The Economist: Full print edition

18th-century pornography: Vintage voyeurism

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:56 GMT

A stash of obscene etchings is discovered inside the Ministry of Justice

WHEN the government decided to split the Home Office into two separate ministries in 2007, various benefits and problems were expected. One consequence that no one foresaw was the discovery of a 200-year-old porn collection. On December 15th a ministerial delegation made its way to the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum to hand over a smutty 40-page album turned up during the departmental move last year.

The etchings are the work of James Gillray, one of Britain’s most famous and ruthless caricaturists, who flourished at the time of the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars. His cartoons were so biting that William Pitt the Younger, prime minister of the day, paid him GBP200 a year (GBP10,800, or $17,600, nowadays) to keep him onside and George IV bought his copper plates before prints could be circulated among a wider audience. ...

HIV microbicides: Dashed hopes

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:56 GMT

A microbicide which, it was believed, might protect from HIV, does not

IN THE frantic search for ways to stop the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a gel that women apply to their vaginas before having sex, in order to destroy or disable the virus, sounds one of the most desperate. Yet it is not a foolish idea. Unlike the most reliable form of protection, a condom, it is the woman, not the man, who makes the ultimate choice about whether to use the gel. (So-called femidoms, inserted by the woman, have been a dismal failure.) Moreover, such a microbicide, as it is known technically, might simultaneously protect against the virus that causes AIDS, but permit insemination, and thus eliminate objections from both putative parents and some religious authorities to the use of contraceptives to avoid infection.

Sadly, the latest test of a microbicide has shown no protective effect—a result more bitterly disappointing because it followed the apparently positive outcome of a smaller trial of the same substance. The substance in question is a naphthalene sulfonate polymer called PRO 2000 which (in the laboratory) blocks the process by which HIV binds to the cells in which it subsequently reproduces. ...

Marine archaeology: Davy Jones's lock-up

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:56 GMT

Underwater robots can help study the world’s shipwrecks, a trove of information about the past, more easily and cheaply

A SHIPWRECK is a catastrophe for those involved, but for historians and archaeologists of future generations it is an opportunity. Wrecks offer glimpses not only of the nautical technology of the past but also of its economy, trade, culture and, sometimes, its warfare. Until recently, though, most of the 3m ships estimated to be lying on the seabed have been out of reach. Underwater archaeology has mainly been the preserve of scuba divers. That has limited the endeavour to waters less than 50 metres deep, excluding 98% of the sea floor from inspection. Even allowing for the tendency of trading vessels to be coasters rather than ocean-going ships, that limits the number of wrecks available for discovery and examination.

Moreover, shallow-water shipwrecks are often damaged. Storms reach down to affect them. Seaweeds and corals, which need light to grow, colonise them. Freelance divers, seeking salvage rather than knowledge, despoil them. Archaeologists do sometimes team up with people who have access to miniature submarines (some manned, some unmanned) to explore deeper waters. But such expeditions are expensive—a million dollars a pop is not untypical—and archaeology is not a well-resourced profession. Often, these expeditions are privately financed, speculative ventures which amount to little more than treasure-hunting. ...

Reproductive biology: Girls on top

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:56 GMT

Stressed mothers spontaneously abort male fetuses

IT HAS been known for a while that stressful conditions such as famine result in more girls being born than happens in good times. The shift in the sex-ratio is tiny—around 1%—but in a large population that is still noticeable. A possible evolutionary explanation is that daughters are likely to mate and produce grandchildren regardless of condition, whereas weedy sons may fail in the struggle to have the chance to reproduce at all. In hard times, then, daughters are a safer evolutionary bet. Regardless of why the shift happens, though, it has long been argued that the moment when it happens is conception—or, more probably, implantation. A womb exposed to stress hormones, runs the hypothesis, is less likely to accommodate a male fetus.

A recently published study, however, suggests this ain’t necessarily so. According to Ralph Catalano of the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues, writing in the American Journal of Human Biology, stress-induced sex selection can take place long after conception and implantation. ...

The search for dark matter: An early Christmas present?

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:56 GMT

Wild rumours are circulating of the discovery of one of physics’s great unknowns: dark matter

AS The Economist went to press this week, physicists were aflutter about an expected announcement from one of the world’s most important experiments searching for dark matter—the as-yet-undetected material that, if models of the universe are correct, is about six times as abundant as the familiar, visible stuff. Physicists working on the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS), a large collaboration whose experimental apparatus is located in Minnesota, will be making presentations on December 17th at Fermilab and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in America, and on December 18th at CERN, the European particle-physics laboratory near Geneva. The speculation is that they will announce the detection of the hitherto unknown particles that make up dark matter. The researchers plan to post their results to the arXiv, an online repository of physics papers, on December 17th, with submissions to a peer-reviewed journal following shortly thereafter.

Around a quarter of the universe is thought to be made up of dark matter, which, as the name suggests, neither gives off nor reflects light. (The balance, once the small amount of visible matter is subtracted, is made of even more mysterious stuff known as “dark energy”.) However, dark matter does make itself known through its gravity. This, indeed, is why astronomers believe it must be there. Some galaxies rotate so fast that they should be throwing off their outermost stars. Only the gravitational pull of these galaxies’ unseen halos of dark matter holds those stars in. Observations of the bending of light around clusters of galaxies, as well as the way that galactic structures formed in the early universe, also suggest that there is much more to reality than meets the eye. ...

Science spending: No more booms, just bust

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:56 GMT

Mismanagement and recession lead to reductions in state funds for research

INVESTING in the “knowledge economy” was supposed to equip Britain for the growing rigours of global competition. Now that investment, like much else in these straitened times, is being cut back. On December 9th Alistair Darling, the chancellor of the exchequer, said he expected to make savings of GBP600m ($980m) from the budgets for higher education, science and research by 2012. Seven days later the body that funds much of British physicists’ research announced that it too was cutting spending. The moves are a setback for universities, which have enjoyed a rapid growth in state spending on science under the Labour government.

It is physicists who will feel the whiplash most. The Science and Technology Facilities Council, set up in 2007 to direct state cash into research projects, now says that some big telescopes will be abandoned and experiments once thought important will be stopped. Those that continue will do so on 10% less money. The number of students funded to pursue PhDs will also fall, by 25%. ...

Defence spending: The war bill comes due

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:56 GMT

Ships and planes are cut to help the army fight the Taliban

LAST summer Britain’s defence secretary, Bob Ainsworth, told his new military chiefs that he wanted them to go on to a war footing. Afghanistan would be Britain’s “main effort”; by implication, other tasks would take second place. On December 15th Mr Ainsworth backed his words with deeds. He announced plans to buy 22 new Chinook helicopters, another C-17 transport aircraft, more unmanned drones, extra body armour and night-vision goggles, improved satellite communications and so on.

This will cost about GBP1.2 billion ($1.9 billion) over the next three years. Some GBP280m of it will come from the Treasury, which has already provided GBP14 billion from its reserves to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The lion’s share, however, will be found by raiding other parts of the overstretched defence budget, with planned cuts that would realise around GBP1.5 billion over three years. ...

A legal spat between Israel and Britain: Welcome to London

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:56 GMT

Except if you’re an Israeli official

ISRAELI bigwigs may not be visiting Britain much in the months ahead following the near arrest on December 13th of Tzipi Livni, the leader of the opposition, for alleged war crimes. A London judge issued an arrest warrant for Ms Livni for her role as foreign minister in Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead”, the assault on the Gaza Strip earlier this year. The order was withdrawn when the judge learned that Ms Livni would not be in Britain as planned.

It is the highest-profile case since Britain arrested General Augusto Pinochet more than a decade ago, and has understandably left the Israelis feeling as if they have been singled out. It drew apoplectic protests from Israel and much abject apologising from the British government. Both sides said it was inconceivable that Israeli officials might fear to set foot in England. But the Israelis set little store by assurances that the British “system” would be changed to prevent such cavalier deployment of universal jurisdiction. They said Britain had been promising to change it for years. They were now being told informally that no change was likely before the general election, given Israel’s unpopularity in British public opinion. Gordon Brown is said to be looking for some administrative stopgap, meanwhile. ...

Iran's nuclear programme: A thousand and one excuses

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:56 GMT

But they are running out

IS IRAN trying to build a bomb, or is its nuclear work aimed merely at keeping the lights on? Gathering evidence, and Iran’s refusal to heed a string of UN Security Council resolutions and stop its suspect activities, make the question seem quaint.

Few believe the tales Iranian officials have spun since the first news, in 2002, of their covert efforts to enrich uranium—usable for civilian nuclear reactors, but abusable at high enrichment for making weapons. Yet even the recent discovery of another hitherto secret enrichment plant being built deep in a mountainside on a heavily guarded military compound near the city of Qom had a ready explanation: to keep “civilian” enrichment going if other nuclear sites were attacked. ...

Mohamed ElBaradei: From fission to Pharaoh?

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Egyptian reformers suggest a possible president

WHEN Mohamed ElBaradei won the Nobel peace prize in 2005, Egyptians happily proclaimed him a national hero. But now that he has retired after 12 years as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, some are calling him a villain. He may be an American or even an Iranian agent, hint editorials in Egypt’s state-owned press. He bears a nasty grudge against his native country after so long abroad, grumble other government mouthpieces.

The reason for this sudden spate of spurious insinuation? Responding to pleas from reform-minded Egyptians despairing of local politics, Mr ElBaradei has suggested he may return to Egypt and run for president in elections due in 2011. Worse yet, he has deigned to propose conditions for his possible candidacy. The poll, he says, must meet internationally accepted standards. ...

Sudanese politics: Heading towards independence

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

A new referendum law makes the break-up of Sudan more likely

SUDAN is unaccustomed to good news. But on December 13th the ruling party of the north, the National Congress Party (NCP), and the former rebels who control the south agreed on the terms for a referendum in 2011 over southern independence. The question now is whether that just sets up the next fight.

A peace agreement in 2005 ended a conflict between the north and the south that had endured for the best part of 50 years and claimed over 2m lives. But the deal had come under increasing strain in the past few years, not least over the exact terms of its most important provision, the referendum in the south on whether it wants to secede. Now, however, the NCP and the south’s ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) have at last worked out most of the details. Fears of more fighting between the two sides have thus receded—if only a bit. ...

Zimbabwe's unity government: Still adored

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

By a few. But Robert Mugabe is reviled as never before by most of his compatriots

SADLY for his many opponents, Robert Mugabe is far from being the decrepit old man some would wish. Indeed, judging by his display at last weekend’s five-yearly ZANU-PF congress in Harare, Zimbabwe’s 85-year-old president is as cunning and energetic as ever. Cultured, amusing, charming one moment, threatening and vicious the next, the former liberation hero remains a political superstar to his grassroots supporters. On December 12th he was reappointed his party’s leader for a further five years and thus became its likely presidential candidate too.

Within Zanu-PF different groups have been jostling to succeed Mr Mugabe. One such, led by Vice-President Joice Mujuru and her husband, a former general called Solomon Mujuru, appears for the moment to have gained the upper hand over a clutch of hardliners led by Emmerson Mnangagwa, the defence minister. Yet much as the top brass dislike Mr Mugabe, they also know that ZANU-PF would collapse into warring factions were he to go. ...

Foreign students in America

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Students flock to American universities from all over the world. But according to the OECD, a think-tank, over 40% of the 106,123 foreign students in the country during the 2007-08 academic year came from just three Asian countries: China, India and South Korea. The 23,779 Chinese students in America far outnumbered those from India and South Korea, which each sent just under 10,000 students to America. But over the period 1997-2008 the number of Indian students grew the fastest. By contrast, the European presence on American campuses has grown more slowly. But between them, Germany, France and Italy still sent more students to America in 2007-08 than did either India or South Korea.

...

Markets

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Trade, exchange rates, budget balances and interest rates

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Overview

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Consumer prices in America rose by a seasonally adjusted 0.4% in November, leaving them 1.8% higher than a year earlier. The index of “core” prices, which excludes food and fuel, was unchanged from October. Industrial production rose by 0.8% in November. Car production was up and other industries also enjoyed healthy increases in output. America’s current-account deficit widened from $98 billion to $108 billion (or 3% of GDP) in the third quarter.

Unemployment in Britain rose by 21,000 in the three months to October, the smallest increase since May 2008. The number claiming unemployment benefits fell in November for the first time since February 2008, by 6,300. Consumer prices in Britain rose by 1.9% in the year to November, exceeding the 1.5% increase in the year to October. ...

Output, prices and jobs

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

The Economist commodity-price index

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

World GDP

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

The Great Recession is receding, according to our measure of global GDP, based on data from 52 countries. World output fell by 1.2% in the year to the third quarter, around half the rate of decline recorded in the year to the second quarter. In most of the countries that have published third-quarter figures, GDP was lower than a year earlier. The exceptions were mostly in Asia: China and India recorded the fastest growth, followed by Indonesia. Only one European country, Poland, reported higher GDP in the third quarter than a year earlier. But some of the world’s most troubled economies are in eastern Europe. The three Baltic countries—Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania—suffered the biggest falls in GDP.

...

The world this year

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Barack Obama was inaugurated as America’s 44th president. In a whirlwind first year in office, Mr Obama overturned a prohibition on federal funding for stem-cell research, eased some restrictions on dealing with Cuba, lifted a ban on people with HIV travelling to the United States, pushed Congress to pass health-care reform, promised to close the detention camp at Guantanamo, pledged a cut in America’s emissions and promoted the first Hispanic person to the Supreme Court.

Mr Obama also set about changing the tone of American foreign and security policy, for example by seeking to “reset” relations with a prickly Russia and by stopping the use of torture during intelligence interrogations. Speaking in Cairo, Mr Obama’s call for “a new beginning” with Muslims was applauded by the Arab world. The new president was awarded the Nobel peace prize, though many said this was premature. He defended the use of force in “just wars”. ...

KAL's cartoon

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Yegor Gaidar

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Yegor Timurovich Gaidar, a Russian reformer, died on December 16th, aged 53

“IN RUSSIA you have to live long,” a Russian poet said once. Yegor Gaidar did not. But in his short life he did not just see historic changes, he brought them about. Journalists liked to call him the architect of Russian market reforms. As justifiably, he could be called the man who saved his country from civil war.

In the autumn of 1991, at the age of 35, he had to deal with the collapse of the Soviet economy and the disintegration of a nuclear empire into 15 states. Boris Yeltsin asked him to serve first as deputy prime minister, then as finance minister and then as acting head of government. Mr Gaidar was an economics graduate from Moscow State University and economics editor of an academic journal, the Communist. With his big shiny forehead and podgy face, he looked like the class swot, rather than a revolutionary. Yet his impact was no less significant: he helped to avert another revolution of the violent Bolshevik kind. Unusually, Mr Gaidar had both an academic’s close eye for facts and figures, and a sense of the weight of his own decisions in the turbulent sweep of Russian history. ...

Economics focus: Paul Samuelson

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

The last of the great general economists died on December 13th, aged 94

“I WAS reborn, born as an economist, at 8.00am on January 2nd 1932, in the University of Chicago classroom,” wrote Paul Samuelson in a memoir published earlier this month. He became probably the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century. For his work in several branches of the dismal science he became the first American economics Nobel laureate. Through his bestselling textbook, he introduced millions of people to the subject. And right to the end he kept on mentoring the profession’s brightest stars.

His actual birth took place almost 17 years earlier in the steel town of Gary, Indiana, to a family of upwardly mobile Polish immigrants. His earliest memories—of the recession of 1919-21 and strikebreaking immigrant workers from Mexico, and of the boom and bust that followed—shaped Mr Samuelson’s macroeconomic views throughout his life. He approved of massive government spending to help an economy escape from recession when monetary policy can do no more. When the Obama administration introduced just that sort of stimulus this year, partly on the advice of Mr Samuelson’s nephew, Larry Summers, who is Mr Obama’s chief economic adviser, he was quick to approve. ...

Switzerland as a financial centre: Alpine ambitions

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Many funds are looking at Geneva. Fewer have moved

“MY GOD, Gordon Brown must admire Switzerland,” exclaims Francois Micheloud, of Micheloud & Cie. “He is sending us so many of his best countrymen, and they are not all Scots.” His firm, which helps rich people move to Switzerland, has seen a steady increase in business over the past two years or so since Britain changed the rules on how it taxes foreign residents.

In downtown Geneva, Daniel Loeffler of the city’s Economic Development Office has also seen a spike in interest, this time from companies. In April, just after Britain increased its top rate of tax for high earners, large numbers of hedge funds and their agents started knocking on his door. “We did not have a strategy to attract hedge funds to Geneva, but this for us was really an opportunity that came up when we had a lot of questions,” he says. ...

Financial centres: Foul-weather friends

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

London risks losing its global appeal

AT THE start of the 1960s London’s status as a financial centre was in gentle decline, reflecting Britain’s waning importance in the global economy. Then the American government helpfully imposed Regulation Q and the Interest Equalisation Tax, two measures that encouraged investors to hold a lot of their dollars offshore. London became the centre of the so-called Euromarket, attracting more international banks than New York.

Despite its terrible weather and creaking transport infrastructure, London has continued to punch above Britain’s economic weight as a financial centre. The city built up critical mass in legal, accounting and fund-management expertise, and big American investment banks such as Goldman Sachs steadily increased their presence. London is not just Europe’s dominant financial hub (see chart). Before the credit crunch, talk that London would replace New York as the world’s financial centre was commonplace. ...

America's megabanks: Goodbye, or see you again?

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

America’s big banks are repaying the state. Can they really walk alone?

IT WAS less of a goodbye kiss and more of a farewell hand-off in the face. Thirteen months after getting government cash from the Troubled Asset Relief Programme, America’s megabanks have stampeded to repay it before the new year, desperate to escape the stigma and meddling it has brought. On December 9th Bank of America (BofA) said it had repaid the $45 billion of preferred stock owned by the state and sold $19 billion of new ordinary shares. Citigroup and Wells Fargo announced similar plans on December 14th. (JPMorgan Chase, the other megabank, repaid the state in June.)

In total this month the government should get $90 billion of preferred stock (really a form of debt) repaid, while the banks will raise some $50 billion of common equity to boost their capital. The state will tear up its loss-sharing agreement with Citi. It also intends to sell its $25 billion of ordinary shares in the bank within a year, although immediate plans to flog $5 billion-worth were put on ice after Citi’s shares dipped too low for the Treasury’s taste. That blip aside, the banks are feeling perkier. BofA, which has struggled mightily to hire a new chief executive, managed to appoint Brian Moynihan, a company insider, to the role on December 16th. ...

Dubai's debt cliffhanger: A second life

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Abu Dhabi rescues Dubai after all

DUBAI’S international film festival, which concluded this week, was graced by a rare local offering called “City of Life”. But nothing could compete with the home-grown cliffhanger unfolding in the emirate’s debt markets. On December 14th Dubai’s neighbour, Abu Dhabi, stepped in at the last moment to rescue its indebted sibling from the brink of default.

It provided $10 billion to Dubai’s government, more than enough to repay the $4.1 billion due the same day to holders of a sukuk, or Islamic bond, issued by Nakheel, a prominent developer. The firm belongs to Dubai World, a holding company owned by the Dubai government, which less than three weeks earlier had requested a standstill on repayments of $26 billion of debt, panicking global markets. ...

Tax reform in India: Trickle through

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

An ambitious overhaul of India’s confusing hotch-potch of indirect taxes could give business a boost

TO MANY Indians the tendu leaf is a source of comfort. Hand-picked, dried then dampened, the leaf is rolled into the beedis, or cigarettes, that glow in India’s winter gloom. But the leaf is also a small example of India’s fiscal fragmentation. In the state of Rajasthan and many others, the state government charges a value-added tax (VAT) of just 4% on the leaf, deeming it an essential good. In Uttarakhand, the government charges the standard rate of 12.5%. In Madhya Pradesh, meanwhile, leaf-rollers must pay a hefty 25.3%.

India’s appeal to business rests on the potential size of its market: over 1 billion consumers, spending about $600 billion a year. But viewed through a fiscal lens, the country is not one market, but 28 states, each with its own tax-raising powers, which they are not afraid to use. ...

Maiden flights for Boeing and Airbus: Upwards and onwards

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Airborne at last, the Dreamliner and the A400M still have a lot to prove

ON THE face of it the A400M, a dumpy military transport made by Airbus, and Boeing’s sleek 787 Dreamliner (pictured) have little in common other than that they both flew for the first time in the past few days. But they share a similar history: both planes finally took to the air more than two years late and far over budget. Moreover, both were developed in unnecessarily complicated ways, even though big aviation projects are difficult enough without taking on further risks.

In an effort to reduce the cost of developing an innovative new aircraft, Boeing recruited “risk-sharing” partners who became largely responsible for designing whole sections of the plane, while creating one of the most complex and extended supply chains in industrial history. But Boeing failed to supervise its partners’ work adequately and has probably ended up spending more to put things right than it ever would have saved. With the A400M, European defence ministers jeopardised the project from the outset by setting up a politically conceived consortium to produce the aircraft’s giant turboprop engines rather than allowing Airbus to buy them from America’s Pratt & Whitney. ...

Exxon Mobil buys XTO Energy: Unconventional

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

The unflappable oil giant changes tack

IN RECENT years, as the price of oil rose to record levels, analysts fretted that Exxon Mobil’s conservatism was undermining its future growth. As rivals threw money at new projects or acquisitions, it spent more on share buybacks and dividends than it invested. Critics complained that the firm was slowly winding itself up. But Exxon’s managers endlessly intoned that they invested for the long term, and would not be moved by temporary swings in prices. That approach was vindicated when oil prices plunged last year. Now Exxon has taken advantage of lower oil and gas prices to replenish its reserves—and raised a different set of questions about its future.

On December 14th Exxon agreed to buy XTO Energy, a natural-gas firm, in a deal valued at $41 billion. The deal was apparently struck when Exxon’s chief executive, Rex Tillerson, entertained Bob Simpson, XTO’s boss, at a quail hunt on company land in Texas. If completed, this will be Exxon’s first acquisition worth more than $2 billion since its transformational $80 billion purchase of Mobil in 1999. It will increase Exxon’s proved reserves by the equivalent of 2.3 billion barrels of oil, or almost 20%. But it also brings promising exploration rights, with the potential to increase reserves and production even more, and great expertise in exploiting them. ...

Spain's El Gordo lottery: Gamblers united

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

How an original business model got Spaniards hooked

IT IS called El Gordo (“the Fatty”) because of the huge amount it pays out: €2.3 billion ($3.3 billion) in this year’s draw, to be held on December 22nd. Yet Spain’s Christmas lottery is notable not just for the vast sums to be won, but also for its clever business model.

Spaniards are not especially big gamblers, with spending per head below the average for the European Union, according to a 2006 study by London Economics, a consultancy. Yet they spend about €12 billion a year on lottery tickets, over 1% of GDP—almost as much as the country spends on research and development. Roughly three-quarters of them participate in the Christmas lottery. ...

Technology firms and antitrust: Here we go again

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

As one long-running antitrust case comes to an end, others emerge

TRUSTBUSTERS on either side of the Atlantic had seemed in permanent disagreement in 2009, at least when it came to technology firms. In January the European Commission decided to go after Microsoft for bundling its web browser with its operating system—a tactic which America’s Department of Justice (DoJ) had decided to let stand a long time before. In May the commission fined Intel €1.06 billion (then $1.44 billion) for having abused its dominance, whereas the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in Washington did not seem interested. And in November the commission objected to the proposed $7.4 billion purchase of Sun Microsystems, a troubled maker of computer hardware, by Oracle, a business-software giant—a deal that the DoJ had already approved.

Yet on December 16th, American and European antitrust regulators began playing in tune. First Neelie Kroes, Europe’s competition commissioner, announced that she had reached a settlement with Microsoft. Starting in March, all versions of Windows will come with a “choice screen” inviting users to install any of 12 different browsers. This should make Europe’s browser market more competitive, and end the decade-long antitrust action against the world’s biggest software firm. ...

Schumpeter: The silence of Mammon

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Business people should stand up for themselves

HENRY HAZLITT, one of the great popularisers of free-market thinking, once said that good ideas have to be relearned in every generation. This is certainly true of good ideas about business. A generation ago Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan did an excellent job of making the case in favour of business. Today it looks as though the case needs to be made all over again.

It is hardly surprising that business has fallen from grace in recent years. The credit crunch almost plunged the world into depression. The new century began with the implosion of Enron and other prominent firms. Some bosses pay themselves like princes while preaching austerity to their workers. Business titans who once graced the covers of magazines have been hauled before congressional committees or carted off to prison. ...

British Airways: Falling star

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Christmas woes for Britain’s once-great flag carrier

THERE was a time, a decade ago, when British Airways (BA) could credibly claim to be “the world’s favourite airline”, as its posters proudly affirmed. Not any more. And certainly not to those passengers who were hastily booking alternatives to their BA flights this week as the threat of a long strike over Christmas loomed. The walkout was averted on December 17th, but the underlying problems that led to the standoff remained unresolved. Compounding the woe came news of a series of two-day strikes at Eurostar, the passenger-train service under the English Channel, and the collapse of Flyglobespan, a Scottish airline.

The dispute at BA centres on its desire to cut costs by reducing cabin staff on most flights and limiting wage increases. The airline’s pilots and engineers have already accepted austerity measures; cabin staff, notified of the proposed changes in July, are less inclined to compromise (though some have taken voluntary redundancy). On December 14th Unite, the union which represents almost all of the company’s 13,500 cabin staff, said they had voted overwhelmingly to strike. ...

Bagehot: Heroes of New Labour

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Yes, there have been some—though not perhaps the ones you might expect

CHRISTMAS, that Janus-faced season. A moment to look forward to 2010, which, in Britain, will involve a general election. But a chance also for reflection on the outgoing year—and on the past twelve and a half, the long, long epoch of New Labour that seems destined soon to end. Bagehot has been thinking in particular about which of the political figures who have populated it deserve to survive, in reputation, the ignominy of defeat and oblivion of time. Who have been the real heroes of New Labour?

That question raises a prior one, about the nature of political heroism. One criterion, obviously, is to have done the state and country some serious and lasting service: created something new, or driven through valuable change. It helps if the authorship of the policy or institution is clear. For example, the minimum wage will be a positive part of Labour’s legacy; but the idea was an old one with many sponsors and progenitors. ...

Silvio Berlusconi under attack: A prime minister struck

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

The end of a turblent year for Italy's prime minister

IT HAS not been a good year for Silvio Berlusconi. His wife left him, he had a string of scandals and he lost a fight to give himself legal immunity. On December 13th it got worse. At a rally in Milan a man with a history of mental instability hit him at short range with a model of the city’s cathedral. It broke Mr Berlusconi’s nose and two of his teeth. He lost half a litre of blood and was still in hospital three days later. A wave of sympathy ensued with even enemies impressed by his spirited response. But the compassion waned as some supporters blamed the attack on a climate of hostility created by judges, rivals and the media. The interior minister said the cabinet might block internet sites that praised the assailant and curb some demonstrations. That risks making Italian politics even more polarised.

...

Turkey and the Kurds: Hopes blown away

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

New roadblocks spring up to obstruct peace with Turkey’s Kurds

SOON after Turgut Ozal, a former Turkish president, spoke in 1993 of an amnesty for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), 33 Turkish soldiers were killed by PKK rebels in an ambush. His hopes for lasting peace went up in smoke. There was a sense of deja vu on December 10th when the PKK claimed responsibility for the deaths of seven soldiers in Tokat, a Turkish nationalist stronghold in the north-east. The attack came soon after bold reforms by the ruling Justice and Development (AK) party to improve the lot of the country’s 14m-odd Kurds and perhaps end the PKK’s 25-year insurgency.

Kurdish and Turkish nationalists alike promptly declared the government’s so-called Kurdish overture dead. Clashes between Turks and Kurds intensified when the constitutional court voted unanimously on December 11th to ban the biggest Kurdish party, the Democratic Society Party (DTP), on the grounds that it had become “a focal point for terrorism”. Two DTP parliamentarians, including its co-chairman Ahmet Turk, were stripped of their seats and 37 party officials were banned. Some 19 other DTP deputies said they were pulling out of parliament with the aim of regrouping under a new label. ...

France's school curriculum: La fin de l'histoire

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Enough of history, decides the state

NICOLAS SARKOZY has often dwelt on the need for the French to know their history. He has required teachers to read out a letter written by a 17-year-old Communist resistance fighter to his mother just before his execution. He has proposed that every final-year primary pupil remember a child killed in the Holocaust. He has studded his speeches with references to “crusades and cathedrals, human rights and the revolution”, saying that “there cannot be a nation if there is not a common history.”

It is strange, then, that his government should decide to scrap history as a compulsory subject in the final year of one of the top three baccalaureats. The 50% or so of pupils who take the Bac S, which specialises in science and mathematics, have a compulsory two-and-a-half hours of history a week in their final year. But under a new reform, history will become optional, letting budding scientists retreat behind their Bunsen burners untroubled by the cold war or anti-colonialism. ...

Charlemagne: Too many cooks

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Many people are trying to stick their hands into the new foreign-policy pot

AS A rule in the European Union, the grandeur of somebody’s office is inversely related to the sexiness of their work. This is especially true in foreign policy. In Brussels the dingy Justus Lipsius building hosts officials who negotiate with Iran and send peacekeepers to the Balkans. This is the base of the Council of the European Union, a small Brussels secretariat for the EU’s 27 national governments. It is a maze of low-ceilinged corridors and linoleum floors, in shades of magenta, brown and nicotine yellow. Without its impressively fortified filing cabinets (for holding sexily secret files), it might be a railways ministry.

Across the street is the Berlaymont, a building of sweeping glass-and-steel curves that houses the European Commission, the EU’s standing bureaucracy. Commissioners wield soft power: their thousands of staff spend billions on such things as development aid for Africa (and farm subsidies at home). Commissioners forge trade deals with the outside world, and scrutinise countries wanting to join the EU. This is important stuff, but it is not Bismarckian realpolitik. Commissioners need willing partners with audited accounts: their world is one of action plans, projects and contracts. In the acidic judgment of one national bureaucrat, commission officials are “wonderful” at managing programmes, but “lack expertise in what we would call diplomacy”. Commissioners’ offices are like a five-star IKEA design: all pale wood floors, tasteful sofas and modern art. ...

Ukraine's predicament: Oranges are not the only fruit

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Five years after the “orange revolution”, Ukraine faces a less uplifting election

THE good news is that nobody can predict the result of Ukraine’s presidential election on January 17th, a sign of a healthy democracy. The incumbent, Viktor Yushchenko, who swept to power in the “orange revolution” in 2004-05, is almost certain to be voted out. But a second round of voting is likely to be needed between Yulia Tymoshenko, the prime minister and former orange ally of Mr Yushchenko, and Viktor Yanukovich, a former prime minister who was the anti-Yushchenko loser then. In the fluid world of Ukrainian politics, allies become enemies and vice versa. Russia strongly backed Mr Yanukovich in 2004. This time, the Kremlin would settle for either frontrunner and has also promised no gas war this Christmas.

After years of political crisis, at least Ukraine is taking the election in its stride. The protesters’ tents that were once a fixture of Ukraine’s political life are so far absent. Political fighting is fierce, as reflected by television channels that plug the interests of their powerful owners. But at least the overall coverage is diverse. ...

Greece's budget crisis: Papandreou tries to prop up the pillars

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

The prime minister’s promises of fiscal austerity have not convinced the markets

SUCCESSIVE Greek governments have managed to hoodwink the European Union over the size of the country’s budget deficit and its public debt by blaming their predecessors and then promising to do better. No longer. The European Commission’s fury over a leap in the projected deficit for 2009 from 6.7% of GDP (the figure from the old centre-right New Democracy-led lot) to 12.7% (the figure produced by the new centre-left Pasok government) helped to trigger a collapse in the Greek bond markets and even provoke dire warnings that the country might go bust.

For now, the idea of Greece having to seek a bail-out from its euro-area partners or appealing to the IMF for help is just talk. The finance minister, George Papaconstantinou, says he has had no such negotiations with his European colleagues. He adds that no euro-area government could ever go to the fund. But the markets’ grim mood could yet change things. ...

Climate change and forests: Touch wood

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Everyone agrees on the need to save trees, but the details are still tricky

WHATEVER else historians say about the Copenhagen talks on climate change, they may be remembered as a time when the world concluded that it must protect forests, and pay for them. In the Kyoto protocol of 1997, forests were a big absentee: that was partly because sovereignty-conscious nations like Brazil were unwilling, at any price, to accept limits on their freedom to fell.

All that is history. As the UN talks went into their second week, trees looked like being one of the few matters on which governments could more or less see eye to eye. Over the past two years, skilful campaigning by pro-forest groups has successfully disseminated the idea that trees cannot be ignored in any serious deliberation on the planet’s future. ...

Religious freedom: Too many chains

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Two centuries after the French and American revolutions, and 20 years after Soviet communism’s fall, liberty of conscience may be receding again

THE Universal Declaration of Human Rights, one of the great moral statements of the 20th century, could not be clearer. It says that “everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion,” including the right to change religion and to “manifest his religion in teaching, practice, worship and observance”.

America’s Founding Fathers, albeit living in a world where most people were assumed to be theists and Christians, used finer prose to affirm their belief in liberty. Given that God had endowed the human mind with freedom, said Thomas Jefferson, “all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness.” ...

Indian states: Divide but not rule?

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Attempts to satisfy demands for local autonomy backfire

PROTESTERS fought with police. Politicians yelled so loudly that parliament was adjourned. The Indian government’s announcement on December 9th that it would eventually create a 29th state by splitting up Andhra Pradesh (AP, see map) caused a wave of protests even bigger than the one it sought to calm.

Activists in AP have long been demanding statehood for Telangana, an impoverished region in the centre of the state, and recently closed down the prosperous capital, Hyderabad, with their noisy protests. But it was a fast “to the death” by a local politician, K. Chandrasekhar Rao, whose increasingly gaunt face appeared daily in the national media, that prompted India’s central government, led by the Congress party, to bow to the demands of the five-decade-long campaign. Since then, apparently wishing it had not acted with such haste, and worried about the political fallout in one of its strongholds, Congress has been back-pedalling furiously. ...

Kazakhstan and the OSCE: The sultan takes over

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Doubts resurface about Kazakhstan’s suitability to lead the OSCE

WHEN Kazakhstan launched its bid to become chairman of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Britain and America initially opposed the idea because of the authoritarian country’s obvious shortcomings as a promoter of democracy and human rights, which the 56-member body is supposed to encourage. Their concerns were ultimately overcome, thanks partly to Russia’s backing for the oil-rich former Soviet republic, and partly because member states hoped, perhaps against their better judgment, that the chairmanship would inspire Kazakhstan to improve its record.

For a while, it seemed as if those hopes might be fulfilled. Kazakhstan pushed through admittedly cosmetic changes to its election law, the registration of political parties, and its media law. It also reformed its judicial system. ...

Japan and China: The shogun and the emperor

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

To the fury of nationalists, the emperor becomes a pawn in a geopolitical game

WHO rules Japan, the emperor or the shogun? That question vexed America when it first sought to trade with Japan in the 1850s. Today, China has no doubts. The answer is the “shadow shogun”, Ichiro Ozawa, a master manipulator who secured an historic victory for the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in August elections.

In the past week Mr Ozawa has hogged the limelight on two occasions to convince China—and remind Japan—who is the boss. On December 10th he led what looked like a modern-day version of a medieval tribute visit, flying 645 people, including 143 DPJ members of parliament, to Beijing. They filled five aeroplanes. His meeting with the premier, Hu Jintao, made the top of the nightly news in China, an achievement in a country where many people still loathe the Japanese. ...

Banyan: Currency contortions

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Tensions are likely to rise further over China's exchange rate

A COMMUNIST leadership always on full alert for violations of national sovereignty has lately grown shrill over calls by American and European policymakers to raise the value of the Chinese yuan, kept low by a heavily managed currency regime. Recently the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, presided over a grumpy summit between China and the European Union. There he berated his guests for their “unfair” pressure to revalue the yuan. The mantra of Mr Wen and other Chinese leaders is that the yuan ain’t nobody’s business but their own.

This message cannot be immune forever to reason, and an almighty international ruckus over the Chinese currency looks likely in the coming months. A tiny economy may enjoy what Martin Wolf, a columnist at the Financial Times, calls “the liberty of insignificance”. But China is the world’s largest exporter, with $2.3 trillion of foreign-exchange reserves. The scale and consequences of its currency regime are alike unprecedented. ...

Democracy, China and the Communist Party: Big surprise

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Attempts to democratise the Communist Party have failed. Again

“INNER-PARTY democracy is the life of the party,” enthused China’s former president, Jiang Zemin, as he prepared to hand over to Hu Jintao seven years ago. It could, he said, promote democracy in the country as a whole. But Mr Hu’s cautious experiments with reform inside the party appear to have fizzled. So too, it seems, has his own commitment to the idea.

Rhetorically at least, Mr Hu had shown more enthusiasm for reform than did Mr Jiang who, as party chief from 1989 to 2002, made no obvious effort to change the party’s top-down dictatorial style. But in September Mr Hu dropped a not-so-subtle hint of his own reservations, emphasising the principle of “centralism”—which means upholding party decisions without dissent. The party’s own literature, especially that intended for official readership, suggests his reforms have often resulted in more pointless rubber-stamp meetings, confusion and disillusionment. They have also been a drain on government funds. ...

Chile's presidential election: Piñera flies the flag

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Sebastian Pinera, an airline tycoon, is well placed to break his country’s political mould. But he promises less change than meets the eye

THE mood at Sebastian Pinera’s final campaign rally was hardly triumphant. The turnout on the Alameda, the main avenue in the centre of Santiago, Chile’s capital, was poor by the standards of the rallies of previous election-winners. Groups of young people—there for the bands rather than the politics, they said—chatted obliviously through an uninspiring speech by Mr Pinera, the presidential candidate of Chile’s conservative opposition.

Just three days later, on December 13th, Mr Pinera was jubilant. With 44% of the vote he now enters a run-off election on January 17th with a 14-point lead that will be hard to overcome for his rival, Eduardo Frei, a Christian Democrat from the ruling centre-left Concertacion coalition. Defeat for Mr Frei, Chile’s president from 1994 to 2000, would overturn Chile’s stable political divide, with almost 60% habitually backing the centre-left and some 40% the right. This split has endured since a 1988 referendum that ended the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. Mr Pinera is confident of breaking this pattern. He offers voters “change, future and hope”, whereas, he says, the Concertacion, after 20 years in office, is “exhausted” and has “lost its direction”. ...

Canada's criminal-justice policy: Prisoners of politics

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Less crime, more punishment

FEW political promises are such tried and trusted crowd pleasers as the vow to get tough on crime. But what is a politician to do when the crime rate is at a 30-year low and both the rate and the severity of reported crime has been dropping? If you are Stephen Harper, Canada’s prime minister, you pledge to keep “law-abiding Canadians and their families” safe, and introduce a series of bills that will put more people in prison for longer and make it harder for convicts to win early release.

Fighting crime has been a priority for Mr Harper’s minority government ever since the Conservatives defeated the Liberals in 2006. A third of the 63 bills introduced in the House of Commons in the past year have dealt with some aspect of criminal justice, and more are on their way. Despite complaints that a similar, purely punitive approach has not worked in the United States, and that piecemeal change will clog up the justice system and leave taxpayers with a larger bill, the government has not deviated. ...

Security in Colombia: Calling freedom

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

How mobile phones may help to deter kidnaps

MOBILE phones have allowed African farmers to check the market price of their crop and migrants to send cash back home. Might one of their less familiar benefits be the foiling of kidnappings in Colombia? That is the claim made in a new paper* by Santiago Montenegro and Alvaro Pedraza, two economists linked to Bogota’s University of the Andes.

Colombia suffered a surge in kidnappings, peaking first in the early 1990s and then at a higher level at the end of the decade. Illegal armed groups—left-wing guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries—were responsible for most of them. But in recent years the number of kidnaps has fallen dramatically (see chart). The obvious explanation is a big security build-up under Alvaro Uribe, who was elected president in 2002. Over the next five years the security forces expanded from 307,000 members to 405,000, and police were deployed in 160 municipalities that lacked them. ...

Direct democracy: The tyranny of the majority

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

The fourth branch of government has run amok in parts of America

AS 2009 draws to a close, the voter-initiative industry is already frantically busy. In two dozen states new propositions are being readied to go before voters in 2010. Soon “bounty hunters”, paid by the sponsors, will appear on the streets to gather signatures in order to place initiatives on ballots. In states such as California voters will probably have to consider more than a dozen next year.

The lofty term for these initiatives, along with referendums and recalls (most famously of Gray Davis, California’s then-governor, in 2003), is “direct democracy”. They play the biggest and most excessive role in California, where voters have directly amended the state’s constitution or statutes in matters big and small, from how to spend to how to tax, from regulating how fowl should be kept in coops to banning gays from marrying. ...

Houston's new mayor: Leading lady

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Time for tight budgets and eating vegetables

“SOMEHOW in the United States, we’re almost an afterthought,” said Annise Parker, the Houston city controller, the night before the city’s mayoral election. “I don’t care. I think our future is international.” That kind of blunt talk is central to Ms Parker’s appeal, and the next day, on December 12th, Houston elected her as its next mayor in a run-off.

Houston, America’s fourth-biggest city, is now its largest ever to have elected an openly gay mayor. And Ms Parker is one of the two most prominent gay elected officials in the country alongside Barney Frank, an influential congressman from Massachusetts. But her victory is not that surprising. The controller is the second-most-powerful city office, and Ms Parker was elected to that post three times. Her sexuality was not much discussed until after the first round of the mayoral election, in November, which sent Ms Parker and Gene Locke, a former city attorney, into the run-off. At that point some right- wing groups circulated homophobic flyers, but voters seemed not to care. A more remarkable fact is that Ms Parker will become the only woman to lead one of America’s ten largest cities. ...

The Guantánamo detainees: Ready and willing

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

A small town in Illinois opens its (prison) doors

VISITORS to Thomson, Illinois, are welcomed by one sign that announces the village’s population, 600, and two that proclaim its glory: the 2009 girls’ softball team came fourth in its division, and another team came third in a state music competition. With the cold comes basketball season, when the village president referees local games. Snow blankets the cornfields. Soon the bald eagles will arrive, as they do each winter, to catch fish from the nearby Mississippi river. And if all goes according to plan, Thomson will prepare for another batch of visitors, too.

On December 15th the White House announced that it would buy a prison in Thomson to house some of the detainees from Guantanamo Bay. Many Republicans are furious, claiming that Illinois will become a terrorist target. (A few saltier souls claim to relish the idea of forming armed posses to hunt the inmates down, should any escape.) But Democrats there, in Barack Obama’s home state, had lobbied for the move and greeted the news triumphantly. For Mr Obama, the promise to close Guantanamo by January seems as unlikely as ever, though the announcement marks progress of a sort. No one, however, is more thrilled than the residents of Thomson itself. ...

America's foreign policy: Is there an Obama doctrine?

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

“Just war”, not just war. And affordable, please

BY HIS own admission, Barack Obama received his Nobel peace prize when his accomplishments were still “slight”. But he has big plans—including signing a new nuclear-arms reduction treaty with Russia and, eventually, ridding the world of atomic weapons altogether. When he collected his prize in Oslo on December 10th, he also gave a thought-provoking acceptance speech. To some it hit the rhetorical heights of Cicero (Simon Schama, a historian, in the Financial Times). For others (David Brooks, in the New York Times), there were echoes of Reinhold Niebuhr, a theologian with a gloomy view of human nature. The question now obsessing America’s commentariat is whether this speech outlines an “Obama doctrine” in foreign policy. If so, what is it?

Mr Obama has never claimed to be a pacifist. Yet his critics on the right seemed surprised, pleasantly, when he said in Oslo that “there will be times when nations—acting individually or in concert—will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.” Bill Kristol, the neoconservative editor of the Weekly Standard, praised his “hardheaded and pro-American tone”. Sarah Palin appeared to like his observation that “evil does exist in the world”. (She also reminded Americans that they could read her own musings on man’s fallen state in her new book.) John Bolton, on the other hand, remained in a grump. George Bush’s former ambassador to the United Nations took exception to Mr Obama’s acknowledgment that the world would “not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes”. End violence? Merely to entertain such a possibility, he huffed on television, “reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature”. ...

Lexington: Bah, humbug

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

The virtues of pessimism

IN AN odd footnote to the health-care debate, Christian Scientists are lobbying to make health insurers pay for “faith healing”. Mary Baker Eddy, the sect’s 19th-century founder, taught that sickness is a delusion and prayer the best medicine. Her followers sometimes pay others to pray for them instead of popping pills, and they think insurers should pick up the tab. This idea is unlikely to become law, but a former presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry, thinks it respectable enough to merit his support.

Two recent books, one from the left, one from the right, lament the American tendency towards mindless optimism. Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America” has a smiley-face balloon on its cover. John Derbyshire’s “We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism” has the most miserable-looking mugshot of an author that Lexington has ever seen. Both writers confront the upbeat and beat them down. ...

The world economy: The Great Stabilisation

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

The recession was less calamitous than many feared. Its aftermath will be more dangerous than many expect

IT HAS become known as the “Great Recession”, the year in which the global economy suffered its deepest slump since the second world war. But an equally apt name would be the “Great Stabilisation”. For 2009 was extraordinary not just for how output fell, but for how a catastrophe was averted.

Twelve months ago, the panic sown by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers had pushed financial markets close to collapse. Global economic activity, from industrial production to foreign trade, was falling faster than in the early 1930s. This time, though, the decline was stemmed within months. Big emerging economies accelerated first and fastest. China’s output, which stalled but never fell, was growing by an annualised rate of some 17% in the second quarter. By mid-year the world’s big, rich economies (with the exception of Britain and Spain) had started to expand again. Only a few laggards, such as Latvia and Ireland, are now likely still to be in recession. ...

Chile's presidential election: Small earthquake hurts centre-left

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Despite some serious flaws, Sebastian Pinera offers Chile a necessary change

FOR the past two decades Chile has been rather well-governed by the Concertacion, a centre-left coalition. For much of that time it was the one Latin country that recorded an Asian rate of economic growth. The share of Chileans living in poverty fell from 38.6% in 1990 to 13.7% in 2006, and education, health care and pensions are now much more widely available. Public-private partnerships have built the best infrastructure in the region. Chile is widely held up as a model for Latin America, a status underlined this week by an invitation to join the OECD, a rich-country club.

For all of this the Concertacion deserves much credit. It kept the free-market economic policies adopted, with costly trial and error, by the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. To these it added greater fiscal and monetary rigour, better social policy and a concern with equality of opportunity. It gradually turned Chile into a proper democracy, in which dozens of the dictatorship’s army officers are now in jail for murder. ...

Greece and the euro: Athenian dances

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Urgent measures must be taken by the most profligate euro-area member of all

IN GREECE ouzo and olives have given way to debt and downgrades. The country stands out among post-Dubai sovereign risks for its bloated and corrupt public sector, and a budget deficit and public debt of almost 13% and 125% of GDP, respectively. Spreads on Greek government bonds over German Bunds have widened to more than 2.5 percentage points. Nor were investors impressed by this week’s promises by George Papandreou, the prime minister, to cut the deficit to under 3% by 2013. They noted an absence of detail, a heavy reliance on hoped-for new revenues and talk of public-sector pay rises in 2010—and, warned by a credit downgrade by Standard & Poor’s, pushed spreads wider still (see article).

By Greek standards Mr Papandreou has been courageous, but he should have been braver still. Ireland set the pace on December 9th by producing a budget that sharply cut public-sector wages. Mr Papandreou and his finance minister, George Papaconstantinou, talk up the need to balance fairness and social peace with fiscal austerity. But the socialist Pasok party won a big majority in October’s election, making it Greece’s strongest government in a generation. The opposition has an untested new leader. Mr Papandreou wants to avoid direct confrontation with his trade union supporters, but the need to re-establish fiscal credibility ought to have come first. ...

Democracy in China: Control freaks

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

A growing dilemma for Hu Jintao: how should he deal with democracy inside the Communist Party?

YOU might have thought China’s leaders would be brimming over with confidence just now. Even as the West is struggling, their economy is growing strongly. China’s eclectic mix of free-market principles, spoon-fed state enterprises and intolerance of dissent may be contradictory, but it seems to have paid dividends. Around the world those disillusioned with American capitalism have half an eye on China as an alternative.

Yet the ruling Communist Party is acutely conscious of its own frailties. Although students are still desperate to join the party, that is not because they believe in Marxism, but because they are worried about their job prospects and party membership can pull strings. Once in, they find an organisation that cloaks itself in the mind-numbing dogma of yesteryear, pays little heed to the will of its 76m members and revels in costly, time-wasting meetings to rubber-stamp the leaders’ decisions. It is a formula that buys the party short-term comfort at the expense of long-term instability. ...

London as a financial centre: The real windfall

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

If Gordon Brown drives away international capital, British taxpayers will be the losers

BRITISH AIRWAYS lost GBP292m ($465m) in the six months to the end of September and its pension fund has a GBP3.7 billion deficit. Its cabin crew responded by voting to strike over the Christmas period, alienating the millions of customers that pay their wages and fund those pensions. Similarly, London now risks losing its reputation as a hub of international finance, driving away mobile capital and taxpayers at a time when the government’s deficit is above 10% of GDP. There will be no immediate exodus. But the impression that tax policy is now designed to maximise the number of Labour votes rather than the state’s revenue should worry Britons as well as financiers.

No single tax change has been decisive, though the levy on bank bonuses, announced on December 9th, has brought the issue into focus. This newspaper has argued that it is fair for the taxpayer to claw back the huge subsidy that all banks have enjoyed: the cheap money and guarantees were provided to help banks continue lending and build up their capital, rather than distributing the money to staff. A globally co-ordinated approach to this could have worked. But Gordon Brown’s rushed attempt to punish the rich seems ever more cackhanded. ...

On Honduras, Switzerland, food, class politics, Mike Huckabee, words, Belgium

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

SIR – You accurately highlighted the complicated circumstances surrounding the political turmoil in Honduras and rightly questioned the level of perfection of its recent election (“Honduras defies the world”, December 5th). However, I firmly refute your claim that the Organisation of American States was “absurdly maximalist” at the start of the crisis by “refusing talks” to overcome the emergency.

Immediately after the coup in June the OAS acted swiftly and clearly, calling for the restoration of democratic order. The OAS supported the efforts of Oscar Arias, Costa Rica’s president, to mediate a resolution and sent delegations of foreign ministers and officials to San Jose to promote acceptance of the accords. ...

Human identity: An elusive illusion

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

A scientific exhibition examines what makes human beings individuals

WITH the construction of the railways in the 19th century, a new sociological phenomenon was born: the travelling criminal. Until then, police had relied on local communities to recognise a bad apple in their midst, but now the felons were on the move, wreaking havoc in communities which had no knowledge of their past and hence no reason to be wary. For law enforcers trying to contain the problem by sharing descriptions of known recidivists, it became imperative to answer one question: what is it that identifies someone as a particular person?

This question has long troubled humanity, of course, and it is explored in all its facets in a new exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London. One practical application lies in the forensic arena. The first solution offered, branding, was simple and effective. But even in a society that preferred to believe that criminals were born and not made, this was soon deemed unacceptable. So there was a need to find something innate to human beings that remains constant from the cradle to the grave, and that is sufficiently differentiated in the population to make it useful in identifying individuals. ...

Zombie films: Invasion of the living dead

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Even Jane Austen has been infected

“FROM a corner of the room, Mr Darcy watched Elizabeth and her sisters work their way outward, beheading zombie after zombie as they went.” That sentence springs from “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”, a surprise literary hit (it was a bestseller in America last April) that imagines Regency England being overrun by the undead. Elizabeth Bennet and her beau flit from dancing at balls to employing Asian martial arts, a sort of Fred Astaire and Ninja Rogers.

In a sense, the author of this pastiche, Seth Grahame-Smith, has turned Jane Austen into a zombie, reviving her text from the grave and turning it into a grisly version of the original. Hollywood is planning a film version next year, the latest in a series of movies to star the undead. The recently released “Zombieland”, one of the more successful versions, combined romance, the undead and comedy (a romzomcom, in the jargon), and garnered more than $85m in worldwide sales. ...

An evolutionary biologist on religion: Spirit level

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

Why the human race has needed religion to survive

The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why it Endures. By Nicholas Wade. Penguin Press; 310 pages; $25.95. Buy from Amazon.com

...

Foreign aid: Trap or treat

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:02:55 GMT

A blueprint for making foreign aid work

The Aid Trap. By Glenn Hubbard and William Duggan. Columbia University Press; 198 pages; $22.95 and GBP15.95. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

...

Microsoft and antitrust: The end, sort of

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 07:53:11 GMT

Microsoft settles a long-running antitrust case with Europe's competition commissioner

“TO HECK with Janet Reno”, said Steve Ballmer, now Microsoft’s boss, after America’s attorney-general dared to go after the software firm in 1997 for abusing its Windows monopoly to smother Netscape, a now defunct browser firm. These words marked the beginning of what was to become probably the most spectacular antitrust case in the computer industry so far. The dispute later spread to Europe.

On Wednesday December 16th the case at last came to an end. Neelie Kroes, Europe’s competition commissioner, announced that she had reached a settlement with the software giant. Starting next March, in Europe at least, all versions of Windows will come with a “choice screen” rather than just an already-installed version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. This will list 12 web browsers, including Microsoft’s and those provided by competitors. Computer users will be able to pick their favourite. ...

Buttonwood: When good news is bad news

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

A foretaste of a new phase in the markets

IT IS better to travel hopefully than to arrive. For weeks data on the American economy had been patchy, indicating a spluttering recovery. Unemployment in particular continued to rise, hitting 10.2% in October. Have patience, said the optimists. Unemployment is a lagging indicator. Sure enough, on December 4th the non-farm payrolls data for November showed a fall of 11,000 jobs, a far smaller figure than expected. The last jigsaw-piece of recovery had slotted into place.

You might have expected the stockmarket to rebound sharply on the news. After all, a rise in employment can make the recovery self-sustaining. Workers will buy goods, making the corporate sector expand production and take on more employees. The economy can be less dependent on ad hoc government schemes like “cash for clunkers”. But the Dow Jones Industrial Average eked out a mere 22-point gain on the day of the announcement. ...

Europe's corporate credit crunch: Muck in the fuel pipe

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

Europe’s banks will struggle to lend their clients a hand when demand revives

MECHANICS checking for a blockage in a car’s fuel pipes know to floor the accelerator, for a splutter then indicates a problem that may not show up when the engine is idling. The mechanics of the financial system are wondering whether the same rule applies to the world economy and whether its recovery will be choked by a lack of credit to companies just as demand starts picking up.

In late summer, as Europe’s economies barely ticked over, bankers across Europe seemed ready to ease their grip on the purse strings. A survey of banks’ loan officers in euro-area countries in late September led the European Central Bank (ECB) to conclude that a “turning-point” had been reached and that banks would probably soon start to relax credit standards. In Britain, a survey for the Bank of England (BoE) at about the same time showed an increased willingness by banks to lend to companies (even if they were holding back on lending to households). ...

Student finance: Uniformly shabby

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

Funding for those in higher education is needlessly chaotic

WHINGEING students may be a standard feature of university life in England but this autumn the grievances have been genuine. When term started, many who had applied on time had nonetheless not received the government grants and loans to which they were entitled. An investigation published on December 8th by Sir Deian Hopkin, the interim vice-chancellor of the University of East London, found that students are still waiting for their money, including some who should have got extra because they are disabled or have young children. Reluctant to see their charges going hungry and homeless, university administrators are dipping into institutional pockets, shelling out an average of about GBP100,000 and spending time on such non-core matters as explaining the situation to irate nurseries.

A new finance scheme was introduced in February. The intention was to make life simpler for students. Before then, they had to apply to the local authority in which their parents lived for grants to cover part of their living expenses, and to the Student Loans Company, a public body, for subsidised loans to cover the rest along with the tuition fees charged by universities. Now the company deals with all aspects of government-issued finance, from advising students to assessing applications to processing payments. But technical problems and poor planning (the company hired no extra staff to answer telephones, meaning 95% of calls made during the first week of September went unanswered) led to a growing backlog. It still has not been fully cleared. ...

Bankers' pay: Cui bono?

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

Who benefits from a one-off levy on bankers’ bonuses?

COME April 6th 2010, it will be business as usual. Until then, banking firms with employees in Britain will have to be ultra-creative to get around measures announced in the pre-budget report (see previous story) to impose a 50% payroll tax at source on those dishing out bonuses of more than GBP25,000 ($40,750). As The Economist went to press there were rumours that France might follow suit.

The intention is to catch cash benefits paid between now and April 5th, the end of the tax year, including loans against shares deposited in trusts, and other such tax-avoidance dodges. No firm engaged in banking activity, British or foreign, with employees taxable in Britain will be spared. Bonuses contractually guaranteed before December 9th, however, will slip through the net. So will incentive schemes awarding shares or share options. Banks that have hiked salaries at the expense of bonuses may escape the full fury. ...

Efficiency savings in government: Fat-fighters

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

Politicians get serious (well, sort of) about wasteful spending

NOBODY will call him the Iron Prime Minister, and the word “prudent” ceased to serve as his virtual middle-name a decade ago. But the fiscal crisis is forcing Gordon Brown to revive his old image of bean-counting frugality.

His latest plan to save money, unveiled on December 9th by his chancellor of the exchequer, Alistair Darling, claims to protect the “front-line” of public services. (The opposition Conservatives, by mischievous implication, would not). The axe will fall on the Whitehall bureaucracy. Fees paid to consultants are to be halved and the salaries of senior staff reviewed. Other plans range from the fiddly (cutting missed health-care appointments with the help of text-messaging) to the profound (paying third-sector organisations to provide services). In addition to the savings identified in last April’s budget, GBP12 billion ($19.6 billion) will supposedly be cut over four years. ...

Labour's pre-budget report: Drawing up the battle lines

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

The chancellor’s fiscal statement was all about politics

A YEAR ago, when Alistair Darling presented his pre-budget report, the chancellor of the exchequer unveiled an astonishing deterioration in the public finances. That got even worse in his spring budget. Judged by those titanic standards, the pre-budget report on December 9th was a tame affair. But it still mattered for what it revealed about the government’s priorities in dealing with a still-floundering economy and Britain’s huge budget deficit. Above all, it outlined the case Labour will put to voters at the election due by June.

Mr Darling had to own up to a much bigger contraction in the economy this year than he expected at the time of the budget. The Treasury thinks GDP will shrink by 4.75% in 2009, whereas in April it was forecasting a fall of 3.5%. But it still expects the economy to expand by about 1.25% in 2010, and indeed to emerge from recession in the final quarter of this year. The chancellor is sticking to his prediction of 3.5% growth in 2011, which was criticised as over-optimistic this spring, and thinks it will carry on in 2012. ...

Terrorism in Northern Ireland: Resurgent

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

A political impasse means violence can flourish

THOUGH their bailiwick is supposed to be at peace, Northern Ireland’s security forces are becoming increasingly concerned that republican terrorism is mutating into a new and even more dangerous form, more expert and with a wider range of tactics. Some of the dissidents who refused to accept the 1998 peace agreement are now behind bars, but others have taken their place and are proving so menacing that the threat they pose is at its highest official rating in over five years.

Both the Police Service of Northern Ireland and MI5, which handles security intelligence in mainland Britain and Northern Ireland, are devoting significant additional resources to countering the dissident threat. Security sources say that they are now following more suspected threat-to-life plots by republicans in Northern Ireland than by Islamists in mainland Britain. Though the republicans are not intent on inflicting large-scale civilian casualties, there is the awful example of their attack on the town of Omagh in 1998: they said that civilians were not the target but nonetheless 29 were killed. ...

Betting on the horses: Handicap hurdle

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

A long dispute at Britain’s racecourses may be nearing resolution

A GLORIOUS morning in Sussex turns to a dull afternoon of foul rain. The turf at Fontwell Park racecourse, already heavy in places, becomes even more testing for the horses. For the bookmakers in the enclosure, the going in recent times has been almost as strength-sapping.

To unsuccessful punters—ie, most of them—bookmakers may be undeserving of sympathy. Nevertheless, taking bets on a racecourse is not, by and large, a lucrative trade. Last year, according to the Gambling Commission, course bookies’ gross profits came to GBP24.4m—or GBP600 each a day—before fees, staff and travel costs, and taxes. Their market share is small and many punters have quit for online exchanges (where they can back a horse to win but also, like a bookmaker, lay it to lose). The biggest exchange, Betfair, started in 2000 with just 36 traders; now it boasts 3m registered customers. In 1999, says Pat Dennis, standing at Fontwell, his family’s firm turned over GBP48,000 a day; now it takes less than GBP15,000. “The GBP50-100 punters have gone missing,” says Robin Grossmith, chairman of the Rails Bookmakers Association. “They’re the bread and butter.” ...

German education reforms: The angst in Hamburg

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

A revolt against school reforms in Hamburg has wider repercussions

FOR 480 years the Johanneum has taught ancient languages to Hamburg’s children. That tradition is about to be disrupted, fears the school’s director, Uwe Reimer. Radical reforms are planned by the city’s government, a coalition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Greens. These would mean “humanistic” Gymnasien (academic high schools) like the Johanneum would get two fewer years to impart Latin and Greek. If the reforms are enacted, says Mr Reimer, “the profile we developed over such a long period cannot be maintained.”

The unease goes far beyond the Johanneum. “We Want to Learn”, a parents’ movement to stop the reforms, collected 185,000 signatures in November, three times the number needed to force a referendum. Half of Hamburgers want changes to the plans; a fifth think them completely wrongheaded. They will vote next summer unless a compromise is found. Defeat would discourage similar experiments and also traumatise Hamburg’s government, which had been seen as a model for a national CDU/Green coalition one day. ...

Cyprus's history: Aphrodite's troubled island

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

History helps to explain why the Cyprus problem is so hard to solve

MOST Greek-Cypriots date their island’s “problem” to July 1974, when Turkish troops invaded the north. But Cyprus is one of those places that has too much history. The roots of its problem stretch much further back.

In medieval days Cyprus was the eastern bastion of Venice. In 1570-71 it was bloodily conquered by the Ottomans—the Venetian commander of Famagusta, Marcantonio Bragadino, was flayed alive after surrendering. The island remained in the Ottoman empire, with a Christian majority, until it was ceded to Britain at the 1878 Congress of Berlin (Disraeli, Britain’s prime minister, noted that Bismarck’s idea of progress was to seize somebody else’s territory). ...

Ireland's budget: Hard times

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

Ireland shows the rest of Europe what austerity really means

WHEN the Irish finance minister, Brian Lenihan, in effect cut the pay of public-sector workers earlier this year by introducing a special 7% pension levy, he confessed that Ireland’s European Union partners were amazed at the muted public reaction. There would, he said, have been riots in France. On December 9th Mr Lenihan presented his 2010 budget, inflicting even more pain by imposing steep pay cuts on public employees. This time, the response may not be quite so muted. The police are already threatening to defy a no-strike law in protest, and other public-sector workers are preparing to hold ballots on industrial action.

In a week when Greece and Spain both saw their credit ratings under attack (see article), the budget at least gave the government an opportunity to reassure international investors that Ireland, unlike some other EU countries, is serious about controlling its budget deficit and public-debt burden. Mr Lenihan has done this with the toughest budget in his country’s history. Public servants face pay cuts of 5-8% on salaries up to €125,000 ($190,000); higher earners (who will include the prime minister) will see their pay cut by 15% or more. Unemployment and welfare benefits have also been cut, though not pensions. Next year’s budget deficit, at around 11.6% of GDP, will be similar to this year’s. ...

Romania's presidential election: Against all odds

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

Traian Basescu wins a tight but mucky race. Now he must keep his promises

IT SEEMED like a safe bet. Mircea Geoana, the centre-left challenger in Romania’s presidential election, had the money, media and political backing that he needed to win. Sleek and Western-educated, he portrayed himself as the safe consensus candidate against Traian Basescu, the lively but exasperating former sea-captain (and once mayor of Bucharest) who has been the country’s president since 2004.

For a few hours on December 6th it even appeared to have paid off. Exit polls gave Mr Geoana a narrow victory. He did win inside the country by 14,738 votes. But Romanians abroad cast 146,876 votes and Mr Basescu took 78% of them. The campaign was exceptionally dirty: observers think that both sides cheated. Mr Basescu’s victory against largely hostile news coverage was impressive. Mr Geoana wants a rerun, but his support is dwindling. His Liberal allies now hope to form a government with Mr Basescu’s centre-right Democrats. ...

The European Union and Serbia: A slow march to Europe

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

A small step for Serbia, but joining the EU will require a giant leap

SERBIA, comments one eurocrat dryly, is being defrosted bit by bit. On December 7th, after lengthy debate, European Union foreign ministers announced that a trade agreement with the country would at last be implemented. The significance cannot be overstated: Serbia’s path towards the EU has been reopened.

In April 2008, in a bid to help the pro-European party of Serbia’s president, Boris Tadic, the EU signed an association agreement with Serbia. But the Dutch (backed by the Belgians) insisted it be frozen because of Serbia’s failure to arrest Ratko Mladic, a Bosnian Serb general indicted for genocide after the murder of some 8,000 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995. Now, under pressure from colleagues and after a report by the chief prosecutor at the Yugoslav war-crimes tribunal said the Serbs were doing what they could, the Dutch veto has been lifted—for the time being. ...

Cyprus, Turkey and the European Union: A Mediterranean maelstrom

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

Turkey’s fading hopes of joining the European Union would be hugely boosted by a Cyprus settlement, for which the next few weeks will be critical

IT IS no secret that negotiations on Turkish membership of the European Union are going slowly. Only one of the 35 “chapters”, on research, has been completed. Five are blocked by a French veto on anything implying Turkey’s eventual accession. Eight have been frozen since December 2006 to punish the Turks for not opening their ports and airports to Cyprus (ie, the Greek-Cypriot republic). On December 8th the EU agreed to open just one new chapter, on the environment.

This week’s annual stocktake on progress with Turkey was gloomy. Public opinion is shifting, too: Turkish support for EU accession fell from 70% in 2004 to 42% in 2008. The new president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, once said Turkey would never be part of Europe, a sentiment shared by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. Yet Western diplomats tell the Turks that time is on their side, and that presidents come and go. ...

The Red Cross movement: How much evil can you not see?

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

Impartiality is still the best policy, a giant humanitarian network says

AS EVERY student of warfare knows, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is staunchly, and at times controversially, neutral. Its work as a guardian of the laws governing conflict has obliged it to deal with all manner of bad people, including the Nazis.

Less well known, probably, is the neutral tradition of the other wing of the Red Cross movement, which is much larger: the network of humanitarian volunteers in 186 countries which offers medical aid and practical help to victims of disaster, both natural and man-made. But the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), whose leaders met in Nairobi last month, is adamant that impartiality has served it well, and worked to the advantage of the people it succours. ...

Refugees and cities: Tents come down

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

Tomorrow’s fugitive will live in a slum, not under canvas

SAY the word “refugee” and it still conjures up visions of uprooted families who live, for years, in vast camps where humanitarian agencies look after them and they remain largely separate from their so-called host countries.

That image is out of date and getting more so all the time, says UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency. Perhaps half the 10.5m people who fall directly under the organisation’s remit (in other words, those who have crossed borders, fearing death or persecution) now live in cities, cheek by jowl with other desperate folk. Refugees, it seems, are just like other human beings: they are trying their luck in the vast conurbations whose growth will continue to be a big social trend in the 21st century. ...

The Copenhagen climate talks: Filthy lucre fouls the air

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

Arguments over money dampened the euphoria that marked the start of talks on a global deal to limit greenhouse gases

DESPITE the gloomy talk that preceded the UN climate conference, the opening was upbeat. Most big countries had vowed to cut or limit emissions during the previous few weeks. As delegates arrived, America’s Environmental Protection Agency announced that carbon-dioxide emissions were an “endangerment” to health. This allows Barack Obama to regulate them, whatever Congress does.

The happiness did not last. On December 8th a draft agreement which had been discussed some weeks ago was leaked to the Guardian. It caused a furore. The “Danish text” had been circulated by the hosts, but not to all parties; and it seems to confirm the futility of moves towards the legally binding treaty that many still want. ...

Bangladesh makes friends with India: Trying to be good neighbours

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

Aligning history and geography with politics and economics

A POOR country, surrounded on three sides by a rising economic power, Bangladesh has long hoped for closer economic integration with its neighbour. One big problem has been India’s worry that Bangladesh harbours anti-Indian terrorists. The year-old government of Sheikh Hasina Wajed and her Awami League has started to dismantle this obstacle.

This month it arrested and handed over to India Arabinda Rajkhowa, the chairman of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), a militant group fighting for an independent homeland for ethnic Assamese in India’s north-east state of Assam. In the past two decades at least 10,000 people have died in the insurgency. Bangladesh had already handed over a number of other ULFA leaders in November. ...

Japan's new government: Three's a crowd

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

The DPJ’s fractious coalition partners disrupt economic and foreign policy

BETWEEN them, they won less than 3% of the vote in the August election for the lower house of the Diet, or parliament. In the 242-seat upper house, they hold just ten seats. Both are led by loose cannons, one an anti-capitalist, the other a liberal feminist. So why, Japan’s ruling party is being asked, are its two tiny coalition partners able to hold it—and by extension the management of the world’s second-largest economy—to ransom?

This is a question of growing importance for Yukio Hatoyama, the fledgling prime minister. In an opinion poll on December 7th, the main reason given for the party’s falling popularity (still a robust 59%) was his lack of leadership. This month he has allowed the two cabinet members appointed from his Democratic Party’s coalition partners to mount direct challenges to his authority on the economy and foreign policy. ...

Turkmenistan's plight: Burning sands and pipe-dreams

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

A rich country with poor people and an heroic dentist for a dictator

AS THE Karakum desert sinks into cold darkness, a faint glow lights up the horizon. Another 15 minutes’ driving through dunes reveals why: a giant red pit is belching gases and flames into the night sky. This infernal sight first appeared some 30 or 40 years ago, after a drilling platform sank through the earth’s surface. The Darvaza crater could serve well as a symbol for the whole country—were Turkmenistan in need of any more monuments. Bordered by Afghanistan, Iran, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, surrounded by mountains and a desert shore, this land is rich in history, in natural gas and in misery. The Persians, Parthians, Arabs, Mongols and Russians passed through these arid plains. A “ruined and burned-out country”, is how Makhtum Kuli, an 18th-century Turkmen poet, summed it up.

It has the world’s fourth-largest gas deposits and its proud and poor population is ruled by one of the most oppressive and corrupt regimes in the world. A few kilometres south of the gas crater people sleep in yurts and drink rainwater. Scrawny children run about half-naked. Turkmenistan sells billions of dollars worth of gas each year. Yet the average income of its 5m people is under $300 a month. ...

Nepal's tenuous peace: Striking out

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

After months of deadlock, a bloody clash brings the country back to the brink

NEPALI brides and grooms had extra blessings to count when they married on December 9th. The country’s Maoist party had called a nationwide strike on one of the year’s few auspicious nuptial dates. But fortune smiled. The Maoists postponed their blockade, and hundreds of weddings took place.

There was little else to celebrate. Stalemate between the government and the Maoist party, comprising former rebels, has grown violent. Tensions exploded on December 4th after thousands of landless labourers in the far west, backed by the Maoists, claimed tracts of government-owned forest for themselves. National security forces responded by opening fire and burning the squatters’ huts. Some of the settlers beat a police officer to death. ...

Violence in Mindanao: A martial plan?

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

A looming rebellion, or perhaps a chance to cover up embarrassing links

THE massacre last month of 57 people in the southern Philippine province of Maguindanao, on Mindanao, has provoked outrage. In response, the government of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has been striving to give the impression that it is doing its utmost to uphold the rule of law. The opposition thinks first impressions can be deceptive.

The killings involved a group on the way to file a candidacy for elections next year, accompanied by about 30 members of the press. Armed men shot or hacked to death all in the convoy, as well as some unconnected passers-by. Suspicion immediately fell on a local mayor, Andal Ampatuan, a member of a Muslim clan with a private army that lords it over the local government. The authorities in Manila soon arrested him and charged him with multiple murder, which he has denied. The security forces began uncovering arms caches on Ampatuan property. On December 4th the government declared martial law in Maguindanao, saying a rebellion was looming. Several more leading Ampatuans were detained. ...

Thailand's restive south and Malaysia: The trouble in between

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

Najib and Abhisit have a look-see

PEOPLE in Thailand’s three southernmost provinces have heard plenty of promises from Bangkok since January 2004, when Muslim insurgents began a campaign of separatist violence. Government ministers, royalty and military brass have descended in droves to dispense advice, arms and money. But the conflict, which has so far claimed the lives of nearly 4,000 Thais, shows no signs of ending.

Last year saw a surge in troops and a dip in violence. But the shootings and bombings have increased again, with gruesome tactics such as the beheading of victims. The militants behind the killings do not declare themselves. They have neither taken their violent campaign to the rest of Thailand nor combined forces with foreign, anti-western terrorists. Caught up in their own political drama, few Thais pay close attention to the southern conflict. ...

The Latinobarómetro poll: A slow maturing of democracy

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

More Latin Americans now trust the government than the army

DESPITE the recession which rippled across the region over the past year, Latin Americans are more supportive of— and satisfied with—their democracies and their governments. More of them favour the market economy, and most take a dim view of Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s radical leftist president. Those are among the findings of the latest Latinobarometro poll taken in 18 countries across the region and published exclusively by The Economist. Because the poll has been taken regularly since 1995, it tracks changes in attitudes across the region.

This year’s poll was taken in late September and October, when many countries in the region were starting to pull out of the downturn. Latin Americans felt the recession, but in most places only moderately. Respondents describing the economic situation as “bad” or “very bad” increased from 35% last year to 40% this year, while those calling it “good” or “very good” fell to 43% from 47%. Unemployment edged ahead of crime as respondents’ main concern, as it was in all the previous polls except last year’s (though in seven countries crime remains the number one worry). ...

Paraguay's president: Loose-lipped Lugo

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

Giving offence and receiving it

WHEN Fernando Lugo was sworn in as Paraguay’s president in August last year, the former bishop and liberation theologian, a political novice, represented a refreshing change in a country that had endured 60 years, largely of misrule, under the Colorado party. But Paraguayans have since been reminded that political savvy is not always a bad thing. In the past few weeks Mr Lugo has managed to offend some of his political allies, insult some of the wealthier families in the country and upset the armed forces. He has been threatened with impeachment twice. And one of the three women who claim that he fathered their children filed a (third) paternity suit against him.

“Those with bulky bank accounts, whose pictures appear in the newspapers’ social pages,” are holding Paraguay back, Mr Lugo declared at a rally in a poor neighbourhood of Asuncion, the capital. He had said such things from the pulpit in the past. But this time he spoke only nine days after Fidel Zavala, a cattle rancher, had been kidnapped by the self-styled Army of the Paraguayan People (EPP), a small left-wing group with links to Colombia’s FARC. Mr Lugo is friendly with some former EPP members. ...

Canada's Nisga'a: Home-owning nation

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

An Amerindian experiment with property rights

THE Amerindian peoples of Canada, where they are known as First Nations, like those in Bolivia (see article), have traditionally held land in common. So the decision by the Nisga’a First Nation of north-western British Columbia to grant private property rights to its members, insignificant though it might seem to most Canadians, has potentially revolutionary implications.

Who owns the land is unfinished business in British Columbia where, unlike in the rest of Canada, only a few treaties covering small areas were signed in colonial times. The First Nations lay claim to most of the province. In 1998 the Nisga’a, after more than a century of negotiation and litigation, were the first to sign a modern treaty. The 6,400 Nisga’a gained ownership of almost 2,000 square km (770 square miles) in the Nass valley, plus powers of self-government comparable to a municipality, some control over language and cultural issues, ownership of forestry and mineral resources, a share of the fisheries and a C$190m (then worth $280m) development fund. This deal has served as a benchmark for leisurely talks involving 60 other native groups. Earlier this year the Tsawwassen, one of the smaller ones, became the second to conclude a new treaty. ...

Banking in Venezuela: Fall of the Boligarchs

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

Hugo Chavez cracks down on allies

“BEING rich is bad,” Hugo Chavez is wont to remark. But in the decade in which he has been Venezuela’s president, some people with close ties to his regime have made fortunes. Now he seems to have lost patience with them. Over the past fortnight the government has shut down seven small banks and an insurance company and arrested several of their owners, accusing them of fraud and mismanagement. The president says this is part of a drive to root out corruption. Yet the scandal would seem to lead to the upper echelons of his government.

Mr Chavez has nationalised many other businesses, so the takeovers at first caused mild panic in financial markets. But the banks involved account for less than 10% of total deposits. Mr Chavez assured the big private banks that they were not incompatible with his ideology of “21st-century socialism”. ...

Bolivia's presidential election: The explosive apex of Evo's power

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

A triumphant Evo Morales has won a second term. But the going will not necessarily get any easier for his social revolution

SPEAKING to a crowd from the balcony of the Palacio Quemado, the presidential palace in La Paz, a triumphant Evo Morales hailed his election for a second term as a mandate “to accelerate the process of change”. His opponents will find that hard to argue with. Official results will not be released for a fortnight, but exit polls suggested that Mr Morales took about 63% of the vote and that his Movement to Socialism party (MAS) came close to winning a two-thirds majority in the legislature. The turnout was around 90%. This pointed to a thumping endorsement for the social revolution led by Mr Morales, a cocaworkers’ leader of Aymara Indian descent, in one of South America’s poorest countries. This has involved giving greater constitutional rights to indigenous peoples and extending the state’s control over the economy.

The result means that Mr Morales can now not only implement a new constitution formalising many of those changes, but may also be able to tweak this to allow him to run indefinitely for the presidency, like his friend, Hugo Chavez, in Venezuela. His victory was not just a triumph for Bolivians but also for all “anti-imperialist” governments and peoples, said Mr Morales, who is allied with Mr Chavez and Cuba in an anti-American block. ...

George Bush speaks: The motivator

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

Beer, hot dogs and an ex-president

THE former president looked healthy and well-rested, and happier than he has in recent years. He said that he had been enjoying walking his dog in his new neighbourhood in Dallas, although he misses being commander-in-chief. It was December 2nd, and George W. Bush was back on stage. Not the world stage, of course. The former vice-president, Dick Cheney, has been nipping at Barack Obama’s heels all year. But Mr Bush has let his successor forge ahead without second-guessing him. This was a temporary stage at the AT&T Centre in San Antonio, Texas, and Mr Bush was the keynote speaker at an event called Get Motivated!, a day of inspirational speeches for personal and business success.

Motivational seminars are an interesting corner of American life. They feel a bit like megachurch meetings, but with beer and hot dogs, and seem to be descended from the tent-revivals and circuses of the antebellum era. At the San Antonio event the speakers emphasised self-reliance, faith, and hard work and scoffed at government intervention, higher education, mainstream media and the cult of celebrity. “The world is going to hell in a handbasket and the UN can’t do a frickin’ thing about it,” said Tamara Lowe, one of the founders of the series, before challenging the audience to tackle global poverty themselves. ...

Struggling giants: Toyota slips up

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

What the world’s biggest carmaker can learn from other corporate turnarounds

LESS than two years ago Toyota swept past an ailing General Motors (GM) to become the world’s biggest carmaker. Now its newly installed boss, Akio Toyoda, the 53-year-old grandson of the founder, says that the firm could be locked in a spiral of decline. Toyota is still a hugely formidable company, and some within the industry (and inside Toyota itself) believe that Mr Toyoda may be overstating the case. Yet there is no shortage of signs that all is not well (see article).

Toyota’s story has implications beyond the motor industry, for it is not just a car company; it is the model for manufacturing excellence whose “lean” techniques have been copied by countless firms. How it slipped up—and how it may right itself—carries lessons for others. ...

On scepticism about climate change, Africa's displaced people, Brazil and China, agriculture, Franco Modigliani, Czechoslovakia, Scotland, anagrams

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

SIR – Passion is the root problem in what you term “the modern argument over climate change” (“A heated debate”, November 28th). You state, for instance, that the “majority of the world’s climate scientists have convinced themselves” that human activity is the cause of climate change. I know of no poll that confirms this, but your choice of words is telling. In science, our interpretations of nature are based on observation, experiment and evidence, not self-conviction.

Those of us who are dismissed, often derided, as sceptics have waited a long time for the chicanery behind the global-warming movement to come to light. But we should not blame scientists—however unprincipled—nor UN organisations, nor national governments. The true culprits are the latter-day Nostradamuses who, under their icons of cuddly pandas and polar bears, have misused science to stoke fear, guilt and a craving for atonement in the minds of the public. Governments have been browbeaten to respond to these catastrophists, and some scientists, dependent on public money, have fashioned their behaviour accordingly. ...

Iraqi bombings: What difference do they make?

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

A new pattern of violence is emerging in the run-up to next year’s elections

BAD news from Baghdad inevitably seems to follow the good. Earlier this month the mood brightened when it was announced that fewer Iraqis had been killed in violent deaths in November than in any previous month since America invaded in 2003. (The toll was a still far-from-negligible 88, but a lot less than the 3,000 a month who were dying at the height of the sectarian bloodbath three years ago.) And then, after months of wrangling, an electoral law was finally ratified on December 6th, enabling a general election to be held early next year, probably on March 7th.

But just as the prospect of normality seemed at last to beckon, Baghdad was shaken by one of the year’s bloodiest bunch of bombings. On December 8th five almost simultaneous explosions killed at least 120 civilians. Among the targets was a court complex near the fortified Green Zone, where the prime minister and parliament reside. Many young lawyers queuing for job interviews to be clerks were killed outside. Dozens of cars caught fire, causing a string of secondary explosions. Four other car-bombs went off elsewhere in Baghdad, hitting an interior-ministry compound, a law academy, some buildings used by the finance ministry since its old home was bombed in August and some buildings near Baghdad’s big oil refinery. ...

Iraq and alcohol: The battle for booze

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

Alcohol is freely on sale again but the Islamists may yet violently object

“ONCE, during prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.” That old moan by W.C. Fields, the American funny man, echoes the more recent feelings of many a resident in Basra. Iraq’s biggest southern city was a byword for pleasure and vice during Saddam Hussein’s rule: booze flowed freely, lubricating casinos and brothels as well as restaurants. But after his fall Basra was gradually taken over by ferocious Islamist militias. Anyone caught with a bottle was liable to meet an untimely end—and scores of merchants did. A year-and-a-half ago, under orders from Baghdad, the Iraqi army retook the city. Hundreds of militiamen were killed. Many were chased across the border into Iran. Secular Basrawis gradually felt able to breathe again.

But only recently has alcohol become easily available. Licensed shops along puddle-filled Watan Street in the city centre have reopened for the first time since they were looted in the wake of the American-led invasion. Trade is brisk. Jordanian whisky with the labels Black Jack, Grand and Royal Home are selling particularly well, at around $2 a bottle. Another favourite with Basra’s newly liberated boozers, all of whom appear (at least in public) to be male, is a Turkish beer sold in squat bottles that have earned it the nickname “Uncle Jalal” after Iraq’s roly-poly president, Jalal Talabani. ...

Terrorism in Somalia: Ever more atrocious

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

Even in a country inured to violence, the latest bombing was horrifying

THERE was a rare moment this week in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, when a crowd of protesters marched through the ruined seaside city and burned the black flag of the Shabab, the jihadist militia that is threatening to take over the country. The Shabab, which means youth, hunts down its critics, sometimes beheading them, so torching its battle banner in broad daylight was a brave act. But the courage was perhaps born of desolation. Most of the protesters were family and friends of Benadir University medical students killed by a suicide-bomber on December 3rd.

It has been 18 years since Somalia has had a properly functioning government. Since 2007, 19,000 Somali civilians are reported to have been killed and 1.5m displaced; over 3m in a population of 8m need emergency aid. Yet amid all the violence and despair, people often overlook the lion-hearted efforts of institutions like Benadir University to turn the country around. Against the odds, the embattled university trains young Somalis to serve as doctors in Mogadishu’s dire hospitals. ...

Merchant ships

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

After falling each year since 2002, the tonnage of ships sold for scrap to shipbreaking yards doubled between 2007 and 2008, to 8m deadweight tonnes (dwt) according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. In all, 487 ships weighing over 10,000 dwt were sent to be demolished last year, mostly to shipbreaking yards in Bangladesh, India and China. These scrapyards may do even brisker business this year: 339 ships had already been sold for scrap by the end of April 2009. High demand for bulk carriers during the boom years meant that very few were scrapped. But the recession ensured that the demolition of such ships soared to 3.1m dwt in 2008, the highest since 2003.

...

Output, prices and jobs

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

The Economist commodity-price index

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

Markets

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

China's stockmarket

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

The massive rally in the Chinese stockmarket has raised questions over whether equities are already in bubble territory. Price-earnings ratios can be subject to distortion, especially at turning points in the cycle. Another approach is to look at the ratio of prices to asset value, or price-to-book. Despite having risen this year, this measure has yet to reach its 2007 peak. Paying a premium to book value (the current ratio is around 2.6) can be justified if companies are earning high returns on equity. Dylan Grice, a strategist at Societe Generale, says that assuming a 10% hurdle rate, the current 17% return on equity warrants a price-to-book ratio of 1.7. This leaves equities, if not in bubble territory, more than fully priced.

...

Overview

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

German consumer prices fell by 0.1% in November from the previous month, but were 0.4% higher than a year earlier. This is the first time since June 2009 that Germany has reported positive inflation.

Germany’s exports were 2.5% higher in October than a month earlier. A 2.4% decline in imports meant that the country’s trade surplus rose to €13.6 billion ($20.1 billion). But factory orders fell by 2.1% in October and were 8.5% lower than a year earlier. ...

Trade, exchange rates, budget balances and interest rates

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

Sovereign-debt worries: Rate and see

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

Greece loses its A-rating; other rich countries are under the spotlight too

THERE are few things more embarrassing for an analyst than issuing a sell notice on a stock when the share price has already slumped. That fear of acting too late may explain why Fitch, a big credit-rating agency, chose this week to lower Greece’s sovereign-debt rating by another notch, from A- to BBB+. The firm last cut the rating in October and warned then of a further downgrade, after the new government revealed that its budget deficit this year would be 12.7% of GDP, more than twice the level previously forecast. The extra borrowing adds to a daunting stock of government debt, which the European Commission fears could rise to 135% of GDP by 2011 unless serious action is taken to cap it.

Greece intends to cut its deficit to 9.1% of GDP next year but Fitch thinks its efforts will not be enough to keep debt on a stable path. Half of next year’s budget tightening comes from one-off measures, says the agency, and this year’s red ink cannot be explained away by a mild recession or support for banks. Standard and Poor’s (S&P), another rating firm, said on December 7th (the day before Fitch acted) that it too would downgrade Greece to BBB+ unless the Greeks came up with a stricter plan to cut its debt burden. The government must submit new proposals by January to fix its finances, as part of its fiscal pact with other euro-zone countries. These will be closely watched. George Papaconstantinou, the finance minister, may set a supplementary budget for next year. He conceded that Greece’s history of inaction on fiscal problems was the source of “mistrust”. ...

America's municipal-bond market: State of pay

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:12 GMT

A federal subsidy may change the market for good

THE federal government may have astronomical deficits but it can still borrow with ease at rock-bottom rates. Not so states, municipal governments and other government agencies, such as school districts and public-transport bodies, which have historically borrowed at lower rates than the Treasury. That is because interest on municipal bonds is generally tax-exempt. Investors accept a lower yield on a muni-bond than on a comparable Treasury bond on which they pay tax.

Thanks to the financial crisis, however, that position has changed: municipal yields are much closer to and, in some cases, above those on Treasuries (see chart). Some borrowers have scaled back or shelved planned borrowing. New Mexico usually issues short-term notes each year to raise working capital, investing some of the proceeds in higher-yielding federal securities. But that would be a money-loser at its current cost of borrowing. “We have been trying to issue (the notes) for almost a year and the market just wasn’t favourable,” says James Lewis, the state treasurer. ...

Economics focus: Crash and carry

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

New research suggests a way to make steady profits from the carry trade

WHEN pundits worry about the distorting effects of cheap money on asset prices, they invariably single out the carry trade as a cause for concern. The term is often used loosely to describe any investment that looks suspiciously profitable. More specifically it refers to a particular sort of foreign-exchange trading: that of borrowing cheaply in a “funding” currency to exploit high interest rates in a “target” currency. The yen has long been a favoured funding currency for the carry trade because of Japan’s permanently low interest rates. As a result of the crisis and near-zero rates in America, the dollar has become one, too.

If markets were truly efficient, carry trades ought not to be profitable because the extra interest earned should be exactly offset by a fall in the target currency. That is why high-interest currencies trade at a discount to their current or “spot” rate in forward markets. If exchange rates today were the same as those in forward contracts, there would be an opportunity for riskless profit. Arbitrageurs could buy the high-interest currency today, lock in a future sale at the same price and pocket the extra interest from holding the currency until the forward contract is settled. ...

The Texas governor's race : White v right

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

The mayor of Houston steps up to the plate

HEAVY snow was falling on Houston when Bill White, the Democratic mayor, made his move. “I’ll be a governor who challenges Texans to lead, not leave, the United States,” he said on December 4th, announcing that he would run for governor in 2010. That was a shot at Rick Perry, the Republican incumbent, who got fired up at a tax protest this summer and suggested Texas might consider seceding rather than submit to Washington’s socialism. Observers expect a spirited campaign.

Mr White was expected to run. As a big-city mayor he has ample executive experience. But until last week he had focused on the Senate, as Texas will supposedly have an election for that job next year, too. The state’s senior senator, Kay Bailey Hutchison, is challenging Mr Perry for the Republican nomination for governor, and insists that she will leave her seat in 2010 either way. ...

Banks and small businesses: For want of a loan

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

America’s best job creators are being hit by a credit crunch

IT IS basically a second stimulus, though no one wants to call it that. On December 8th President Barack Obama announced a set of proposals to address unemployment and made it clear that he wanted to use some of the unspent TARP funds (money set aside to support failing banks) to help pay for them. No precise figure was given. Some $50 billion will be spent on infrastructure projects; there will also be new rebates for home insulation and other energy-saving incentives. But the linchpin of the administration’s effort is a broad push to support small businesses.

That sounds reasonable. Small businesses (firms employing 500 workers or fewer) have accounted for 64% of net new job creation over the past 15 years, according to the Small Business Administration (SBA), an independent government agency. And a recent economic study found that cities with more small firms have done better at creating jobs over the past 20 years. But America’s most recent recession has hit small businesses hard. The very small, with fewer than 50 workers—employing almost one-third of working Americans—have suffered around 45% of the job losses of the downturn. ...

America in the world: Pay any price? Pull the other one

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Both the public and the experts are retreating from foreign involvement

GENERAL STANLEY McCHRYSTAL, America’s commander in Afghanistan, and Karl Eikenberry, its ambassador there, turned up on Capitol Hill this week to tell congressmen how satisfied they were with Barack Obama’s decision to send 30,000 more American troops into the fray. But their enthusiasm is not widely shared. It is not just many of the Democrats in Congress who are troubled by their country’s entangling foreign wars. A poll of the foreign-policy attitudes held by Americans at large paints a bleak picture of an America that is no longer sure of its own pre-eminence and fast losing interest in causes such as promoting democracy or defending human rights in the rest of the world.

The survey, “America’s Place in the World”, is conducted every four years by the Pew Research Centre and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). It poses its questions not only to 2,000 members of the public but also to 642 members of the CFR, thus tracking both public opinion and the views of foreign-policy experts. ...

Health-care reform: Getting to 60

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Deal by deal, compromise by compromise, the Senate moves closer to a final vote

“HEALTH care will pass: the president has his reputation on the line.” That declaration about the congressional prospects for health reform comes not from a Democratic booster, but from Senator Judd Gregg. The Republican budget hawk says this through gritted teeth, though, convinced that the flawed effort will prove fiscally “disastrous”. To prove his point, he announced a proposal this week—in agreement with Kent Conrad, the Democratic head of the Senate Budget Committee—to form a bipartisan commission of worthies to reform all “entitlements”, health-related or otherwise.

His fiscal analysis may be contested, but several recent developments suggest that his political prediction may be correct. The Senate now looks likely to pass a health bill in the footsteps of the House. ...

Public-sector unions: Welcome to the real world

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

For decades, America’s public-sector workers have been coddled and spoiled. The recession may change that

THE American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 25, occupies a hulking building in downtown Detroit. Deep in its basement is the office of Local 207, one of the city’s most aggressive public-sector unions. John Riehl, its president, has taped a poster to the wall carrying an old war cry: “No Contract No Work”. The sign dates from a strike in 1986. Mr Riehl hopes to revive the old battle spirit. Detroit’s mayor, Dave Bing, is urging unions to make concessions. Several have agreed. Most have not.

The trouble is, the city is broke. Mr Bing’s office sits high above Detroit’s barren streets. “We have not made the structural changes we should have made,” he explains. Few cities have such a sprawling workforce—50 bargaining units in all—or so little money to pay for it. But Detroit is not alone. Most cities and states will collect only meagre revenues for at least the next year. While politicians mull tax increases and service cuts, public-sector workers continue to gobble up money—in Philadelphia, they account for 61% of spending. The crisis, however, at least illuminates a simple fact. The status quo is unaffordable. ...

Lexington: Softly softly, charming Huckabee

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Don't underestimate the rocker of the religious right

SARAH PALIN may be the Republican Party’s rock star, but Mike Huckabee can actually play the bass guitar. While campaigning for the presidency last year, he would often whip it out and start jamming. Lexington heard him a few times. He was at least as good as that other former governor of Arkansas, the one who plays the saxophone. And his latest book has more about rock music in it than the title, “A Simple Christmas”, might suggest.

As an eight-year-old boy in 1964, he watched the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show and immediately wanted to be one of them. He put “electric guitar” on his Christmas list, but his parents picked something cheaper. After two years, he drew up a list with only the guitar on it. Alarmed by the price, his parents urged him to reconsider. No, he said, it’s a guitar or nothing. They gave in. “I didn’t know until years later…just how much money $99 was to my parents,” recalls Mr Huckabee. It took them a year to pay for it. The lesson? Christmas is about sacrifice. Several Christmases later, when he was a penniless father-to-be, he sold his precious guitars (he had two by then) to buy a washing machine. ...

Nepal's floundering peace: Back to the brink

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

The spread of violence in Nepal is not just the Maoists’ fault

THOSE who have never trusted the commitment of Nepal’s Maoists to pluralist politics are feeling vindicated. As vicious insurgents, they came close to turning a country of 30m into a failed state. As supposedly mainstream politicians, they have been boycotting parliament since May and fomenting violent unrest. This month a Maoist-backed land-grab by thousands of poor people in the far west of the country led to a bloody clash with the security forces (see article). Some Maoists mutter grimly about ditching the peace deal that in 2006 ended their ten-year insurgency.

For now, there is little immediate danger that the Maoists will go back to the jungle. But the peace process has ground to a halt. The Maoists are partly responsible. They have been doing their best to justify fears that they are totalitarian fighters masquerading as democrats. But the other political parties have been doing their best to justify Maoist suspicions that the Nepali elite will never cede power to them. Nepal’s overbearing neighbour, India, has encouraged this, seemingly intent on unpicking a peace settlement it helped knit together. ...

The sharp end of the credit crisis: Small business, big problem

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

It is harder for smaller firms to raise money: the state can help a bit

LIFE has got easier for big firms this year. They now have access to several forms of credit. They have stampeded into the bond markets to take advantage of low borrowing costs and push out refinancing dates while they can. Record amounts of corporate bonds have been issued this year. The market for commercial paper is open again, too. Stockmarkets offer another avenue to capital.

Smaller firms have far fewer choices. Too puny to be able to tap capital markets, they are at the mercy of the banks. America’s large firms get 30% of their financing from the banks; its smaller enterprises rely on them for 90% of their financing needs. In Europe small companies are in a similar bind. Bank lending to businesses in the euro zone fell by 1.2% year-on-year in October. True, lower lending volumes reflect weakening demand for bank credit as well as constrained supply. But hunger for bank credit has declined more among Europe’s larger firms, thanks to their access to other sources of finance (see article). ...

Innovation: The military-consumer complex

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Military technology used to filter down to consumers. Now it’s going the other way

THE earliest computers were used to crack codes and simulate nuclear explosions. The internet grew out of a military research project. In-car navigation systems rely on satellites that were put into orbit to guide ships, troops and missiles. The Boeing 747, with its raised cockpit, was designed as a military transporter. In each case a technology created for military use has gone on to become widely used by civilians. That this happens so often is not surprising: the military is, after all, a deep-pocketed customer prepared to fund the development of expensive new technologies. As gizmos become smaller and cheaper—and they invariably do—they are then able to percolate from the soldier on the battlefield to the man in the street.

But lately some kinds of technology have been moving in the other direction, too. The United States Air Force has just placed an order for 2,200 Sony PlayStation 3 video-game consoles, which will be the building-blocks of a supercomputer (see article). Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are using Apple iPods and iPhones to run translation software and calculate bullet trajectories. Xbox video-game controllers have been modified to control reconnaissance robots and drone aircraft. Graphics chips that power PC video-cards are being used by defence firms to run simulations. ...

Britain's public finances: Class warrior

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Bashing the rich is bad politics and rotten economics

GORDON BROWN has been many things in his time: co-author of market-friendly New Labour, Prudence with his hand on the Treasury tiller, friend of Britain’s all-important City. Now, with a general election less than half a year away, a new prime minister is emerging. The well-off, already set to lose half of their earnings above GBP150,000 ($243,000) to the taxman, face a further cut to tax relief on their pension contributions; a promised increase in the inheritance-tax threshold has been shelved; those with offshore bank accounts will have their feet held to the fire, American-style. Mr Brown’s Conservative opponents, by contrast, have dreamed up their tax policies “on the playing fields of Eton”. Mr Brown’s inner class warrior has finally stepped forth (see article).

As one of the few set-piece occasions before the general election due by June for Mr Brown’s embattled government to make its case to voters, the pre-budget report (PBR) on December 9th (see article) was always likely to be more political than sensible. Even so it disappointed. Alleged dividing lines between Labour and its main opponents, the Conservatives, were dug deep into the sand: Labour, the party of the many, devoted to protecting public services and “going for growth”; the Tories, protectors of privilege and gleeful spending slashers. ...

Monitor: Making ink bulletproof

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Ink: Basic ink compositions have remained unchanged for millennia, but some companies think there is still room for improvement

HAVING recognised the fallibility of human memory, people have been keeping records written with ink for over four millennia. Thanks to the durability of those early inks, the thoughts of our ancestors have been preserved. Indeed, civilisation itself could be said to depend on the persistence of the written word.

Early inkmakers mixed fine black soot with resin and water. Water suspended the soot, keeping the ink runny enough to write with. Once the water evaporated, the resin made the carbon particles stick to paper or papyrus. Today this is called pigment ink, and it remains in use in pens and inkjet printers. Another ancient way to make ink is to use dyes, in which the colour is dissolved rather than suspended in its solvent. The existence of two such venerable yet reliable technologies, however, has not prevented a numb ...

Surgery using sound and light: Son et lumière meets surgery

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Biomedicine: Non invasive surgical techniques based on sound and light could be much easier on the body than ordinary surgery

NOT SO long ago, newly qualified doctors in the West would take the Hippocratic oath. Along with promises to look after the interests of their tutors, to do no harm to their patients and not to procure abortions, they also swore not to “cut for stone”. It was actually an early form of restrictive practice. The oath’s wording makes it clear that stone-cutting (removing kidney stones) was reserved for surgeons, with their separate guilds and separate fees. But the latest technology makes the distinction irrelevant. These days, kidney stones and similar calciferous accumulations in other parts of the body can be dealt with by using a dose of shockwaves to break up the offending concretion—with no cutting required.

Shockwave therapy, as it is known, is just one of a range of non-invasive techniques that reduce the need to slice people open in order to treat them. Such techniques promise to blur still further the once-sharp distinction between physician and surgeon that the Hippocratic oath sought to preserve. As with all technological destruction of restrictive practices, though, this one has one clear beneficiary: the customer—or, as he is generally known in medical circles, the patient. ...

Offer to readers

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Buy a PDF of this complete quarterly, including all graphics, for saving or one-click printing.

The Economist can supply standard or customised reprints of special reports. For more information and to place an order online, please visit the Rights and Syndication website. ...

Monitor: Glue bones

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Biomedicine: An adhesive secreted by a marine worm inspires a promising new treatment for compound fractures of human bones

TORN flesh is easy to put back together with stitches, but when bone breaks, repairs are nowhere near as simple. Bones with fractures that run in a straight line can often be placed back in their proper alignment and set in a cast to heal. Compound fractures, however—those that involve bones shattered into fragments—pose more of a challenge. Large fragments can, with the aid of metal screws and pins, be reattached and set in place for healing. Small fragments cannot be treated in the same way, as they are often too tiny to be connected with metal hardware. Medics have long sought a glue to do this work, and now Russell Stewart of the University of Utah may have found one in the secretions of a marine worm.

The sandcastle worm, as the creature is known, lives in a mineral shell. It does not, however, secrete this shell directly in the way that, for example, a mollusc does. Instead it secretes a glue and uses this to stick bits of sand together to form its casing. The glue does not dissolve in water. Indeed, it is able to displace water and thus adhere to surfaces even underwater. And it solidifies soon after being secreted. It, or something like it, therefore sounds ideal for repairing bones. ...

Monitor: Electrical potential

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Biomimetics: The electric eel’s ability to generate powerful shocks has inspired the development of a new type of battery

IN DECEMBER 2007 a Japanese aquarium hooked up the lights on a Christmas tree to a tank containing an electric eel. Metal plates at the ends of the tank enabled the eel to power the bulbs. It was certainly effective as a publicity stunt. Now some researchers in America have developed a battery that produces electricity in a similar way.

Many creatures use differences in the concentration of ions (electrically charged atoms) within the body to do work. Human brains, for example, rely on electrical impulses to release calcium ions that bind to neurotransmitters that, in turn, communicate with the rest of the nervous system. The mechanism that allows Electrophorus electricus to produce a shock as strong as a wall socket employs differences in the concentration of sodium ions in some 6,000 specialised cells called electrocytes. These cells are normally electrically isolated from one another. When the eel locates its prey, it opens a series of cellular gates through which the ions flow. This movement of charged ions, when the eel is in a conductive solution like water, creates an electric current. ...

Agricultural robots: Fields of automation

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Robotics: A new generation of agricultural equipment promises to take more of the toil out of farming by automating the business of growing fruit

IN THE early 1830s, spurred on by his hatred of sweaty field work, Cyrus McCormick took an idea his father had been working on at the family farm in Virginia and produced a mechanical reaper. Others devised similar machines. Despite initial scepticism, farmers eventually bought them in droves. With one person riding the horse that pulled the reaper, and another raking the cut stalks off the back, the machines could harvest as much grain in a day as a dozen men breaking their backs with reaping hooks.

Mechanical reapers became even more efficient when adapted to bale the stalks into sheaves, too. Development continued: today a driver in the air-conditioned cabin of a combine harvester may be guided by satellites as he cuts, threshes and pours clean grain into a fleet of accompanying trailers. One machine, the New Holland CR9090, holds the record after harvesting a colossal 551 tonnes of wheat in just eight hours from a farm in Britain in 2008. Given that such machines cost around GBP350,000 ($580,000), agricultural automation must make economic sense—because farmers don’t spend money on frivolities. ...

Inside story: Nuclear's next generation

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Inside story: A group of six new blueprints for nuclear power stations promise advances in safety and efficiency. How do they differ from existing designs?

DWIGHT EISENHOWER observed in his “Atoms for Peace” speech in 1953 that nuclear technology originally developed for military purposes could also be put to peaceful uses, namely generating electricity. His speech led to the dissemination of nuclear technology for civilian purposes and the establishment of the first nuclear power stations. Many of these early reactors, built during the cold war, made a virtue of the “dual use” nature of nuclear technology. Designs were favoured that could create weapons-grade material as well as electricity.

Today those priorities have been reversed. America and Russia are taking steps to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear weapons, and the international community is trying to prevent their acquisition by new states. Under America’s “Megatons to Megawatts” programme, weapons-grade material from retired warheads is being broken down to provide fuel for civilian nuclear power stations. With 53 new reactors under construction around the world and dozens more planned, the main difficulties facing nuclear scientists now are to reduce the threat of proliferation, improve efficiency and do something about the growing stock of nuclear waste in indefinite temporary storage. ...

National Health Service: After the gold rush

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

The NHS must now clamp down on costs and become more efficient. Really

THIS summer something odd happened. For over a decade the National Health Service has been at, or close to, the top of public worries and the cause of much political feuding. But as the recession supplanted it in Britain, it briefly took centre-stage in America, demonised by critics railing against Barack Obama’s proposed health reforms. Both Gordon Brown, the Labour prime minister, and David Cameron, the Conservative opposition leader, rallied to defend the NHS against the charge that it was Orwellian.

The NHS arouses international interest because it is an especially stark example of a state-run and publicly financed medical-care system. Along with countries like Sweden, Britain uses tax finance to pay for over 80% of health spending. Elsewhere in Europe—in Germany, for instance—social-insurance schemes shoulder most of the financial burden. America has forged its own third way among rich countries by relying heavily on private insurance through employers to pay for much of its supersized spending, which still leaves 15% of the population lacking health insurance. ...

New displays for e-readers: Read all about it

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Display technology: Readers of electronic books must choose between long battery life or vibrant, living colour. Could they have both?

THE sudden surge in the popularity of e-readers—slate-like devices, such as Amazon’s Kindle, on which electronic books can be read—has been one of the big surprises of 2009. Recessions are often a good time to launch new products, as old certainties are questioned and consumer tastes shift. The iPod made its debut in 2001 in the depths of America’s recession, and e-readers may prove to be a similar success story this time. But today’s e-readers, like that first iPod, are technologically quite simple. Most of them have a monochromatic screen to display text and black-and-white pictures, and none can handle video.

Even so, around 5m e-readers will be sold worldwide in 2009, according to iSuppli, a market-research firm, and a further 12m in 2010. The Kindle is by far the most popular e-reader, but there are many others. Sony has offered a range of e-readers for years, and has recently introduced several new models. Barnes & Noble, a bookstore chain, unveiled its own reader, the Nook, in October. Plastic Logic will unveil its QUE proReader in January at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which is likely to be a coming-out party of sorts for this new product category. Many other firms, including makers of laptops and flat-panel displays, are also entering the market. Apple may well upstage all of them by announcing its own tablet-like device in January. ...

Iran's resilient opposition: The regime's ramparts are shaky

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Seven months after a disputed election, opposition to the clerical regime and its controversially re-elected president refuses to die

EVER since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was returned to power in June’s dodgy election, protests have erupted in Iran at irregular intervals. The most recent was on December 7th, officially “Student Day”. Across the country, tens of thousands of demonstrators managed to evade the security forces, forcing a way out of the universities into the streets, where non-student protesters joined them. There were reports of hundreds of arrests and severe beatings by the feared baseej militia, which answers to the Revolutionary Guard, the Islamic regime’s armed bullies. In Tehran, the capital and hottest spot, on the day after the demonstration students in the university’s technical faculty were again attacked by plainclothes agents, and further arrests were made.

To the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and senior members of Iran’s panoply of security organs, this is all part of a “soft war”—of disinformation, sabotage and provocation—being waged on the regime by the nation’s enemies. Earlier this month a troupe of pro-government actors performed a grotesque re-enactment of the last moments of Neda Agha Soltan, whose death by police bullet on June 20th was watched on television across the world, to perpetuate the fiction that she was somehow murdered by Western powers. Speculation swirls around the death by poisoning of a doctor who served in a prison where opposition detainees were killed and tortured this summer. Shirin Ebadi, a human-rights lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize-winner who has criticised the regime from abroad, has been threatened with prosecution on charges of tax evasion if she dares to return home. ...

Business this week

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Greece’s credit rating was downgraded to BBB+, with a negative outlook, by Fitch, the first time in a decade that the country has received a rating below A. The downgrade caused stockmarkets to fall amid fears of a potential wider fiscal crisis in the euro area. Investors were further perturbed when Moody’s cut its ratings for state-owned companies in Dubai, underlining the extent of the Gulf emirate’s debt woes. Worries were also raised about ballooning deficits in America and Britain, where governments have been urged to take action to get spending under control. See article

In his pre-budget report, Alistair Darling laid out plans to increase tax on middle-income earners and cap pay rises for public-sector workers in order to tackle Britain’s budget deficit, which is expected to reach GBP178 billion ($289 billion) this year. See article ...

Politics this week

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Divisions between rich and poor countries emerged swiftly as the Copenhagen conference on climate change got under way, with the leaking of a document drafted by Denmark, the host country. Developing countries think that developed countries need to make bigger cuts in their emissions and offer more cash than hitherto envisaged. Barack Obama delayed his trip to the summit to coincide with other world leaders, who will attend the talks next week. See article

With good timing, America’s Environmental Protection Agency declared that six greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, “threaten the health and welfare of the American people”. The decision could open the way for the Obama administration to impose its own curbs on emissions, although Congress may want the final say. ...

Banks and sovereign-wealth funds: Falling knives

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

The smart and the not-so-smart

YOUR phone rings at 3am. It’s a senior American banker sounding desperate. An unidentified heavy-breather—the treasury secretary?—is also on the line. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime, the banker swears: the chance to buy a multibillion-dollar stake in a big Wall Street firm. By the way, he adds breezily, any chance of an answer right away?

Most sovereign-wealth funds (SWFs) got an invitation of this sort between November 2007 and January 2008. Within a few weeks some $40 billion was poured into distressed Western lenders, among them Citigroup, UBS, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch. Now SWFs are selling out. This month the Kuwait Investment Authority, the oldest SWF, sold a $4 billion stake in Citigroup, claiming a $1.1 billion profit. In September one of Singapore’s two investment vehicles, GIC, sold part of its stake in Citi, realising a $1.6 billion profit. ...

Rational consumer: Powering the drive

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Motoring: Manufacturers of electric cars, and prospective buyers, will have to find ways to deal with “range anxiety” for the next few years

OVER the next three years most of the big carmakers, along with several newcomers, are planning to launch dozens of all-electric vehicles—in other words, cars that are entirely battery powered. Unlike hybrid cars, which are powered by a combination of an electric motor and a petrol engine, they will not be able to fall back on fossil fuels when the battery runs low. Accordingly, potential customers are expected to suffer from what the industry has come to call “range anxiety”.

This is no idle malady, as test-driving some of the first electric cars and prototypes reveals. Motorists have become used to getting into an ordinary car in confident expectation of being able to drive hundreds of miles on a full tank—and, with an occasional glance at the fuel gauge, finding a filling station when the fuel runs low. By contrast, the gauge showing the remaining power left in the battery of an electric car demands almost constant attention. ...

Monitor: Better ways to collaborate

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Software: E-mail has severe limitations as an online collaboration tool, but it has the benefit of ubiquity. Might it be displaced by something new?

MOST people would agree that computer technology can play a valuable role in helping workers collaborate. Yet they would probably also agree that e-mail, the most widely used example of such collaborative technology, is less than ideally suited to the task. Based on protocols that were created long before the internet took its current form, e-mail continues to thrive for two reasons. It is ubiquitous: your e-mail address, being unique, functions as the internet equivalent of your name, postal address and passport, since it is commonly used to sign into websites. And it is a classic example of a “good enough” tool. It allows people to send messages to individuals or groups, to hold online discussions and to exchange documents and other files.

But an e-mail discussion between more than a few people can quickly fill the participants’ in-boxes with a deluge of messages, making the argument hard to follow. Collaborating on a document via e-mail can also be problematic, as different versions start to circulate which must then be reconciled. “The dominant mode these days is still to put attachments on e-mails and send them around, and really, nobody is happy with that,” says Andrew McAfee, an expert on collaboration at Harvard University’s Berkman Centre for Internet & Society and the author of “Enterprise 2.0”, a book on the subject. ...

Monitor: And the winners were...

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Innovation awards: Our annual prizes recognise successful innovators in eight categories. Here are this year’s winners

THIS newspaper was established in 1843 to take part in “a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress”. One of the chief ways in which intelligence presses forward is through innovation, which is now recognised as one of the most important contributors to economic growth. Innovation, in turn, depends on the creative individuals who dream up new ideas and turn them into reality.

The Economist recognises these talented people through its annual Innovation Awards, presented in eight fields: bioscience, computing and telecommunications, energy and the environment, social and economic innovation, business-process innovation, consumer products, a flexible “no boundaries” category, and the corporate use of innovation. The awards were presented at a ceremony in London on October 29th. And the winners were: • Bioscience: Craig Venter, chief executive of Synthetic Genomics, for his contributions to genomics. Dr Venter pioneered the use of expressed sequence tags as a new way to identify human genes, and went on to lead the private initiative to sequence the human genome, completed in 2000. He is now working in the field of synthetic biology, developing modified micro-organisms with the scope to produce clean fuels, among other things. • Business Process: Ratan Tata, chairman of the Tata Group, for pioneering the globalisation of corporate India. In 1991 Mr Tata assumed the reins of his family-run company. He has since been the architect of a series of bold foreign acquisitions and is the man behind the world’s cheapest car, the Tata Nano, which costs $2,200. • Computing and Telecommunications: Raymond Kurzweil, founder of Kurzweil Technologies, for his work in artificial intelligence. Mr Kurzweil led the development of the first omni-font character-recognition system, the first text-to-speech reading machine and the first commercial speech-recognition system. • Consumer Products and Services: Steve Sasson of Eastman Kodak for inventing the digital camera. Mr Sasson built the world’s first digital camera in 1975. It had a resolution of 0.01 megapixels and stored images on tape. Digital cameras have since revolutionised photography. • Energy and the Environment: Richard Swanson, president and chief technology officer of SunPower, for his contributions to solar-cell technology. In 1985 Dr Swanson founded SunPower Corporation to commercialise the solar-cell technology he developed while he was a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University. His design made solar cells thinner, more efficient and cheaper. • No Boundaries: Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook, for popularising social networking. In 2004 Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook, a social-networking site, from his dorm room at Harvard University. Initially available only to Harvard students, it is now a global phenomenon with over 300m active users. • Social and Economic Innovation: Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen, chief executive of Vestergaard Frandsen, for developing low-cost health devices for the poor. Mr Vestergaard Frandsen reoriented his family firm from making uniforms to developing products to address the developing world’s greatest health problems. They include PermaNet mosquito nets, ZeroFly insecticide-treated plastic sheeting and the LifeStraw, a portable water-purification device. • Corporate Use of Innovation: Reckitt Benckiser, in recognition of its innovative and entrepreneurial corporate culture. Reckitt Benckiser is one of the world’s biggest makers of household cleaning products. It has maintained strong sales and profit growth, despite the recession, because of its diverse, dynamic and innovative culture. ...

Monitor: A question of character

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Mobile phones: Typing text into a mobile phone is fiddly enough in English. How do handsets and their users manage in other languages?

SENDING a text message is often the most time-consuming and expensive way to transfer data. Yet it remains popular not only in countries that use Latin-based languages, such as America, Britain and most of Europe, but also in China, Japan and most of Asia, where written languages often have much larger alphabets. Letting people send messages in these languages involves transliterating the text or, in some cases, developing new ways of reading what has been written.

Historically, the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet have been assigned to eight of the 12 buttons on a typical mobile-phone keypad, making it straightforward to compose text. Multiple letters are assigned to each key (the “2” key is also “ABC”, for example), and tapping repeatedly on a key switches between its corresponding letters until the desired character is chosen. Predictive-text software can also translate strings of numbers into common words. ...

Monitor: Who pays for the pipes?

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Telecommunications: If broadband providers are reluctant to lay expensive optical fibres, consumers can sometimes pay for it themselves

TELEPHONE and cable companies make their money by investing in communications infrastructure and then charging people to use it. Having invested, however, they are often reluctant to upgrade their kit. Replacing copper wires with fibre-optic cables, for example, is hugely expensive, and many firms in Europe have been dragging their heels. Now an alternative has been proposed: why not ask communities and individuals to pay for installation themselves?

The idea that homeowners might be willing to pay a few thousand dollars for a cable sounds implausible. But it could be a worthwhile investment. As well as providing a high-speed broadband link, it would increase the home’s value. A survey conducted earlier this year by RVA, an American market-research firm, on behalf of an American telecoms-industry body, found that among respondents who did not currently have a fibre connection, 69% viewed high-speed service as an important factor when buying a new home. ...

Brain scan: Beyond the ether

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Bob Metcalfe has grabbed opportunity at every turn in his multiple careers—ever since he invented Ethernet at the age of 27

SUFFERING from jet lag and insomnia while staying at a friend’s house in Washington, DC, in 1972, Bob Metcalfe came across the proceedings of a conference held by the American Federation of Information Processing Societies. It certainly looked sleep-inducing, even for a young computer scientist. So Mr Metcalfe settled down and started reading. But rather than falling asleep, he became intrigued by an account of a wireless network in Hawaii, called ALOHAnet.

This nocturnal encounter was the spark that prompted Mr Metcalfe to create a new networking technology, now known as Ethernet, that would help him finish his PhD at Harvard, become a multi-millionaire and revolutionise computing. And it highlights an ability to observe, synthesise and improve things that would serve him time and again as he progressed through his multiple careers of academic, entrepreneur, pundit and venture capitalist. “Some call it luck,” says Vint Cerf, a founding father of the internet. “But Bob has an ability to detect and take opportunities. And he is willing to take risk.” ...

Monitor: Greenery on the march

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Clean technology: Finding alternative sources of energy is becoming a pressing military necessity for America’s armed forces

THE air around Bagram airfield, the main American base in Afghanistan, is thick with the smell of jet fuel, the roar of aircraft taking off on bombing missions and the constant drone of electricity generators. Outside the ramparts, a snakelike convoy of brightly coloured lorries waits to unload fuel hauled from Pakistan and Central Asia. These are the modern equivalents of the pack mules that once carried military supplies—much of it fodder for the beasts themselves. The British army calculates that it takes seven gallons of fuel to deliver one gallon to Afghanistan.

Modern warfare would be impossible without vast quantities of fossil fuel. It is needed to power everything from tanks to jets to electricity generators that run the communications networks on which Western armies depend. In the punishing climate of Iraq and Afghanistan, moreover, soldiers’ accommodation must be kept cool in hot weather, and warm in the cold. American forces consume more than 1m gallons of fuel a day in Afghanistan, and a similar quantity in Iraq. ...

Charlemagne: Lessons from “The Leopard”

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Is Europe becoming too accustomed to genteel decline?

ONE of the great studies of decline is a novel about a fictional Sicilian prince, living more than a century ago. There is much about Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s “The Leopard” that is remote now: peasants paying their rent with wheels of cheese and freshly killed lambs, footmen in knee-breeches, a constant threat of revolutionary violence on the horizon. Today’s Europe is at peace. Feudalism is long gone. Blatant inequalities are frowned on. Yet today’s European leaders would still do well to study “The Leopard”, for it offers them some topical lessons.

Talk of Europe’s relative decline seems to be everywhere just now. Listen to a speech by any European leader and you are likely to hear about the dangers of a G2 world, run by America and China, if Europe does not get its act together and speak with one voice. You may hear glum figures about Europe’s future weight, and with some reason. In 1900 Europe accounted for a quarter of the world’s population. By 2060 it may account for just 6%—and almost a third of these will be more than 65 years old. ...

Bagehot: Class war III

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Gordon Brown has attacked both the posh and the rich. He may ignite another sort of class war

NO TWO ways about it, David Cameron is posh. Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, is posh. On the other hand Lord Sugar, a recently ennobled businessman, is not. Nor is David Beckham: both are rich, but neither is posh. Get it?

If you are British, and especially English, you will. In Britain, class and money overlap, but only partially, like circles in a Venn diagram. Not all posh people are rich (some are shabby genteel, scrimping and saving for the school fees), and vice versa. Class is a magical amalgam of education, occupation, accent, vocabulary (“lounge” or “sitting room”), outlook and habit. ...

Expanding Heathrow airport: Clearer skies?

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Some think aviation can be both bigger and greener

CLIMATE change is not bad news for everyone. To those living beneath the flight paths of busy airports such as Heathrow and Stansted, it brings hope of relief. Schemes to expand these airports to accommodate 570m passengers a year across Britain by 2050, up from 230m passengers today, could not possibly survive plans to cut Britain’s carbon emissions by 80% by the same date, or so residents hoped.

Yet last January, to their dismay—and to the outrage of climate campaigners—ministers approved a third runway at Britain’s biggest airport, Heathrow, to handle 605,000 flights a year, compared with 480,000 now. On December 8th the Committee on Climate Change, which advises ministers on cutting carbon emissions, published its report on their aviation policies. Campaigners had expected excoriation; what appeared, to their surprise, was a qualified blessing. ...

Schumpeter: Talent on tap

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

The fashion for hiring temps has reached the executive suite

TEMPORARY work is all too familiar to the masses. Farmers have always relied on seasonal workers to plough the fields and pick the crops. Companies have been hiring temps to answer the phones and do the filing for as long as anyone can remember. Now a new group of people are experiencing the joys of the flexible economy: the managerial elite.

The practice of appointing interim bosses actually originated in Europe some years ago as a way of coping with the continent’s rigid employment laws. But European companies were always as discreet about the practice as possible. Now the habit has reached the United States, and Americans are doing what they do naturally: shouting about it from the rooftops. No with-it company can be taken seriously without a “flexible boardroom” and a “just-in-time talent pipeline”. ...

Magazines take on Amazon: A Hulu for print

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Magazines attempt to win back control of their digital editions

LET it never again be said that old-media firms are slow to deal with new technology. On December 8th Conde Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corporation and Time Inc invested in an as-yet-unnamed venture that will create and sell digital magazines and newspapers for the new generation of e-readers that is likely to succeed Amazon’s monochrome Kindle in the next year or so. It was as if a group of explorers had announced plans to settle a country that had not yet been discovered.

Consumers can already get hold of many publications on smart-phones and e-readers. But smart-phones have small screens, and e-readers render magazines as crudely illustrated black-and-white books. They cannot reproduce magazines’ distinctive fonts or elegant graphics. Worse, they are unsuited to advertising, on which most magazines depend. In the year to June, Meredith’s publishing arm, which produces Better Homes and Gardens among dozens of other titles, made almost twice as much from advertising as it did from newsstand sales and subscriptions. ...

New strategies at AOL and Yahoo!: Back into the fray

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Two fallen internet titans are trying to regain their footing

“THEY never come back” may be an ironclad law of boxing, but AOL and Yahoo! are trying to prove that it does not apply to lumbering online giants. On December 9th Time Warner span off AOL, undoing a famously ill-conceived merger. A couple of days earlier Yahoo! and Microsoft finalised an agreement to merge their web-search and much of their advertising businesses, freeing Yahoo! to hone a new strategy. Peculiarly, both firms’ comeback plans hinge on giving away content to attract traffic and thus advertising—an online strategy that has disappointed many media companies.

AOL and Yahoo! came of age a decade ago in different corners of the internet: one as the biggest provider of dial-up access, the other as the leading web directory. Both soon turned into “portals” providing both content and communications tools, such as web-mail and instant messaging. More recently, both have drifted while the internet evolved around them. A series of weak bosses failed to do away with fiefs, professionalise management and keep the brands fresh, even as competition—from broadband in the case of AOL, and from rivals such as Google and Facebook for Yahoo!—ate into revenues. ...

Corporate reform in America: A chill in the boardroom

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Business lobbyists complain that a regulatory tsunami is on its way. But some firms are embracing the proposed reforms

“WHEN people hear the word regulation, they feel stifled, delayed, and many times they believe that government is being intrusive,” said Hilda Solis, America’s labour secretary, on December 7th as she unveiled plans for 90 new regulatory initiatives to improve the lot of workers. If you doubt her word, try mentioning regulation to the boss of an American company. Then stand back and wait for the inevitable explosion.

Stifled, delayed and intruded upon are the least of the complaints you hear from America’s bosses these days. Their list of grouses includes ever-increasing regulation, stricter corporate-governance standards and the threat of higher taxes in response to the ballooning deficit. This week the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it considered carbon dioxide to be a dangerous pollutant, raising the spectre of clumsy administrative measures to reduce emissions—a prospect even more terrifying to business than the cap-and-trade scheme currently under consideration in Congress. Meanwhile, hopes of business-friendly reforms to America’s convoluted corporate-tax regime, among other things, have fallen by the wayside. ...

Roche digests Genentech: Back to the lab

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

The newly expanded pharmaceutical firm bets on old-fashioned research

“THE fundamental question is whether it is still worthwhile to invest in pharmaceutical science,” says Severin Schwan, the newish boss of Roche, a once-stodgy Swiss drugs firm. A cursory glance at his rivals, who have been trying to concentrate less on coming up with new medicines and more on making simpler things such as “branded” generics and over-the-counter drugs, suggests that the answer is no. Indeed, some analysts claim that the industry’s giants face such a precipitous decline in sales from drugs coming off patent, with so few promising new prospects to replace them, that their entire business model is collapsing.

That argument has Mr Schwan leaping out of his seat with indignation. Using a deck of PowerPoint slides he sets out to disprove “the chorus of gloom”. Drugmaking is “so crude”, he argues, that half of all known diseases cannot be treated at all, and the drugs for the other half work properly only half the time and with huge side effects. “Imagine a car that starts only half the time, and whose brakes often don’t work,” he says. He sees this sorry state of affairs as a huge business opportunity. In particular, he is convinced that rapid advances in diagnostics, genomics and biotechnology will bring “a brand new revolution” in personalised medicine. ...

Indonesia's coal rush: Sooty success

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Rising demand from China and India is stoking Indonesia’s exports of coal

FOR power stations on the coast of China, it is often cheaper to import coal by sea from Indonesia than from mines in the interior. The same goes for many Indian consumers. Japan and South Korea, both big importers, are also close—putting Indonesia at the heart of an Asian coal boom.

The majority of electricity in China, India and several other Asian countries comes from burning coal. Demand for the stuff has grown rapidly, along with the region’s economies. It is likely to continue to do so, despite environmental concerns, because coal is abundant and cheap. Last month the International Energy Agency predicted global demand for coal would increase by 1.9% a year until 2015, outpacing all other fossil fuels except natural gas. ...

New ties for VW, GM and Peugeot Citroën: Asian alliances

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

Three deals signal the way forward for the car industry

HAVING weathered the storm, global carmakers are now turning their attention to the tie-ups they hope will give them an edge in the upturn. Two such deals, the first involving General Motors and its Chinese partner SAIC, and the second between Volkswagen and Suzuki, have been concluded in the past few days. Another, linking PSA Peugeot Citroen and Mitsubishi, is still under negotiation. All three are aimed at winning a bigger presence in Asia and tapping into low-cost manufacturing expertise, while sharing components and development budgets.

Of the three, the most significant is VW’s announcement this week that it has agreed to pay $2.5 billion for 19.9% of Suzuki, a family-owned Japanese maker of small cars and motorcycles. Along with Fiat, Suzuki may be the only manufacturer of international importance that knows how to make money out of small, inexpensive cars. That is something VW forgot long ago. But it needs to relearn it, argues Max Warburton of Bernstein Research, if it is not to suffer from the worldwide trend towards downsizing, as new emissions laws bite and growth shifts to poorer consumers in emerging markets. ...

Panettone season arrives: A piece of cake

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

How Italy’s bakers cope with seasonal demand

FLUFFY, dome-shaped, dotted with sultanas and candied citrus peel, panettone is an Italian Christmas cake. Italians will eat about 40m of them over the holiday season this year. They are becoming popular elsewhere too: an estimated 1m have crossed the Atlantic this autumn. Delia Smith, a celebrity chef, recently caused a surge in demand in Britain with a recipe for trifle made with panettone. That is great news for the big manufacturers of the Milanese speciality back in Italy. But catering to the growing and ever more dispersed appetite for panettone requires some deft industrial planning.

The grand cafes in Milan, such as Taveggia, Sant’Ambroeus and Cova, about which Ernest Hemingway wrote in “A Farewell to Arms”, simply squeeze a few batches of panettoni into their normal baking schedules as Christmas approaches. But for industrial producers such as Bauli, which will make 12m this season, that is not possible. Although Bauli is diversified into year-round products like croissants and biscuits, seasonal cakes account for over 50% of its turnover, which is expected to be €420m ($570m) this year. ...

Banyan: Come together

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

The cause of regional integration in Asia faces better odds than in a long while

WHEN Asian boosters of regional integration talk about their cause’s glorious future they tend not to mention its dodgy past. Yet 80 years ago a Bengali, Rabindranath Tagore, Asia’s first Nobel laureate, stirred crowds in India, China and Japan by calling for a pan-Asian spiritualism to counter Western materialism. Both he and Sun Yat-sen, China’s anti-imperialist exile, greatly admired the idea, fostered by Japan, of an “Asia for the Asiatics”.

Well, none of this looks so good to Asians now. Japan’s enslavement of much of Asia gave pan-Asianism a bad name. And, although decolonisation after the second world war led to calls for a kind of Asian commonwealth, post-war fraternity soon crumbled, as cold-war fault-lines hardened. And if there is a transcendent reality that unites Asians today, it’s the iPhone. ...

The peak-oil debate: 2020 vision

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:11 GMT

The IEA puts a date on peak oil production

FATIH BIROL, the chief economist of the International Energy Agency (IEA), believes that if no big new discoveries are made, “the output of conventional oil will peak in 2020 if oil demand grows on a business-as-usual basis.” Coming from the band of geologists and former oil-industry hands who believe that the world is facing an imminent shortage of oil, this would be unremarkable. But coming from the IEA, the source of closely watched annual predictions about world energy markets, it is a new and striking claim.

Despite repeated downward revisions in recent years in its forecasts of global oil supply in 2030, the IEA has not until now committed itself to a firm prediction for when oil supplies might cease to grow. Its latest energy outlook, released last month, says only that conventional oil (as opposed to hard-to-extract sources like Canada’s tar sands) is “projected to reach a plateau sometime before” 2030. ...

Military use of consumer technology: War games

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:10 GMT

Consumer products and video-gaming technology are boosting the performance and reducing the price of military equipment

VIDEO games have become increasingly realistic, especially those involving armed combat. America’s armed forces have even used video games as recruitment and training tools. But the desire to play games is not the reason why the United States Air Force recently issued a procurement request for 2,200 Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) video-game consoles. It intends to link them up to build a supercomputer that will run Linux, a free, open-source operating system. It will be used for research, including the development of high-definition imaging systems for radar, and will cost around one-tenth as much as a conventional supercomputer. The air force has already built a smaller computer from a cluster of 336 PS3s.

This is merely the latest example of an unusual trend. There is a long tradition of technology developed for military use filtering through to consumer markets: satellite-navigation systems designed to guide missiles can also help hikers find their way, and head-up displays have moved from jet fighters to family cars. But technology is increasingly moving in the other direction, too, as consumer products are appropriated for military use. ...

Virtual autopsies: A cut from CSI

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:10 GMT

A CT scanner and gaming technology opens up a body

PERFORMING a postmortem on a murder victim can take days, delaying any criminal investigation. Moreover, pathologists sometimes get only one chance to look for clues when dissecting a body. But Anders Persson, director of Linkoping University’s centre for medical image science and visualisation in Sweden, hopes to change that. Along with his colleagues Thomas Rydell and Anders Ynnerman of the Norrkoping Visualisation Centre, they have created a virtual autopsy system.

The body needing to be examined is first scanned using a computed tomography (CT) machine, a process which takes about 20 seconds and creates up to 25,000 images, each one a slice through the body. Different tissues, bodily substances and foreign objects (such as bullets) absorb the scanner’s X-rays in varying amounts. The software recognises these and assigns them a density value. These densities are then rendered with the aid of an NVIDiA graphics card, of a type used for high-speed gaming, into a 3-D visualisation of different colours and opacities. Air pockets are shown as blue, soft tissues as beige, blood vessels as red and bone as white. A pathologist can then peel through layers of virtual skin and muscle with the click of a computer mouse. ...

Commercial space flight: A real starship called Enterprise

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:10 GMT

Virgin Galactic’s spaceship makes its first appearance

IN THE 1960s Pan Am, an American airline, set up a waiting list for people hoping to fly to the moon. Such was the interest that 80,000 people signed up. In the end, Pan Am died before the space dream did. So when a firm called Virgin Galactic announced in 2004 that it was planning commercial space flights there was, not surprisingly, some scepticism. Cynics thought it was all a publicity stunt by the Virgin Group of companies and its flamboyant British boss, Sir Richard Branson.

But on December 7th at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, Virgin Galactic unveiled its first commercial spaceship, the VSS Enterprise. This is a reusable craft made of composite material, 18 metres (60 feet) long and capable of taking six passengers and two pilots briefly into space before gliding back down to land. Initially such trips will cost $200,000 per person. ...

Psychology: Alone in the crowd

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:10 GMT

Loneliness is a contagious disease

ON THE surface, Framingham, Massachusetts looks like any other American town. Unbeknown to most who pass through this serene place, however, it is a gold mine for medical research. Since 1948 three generations of residents in Framingham have participated in regular medical examinations originally intended to study the spread of heart disease. In the years since, researchers have also used Framingham to track obesity, smoking and even happiness over long periods of time. Now a new study that uses Framingham to analyse loneliness has found that it spreads very much like a communicable disease.

Feeling lonely is more than just unpleasant for those who yearn to be surrounded by warm relationships—it is a health hazard. Numerous studies show that loneliness reduces fruit-fly lifespans, increases the chances of mice developing diabetes, and causes a host of adverse effects in people, including cardiovascular disease, obesity and weakening of the immune system. Simply being surrounded by others is no cure. In people, the mere perception of being isolated is more than enough to create the bad health effects. However, in spite of its significant impact, precious little is known about how loneliness moves through communities. ...

Charis Wilson

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:10 GMT

Charis Wilson, model and writer, died on November 20th, aged 95

THE first time she modelled for Edward Weston, in March 1934, Charis Wilson knew she didn’t look good. At 20 she was “a piece of jailbait”, a mere child, especially with the stumpy plaits into which she sometimes twisted her hair. She was a drifter, moving in a miasma of angry despair in and out of speakeasies and other people’s beds because her father had refused to let her go to college, even though she’d won a full scholarship to Sarah Lawrence, and even though he would certainly have let her brother go. There was nothing to do but work in her mother’s dress shop, sleep around in San Francisco, get pregnant, have an abortion. She had taken a solemn vow of chastity since then, like one of her made-up childhood rituals of lying in freezing cold water, but to someone with her natural generosity it was a heartless, bitter thing. She looked pale, her chin jutting out in defiance and her whole face needing something—like warts on her nose, her mother told her—to make it remotely interesting.

But none of this seemed to matter to the short, long-faced, middle-aged man who was now behind the focusing cloth, clattering the shutter furiously in tenth-of-a-second bursts, to take her picture. It was obvious to her as soon as they had met, some weeks before—Weston’s eyes meeting hers across the crowd at a concert, looking away, looking back again—that he missed nothing. His career as one of America’s greatest photographers was already taking shape. He was busy now recording separate fragments of her, a knee, a shin, a shoulder, her arms. But in the repeated curve of her thigh and calf he saw shapes like sea shells, with the luminescence and faint muscular rays of the great chambered nautilus. Her torso, outlined in light, was like the trunk of a cypress tree just entering the soil. Her skin, every follicle and flaw in focus in the ground glass of his lens, had the same sun- and sea-wind weathering, but fainter, of the stones of the Californian desert, and her hips had the convolutions of the naked mountains. To him she was a landscape. ...

KAL's cartoon

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:10 GMT

Toyota: Losing its shine

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:10 GMT

Unless Akio Toyoda can find an answer to Toyota’s problems, the Japanese company’s reign as the world’s biggest carmaker may be brief

IT IS not unusual in Japan for corporate leaders to make semi-ritualised displays of humility. But when Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota Motor Corporation since June and grandson of the firm’s founder, addressed an audience of Japanese journalists in October his words shocked the world’s car industry.

Mr Toyoda had been reading “How the Mighty Fall”, a book by Jim Collins, an American management guru. In it, Mr Collins (best known for an earlier, more upbeat work, “Good to Great”) describes the five stages through which a proud and thriving company passes on its way to becoming a basket-case. First comes hubris born of success; second, the undisciplined pursuit of more; third, denial of risk and peril; fourth, grasping for salvation; and last, capitulation to irrelevance or death. ...

War in the Caucasus: A small corner, very bloody

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:10 GMT

Chechnya may have been largely pacified, but it is far from being at peace

Towers of Stone: The Battle of Wills in Chechnya. By Wojciech Jagielski. Translated by Soren Gauger. Seven Stories Press; 329 pages; $19.95. Buy from Amazon.com

FORMIDABLE, useful in war and, though picturesque, impractical in peacetime, the stone towers that dot Chechnya’s mountains could be regarded as symbols of its people. Wojciech Jagielski’s book sets new standards for gritty reporting of Russia’s most miserable corner, and the dreadful damage done to it by both outsiders and the Chechens’ own leaders. ...

Post-war artists: Man and master

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:10 GMT

Jackson Pollock and his mentor

Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock. By Henry Adams. Bloomsbury; 390 pages; $35 and GBP25. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

FOR all the books written about artists’ muses and patrons, relatively few explore the role of mentors, perhaps because the presence of a teacher threatens to deprive the artist of his or her status as a self-made genius. In “Tom and Jack”, Henry Adams, a professor of American art at Case Western Reserve University, looks resolutely at the art of Jackson Pollock through the work and life of his mentor, Thomas Hart Benton. In so doing, he casts new light on the legendary abstract expressionist. ...