of it on pokies. Julia Gillard, the prime minister, put together a minority Labor government 16 months ago partly on the strength of a deal to attack perceived problem gambling. On January 21st, after a campaign by Australia’s clubs industry, she ditched the deal. In doing so, she has further complicated her…

  • Politics in Bangladesh: Turbulent house

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    And fine cellar confiscated IT WAS, says Gowher Rizvi, a close adviser to Bangladesh’s prime minister, “very quickly nipped in the bud”. He was talking of a coup plot foiled by the army. The schemers—16 were involved, and some are on the run—included disgruntled mid-ranking officers, retired officers, and others abroad. He claims investigators found a list of prominent people to be assassinated, and another list of generals expected to be “potential partners”.Bangladesh has faced dozens of coups, failed or not, in its 40 years. But for an army spokesman to give details of one,…

  • Political visions in Japan: Generational warfare

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    IT IS rare in Japan to find one bold political leader, and even rarer to find two. Yet since the start of the year, two men with wildly different personalities, political styles and power bases have launched daring projects that they hope will help shake Japan out of its long economic funk. They may end up colliding with each other.The first is the prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda. At the opening of the Diet, or parliament, on January 24th, he said he would present a bill by the end of March that aims to double the consumption tax, to 10%. For well over a decade, the political establishment has…

  • Satire in South Korea: Lampooning the pols

    19 Jan 2012 | 10:07 am
    POKING fun at the Kim family dynasty of North Korea has long been a staple for satirists (those outside the gulag nation, that is): think of the depiction of the late Kim Jong Il in the comedy “Team America”, or just Google a website devoted to his son, “kim jong-un looking at things”. Yet now South Korea, south of the demilitarised zone, is the new venue for an unlikely boom in satire.Though democratic for quarter of a century, South Korea’s Confucian culture is top-down and deferential. Public criticism of the powerful, especially sarcasm, has abiding power to shock. Excessively…
 
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    The Economist: International

  • Saving lives: Scattered saviours

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    Eli Beer: smart bike, phone and idea ISRAELIS know all too well the need for first aid—and the difficulties of providing it. When Eli Beer was four, in 1978, he saw the carnage after a hijacked bus exploded. In 2001 he was knocked to the ground by a secondary bomb intended to kill first-aiders rushing to the scene of a suicide blast.Conventional ambulances called to such scenes have plenty of fancy equipment, but they start from a central location and often struggle to squeeze through traffic jams. So they often arrive too late: the most gravely injured often die in minutes.Mr Beer has…

  • Privacy laws: Private data, public rules

    25 Jan 2012 | 3:33 pm
    FIRST came the yodelling, then the pain. The online entrepreneurs and venture capitalists at DLD, a geeks’ shindig this month in Munich, barely had time to recover from their traditional Bavarian entertainment before Viviane Reding, the European Union’s justice commissioner, introduced a new privacy regulation. Ms Reding termed personal data the “currency” of the digital economy. “And like any currency it needs stability and trust,” Ms Reding told the assembled digerati.The EU’s effort (formally published on January 25th) is part of a global government crackdown on the…

  • Dissent about prohibition: In narco veritas

    19 Jan 2012 | 10:07 am
    RETIRED policemen, judges and presidents who support radical drug-law reform still greatly outnumber those who pipe up while still in the job. But calls for a rethink are increasingly coming from incumbents too. Last year Bolivia’s left-wing government briefly withdrew from the UN’s Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the 1961 treaty underpinning prohibition. It returned after negotiating an opt-out for coca, a traditional mild stimulant (unlike cocaine, no more harmful than caffeine) protected by the country’s constitution.More hawkish leaders are also thinking twice. Felipe…

  • Corporate anonymity: Ultimate privilege

    19 Jan 2012 | 10:07 am
    THAT a company can conceal who really owns it is a longstanding privilege in many countries. This is not just convenient for the shareholders. It makes money for the authorities that register such firms and for the lawyers who handle the details.But it incenses crimefighters and sleazebusters. A World Bank report last year, “The Puppet Masters”, investigated 150 big corruption cases. Almost all involved the misuse of corporate vehicles, such as companies and trusts, to the tune of $50 billion. The Obama Administration’s action plan for open government calls for “meaningful”…

  • Demography and climate change: How to cut carbon emissions

    19 Jan 2012 | 10:07 am
    CARBON emissions vary hugely between countries. That is well known, as is the finding that rich people emit more than poor ones. But a newly revised paper* by Emilio Zagheni of the Max Planck Institute in Rostock, Germany also shows how carbon footprints vary by age—and the worrying implications of this.Average spending patterns vary over a lifetime. Consumption as a fraction of household spending typically peaks when people are in their 20s. Old people drive cars less than do their children and grandchildren. Clothes spending peaks in (most) people’s 40s and declines thereafter. These…
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    The Economist: Business

  • Grameen’s business empire: Grabbing Grameen

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    Some day, all this will belong to the state HE IS probably Bangladesh’s most celebrated citizen. Muhammad Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel peace prize, founded Grameen Bank in 1983 to provide tiny loans to poor rural women. Grameen became a global model for microfinance. It also spawned 48 other firms in sectors that stretch from textiles to mobile phones. Yet the Bangladeshi government seems determined to take Mr Yunus down a peg.In May 2011 the government pushed him out of his job as boss of Grameen Bank, saying that he was past the retirement age for someone running a government bank.

  • Boeing: Faster, faster, faster

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    THERE are not many businesses in which the next six years’ worth of customers form an orderly queue, putting down fat deposits and topping them up with further instalments as they wait in line. But that is Boeing’s fortunate position. On January 25th it announced a 21% rise in annual net profits, to $4 billion.Last September, after three years of delay, Boeing made the first deliveries of its newest model, the 787 Dreamliner. A revamped version of the trusty but ageing 747 jumbo has also arrived, two years late. A few airlines got fed up and cancelled, but most had little choice but to…

  • The internet and file-sharing: Dotcom bust

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    This year’s beach sumo contest was surprisingly one-sided MOST people running a business that could end up on the wrong end of a lawsuit would keep a low profile. Not Kim Dotcom (pictured). The boss of Megaupload, a popular website that let users store and share music, films and other content, Mr Dotcom went out of his way to attract attention—and not just by changing his surname from Schmitz. He surrounded himself with glamorous women and fast cars bearing number plates such as “GUILTY”. He likened himself to Dr Evil, a movie villain, though he looks more like Dr Evil’s henchman,…

  • Legal services: Psst, wanna buy a law firm?

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    LAWYERS have long considered themselves a breed apart: highly educated professionals, not dim-witted businessmen who think a “whereas” is a man who turns into a small member of the horse family when the moon is full. Many countries bar business types from owning even a bit (much less all) of a law firm. But in Britain, that law changed in October.Companies are queuing up to form new “alternative business structures” (ABS). The Solicitors Regulation Authority, the biggest legal regulator, has received at least 65 applications. The first ABSs should be approved in February.The…

  • Canada’s high-tech woes: Research in commotion

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    FOR months Research In Motion (RIM), the Canadian maker of BlackBerry smartphones, has seemed incapable of getting anything right. Its PlayBook tablet went on sale without e-mail (unless attached to a BlackBerry). Its network was blacked out for days with scarcely a word from the company. It has been slow to upgrade BlackBerry’s operating system. Investors squealed as the share price fell by 70% in ten months. Canadians are now worried they might lose a second technology champion within a few years.Ever louder calls for a change in leadership were answered on January 22nd, when RIM’s…
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    The Economist: Finance and economics

  • Greece and the euro: An economy crumbles

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    THE banners at the entrance to the Bank of Greece museum in Athens promise a “fascinating journey through Greece’s modern economic and monetary history”. How could any passer-by resist? Inside the museum ranks of glass cases enclose an array of coins and old bank notes, as well as the paraphernalia used to make them. The bills range from 5 drachma up to 100m drachma, a reminder that Greece has had problems with inflation in the past. The end of history, at least for this exhibition, is 2001 when Greece adopted the euro. But the country’s present troubles suggest an important chapter…

  • Buttonwood: In praise of pessimists

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    BARELY a week goes by without a report on the level of confidence among consumers, businesspeople and investors. Optimism is what’s wanted—Keynes talked of the “animal spirits” that influence economic activity. Pessimists are routinely denounced as Jeremiahs. Those who try to bet on falling prices find their activities are restricted.A cheery disposition may be necessary for societies to function. Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist and Nobel economics laureate, has a chapter in his book “Thinking Fast and Slow” which describes overconfidence as “the engine of capitalism”. No…

  • Private equity under scrutiny: Bain or blessing?

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    IF STEVE SCHWARZMAN thought it was valid in 2010 to compare Barack Obama’s “war” against business to Hitler’s invasion of Poland, what can he be thinking now? Private-equity executives must be hoping the boss of Blackstone will keep his opinions to himself. More bad publicity is the last thing the industry needs. Other Republican presidential candidates are competing to see who can say the most damning thing about Mitt Romney’s career at Bain Capital. Newt Gingrich’s supporters have even made a sort of horror movie about what happens when private-equity firms like Bain Capital get…

  • Free exchange: Shake it all about

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    THE downturn in the euro area and the wobbly recovery in America have already taken their toll on the emerging world. Setting China’s still-bouncy economy to one side, the average growth rate in other developing countries is estimated to have slumped to an annual rate of less than 3% in the fourth quarter of 2011, from 6.5% in the first quarter. Some of that slowdown was the result of policy tightening to cool overheating economies and curb inflation, but it also reflects weaker exports and reduced capital inflows. If the euro-area debt crisis worsens, things will get nastier for emerging…

  • The Federal Reserve: Can you hear me now?

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    JAPAN holds the modern record for years spent with interest rates at zero; they were on the floor from 2001 to 2006. America is on track to break that record. Having cut its short-term rate to near zero in late 2008, the Federal Reserve said on January 25th it will probably stay there “at least through late 2014”, more than a year longer than its previous guidance.On the same day the Fed for the first time published projections of the year individual members of the Federal Open Market Committee, its main policymaking body, expect the federal-funds rate to start rising and the path it…
 
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    The Economist: Science and technology

  • Embryonic stem cells: Looking up

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    FOURTEEN years ago James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin isolated stem cells from human embryos. It was an exciting moment. The ability of such cells to morph into any other sort of cell suggested that worn-out or damaged tissues might be repaired, and diseases thus treated—a technique that has come to be known as regenerative medicine. Since then progress has been erratic and (because of the cells’ origins) controversial. But, as two new papers prove, progress there has indeed been.This week’s Lancet published results from a clinical trial that used embryonic stem cells in…

  • Visible-light communication: Tripping the light fantastic

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    AMONG the many new gadgets unveiled at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was a pair of smartphones able to exchange data using light. These phones, as yet only prototypes from Casio, a Japanese firm, transmit digital signals by varying the intensity of the light given off from their screens. The flickering is so slight that it is imperceptible to the human eye, but the camera on another phone can detect it at a distance of up to ten metres. In an age of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, flashing lights might seem like going back to sending messages with an Aldis lamp. In fact, they are the…

  • Flu research and public safety: Influenza and its complications

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    A danger not to be sneezed at IN DECEMBER the scientific world was taken aback by an odd request. The American government, in the shape of the country’s National Scientific Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), called on the world’s two leading scientific journals to censor research. Nature and Science were about to publish studies by researchers who had been tinkering with H5N1 influenza, better known as bird flu, to produce a strain that might be able to pass through the air between people. The NSABB fretted that were the precise methods and detailed genetic data to fall into the…

  • Colony collapse disorder: Bee off

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    Looking for the cause HONEYBEES are sensitive creatures. From time to time a hive simply gives up the ghost and vanishes. Colony collapse disorder, as this phenomenon is known, has been getting worse since 2006. Some beekeepers worry that it may make their trade impossible, and could even have an effect on agriculture—since many crops rely on bees to pollinate them. Climate change, habitat destruction, pesticides and disease have all been suggested as possible causes. Nothing, though, has been proved. But the latest idea, reported in Naturwissenschaften by Jeff Pettis of the Bee Research…

  • Exercise and longevity: Worth all the sweat

    19 Jan 2012 | 10:07 am
    ONE sure giveaway of quack medicine is the claim that a product can treat any ailment. There are, sadly, no panaceas. But some things come close, and exercise is one of them. As doctors never tire of reminding people, exercise protects against a host of illnesses, from heart attacks and dementia to diabetes and infection.How it does so, however, remains surprisingly mysterious. But a paper just published in Nature by Beth Levine of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centre and her colleagues sheds some light on the matter.Dr Levine and her team were testing a theory that exercise…
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    The Economist: Books and arts

  • Revolution in Egypt: Square eyes

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    Cairo: My City, Our Revolution. By Ahdaf Soueif. Bloomsbury; 202 pages; £14.99. Buy from Amazon.co.ukTHE big themes of history may be written by the victors, but it is the observant bystanders who fill in the details. When Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in Cairo a year ago, among those watching was Ahdaf Soueif, a novelist born in Egypt and mostly resident in London. She missed the first three days as well as some of the postnatal struggles of the new era. As a liberal leftist she is at best a partial victor, given that Islamists took control of the streets after the big battles were won.So…

  • The future of Europe: A declinist’s case

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    After the Fall: The End of the European Dream and the Decline of a Continent. By Walter Laqueur. Thomas Dunne Books; 322 pages; $26.99. To be published in Britain in February; £18.99. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.ukA DISTINGUISHED European historian who now lives and works in America, Walter Laqueur has turned into a leading prophet of European decline. His new book, “After the Fall”, stands as a summary of many pet themes: that the European Union has a weak economy with too lavish a welfare state and little capacity for reform, a shrinking population and, worst of all, too many Muslim…

  • Queen Elizabeth II: Royal bow

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    The Real Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. By Andrew Marr. Henry Holt; 349 pages; $32. Published in Britain as “The Diamond Queen: Elizabeth II and Her People” by Macmillan; £25. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Our Times. By Sarah Bradford. Viking; 305 pages; £20. Buy from Amazon.co.uk A Brief Life of the Queen. By Robert Lacey. Duckworth Overlook; 166 pages; £9.99. T. Buy from Amazon.co.uk Our Queen. By Robert Hardman. Hutchinson; 356 pages; £20. To be published in America in April as “Her Majesty: Queen Elizabeth II...

  • Fiat and the Agnelli family: Near-death experience

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    Vroom, vroom Mondo Agnelli: Fiat, Chrysler, and the Power of a Dynasty. By Jennifer Clark. Wiley; 360 pages; $29.95 and £19.99. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.ukLESS than a decade ago, Fiat, the largest private manufacturing company in Italy, seemed bound for the scrapheap. The carmaker had celebrated its first 100 years in 1999 and had weathered other financial storms in the recent past. However, when it had to negotiate a huge convertible loan with its bankers in 2002 the prospect that it would progress much further into its second century looked slim. Yet Fiat survived and, in sorting…

  • Weegee’s photographs: Black, white and blood red

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    Stop and stare WEEGEE’S photographs of the seamy side of New York are luridly fascinating: car crashes, tenement fires and lifeless bodies sprawled across pavements. He always carried a Speed Graphic camera with a massive flash in his nocturnal prowls around the city, which made his night-time shots both intelligible and distinctive. The extreme contrasts in black and white were perfectly suited to the extreme situations he depicted, with people who were generally weeping, leering or dead.Born Usher Fellig in 1899 in a part of the world that is now Ukraine, Weegee moved with his family to…
 
 
 
 
 
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    The Economist: Obituary

  • Gustav Leonhardt

    26 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am
    A CONCERT by Gustav Leonhardt was not like any other. He approached his harpsichord with the air of a mortician, slightly flexing his long, delicate hands. As he played he sat bolt upright, gaunt and aquiline, unsmiling in his crisp, perfect suit, with his elbows held close to his sides. No unnecessary gesture, no hint of emotion: senza baldanza, as a composer might have marked it. He did not have the look of a man on a mission. But he was.Mr Leonhardt’s life-work was to persuade the world how beautiful the harpsichord was, and how the harpsichord repertoire should be played. When he first…

  • Rauf Denktash

    19 Jan 2012 | 10:07 am
    IT WAS on the coast near Paphos, in south-western Cyprus, that the goddess Aphrodite rose radiant from the sea-foam to waft abroad her message of harmony and love. Ironic, then, that it was also that spot of the coast that produced Rauf Denktash, short, fat and immovable as a rock, whose face was set against every harmonious solution of the island’s governance, unless it met his conditions first.His conditions were simple. Turkish-Cypriot North Cyprus, covering roughly one-third of the island and emptied of its Greek inhabitants, was a republic equal in sovereignty, powers and rights to the…

  • Ronald Searle

    12 Jan 2012 | 10:04 am
    ART is for weeds and sissies whose mater hav said Take care of my dear little Cedric, he is delicate you kno and cannot stand a foopball to the head. Whenever anebode mention Art they all sa gosh mikelangelo leenardo wot magnificent simetry of line. Shurely the very pinnackle of western civilisation etc.etc. Pass me my oils Molesworth that I may paint my masterpeece. The headmaster sa gosh cor is that the medeechi venus hem-hem a grate work so true to life reminds me of young mrs filips enuff said.Molesworth sa on the contry the most beatiful form in art is a Ronald Searle GURL from St…

  • Cesária Évora

    5 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am
    AS A child, Cesária Évora never stepped into the waves. She was frightened of the Atlantic breakers that tumbled up the beaches of São Vicente or crashed in high spray on the rocks, and never learned how to swim.Yet there was no avoiding the sea. In her home on the Cape Verde Islands, lying almost 600 kilometres off the west coast of Africa, there was almost no slope or road or window from which it could not be seen. The sea took Capeverdeans away, flinging to France and Brazil and New England as many as stayed clinging to their dry land. Their exile broke hearts, but gave them money to…

  • Kim Jong Il

    28 Dec 2011 | 10:03 am
    IT WAS all bogus, he said once. The gaggle of pretty young women jumping up and down at a state reception, screaming out praises of Kim Jong Il, didn’t really mean it. It was a lie, too, he said, to show North Korean children on television with plump, rosy cheeks singing hymns to the Motherland. It would have been more truthful to show them in rags and starving. But he preferred to maintain the illusion.Had he not been born the son of Kim Il Sung—still North Korea’s Great Leader and eternal president—and therefore Son of God, Mr Kim might have been a filmmaker. He wrote a book “On…
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