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Thursday, May 22, 2008
Monday, May 12, 2008
Ljubljana
Judged merely by size Ljubljana has all the appearance of a 'provincial' town. With a population of less than 300,000 inhabitants and very modest 'skyscrappers', it poorly compares against the dimensions of any other capital city. Yet such beliefs are misleading, since Ljubljana is recognised as one of the major cultural centers in Europe.Ljubliana is an enchanting place. At Preseren Square, the Triple Bridge (Tromostovje) provides a perfect, lovely gateway to the historic district, which comprises a series of narrow, cobblestone streets, shops, Italian restaurants and pubs. Walking this Old Town is like a voyage in time -medieval Ljubljana remains practically untouched.
China's earthquake
Days of disaster
Two natural disasters; two very different responses. We look first at the government's response to the earthquake in China, then at poor Myanmar
AP
“DON'T cry, don't cry. It's a disaster, and you've survived,” China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, told weeping orphans in a town almost flattened by the country's worst natural disaster in more than 30 years. Mr Wen's awkward words may have done little to calm the bereaved children. But amid the huge destruction caused by the earthquake of May 12th, China's leaders thus far have scored some unusual public-relations successes.
Two natural disasters; two very different responses. We look first at the government's response to the earthquake in China, then at poor Myanmar
AP
“DON'T cry, don't cry. It's a disaster, and you've survived,” China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, told weeping orphans in a town almost flattened by the country's worst natural disaster in more than 30 years. Mr Wen's awkward words may have done little to calm the bereaved children. But amid the huge destruction caused by the earthquake of May 12th, China's leaders thus far have scored some unusual public-relations successes.
Hampered by poor weather (at least for the first day or two) and the blocking of mountain roads by landslides, Chinese troops have been struggling to rescue thousands of people buried in rubble and to bring aid to stricken communities across a wide area of the southwest on the edge of the Tibetan plateau. Three days after the disaster, officials put the number of dead at around 20,000, most of them in Sichuan Province north of the provincial capital, Chengdu. With many trapped, the toll could reach 50,000, the government said.
In contrast with neighbouring Myanmar's lethargic and secretive handling of its cyclone ten days earlier, China responded to the earthquake rapidly and with uncharacteristic openness. Within hours Mr Wen was on a plane, President Hu Jintao was chairing an emergency meeting of the Politburo's Standing Committee and thousands of soldiers and police were being dispatched. After an initial deployment of 5,000 troops the number was ramped up to 100,000 within three days. The official media, often reticent about reporting bad news, rapidly updated casualty numbers. State-owned television provided non-stop coverage.
During China's second-deadliest natural disaster of recent years, flooding along the Yangzi River that killed thousands in 1998, officials barred foreign journalists from some affected areas and failed to update casualty figures for two weeks, before providing suspiciously low numbers. Even this year the government was slow to respond to a snow disaster that affected much of south and central China in January. It expelled foreign journalists from Tibetan-inhabited areas (including the part of Sichuan now worst affected by the earthquake) after an outbreak of anti-Chinese unrest in March.
Of course, covering up was not an option. China measured the earthquake at a magnitude of 7.8, a force so powerful that it sent panicky office workers running into streets as far away as Beijing, 1,500km (930 miles) to the north. But China's leaders are anxious to repair the public-relations damage they have suffered internationally as a result of the Tibet crisis. And they are keen to avoid the kind of criticism directed at Myanmar.
Foreign reporters have been allowed into affected areas without hindrance by officials. China welcomed foreign aid in the form of material and cash. Japan said it was sending an earthquake team. President Hu discussed the disaster in a telephone conversation with George Bush and thanked him for American offers of help. Amid nationwide shock at the scale of the disaster, a recent upsurge of anti-Western sentiment triggered by events in Tibet appears to be abating.
Since March no Politburo member has publicly visited Tibet. Comforting earthquake victims, however, presents few political risks.
Mr Wen has remained at the scene to direct relief operations. Chinese television showed residents muttering “Thank you, prime minister, thank you,” after he declared to one group that thousands of troops and police had been deployed. Some victims are angry, but their resentment is directed at local officials rather than the central authorities.
In Dujiangyan, a large town about 50km from the epicentre, a woman in her 50s complains that while some buildings collapsed, the government and party headquarters remained intact. “Corruption and supervision of construction work is a problem, a very big problem,” says another resident. “I hope they learn a lesson from this.” Even the state-owned media have said shoddy construction may have exacerbated the impact. Casualties at schools have been high, partly because many were in classrooms when the earthquake struck in the early afternoon, but partly too, parents suspect, because they were badly built.
Hundreds of children were buried at Dujiangyan's Xinjian Elementary School, where a four-storey building collapsed like a pack of cards. One young woman, whose son had been killed at the school, was frantically trying to find out where his body had been taken. At one point she stood in front of an ambulance, sobbing and demanding information. Police came and took her gently aside and told her they would try to find the name of the morgue. Several ambulances plied to and from the site, but the official media have reported the rescue of only 50 or so children. Mr Wen watched two of them being pulled from the rubble and wept at the sight, said one Chinese report.
The victims' torch song
Officials are worried about damage to dams upriver from Dujiangyan, closer to the epicentre. Xinhua, a government-controlled news agency, has said Dujiangyan would be “swamped” if the nearby Zipingpu dam were to suffer major problems. Cracks have appeared on the dam's surface and workshops at the site have collapsed. The dam was completed less than two years ago despite concerns raised at the time about building it so close to a seismic fault line.
The Chinese media note that the government's decision to allow prompt coverage follows the implementation on May 1st of new rules on “government information transparency”. Under these rules, the authorities are supposed to make public any information involving the “vital interests of citizens”. But political calculations are likely to have played a bigger role than the regulations themselves, which still allow information to be withheld if it relates to “state secrets”—a term applied sweepingly in China.
The Olympic games are a powerful incentive. The authorities rapidly decided to bow to public opinion and scale down the razzmatazz surrounding the parade of the Olympic torch through China in order to reflect the tragedy. Having at first suggested the torch ceremonies would continue as planned (they include a relay close to the disaster area next month), officials now say they will be “simplified” and combined with fund-raising for earthquake relief. A ritual that last month served as a red flag to China's critics may now be turned to much better use.
May 15th 2008 BEIJING AND DUJIANGYAN
From The Economist print edition
In contrast with neighbouring Myanmar's lethargic and secretive handling of its cyclone ten days earlier, China responded to the earthquake rapidly and with uncharacteristic openness. Within hours Mr Wen was on a plane, President Hu Jintao was chairing an emergency meeting of the Politburo's Standing Committee and thousands of soldiers and police were being dispatched. After an initial deployment of 5,000 troops the number was ramped up to 100,000 within three days. The official media, often reticent about reporting bad news, rapidly updated casualty numbers. State-owned television provided non-stop coverage.
During China's second-deadliest natural disaster of recent years, flooding along the Yangzi River that killed thousands in 1998, officials barred foreign journalists from some affected areas and failed to update casualty figures for two weeks, before providing suspiciously low numbers. Even this year the government was slow to respond to a snow disaster that affected much of south and central China in January. It expelled foreign journalists from Tibetan-inhabited areas (including the part of Sichuan now worst affected by the earthquake) after an outbreak of anti-Chinese unrest in March.
Of course, covering up was not an option. China measured the earthquake at a magnitude of 7.8, a force so powerful that it sent panicky office workers running into streets as far away as Beijing, 1,500km (930 miles) to the north. But China's leaders are anxious to repair the public-relations damage they have suffered internationally as a result of the Tibet crisis. And they are keen to avoid the kind of criticism directed at Myanmar.
Foreign reporters have been allowed into affected areas without hindrance by officials. China welcomed foreign aid in the form of material and cash. Japan said it was sending an earthquake team. President Hu discussed the disaster in a telephone conversation with George Bush and thanked him for American offers of help. Amid nationwide shock at the scale of the disaster, a recent upsurge of anti-Western sentiment triggered by events in Tibet appears to be abating.
Since March no Politburo member has publicly visited Tibet. Comforting earthquake victims, however, presents few political risks.
Mr Wen has remained at the scene to direct relief operations. Chinese television showed residents muttering “Thank you, prime minister, thank you,” after he declared to one group that thousands of troops and police had been deployed. Some victims are angry, but their resentment is directed at local officials rather than the central authorities.
In Dujiangyan, a large town about 50km from the epicentre, a woman in her 50s complains that while some buildings collapsed, the government and party headquarters remained intact. “Corruption and supervision of construction work is a problem, a very big problem,” says another resident. “I hope they learn a lesson from this.” Even the state-owned media have said shoddy construction may have exacerbated the impact. Casualties at schools have been high, partly because many were in classrooms when the earthquake struck in the early afternoon, but partly too, parents suspect, because they were badly built.
Hundreds of children were buried at Dujiangyan's Xinjian Elementary School, where a four-storey building collapsed like a pack of cards. One young woman, whose son had been killed at the school, was frantically trying to find out where his body had been taken. At one point she stood in front of an ambulance, sobbing and demanding information. Police came and took her gently aside and told her they would try to find the name of the morgue. Several ambulances plied to and from the site, but the official media have reported the rescue of only 50 or so children. Mr Wen watched two of them being pulled from the rubble and wept at the sight, said one Chinese report.
The victims' torch song
Officials are worried about damage to dams upriver from Dujiangyan, closer to the epicentre. Xinhua, a government-controlled news agency, has said Dujiangyan would be “swamped” if the nearby Zipingpu dam were to suffer major problems. Cracks have appeared on the dam's surface and workshops at the site have collapsed. The dam was completed less than two years ago despite concerns raised at the time about building it so close to a seismic fault line.
The Chinese media note that the government's decision to allow prompt coverage follows the implementation on May 1st of new rules on “government information transparency”. Under these rules, the authorities are supposed to make public any information involving the “vital interests of citizens”. But political calculations are likely to have played a bigger role than the regulations themselves, which still allow information to be withheld if it relates to “state secrets”—a term applied sweepingly in China.
The Olympic games are a powerful incentive. The authorities rapidly decided to bow to public opinion and scale down the razzmatazz surrounding the parade of the Olympic torch through China in order to reflect the tragedy. Having at first suggested the torch ceremonies would continue as planned (they include a relay close to the disaster area next month), officials now say they will be “simplified” and combined with fund-raising for earthquake relief. A ritual that last month served as a red flag to China's critics may now be turned to much better use.
May 15th 2008 BEIJING AND DUJIANGYAN
From The Economist print edition
Sunday, May 11, 2008
US Map of misery
America may well be only halfway through the house-price bustSOUNDING more like a cartographer than a central banker, Ben Bernanke this week showed off the Federal Reserve's latest gizmo for tracking America's property bust: a series of maps that colour-code price declines, foreclosures and other gauges of housing distress for every county in the country. The Fed chairman's goal was to show graphically that falling prices meant more foreclosures, and he went on to urge lenders to write down the principal on troubled loans where the house is worth less than the value of the mortgage. But the jazzy design of his maps—where hotter colours imply more trouble—also makes a starker point. The pain of America's housing bust varies enormously by region. Hardest hit have been the “bubble states”—California, Nevada and Florida, as well as parts of the industrial Midwest. The biggest uncertainty hanging over the economy is how red will things get.
The answer is not simple. For a start, it is hard to be sure just how much house prices have fallen. America has several house-price indices and they tell different stories. Widely cited, but least useful, are monthly figures showing median home prices produced by the National Association of Realtors (NAR). These indicate that median prices are down some 13% from their peak, but since these averages do not adjust for the mix of homes changing hands, which fluctuates from month to month, they are inevitably distorted.
Mr Bernanke's maps use figures from the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO). Its statistics have broad geographic reach and track repeat sales of the same house. The monthly national index suggests average prices have fallen only 3% from a peak in April 2007, and the quarterly figures are still positive (see left-hand chart). But OFHEO's figures include only houses financed by mortgages backed by the government-sponsored giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. By excluding subprime and jumbo loans, they leave out the top and bottom of the market—where prices rose fastest during the bubble and where the mortgage mess was most severe. Thus OFHEO's figures probably understate the scale of the housing mess, particularly in states such as California and Florida. Another set of indices, developed by Robert Shiller and Karl Case and produced by Standard & Poor's (S&P), a rating agency, includes all types of houses and, not surprisingly, show house prices rising faster during the boom and falling faster now. As of the fourth quarter of 2007, the S&P/Case-Shiller national index was down 10% from its peak, and an index of ten large cities had fallen by almost 16% by February. Although the Case-Shiller figures are not perfect—they miss many rural areas—they are a better gauge of price declines in big cities.
Assessing how much further house prices are likely to fall gets even trickier. One route is to look at market expectations: investors expect a further 20% drop, judging by the prices of futures contracts linked to the Case-Shiller 10 city index. But the futures market is small and illiquid and may overstate the possible declines.The discrepancy between supply and demand suggests that prices could fall a lot more. By historical standards there is a huge glut of unsold homes on the market. The homeowner-vacancy rate—which includes all vacant homes for sale—has soared to a record level of 2.9%, which means that there are some 1.1m “excess” houses for sale compared with the average between 1985 and 2005. Although the inventory of new homes is falling as builders have slashed their production, the supply of homes for sale is being pushed up by foreclosures even as demand from new homeowners remains weak.
By most measures, prices are still above the levels implied by the fundamentals. Using a model that ties house prices to disposable incomes and long-term interest rates, analysts at Goldman Sachs reckon that the correction in national house prices is only halfway through. They expect an 18-20% correction overall, or another 11-13% decline from today's levels. But their models suggest that six states—Arizona, Florida, Virginia, Maryland, California and New Jersey, could see further price declines of 25% or more.
Optimists dispute this gloomy assessment, pointing out that some measures of housing affordability have dramatically improved. According to NAR figures, monthly payments on a typical house with a 30-year mortgage and 20% downpayment were 18.5% of the median family's income in February, down from almost 26% at the peak—and close to the historical average. But this measure of affordability is misleading, not least because credit standards have tightened so much. The latest survey of loan officers conducted by the Fed suggested on May 5th that 60% of banks tightened their lending standards for prime mortgages in the first three months of 2007. And, as Michael Feroli of JPMorgan points out, the affordability gauge depends on what measure of home prices you look at. Use the Case-Shiller index, where the affordability of housing worsened sharply during the boom, and mortgage payments are still high in relation to incomes.
The right-hand chart shows a better measure of housing fundamentals—the relationship between house prices and rents. This is a sort of price/earnings ratio for the housing market: the price of a house reflects the discounted value of future ownership, either as rental income or as rent saved by an owner who lives in the house.
A recent analysis by Morris Davis of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Andreas Lehnert and Robert Martin of the Fed, shows that the rent/price yield in America ranged between 5% and 5.5% from 1960 to 1995, but fell rapidly thereafter to reach a historic low of 3.5% at the height of the boom. Given the typical pace of rental growth, Mr Feroli reckons house prices (as measured by the Case-Shiller index) need to fall by 10-15% over the next year and a half for the rent/price yield to return to its historical average. Again, that suggests the national housing bust is only halfway through. And, given the scale of excess supply, house prices—particularly in hard hit areas—are likely to overshoot. All told, Mr Bernanke's maps are going to get a lot redder—and the pressure on policymakers to help struggling homeowners is bound to increase.
May 8th 2008 The Economist
Myanmar's misery
Despite their appalling government, the Burmese people deserve all the help they can get
THE decision by Myanmar's ruling generals to move their capital in 2005 from Yangon, the country's biggest city, to the remote mountain fastness of Naypyidaw was as baffling as many of their other policies. Local rumour ascribed it to the advice of fortune-tellers, who foretold revolt and disaster in Yangon.
Revolt came last September. It was suppressed easily enough, by an army willing to shoot unarmed protesters. Now natural disaster has come, and on an unimaginable scale: a cyclone that has killed tens of thousands, left hundreds of thousands without shelter and placed millions at risk of disease and hunger (see article). In recent years only the Asian tsunami of December 2004 and the Kashmir earthquake of October 2005 have wreaked devastation as great.
You do not have to believe in astrology to see the essential truth behind the fortune-teller rumour, for this is a regime more interested in looking after itself than its people. It failed to prepare them for the approaching danger, despite having been forewarned. Its soldiers, quick enough to respond to monk-led protests last September, were invisible for days as citizens struggled to cope with devastation, death and injury. And, as a horrified world offered help, the generals were obstructive. Aid workers waited for visas and the junta haggled about import duties on emergency supplies. This is criminal. The first few days after a disaster are, in terms of the lives eventually lost, by far the most important.
The politics of saving lives
For foreign donors, Myanmar raises a dilemma seen also in North Korea, which may be on the verge of another famine (see article): how to rescue desperate people whose own government spurns outside assistance, and how to do so without providing a lifeline to an illegitimate and unpopular regime. In the aftermath of a disaster, only the first of these questions matters: when so many are in such need, the humanitarian imperative overrides qualms about giving handouts to a repugnant regime. Nor, on the whole, is there any way of sidestepping the junta (or the North Korean regime) in the distribution of aid. Some foreign aid agencies have existing networks in the country. But none has a nationwide reach.
In theory it may be possible, as France's foreign minister has argued, to obtain a United Nations' resolution obliging the junta to accept aid. In practice, Myanmar's friends on the Security Council would probably block such a move and it will remain a question of coaxing the generals into accepting help. That means avoiding the risk of feeding the junta's paranoia. It sees the offer of help as the thin end of a wedge of political interference aimed at prising it from power. In this sense it was unfortunate that George Bush's magnanimous offer this week (“Let the United States come and help you!”) was made as he signed legislation awarding a congressional honour to Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's detained opposition leader.
The generals will also have noticed that on the same day Congress passed a resolution condemning their constitutional referendum scheduled for May 10th as “one-sided, undemocratic, and illegitimate”. This is an accurate description of both the process and the constitution the generals want to impose on their people—with such urgency, after 14 years in the drafting, that they have delayed voting in the worst-hit areas by just 14 days. Of course they should postpone the vote. Evil enough in itself as a way of providing some legal cover for the perpetuation of military rule, administering it (and presumably fixing the outcome) is now a distraction from what should be the army's main task: saving lives. However, pressure from America will not make the junta yield. Instead, it will make it even cagier in handling the offers of aid. Postponement would have a better chance if the neighbours who have maintained good links with the junta—Thailand and, especially, China—added their weight to calls for a suspension.
Please, please help you
Encouraging Myanmar's rulers to accept more assistance is more than a short-term problem. Partly thanks to Western sanctions, but largely because of its own go-it-alone policies, Myanmar is among the world's neediest and least-helped countries. Some 30% of its 53m people live below the poverty line. Infant mortality rates are high, at 76 per 1,000 live births. The UN's World Food Programme says that about one-third of children under five are malnourished. Of children enrolled in primary school, 57% drop out. Yet, at $3 per head a year, Myanmar receives proportionately less foreign aid than does almost any other country. Neighbouring Laos receives almost 20 times as much. The cyclone has added another huge—and long-lasting—burden to Myanmar's existing misery. Whatever the regime, it needs more long-term humanitarian aid simply to meet basic needs.
Two faint hopes flicker in the sodden gloom left by the cyclone. The first is the possibility that the need for humanitarian help may lead to a renewed engagement with the West. At the very least it might advertise Western expertise, wealth and generosity, and restore some of the influence that has been lost to Myanmar's big commercial partners in the region. Second, the regime's shocking, bungling response to the crisis might lead even some of its own members to wonder whether their leaders know what they are doing. The army believes it must stay in power because no other force can hold the country together and run it competently. The cyclone must have brought home to some senior soldiers what most civilians have long known, that this is nonsense.
It is not unprecedented for a natural calamity to bring political change: in 1972, the embezzlement by Anastasio Somoza, Nicaragua's dictator, and his cronies of aid sent after an earthquake contributed to the unpopularity that eventually toppled him; more recently, the tsunami was instrumental in bringing peace to Aceh, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. In Myanmar, superstitious generals and civilians alike will have seen the cyclone as a sign of divine impatience hinting at the looming downfall of a tyrannical government. You don't have to believe in portents to hope that they are right.
THE decision by Myanmar's ruling generals to move their capital in 2005 from Yangon, the country's biggest city, to the remote mountain fastness of Naypyidaw was as baffling as many of their other policies. Local rumour ascribed it to the advice of fortune-tellers, who foretold revolt and disaster in Yangon.
Revolt came last September. It was suppressed easily enough, by an army willing to shoot unarmed protesters. Now natural disaster has come, and on an unimaginable scale: a cyclone that has killed tens of thousands, left hundreds of thousands without shelter and placed millions at risk of disease and hunger (see article). In recent years only the Asian tsunami of December 2004 and the Kashmir earthquake of October 2005 have wreaked devastation as great.
You do not have to believe in astrology to see the essential truth behind the fortune-teller rumour, for this is a regime more interested in looking after itself than its people. It failed to prepare them for the approaching danger, despite having been forewarned. Its soldiers, quick enough to respond to monk-led protests last September, were invisible for days as citizens struggled to cope with devastation, death and injury. And, as a horrified world offered help, the generals were obstructive. Aid workers waited for visas and the junta haggled about import duties on emergency supplies. This is criminal. The first few days after a disaster are, in terms of the lives eventually lost, by far the most important.
The politics of saving lives
For foreign donors, Myanmar raises a dilemma seen also in North Korea, which may be on the verge of another famine (see article): how to rescue desperate people whose own government spurns outside assistance, and how to do so without providing a lifeline to an illegitimate and unpopular regime. In the aftermath of a disaster, only the first of these questions matters: when so many are in such need, the humanitarian imperative overrides qualms about giving handouts to a repugnant regime. Nor, on the whole, is there any way of sidestepping the junta (or the North Korean regime) in the distribution of aid. Some foreign aid agencies have existing networks in the country. But none has a nationwide reach.
In theory it may be possible, as France's foreign minister has argued, to obtain a United Nations' resolution obliging the junta to accept aid. In practice, Myanmar's friends on the Security Council would probably block such a move and it will remain a question of coaxing the generals into accepting help. That means avoiding the risk of feeding the junta's paranoia. It sees the offer of help as the thin end of a wedge of political interference aimed at prising it from power. In this sense it was unfortunate that George Bush's magnanimous offer this week (“Let the United States come and help you!”) was made as he signed legislation awarding a congressional honour to Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's detained opposition leader.
The generals will also have noticed that on the same day Congress passed a resolution condemning their constitutional referendum scheduled for May 10th as “one-sided, undemocratic, and illegitimate”. This is an accurate description of both the process and the constitution the generals want to impose on their people—with such urgency, after 14 years in the drafting, that they have delayed voting in the worst-hit areas by just 14 days. Of course they should postpone the vote. Evil enough in itself as a way of providing some legal cover for the perpetuation of military rule, administering it (and presumably fixing the outcome) is now a distraction from what should be the army's main task: saving lives. However, pressure from America will not make the junta yield. Instead, it will make it even cagier in handling the offers of aid. Postponement would have a better chance if the neighbours who have maintained good links with the junta—Thailand and, especially, China—added their weight to calls for a suspension.
Please, please help you
Encouraging Myanmar's rulers to accept more assistance is more than a short-term problem. Partly thanks to Western sanctions, but largely because of its own go-it-alone policies, Myanmar is among the world's neediest and least-helped countries. Some 30% of its 53m people live below the poverty line. Infant mortality rates are high, at 76 per 1,000 live births. The UN's World Food Programme says that about one-third of children under five are malnourished. Of children enrolled in primary school, 57% drop out. Yet, at $3 per head a year, Myanmar receives proportionately less foreign aid than does almost any other country. Neighbouring Laos receives almost 20 times as much. The cyclone has added another huge—and long-lasting—burden to Myanmar's existing misery. Whatever the regime, it needs more long-term humanitarian aid simply to meet basic needs.
Two faint hopes flicker in the sodden gloom left by the cyclone. The first is the possibility that the need for humanitarian help may lead to a renewed engagement with the West. At the very least it might advertise Western expertise, wealth and generosity, and restore some of the influence that has been lost to Myanmar's big commercial partners in the region. Second, the regime's shocking, bungling response to the crisis might lead even some of its own members to wonder whether their leaders know what they are doing. The army believes it must stay in power because no other force can hold the country together and run it competently. The cyclone must have brought home to some senior soldiers what most civilians have long known, that this is nonsense.
It is not unprecedented for a natural calamity to bring political change: in 1972, the embezzlement by Anastasio Somoza, Nicaragua's dictator, and his cronies of aid sent after an earthquake contributed to the unpopularity that eventually toppled him; more recently, the tsunami was instrumental in bringing peace to Aceh, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. In Myanmar, superstitious generals and civilians alike will have seen the cyclone as a sign of divine impatience hinting at the looming downfall of a tyrannical government. You don't have to believe in portents to hope that they are right.
May 8th 2008 From The Economist
Nearer to overcoming
Barack Obama's success shows that the ceiling has risen for African-Americans. But many are still too close to the floor
WHEN Roland Fryer was about 15, a friend asked him what he would be doing when he was 30. He said he would probably be dead. It was a reasonable prediction. At the time, he was hanging out with a gang and selling drugs on the side. Young black men in that line of work seldom live long. But Mr Fryer survived. At 30, he won tenure as an economics professor at Harvard. That was four months ago.
Mr Fryer's parents split up when he was very young. His father was a maths teacher who went off the rails: young Roland once had to borrow money to bail him out of jail. His great-aunt and great-uncle ran a crack business: young Roland would watch them cook cocaine powder into rocks of crack in a frying pan in the kitchen. Several of his relatives went to prison. But Mr Fryer backed away from a life of crime and won a sports scholarship to the University of Texas. He found he enjoyed studying, and was rather good at it. By the time he was 25, the president of Harvard was hectoring him to join the faculty.
Mr Fryer now applies his supple mind to the touchy, tangled issue of racial inequality. Why are African-Americans so much less prosperous than whites? Why do so many black children flounder in school? Why do so many young black men languish behind bars? Why are stories like Mr Fryer's considered so surprising?
Black and white Americans tend to produce different answers to these questions, and there is also heated disagreement within both groups. Some blacks think their glass is three-quarters full; others think it three-quarters empty. Optimists can point to obvious improvements. Little more than four decades ago, blacks in the South could not vote. This year, a black man may be elected president. Under segregation, southern blacks were barred from white schools, neighbourhoods and opportunities. Now, racial discrimination is both illegal and taboo. Blacks have pierced nearly every glass ceiling. The secretary of state, the boss of American Express and the country's most popular entertainer (Oprah Winfrey) are all black.
WHEN Roland Fryer was about 15, a friend asked him what he would be doing when he was 30. He said he would probably be dead. It was a reasonable prediction. At the time, he was hanging out with a gang and selling drugs on the side. Young black men in that line of work seldom live long. But Mr Fryer survived. At 30, he won tenure as an economics professor at Harvard. That was four months ago.
Mr Fryer's parents split up when he was very young. His father was a maths teacher who went off the rails: young Roland once had to borrow money to bail him out of jail. His great-aunt and great-uncle ran a crack business: young Roland would watch them cook cocaine powder into rocks of crack in a frying pan in the kitchen. Several of his relatives went to prison. But Mr Fryer backed away from a life of crime and won a sports scholarship to the University of Texas. He found he enjoyed studying, and was rather good at it. By the time he was 25, the president of Harvard was hectoring him to join the faculty.
Mr Fryer now applies his supple mind to the touchy, tangled issue of racial inequality. Why are African-Americans so much less prosperous than whites? Why do so many black children flounder in school? Why do so many young black men languish behind bars? Why are stories like Mr Fryer's considered so surprising?
Black and white Americans tend to produce different answers to these questions, and there is also heated disagreement within both groups. Some blacks think their glass is three-quarters full; others think it three-quarters empty. Optimists can point to obvious improvements. Little more than four decades ago, blacks in the South could not vote. This year, a black man may be elected president. Under segregation, southern blacks were barred from white schools, neighbourhoods and opportunities. Now, racial discrimination is both illegal and taboo. Blacks have pierced nearly every glass ceiling. The secretary of state, the boss of American Express and the country's most popular entertainer (Oprah Winfrey) are all black.
Life for the average African-American has also improved remarkably. The median black household income has risen from $22,300 (in 2006 dollars) in 1967 to $32,100 in 2006. Black life expectancy has soared from 34 in 1900 to 73 today. Most blacks today are middle class.
Yes, say the pessimists, but the gap between what blacks and whites earn and what they learn, which narrowed steadily between the 1940s and the late 1980s, has more or less frozen since then. Blacks' median household income is still only 63% of whites'. Academically, black children at 17 perform no better than a white 13-year-old. Blacks die, on average, five years earlier than whites. And though the black middle class has grown immensely, many blacks are still stuck in crime-scorched, nearly jobless ghettos.
What ails black America? Public debate falls between two poles. Some academics and most civil-rights activists stress the role played by racial discrimination. It may no longer be overt, they argue, but it is still widespread and severe. Julian Bond of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People reckons that racism is still “epidemic” in America.
Black conservatives, while never denying that racism persists, think it much less severe than before and no longer the main obstacle to black advancement. Bill Cosby, a veteran comedian, tours the country urging blacks to concentrate on improving themselves: to study hard, to work hard and—especially—to shun the culture of despair that grips the ghetto.
The debate is often bitter. Michael Eric Dyson, a leftish academic, argues that the black middle class has “lost its mind” if it believes Mr Cosby's argument downplaying the importance of race. Larry Elder, a conservative pundit, wrote a book about blacks who blame racism for nearly everything called: “Stupid Black Men”.
Mr Fryer eschews histrionics in favour of hard data. He is obsessed with education, which he calls “the civil-rights battleground of the 21st century”. Why do blacks lag behind whites in school? Mr Fryer is prepared to test even the most taboo proposition. Are blacks genetically predisposed to be less intelligent than whites? With a collaborator from the University of Chicago, Mr Fryer debunked this idea. Granted, blacks score worse than whites on intelligence tests. But Mr Fryer looked at data from new tests on very young children. At eight months to a year, he found almost no racial gap, and that gap disappeared entirely when he added controls for such things as low birth weight.
If the gap is absent in babies, this suggests it is caused by environmental factors, which can presumably be fixed. But first they must be identified. Do black children need better nutrition? More stimulation in the home? Better schools? Probably all these things matter, but how much? “I don't know,” says Mr Fryer. It is a phrase that, to his credit, he uses often.
Cool to be dumb
His most striking contribution to the debate so far has been to show that black students who study hard are accused of “acting white” and are ostracised by their peers. Teachers have known this for years, at least anecdotally. Mr Fryer found a way to measure it. He looked at a large sampleMay 8th 2008 of public-school children who were asked to name their friends. To correct for kids exaggerating their own popularity, he counted a friendship as real only if both parties named each other. He found that for white pupils, the higher their grades, the more popular they were. But blacks with good grades had fewer black friends than their mediocre peers. In other words, studiousness is stigmatised among black schoolchildren. It would be hard to imagine a more crippling cultural norm.
Mr Fryer has some novel ideas about fixing this state of affairs. New York's school system is letting him test a couple of them on its children. One is to give pupils cash incentives. If a nine-year-old completes an exam, he gets $5. For getting the answers right, he gets more money, up to about $250 a year. The notion of bribing children to study makes many parents queasy. Mr Fryer's response is: let's see if it works and drop it if it doesn't.
Another idea, being tested on a different group of children, is to hand out free mobile telephones. The phones do not work during school hours, and children can recharge them with call-minutes only by studying. (The phone companies were happy to help with this.) The phones give the children an incentive to study, and Mr Fryer a means to communicate with them. He talks of “re-branding” academic achievement to make it cool. He knows it will not be easy. He recalls hearing drug-pushers in the 1980s joking “Just say no!” as they handed over the goods, mocking Nancy Reagan's anti-drug slogan.
Blacks who do well in school are hungrily recruited by universities, which often admit them with lower test scores than are required of whites or Asians. The bar was first lowered for blacks out of a sense that America owes them a debt for past discrimination. Now universities are more likely to argue that racial diversity is valuable for its own sake.
But racial preferences are unpopular among whites, and the most blatant ones are, increasingly, illegal. The University of Michigan used to give applicants more points for being black than for getting a perfect score on the entrance exam. The Supreme Court deemed this unconstitutional in 2003, but ruled that less explicit preferences might be allowable.
When voters are asked if they want to ban racial preferences in the public sphere, they generally say yes. Since the 1990s, three states have passed referendums barring racial preferences, and four more may do so in November. Opponents of racial preferences argue that they are bad for blacks, too.
A study by Richard Sander of the University of California, Los Angeles, found that when the bar is lowered for black applicants to law school, they are admitted to institutions where they cannot cope. Many who drop out of top-tier colleges might have thrived at slightly less competitive ones. Mr Sander calculated that the net effect of pro-black preferences was actually to reduce the number of blacks who passed the bar exam. That is, racial preferences for black law students result in fewer black lawyers. John McWhorter, the author of “Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America”, argues that lowering the bar for blacks also reduces their incentive to excel at school. “As long as black students have to do only so well, they will do only so well,” he says.
For every dollar that a white man earns, a black man makes only 70 cents. Such figures are sometimes bandied around to imply that nearly all of this gap is caused by discrimination. That is bunk. If a firm could really get the same work done 30% more cheaply simply by hiring blacks, someone would have noticed and made a fortune doing just that.
That said, blacks certainly face barriers in the job market. Two economists, Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan, sent out 5,000 replies to job advertisements in Boston and Chicago. Each fictitious applicant was randomly assigned either a black-sounding name, such as Jamal or Lakisha, or a white one, such as Emily or Greg. For every ten jobs the “whites” applied for, they were offered one interview. The “blacks” had to post 15 letters to elicit the same response. Clearly, some managers are racist. But many are not. And many firms are desperate to hire and promote blacks, if only to avoid lawsuits.
The short straw
Looked at more closely, the statistics are murky. White men are more likely to work than black men. The proportion of black men participating in the labour force fell from 74% in 1972 to 67% last year. Whites start more businesses, too. Only 5% of firms are black-owned, though blacks account for 13% of America's population.
A black woman with a degree earns as much as a white woman with a degree. But with a professional degree, the black woman earns 30% more (see chart 2). That does not prove that law firms discriminate in favour of black women—though they may. Another explanation is that a skilled white woman is more likely to have a rich husband (or indeed any husband), and so may have less incentive to maximise her earnings.
Yes, say the pessimists, but the gap between what blacks and whites earn and what they learn, which narrowed steadily between the 1940s and the late 1980s, has more or less frozen since then. Blacks' median household income is still only 63% of whites'. Academically, black children at 17 perform no better than a white 13-year-old. Blacks die, on average, five years earlier than whites. And though the black middle class has grown immensely, many blacks are still stuck in crime-scorched, nearly jobless ghettos.
What ails black America? Public debate falls between two poles. Some academics and most civil-rights activists stress the role played by racial discrimination. It may no longer be overt, they argue, but it is still widespread and severe. Julian Bond of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People reckons that racism is still “epidemic” in America.
Black conservatives, while never denying that racism persists, think it much less severe than before and no longer the main obstacle to black advancement. Bill Cosby, a veteran comedian, tours the country urging blacks to concentrate on improving themselves: to study hard, to work hard and—especially—to shun the culture of despair that grips the ghetto.
The debate is often bitter. Michael Eric Dyson, a leftish academic, argues that the black middle class has “lost its mind” if it believes Mr Cosby's argument downplaying the importance of race. Larry Elder, a conservative pundit, wrote a book about blacks who blame racism for nearly everything called: “Stupid Black Men”.
Mr Fryer eschews histrionics in favour of hard data. He is obsessed with education, which he calls “the civil-rights battleground of the 21st century”. Why do blacks lag behind whites in school? Mr Fryer is prepared to test even the most taboo proposition. Are blacks genetically predisposed to be less intelligent than whites? With a collaborator from the University of Chicago, Mr Fryer debunked this idea. Granted, blacks score worse than whites on intelligence tests. But Mr Fryer looked at data from new tests on very young children. At eight months to a year, he found almost no racial gap, and that gap disappeared entirely when he added controls for such things as low birth weight.
If the gap is absent in babies, this suggests it is caused by environmental factors, which can presumably be fixed. But first they must be identified. Do black children need better nutrition? More stimulation in the home? Better schools? Probably all these things matter, but how much? “I don't know,” says Mr Fryer. It is a phrase that, to his credit, he uses often.
Cool to be dumb
His most striking contribution to the debate so far has been to show that black students who study hard are accused of “acting white” and are ostracised by their peers. Teachers have known this for years, at least anecdotally. Mr Fryer found a way to measure it. He looked at a large sampleMay 8th 2008 of public-school children who were asked to name their friends. To correct for kids exaggerating their own popularity, he counted a friendship as real only if both parties named each other. He found that for white pupils, the higher their grades, the more popular they were. But blacks with good grades had fewer black friends than their mediocre peers. In other words, studiousness is stigmatised among black schoolchildren. It would be hard to imagine a more crippling cultural norm.
Mr Fryer has some novel ideas about fixing this state of affairs. New York's school system is letting him test a couple of them on its children. One is to give pupils cash incentives. If a nine-year-old completes an exam, he gets $5. For getting the answers right, he gets more money, up to about $250 a year. The notion of bribing children to study makes many parents queasy. Mr Fryer's response is: let's see if it works and drop it if it doesn't.
Another idea, being tested on a different group of children, is to hand out free mobile telephones. The phones do not work during school hours, and children can recharge them with call-minutes only by studying. (The phone companies were happy to help with this.) The phones give the children an incentive to study, and Mr Fryer a means to communicate with them. He talks of “re-branding” academic achievement to make it cool. He knows it will not be easy. He recalls hearing drug-pushers in the 1980s joking “Just say no!” as they handed over the goods, mocking Nancy Reagan's anti-drug slogan.
Blacks who do well in school are hungrily recruited by universities, which often admit them with lower test scores than are required of whites or Asians. The bar was first lowered for blacks out of a sense that America owes them a debt for past discrimination. Now universities are more likely to argue that racial diversity is valuable for its own sake.
But racial preferences are unpopular among whites, and the most blatant ones are, increasingly, illegal. The University of Michigan used to give applicants more points for being black than for getting a perfect score on the entrance exam. The Supreme Court deemed this unconstitutional in 2003, but ruled that less explicit preferences might be allowable.
When voters are asked if they want to ban racial preferences in the public sphere, they generally say yes. Since the 1990s, three states have passed referendums barring racial preferences, and four more may do so in November. Opponents of racial preferences argue that they are bad for blacks, too.
A study by Richard Sander of the University of California, Los Angeles, found that when the bar is lowered for black applicants to law school, they are admitted to institutions where they cannot cope. Many who drop out of top-tier colleges might have thrived at slightly less competitive ones. Mr Sander calculated that the net effect of pro-black preferences was actually to reduce the number of blacks who passed the bar exam. That is, racial preferences for black law students result in fewer black lawyers. John McWhorter, the author of “Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America”, argues that lowering the bar for blacks also reduces their incentive to excel at school. “As long as black students have to do only so well, they will do only so well,” he says.
For every dollar that a white man earns, a black man makes only 70 cents. Such figures are sometimes bandied around to imply that nearly all of this gap is caused by discrimination. That is bunk. If a firm could really get the same work done 30% more cheaply simply by hiring blacks, someone would have noticed and made a fortune doing just that.
That said, blacks certainly face barriers in the job market. Two economists, Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan, sent out 5,000 replies to job advertisements in Boston and Chicago. Each fictitious applicant was randomly assigned either a black-sounding name, such as Jamal or Lakisha, or a white one, such as Emily or Greg. For every ten jobs the “whites” applied for, they were offered one interview. The “blacks” had to post 15 letters to elicit the same response. Clearly, some managers are racist. But many are not. And many firms are desperate to hire and promote blacks, if only to avoid lawsuits.
The short straw
Looked at more closely, the statistics are murky. White men are more likely to work than black men. The proportion of black men participating in the labour force fell from 74% in 1972 to 67% last year. Whites start more businesses, too. Only 5% of firms are black-owned, though blacks account for 13% of America's population.
A black woman with a degree earns as much as a white woman with a degree. But with a professional degree, the black woman earns 30% more (see chart 2). That does not prove that law firms discriminate in favour of black women—though they may. Another explanation is that a skilled white woman is more likely to have a rich husband (or indeed any husband), and so may have less incentive to maximise her earnings.
Even when blacks earn as much as whites, the whites are typically far wealthier. In 2000 the average white household in the bottom fifth of income-earners had net assets of $24,000. The figure for blacks was a piffling $57. Whites in the middle fifth were five times wealthier than their black counterparts.
Partly this is because whites inherit more. But it is also because of different approaches to investment. Blacks are more likely to put their money in the bank, notes Mr Fryer. Whites are more likely to invest in shares, which generate higher returns. Compound this over a couple of generations and the effect is colossal.
Another crucial factor is the collapse of the black family. The proportion of black babies born out of wedlock has nearly doubled since 1970, to 69%. And 70% of these births are to mothers who are truly alone, not cohabiting. Stable two-parent families accumulate wealth more easily than single-parent homes. Two salaries stretch further, two pairs of hands mean less need for paid child care. Two-parent families also find it easier to raise well-adjusted, studious children, who go on to start stable families of their own. Broken families, if middle class, find it harder to stay that way. And if they start in the ghetto, they find it harder to break out.
“Black life is not valued!” booms Michael Walrond, a popular pastor in Harlem. He is referring to the news that three police officers were acquitted of all charges after shooting dead an unarmed black man, Sean Bell, a few hours before his wedding. The cops fired 50 bullets, but the pastor says he is outraged by the figure of 31. Members of his mostly black flock know immediately what he means. Two of the officers were black and all of them thought Mr Bell had a gun. But it was the white officer who reloaded and fired 31 rounds. Mr Walrond's angry sermon draws cheers.
Afterwards, in his office, he agrees that it is not only whites who devalue black lives: black criminals do too. Mr Walrond, like many inner-city clerics, works hard to reform those who stray. But like Barack Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, he tends to assume the worst about his country. He finds Mr Wright's theory that the government concocted the AIDS virus to kill blacks “credible”.
He refers to the Tuskegee experiment between 1932 and 1972 when some doctors in Alabama deliberately neglected to treat black syphilis patients in order to study the disease's progression. That was an abomination. But it is hardly evidence that the government is bent on genocide.
From alienation to despair
Is the state racist? Those who think so often point to the criminal-justice system. A startling 11% of black males aged 20-34 are behind bars. Overall, black men are seven times more likely to be incarcerated than white men. Until recently, sentences for crack offenders (who are mostly black) were much harsher than those for powder-cocaine offenders (mostly white). Ex-convicts in several states are barred from voting, a penalty that deters no crime but signals to wrongdoers that they can never be full citizens again. “We are becoming a nation of jailers, and racist jailers at that,” reckons Glenn Loury, an economist.
Not so, says Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think-tank. Blacks are more likely to be jailed because they commit more crimes, she argues. In 2005 the black murder rate was seven times higher than that for whites and Latinos combined. Harsh crack laws account only for a smidgeon of the disparity in incarceration rates. In 2006 blacks were 37.5% of state prisoners; exclude drug offenders and that figure drops to 37%. And since black criminals' victims are mostly black, some argue that locking more of them up has saved many black lives.
In other ways, it is far from clear that the government is trying to keep blacks down. Affirmative-action policies mean that it provides jobs for a disproportionate number of them. It also allows blacks who own small businesses to charge 10% more than whites and still win federal contracts. “Small” is generously defined. A firm with 1,500 employees can qualify. Its black owner can be worth $750,000—excluding his home and business—and still be deemed “economically disadvantaged”.
Yet many blacks feel alienated in a way that is “vastly disproportionate to real-life stimulus,” frets Mr McWhorter. When New Orleans flooded, some speculated that the government had blown up the levees. Even cooler heads believed that the botched response stemmed from George Bush's indifference to black suffering.
Alienation has consequences. Amid the revolutionary fervour of the 1960s, says Mr McWhorter, many blacks learned that “America's racism rendered it unworthy of any self-regarding black person's embrace and that therefore blacks were exempt from mainstream standards of conduct.” The conventional wisdom about ghettos—best expressed in William Julius Wilson's book “When Work Disappears”—is that inner cities decayed because factories moved away. But the jobs often moved only a couple of bus rides away. Noting that millions of blacks moved halfway across the country to find work during the “great migration” in the early 20th century, Mr McWhorter wonders why so many of their descendants failed to follow suit.
He offers two explanations. First, a huge expansion of open-ended welfare in the 1960s enabled mothers to subsist without work. Until the mid-1990s, welfare often paid better than an entry-level job. Second, the counter-culture taught young blacks that working for “chump change” was beneath their dignity.
Bill Clinton fixed welfare and pushed millions of jobless women into work. Violent crime has also fallen sharply since the 1990s, despite the best efforts of gangster rappers to glorify it. Previously dysfunctional cities, such as New York and Washington, DC, are now soberly governed and better places to live in.
Yet many African-Americans are intensely gloomy. In a poll last year, only 44% said they expected life for blacks to get better, down from 57% in 1986. The subprime mortgage crisis, which will cost many black families their homes this year, will surely deepen the gloom.
Some blacks contend that racism has simply gone underground. Ellis Cose, a journalist, once wrote that even middle-class blacks suffer constant subtle racial slights, and that these are so distressing that they “are in the end most of what life is”. Other blacks think he exaggerates. Sometimes, says Mr McWhorter, the assistant trailing you in a store is just trying to sell you something.
If Barack Obama can only...
Taking the longer view, there is much to cheer. In every way that can be measured (a big caveat), racism has diminished in the past two generations. Inter-racial marriages are up sevenfold since 1970. Young Americans are far less likely to express racial animosity than their elders, suggesting that as old bigots die, they will not be replaced. And if Mr Obama becomes president, it would “raise the ceiling for everyone,” says Robert Franklin, the president of Morehouse, a black college in Atlanta.
“For me, racism is not going to be an obstacle,” says DeWayne Powell, a student at Morehouse. He recalls an incident when, en route to drop off his college application, he stopped to ask for directions. A white receptionist asked sneeringly whether he could read. “I laughed,” he says. “I thought: I'm on my way to fulfil my destiny, and you're stuck behind that glass.”
May 8th 2008 From The Economist
Almost there
Obama deserves the nomination. It is not yet clear whether he deserves the presidency
IN CARTOONS there is often a moment when a hapless character, having galloped over a cliff, is still unaware of the fact and hangs suspended in the air, legs pumping wildly, until realisation dawns, gravity intervenes and downfall ensues. Hillary Clinton's campaign looks a bit like that this week. After her heavy loss in North Carolina and her barely perceptible victory in Indiana, a state she needed to carry triumphantly, Mrs Clinton's campaign is surely close to its end.
As The Economist went to press, Mrs Clinton was publicly still promising to keep on fighting right the way to the Denver convention. That remains her right. But it is hard to see what she, her party or her country can gain from the struggle.
This is largely to do with mathematics. After this week's two primaries, Barack Obama now leads by 166 elected delegates, and counting in the declared “superdelegate” party bigwigs only reduces his lead to 152. A mere six states are still in play. Mrs Clinton would stand a good chance in the first two, West Virginia and Kentucky. But thanks to the Democrats' proportional system, all the states will divide their delegates fairly closely. Mrs Clinton thus needs to win around 70% of the remaining superdelegates—a tall order when she will be behind in the popular vote. Even if she manages to get the hitherto disqualified primaries in Florida and Michigan counted (which, as it stands, would be unfair because nobody campaigned in one and Mr Obama was not on the ballot in the other), then she will come up short in terms of delegates and almost certainly in the popular vote count as well.
If Mrs Clinton bows out in the next week or so, her reputation as a tough fighter—one who has definitively forged a personality separate from her husband's—will have been enhanced. The only justification for her struggling on (assuming the money is there for her to do so) and probably plunging her party into legal warfare, would be the idea that her opponent is somehow unworthy of the nomination—in particular that Mr Obama is bound to lose in November, or that he is bound to be a poor president.
The arugula challenge
Neither charge stands up. This newspaper has hardly embraced Obamamania: we would still like to know more about what the young senator stands for; we have been appalled by some of the anti-capitalist rhetoric he (like Mrs Clinton) has spouted on the campaign trail; we worry about his strategy for leaving Iraq. But Mr Obama has plainly jumped over most of the hurdles the primary season has laid in front of him.
True, Mrs Clinton seems more popular among white working- and middle-class Americans. That puts Mr Obama at something of a disadvantage against John McCain, the Republican nominee. But arguments about Mr Obama's allure to white voters boil down rather too often to a coded argument about race: would America elect a black man? The United States still has big problems with race (see article), but its effect in the general election may be exaggerated.
Mr Obama's main problem with white voters may have more to do with class than race. To the white working man and woman, he has been seen too often as an aloof elitist, who can't drink whisky, displays a suspicious familiarity with the price of an arugula salad and memorably bowled a deplorable 37 in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Toffishness doomed John Kerry; but with Mr Obama, a child of a single mother who sometimes used food stamps, that picture is surely reversible.
Meanwhile, Mr Obama attracts other voters in a way Mrs Clinton never has. For every white bigot who switches sides because of Mr Obama's skin colour, there is likely to be a white independent—especially a young one—running to support him. The data show that young people, both black and white, prefer Mr Obama. Against Mrs Clinton, Mr McCain might have swept up all the independents; with Mr Obama he will have to split them. Mr Obama has raised money from close to 1.5m individuals, far more than anybody else ever has. That will stand him and his party in good stead come November. Each of those donors will be working hard to make sure that their investment is not wasted: an army of footsoldiers to fight the Republicans.
Tested to the point of destruction
The other point of the primary system is to see what somebody is like under pressure, and to measure their presidential character. Mrs Clinton, for instance, has stood out, thus far at least, by her refusal to quit; Mr McCain by his refusal to compromise on either Iraq or free trade. Mr Obama is a less feisty sort, but he has exhibited enormous grace under pressure. In the past few weeks he has had to cope not just with a fresh set of outpourings from his turbulent former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, now mercifully disowned, but also with Mrs Clinton throwing the kitchen sink—and a lot of sharp cutlery—at him. Mr Obama's refusal to follow her (and Mr McCain) in supporting an idiotic summer suspension of the petrol tax, crude economic populism at its worst, was especially notable.
There is one final reason why Mr Obama is almost there. More than any other candidate this year, he has articulated an idea of a nobler America. That is partly because of who he is. When Mr Obama's parents married, in 1960, a union such as theirs, between a white woman and a black man, was illegal in over half of America's states. Now their son stands at the threshold of the White House. But it also has a lot to do with what he says and how he comports himself. Despite considerable provocation, he has never wavered from his commitment to bipartisanship—nor from the idea of America once again engaging with the world. There are severe problems with the details, on which Mr McCain will hopefully push him even further than Mrs Clinton has, but the upside of an Obama presidency remains greater than that of any other candidate.
For all these reasons, Mr Obama in our view now deserves the Democratic nomination. It is surely not worth Mrs Clinton dragging this to the convention. It is time for her, at a moment of her choosing, to concede gracefully and throw the considerable weight of the Clintons behind their party's best hope.
May 8th 2008 From The Economist
IN CARTOONS there is often a moment when a hapless character, having galloped over a cliff, is still unaware of the fact and hangs suspended in the air, legs pumping wildly, until realisation dawns, gravity intervenes and downfall ensues. Hillary Clinton's campaign looks a bit like that this week. After her heavy loss in North Carolina and her barely perceptible victory in Indiana, a state she needed to carry triumphantly, Mrs Clinton's campaign is surely close to its end.
As The Economist went to press, Mrs Clinton was publicly still promising to keep on fighting right the way to the Denver convention. That remains her right. But it is hard to see what she, her party or her country can gain from the struggle.
This is largely to do with mathematics. After this week's two primaries, Barack Obama now leads by 166 elected delegates, and counting in the declared “superdelegate” party bigwigs only reduces his lead to 152. A mere six states are still in play. Mrs Clinton would stand a good chance in the first two, West Virginia and Kentucky. But thanks to the Democrats' proportional system, all the states will divide their delegates fairly closely. Mrs Clinton thus needs to win around 70% of the remaining superdelegates—a tall order when she will be behind in the popular vote. Even if she manages to get the hitherto disqualified primaries in Florida and Michigan counted (which, as it stands, would be unfair because nobody campaigned in one and Mr Obama was not on the ballot in the other), then she will come up short in terms of delegates and almost certainly in the popular vote count as well.
If Mrs Clinton bows out in the next week or so, her reputation as a tough fighter—one who has definitively forged a personality separate from her husband's—will have been enhanced. The only justification for her struggling on (assuming the money is there for her to do so) and probably plunging her party into legal warfare, would be the idea that her opponent is somehow unworthy of the nomination—in particular that Mr Obama is bound to lose in November, or that he is bound to be a poor president.
The arugula challenge
Neither charge stands up. This newspaper has hardly embraced Obamamania: we would still like to know more about what the young senator stands for; we have been appalled by some of the anti-capitalist rhetoric he (like Mrs Clinton) has spouted on the campaign trail; we worry about his strategy for leaving Iraq. But Mr Obama has plainly jumped over most of the hurdles the primary season has laid in front of him.
True, Mrs Clinton seems more popular among white working- and middle-class Americans. That puts Mr Obama at something of a disadvantage against John McCain, the Republican nominee. But arguments about Mr Obama's allure to white voters boil down rather too often to a coded argument about race: would America elect a black man? The United States still has big problems with race (see article), but its effect in the general election may be exaggerated.
Mr Obama's main problem with white voters may have more to do with class than race. To the white working man and woman, he has been seen too often as an aloof elitist, who can't drink whisky, displays a suspicious familiarity with the price of an arugula salad and memorably bowled a deplorable 37 in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Toffishness doomed John Kerry; but with Mr Obama, a child of a single mother who sometimes used food stamps, that picture is surely reversible.
Meanwhile, Mr Obama attracts other voters in a way Mrs Clinton never has. For every white bigot who switches sides because of Mr Obama's skin colour, there is likely to be a white independent—especially a young one—running to support him. The data show that young people, both black and white, prefer Mr Obama. Against Mrs Clinton, Mr McCain might have swept up all the independents; with Mr Obama he will have to split them. Mr Obama has raised money from close to 1.5m individuals, far more than anybody else ever has. That will stand him and his party in good stead come November. Each of those donors will be working hard to make sure that their investment is not wasted: an army of footsoldiers to fight the Republicans.
Tested to the point of destruction
The other point of the primary system is to see what somebody is like under pressure, and to measure their presidential character. Mrs Clinton, for instance, has stood out, thus far at least, by her refusal to quit; Mr McCain by his refusal to compromise on either Iraq or free trade. Mr Obama is a less feisty sort, but he has exhibited enormous grace under pressure. In the past few weeks he has had to cope not just with a fresh set of outpourings from his turbulent former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, now mercifully disowned, but also with Mrs Clinton throwing the kitchen sink—and a lot of sharp cutlery—at him. Mr Obama's refusal to follow her (and Mr McCain) in supporting an idiotic summer suspension of the petrol tax, crude economic populism at its worst, was especially notable.
There is one final reason why Mr Obama is almost there. More than any other candidate this year, he has articulated an idea of a nobler America. That is partly because of who he is. When Mr Obama's parents married, in 1960, a union such as theirs, between a white woman and a black man, was illegal in over half of America's states. Now their son stands at the threshold of the White House. But it also has a lot to do with what he says and how he comports himself. Despite considerable provocation, he has never wavered from his commitment to bipartisanship—nor from the idea of America once again engaging with the world. There are severe problems with the details, on which Mr McCain will hopefully push him even further than Mrs Clinton has, but the upside of an Obama presidency remains greater than that of any other candidate.
For all these reasons, Mr Obama in our view now deserves the Democratic nomination. It is surely not worth Mrs Clinton dragging this to the convention. It is time for her, at a moment of her choosing, to concede gracefully and throw the considerable weight of the Clintons behind their party's best hope.
May 8th 2008 From The Economist
The agony of Gordon Brown
Britain's prime minister is paying sorely for his mistakes. Is he doomed?
WOULD the Labour Party really consider foisting a second unelected prime minister on Britain? Apparently so. Less than a year after Gordon Brown succeeded Tony Blair, the idea of installing a third front man has become thinkable for some of his erstwhile supporters. That it has come to this reflects the astonishing speed of Mr Brown's fall.
Last summer, when the prime minister handled a series of minor crises reasonably competently, he seemed able to turn floodwaters into wine. His long, scheming wait for the top job appeared to have been triumphantly vindicated. Yet in the local elections on May 1st, Labour recorded its worst result in living memory, including the loss of London's mayoralty to the Conservatives. Mr Brown's personal rating has plunged even more violently. His apotheosis, it now seems, has led only to agony. As a result, some Labour MPs are conducting a campaign against him that is likely to damage not only their leader but also their party's chances of re-election.
The fall
It isn't all his fault. Mr Brown is in part the victim of one of the basic laws of politics: gravity. Assuming the premiership after Mr Blair's decade in office, he also inherited an electorate that had grown bored and increasingly hostile to Labour. He was bequeathed a messy party-funding scandal and a Tory opposition under new and (finally) competent management: David Cameron has stolen many of New Labour's ideas (see article). Nor is it Mr Brown's fault that his succession was followed by a dip in the impressively consistent economic growth over which, as chancellor, he presided, and by biting rises in the price of energy and food over which he has little control.
But Mr Brown is responsible for most of what has gone wrong for him. The collapse of Northern Rock is symptomatic of his basic problem: that Labour has been in power long enough for its mistakes to catch up with it. As chancellor, he introduced a badly designed regulation system, with the result that nobody was really in charge of overseeing the banks when the credit crunch hit. He frittered away cash, with the result that the government is going into an economic downturn short of it. He undermined Mr Blair's public-service reforms, with the result that the government has failed to deliver improvements in education and the health service sharp enough to meet voters' rising expectations. He meddled continually with business, with the result that the private sector is howling about red tape. He fiddled with the tax system, including abolishing a tax band designed to help poor people—a change that has ignited a row in his party that he is battling to defuse.
Mr Brown's character does not help. His new job requires a set of traits—ruthlessness, boldness, a malleable charisma, decisiveness—that might not be attractive in a friend but are necessary in a leader. His leadership defects were especially exposed during the hinge of his premiership thus far: the weeks last autumn when he considered holding a general election. The game-playing exposed Mr Brown's efforts to appear ecumenical—the great Tory-hater taking tea with Lady Thatcher, for instance—as so much cynical manipulation. Worst of all was his behaviour after he pulled back. He first comically denied that opinion polls had affected his decision, then over-hastily emulated a crowd-pleasing Tory tax proposal, leaving an enduring impression of intellectual surrender.
That sorry episode unleashed another near-unstoppable political force: momentum. All political news is now interpreted through the refractive lens of Mr Brown's failings. His few good ideas go unrecognised; unrelated mishaps congeal into a narrative of defeat. The Tories, meanwhile, are soaring in the opposite direction. Their momentum is scaring Labour MPs, who made Mr Brown their leader without demur, into distancing themselves from him or embracing outright defeatism—a panicked fickleness that serves only to dig their collective hole deeper.
Can Mr Brown reverse the dynamics? He has been offered no shortage of advice from his party. Turn left, say those who never much cared for the New in New Labour, and in his weakness see a chance to ditch it. Smile more, say others—though when Mr Brown tries to speak human he seems less convincing than when he sticks to macroeconomics. There are a few who, despite the risk of looking chaotically undemocratic, simply enjoin him to go: over half the Labour supporters in a Populus poll for the Times want him out.
Mr Brown can scarcely complain about disloyalty, for he helped to inculcate a taste for plots and mutinies during his long march to Downing Street. But would his removal improve things? From the Labour Party's point of view, there are too many flimsy contenders to replace him and scarcely any serious ones. The struggle to get rid of a leader causes lasting damage—as the Tories, who only recently recovered from the civil war unleashed by the ouster of Lady Thatcher, know well. Besides, the Tories need a huge swing to form a government at the next election, probably in 2010. They are still planning for a hung parliament. Scandal, or an eruption of atavistic, Conservatism may yet weaken Mr Cameron. The new mayor of London, Boris Johnson, now an icon of Tory resurgence, may embarrass his party (see article).
Too early for an execution
From the country's viewpoint, it is even harder to see why Mr Brown needs the coup de grâce just yet. Britain is not being overtly misgoverned, and nobody else in Labour is promising anything radically different. And Mr Brown may yet improve. To do so, he needs to articulate his basic political creed—essentially a meritocracy leavened with egalitarianism—better than he has managed to do so far. And, from this newspaper's point of view, he needs to commit unequivocally to the course of public-service reform eventually set by Mr Blair, then pursue it with dogged competence.
If he does this, especially if the economy recovers, he will have a chance against the Tories. Otherwise, he will go down in history as the worst sort of political failure: the sort who schemes to get a job and then has no idea what to do with it.
May 8th 2008 From The Economist
WOULD the Labour Party really consider foisting a second unelected prime minister on Britain? Apparently so. Less than a year after Gordon Brown succeeded Tony Blair, the idea of installing a third front man has become thinkable for some of his erstwhile supporters. That it has come to this reflects the astonishing speed of Mr Brown's fall.
Last summer, when the prime minister handled a series of minor crises reasonably competently, he seemed able to turn floodwaters into wine. His long, scheming wait for the top job appeared to have been triumphantly vindicated. Yet in the local elections on May 1st, Labour recorded its worst result in living memory, including the loss of London's mayoralty to the Conservatives. Mr Brown's personal rating has plunged even more violently. His apotheosis, it now seems, has led only to agony. As a result, some Labour MPs are conducting a campaign against him that is likely to damage not only their leader but also their party's chances of re-election.
The fall
It isn't all his fault. Mr Brown is in part the victim of one of the basic laws of politics: gravity. Assuming the premiership after Mr Blair's decade in office, he also inherited an electorate that had grown bored and increasingly hostile to Labour. He was bequeathed a messy party-funding scandal and a Tory opposition under new and (finally) competent management: David Cameron has stolen many of New Labour's ideas (see article). Nor is it Mr Brown's fault that his succession was followed by a dip in the impressively consistent economic growth over which, as chancellor, he presided, and by biting rises in the price of energy and food over which he has little control.
But Mr Brown is responsible for most of what has gone wrong for him. The collapse of Northern Rock is symptomatic of his basic problem: that Labour has been in power long enough for its mistakes to catch up with it. As chancellor, he introduced a badly designed regulation system, with the result that nobody was really in charge of overseeing the banks when the credit crunch hit. He frittered away cash, with the result that the government is going into an economic downturn short of it. He undermined Mr Blair's public-service reforms, with the result that the government has failed to deliver improvements in education and the health service sharp enough to meet voters' rising expectations. He meddled continually with business, with the result that the private sector is howling about red tape. He fiddled with the tax system, including abolishing a tax band designed to help poor people—a change that has ignited a row in his party that he is battling to defuse.
Mr Brown's character does not help. His new job requires a set of traits—ruthlessness, boldness, a malleable charisma, decisiveness—that might not be attractive in a friend but are necessary in a leader. His leadership defects were especially exposed during the hinge of his premiership thus far: the weeks last autumn when he considered holding a general election. The game-playing exposed Mr Brown's efforts to appear ecumenical—the great Tory-hater taking tea with Lady Thatcher, for instance—as so much cynical manipulation. Worst of all was his behaviour after he pulled back. He first comically denied that opinion polls had affected his decision, then over-hastily emulated a crowd-pleasing Tory tax proposal, leaving an enduring impression of intellectual surrender.
That sorry episode unleashed another near-unstoppable political force: momentum. All political news is now interpreted through the refractive lens of Mr Brown's failings. His few good ideas go unrecognised; unrelated mishaps congeal into a narrative of defeat. The Tories, meanwhile, are soaring in the opposite direction. Their momentum is scaring Labour MPs, who made Mr Brown their leader without demur, into distancing themselves from him or embracing outright defeatism—a panicked fickleness that serves only to dig their collective hole deeper.
Can Mr Brown reverse the dynamics? He has been offered no shortage of advice from his party. Turn left, say those who never much cared for the New in New Labour, and in his weakness see a chance to ditch it. Smile more, say others—though when Mr Brown tries to speak human he seems less convincing than when he sticks to macroeconomics. There are a few who, despite the risk of looking chaotically undemocratic, simply enjoin him to go: over half the Labour supporters in a Populus poll for the Times want him out.
Mr Brown can scarcely complain about disloyalty, for he helped to inculcate a taste for plots and mutinies during his long march to Downing Street. But would his removal improve things? From the Labour Party's point of view, there are too many flimsy contenders to replace him and scarcely any serious ones. The struggle to get rid of a leader causes lasting damage—as the Tories, who only recently recovered from the civil war unleashed by the ouster of Lady Thatcher, know well. Besides, the Tories need a huge swing to form a government at the next election, probably in 2010. They are still planning for a hung parliament. Scandal, or an eruption of atavistic, Conservatism may yet weaken Mr Cameron. The new mayor of London, Boris Johnson, now an icon of Tory resurgence, may embarrass his party (see article).
Too early for an execution
From the country's viewpoint, it is even harder to see why Mr Brown needs the coup de grâce just yet. Britain is not being overtly misgoverned, and nobody else in Labour is promising anything radically different. And Mr Brown may yet improve. To do so, he needs to articulate his basic political creed—essentially a meritocracy leavened with egalitarianism—better than he has managed to do so far. And, from this newspaper's point of view, he needs to commit unequivocally to the course of public-service reform eventually set by Mr Blair, then pursue it with dogged competence.
If he does this, especially if the economy recovers, he will have a chance against the Tories. Otherwise, he will go down in history as the worst sort of political failure: the sort who schemes to get a job and then has no idea what to do with it.
May 8th 2008 From The Economist
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Friday, May 2, 2008
Angry China
The recent glimpses of a snarling China should scare the country's government as much as the world
CHINA is in a frightening mood. The sight of thousands of Chinese people waving xenophobic fists suggests that a country on its way to becoming a superpower may turn out to be a more dangerous force than optimists had hoped. But it isn't just foreigners who should be worried by these scenes: the Chinese government, which has encouraged this outburst of nationalism, should also be afraid.
For three decades, having shed communism in all but the name of its ruling party, China's government has justified its monopolistic hold on power through economic advance. Many Chinese enjoy a prosperity undreamt of by their forefathers. For them, though, it is no longer enough to be reminded of the grim austerity of their parents' childhoods. They need new aspirations.
The government's solution is to promise them that China will be restored to its rightful place at the centre of world affairs. Hence the pride at winning the Olympics, and the fury at the embarrassing protests during the torch relay. But the appeal to nationalism is a double-edged sword: while it provides a useful outlet for domestic discontents, it could easily turn on the government itself.
A million mutinies
The torch relay has galvanised protests about all manner of alleged Chinese crimes: in Tibet, in China's broader human-rights record, in its cosy relations with repellent regimes. And these in turn have drawn counter-protests from thousands of expatriate Chinese, from Chinese within the country and on the internet.
Chinese rage has focused on the alleged “anti-China” bias of the Western press, which is accused of ignoring violence by Tibetans in the unrest in March. From this starting-point China's defenders have gone on to denounce the entire edifice of Western liberal democracy as a sham. Using its tenets to criticise China is, they claim, sheer hypocrisy. They cite further evidence of double standards: having exported its dirtiest industries to China, the West wants the country to curb its carbon emissions, potentially impeding its growth and depriving newly well-off Chinese of their right to a motor car. And as the presidential election campaign in America progresses, more China-bashing can be expected, with protectionism disguised as noble fury at “coddling dictators”.
China's rage is out of all proportion to the alleged offences. It reflects a fear that a resentful, threatened West is determined to thwart China's rise. The Olympics have become a symbol of China's right to the respect it is due. Protests, criticism and boycott threats are seen as part of a broader refusal to accept and accommodate China.
There is no doubt genuine fury in China at these offences; yet the impression the response gives of a people united behind the government is an illusion. China, like India, is a land of a million mutinies now. Legions of farmers are angry that their land has been swallowed up for building by greedy local officials. People everywhere are aghast at the poisoning of China's air, rivers and lakes in the race for growth. Hardworking, honest citizens chafe at corrupt officials who treat them with contempt and get rich quick. And the party still makes an ass of the law and a mockery of justice.
Herein lies the danger for the government. Popular anger, once roused, can easily switch targets. This weekend China will be commemorating an event seen as pivotal in its long revolution—the protests on May 4th 1919 against the humiliation of China by the Versailles treaty (which bequeathed German “concessions” in China to Japan). The Communist Party had roots in that movement. Now, as then, protests at perceived slights against China's dignity could turn against a government accused of not doing enough to safeguard it.
Remember the ides of May
Western businessmen and policymakers are pulled in opposite directions by Chinese anger. As the sponsors of the Olympics have learned to their cost, while consumer- and shareholder-activists in the West demand they take a stand against perceived Chinese abuses, in China itself firms' partners and customers are all too ready to take offence. Western policymakers also face a difficult balancing act. They need to recognise that China has come a long way very quickly, and offers its citizens new opportunities and even new freedoms, though these are still far short of what would constitute democracy. Yet that does not mean they should pander to China's pride. Western leaders have a duty to raise concerns about human rights, Tibet and other “sensitive” subjects. They do not need to resign themselves to ineffectiveness: up to a point, pressure works: China has been modestly helpful over Myanmar, North Korea and Sudan. It has even agreed to reopen talks with the Dalai Lama's representatives. This has happened because of, not despite, criticism from abroad.
Pessimists fear that if China faces too much such pressure, hardliners within the ruling elite will triumph over the “moderates” in charge now. But even if they did, it is hard to see how they could end the 30-year-old process of opening up and turn China in on itself. This unprecedented phenomenon, of the rapid integration into the world of its most populous country, seems irreversible. There are things that could be done to make it easier to manage—including reform of the architecture of the global institutions that reflect a 60-year-old world order. But the world and China have to learn to live with each other.
For China, that means learning to respect foreigners' rights to engage it even on its “internal affairs”. A more measured response to such criticism is necessary not only to China's great-power ambitions, but also to its internal stability; for while the government may distract Chinese people from their domestic discontents by breathing fire at foreigners, such anger, once roused, can run out of control. In the end, China's leaders will have to deal with those frustrations head-on, by tackling the pollution, the corruption and the human-rights abuses that contribute to the country's dangerous mood. The Chinese people will demand it.
CHINA is in a frightening mood. The sight of thousands of Chinese people waving xenophobic fists suggests that a country on its way to becoming a superpower may turn out to be a more dangerous force than optimists had hoped. But it isn't just foreigners who should be worried by these scenes: the Chinese government, which has encouraged this outburst of nationalism, should also be afraid.
For three decades, having shed communism in all but the name of its ruling party, China's government has justified its monopolistic hold on power through economic advance. Many Chinese enjoy a prosperity undreamt of by their forefathers. For them, though, it is no longer enough to be reminded of the grim austerity of their parents' childhoods. They need new aspirations.
The government's solution is to promise them that China will be restored to its rightful place at the centre of world affairs. Hence the pride at winning the Olympics, and the fury at the embarrassing protests during the torch relay. But the appeal to nationalism is a double-edged sword: while it provides a useful outlet for domestic discontents, it could easily turn on the government itself.
A million mutinies
The torch relay has galvanised protests about all manner of alleged Chinese crimes: in Tibet, in China's broader human-rights record, in its cosy relations with repellent regimes. And these in turn have drawn counter-protests from thousands of expatriate Chinese, from Chinese within the country and on the internet.
Chinese rage has focused on the alleged “anti-China” bias of the Western press, which is accused of ignoring violence by Tibetans in the unrest in March. From this starting-point China's defenders have gone on to denounce the entire edifice of Western liberal democracy as a sham. Using its tenets to criticise China is, they claim, sheer hypocrisy. They cite further evidence of double standards: having exported its dirtiest industries to China, the West wants the country to curb its carbon emissions, potentially impeding its growth and depriving newly well-off Chinese of their right to a motor car. And as the presidential election campaign in America progresses, more China-bashing can be expected, with protectionism disguised as noble fury at “coddling dictators”.
China's rage is out of all proportion to the alleged offences. It reflects a fear that a resentful, threatened West is determined to thwart China's rise. The Olympics have become a symbol of China's right to the respect it is due. Protests, criticism and boycott threats are seen as part of a broader refusal to accept and accommodate China.
There is no doubt genuine fury in China at these offences; yet the impression the response gives of a people united behind the government is an illusion. China, like India, is a land of a million mutinies now. Legions of farmers are angry that their land has been swallowed up for building by greedy local officials. People everywhere are aghast at the poisoning of China's air, rivers and lakes in the race for growth. Hardworking, honest citizens chafe at corrupt officials who treat them with contempt and get rich quick. And the party still makes an ass of the law and a mockery of justice.
Herein lies the danger for the government. Popular anger, once roused, can easily switch targets. This weekend China will be commemorating an event seen as pivotal in its long revolution—the protests on May 4th 1919 against the humiliation of China by the Versailles treaty (which bequeathed German “concessions” in China to Japan). The Communist Party had roots in that movement. Now, as then, protests at perceived slights against China's dignity could turn against a government accused of not doing enough to safeguard it.
Remember the ides of May
Western businessmen and policymakers are pulled in opposite directions by Chinese anger. As the sponsors of the Olympics have learned to their cost, while consumer- and shareholder-activists in the West demand they take a stand against perceived Chinese abuses, in China itself firms' partners and customers are all too ready to take offence. Western policymakers also face a difficult balancing act. They need to recognise that China has come a long way very quickly, and offers its citizens new opportunities and even new freedoms, though these are still far short of what would constitute democracy. Yet that does not mean they should pander to China's pride. Western leaders have a duty to raise concerns about human rights, Tibet and other “sensitive” subjects. They do not need to resign themselves to ineffectiveness: up to a point, pressure works: China has been modestly helpful over Myanmar, North Korea and Sudan. It has even agreed to reopen talks with the Dalai Lama's representatives. This has happened because of, not despite, criticism from abroad.
Pessimists fear that if China faces too much such pressure, hardliners within the ruling elite will triumph over the “moderates” in charge now. But even if they did, it is hard to see how they could end the 30-year-old process of opening up and turn China in on itself. This unprecedented phenomenon, of the rapid integration into the world of its most populous country, seems irreversible. There are things that could be done to make it easier to manage—including reform of the architecture of the global institutions that reflect a 60-year-old world order. But the world and China have to learn to live with each other.
For China, that means learning to respect foreigners' rights to engage it even on its “internal affairs”. A more measured response to such criticism is necessary not only to China's great-power ambitions, but also to its internal stability; for while the government may distract Chinese people from their domestic discontents by breathing fire at foreigners, such anger, once roused, can run out of control. In the end, China's leaders will have to deal with those frustrations head-on, by tackling the pollution, the corruption and the human-rights abuses that contribute to the country's dangerous mood. The Chinese people will demand it.
May 1st 2008 From The Economist
Some of America’s most venerable newspapers face extinction, unless they evolve
THE New York Times once epitomised all that was great about American newspapers; now it symbolises its industry’s deep malaise. The Grey Lady’s circulation is tumbling, down another 3.9% in the latest data from America’s Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC). Its advertising revenues are down, too (12.5% lower in March than a year earlier), as is the share price of its owner, the New York Times Company, up from its January low but still over 20% below what it was last July. On April 29th Standard & Poor’s cut the firm’s debt rating to one notch above junk.
At the company’s annual meeting a week earlier, its embattled publisher, Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger, attempted to quash rumours that his family is preparing to jettison the firm it has owned since 1896. Carnage is expected soon as dozens of what were once the safest jobs in journalism are axed, since too few of the staff have accepted a generous offer of voluntary redundancy.
Pick almost any American newspaper company and you can tell a similar story. The ABC reported that for the 530 biggest dailies, average circulation in the past six months was 3.6% lower than in the same period a year earlier; for Sunday papers, it was 4.6% lower. Ad revenues are plunging across the board: by 22.3% at Media General, for example. In 2007 total newspaper revenues fell to $42.2 billion, not to be sniffed at, certainly, but a lot less than the peak of $48.7 billion in 2000.
Much of this decline is being blamed on the rise of the internet, which offers free, round-the-clock coverage, and which has provided a new, better home for classified advertising, once the bedrock of most newspapers’ revenue. But some of the fall in revenues is actually due to the economic slowdown in America, and especially in the housing market, which contributes a large slice of classified advertising.
The credit crunch has also come at a bad time for a group of new newspaper owners, who used loans that were readily available until last summer to buy their way into the business, but must now be having second thoughts. Sam Zell, a property tycoon who bought the Tribune Company, the owner of papers such as the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, is finding the going harder than expected. He is trying to sell assets such Newsday, a New York tabloid that is the subject of a bidding war between two other moguls, Mort Zuckerman and Rupert Murdoch, and perhaps other firms.
Mr Murdoch’s enthusiasm is a reminder that not all newspapers are suffering. He bought the Wall Street Journal last year, and is investing in a vigorous expansion of its political coverage and international news. This foray on to the traditional turf of the Times seems to be working: the Journal’s circulation is rising. Another flourishing outlet is the web-only Huffington Post, which is fast evolving beyond a series of political blogs into a fully fledged online newspaper with liberal sensibilities close to those of the New York Times.
Industry experts such as Lauren Rich Fine of Kent State University do not think that the Times is responding forcefully enough. “Now is the time to beef up its business section,” she says. Ms Fine also points out that although all newspapers are being buffeted by the internet, their ability to respond will probably depend on whether their audiences are national, metropolitan or local. The first category can afford to invest in distinctive international or business coverage, while the last can prosper by becoming “more intensely local”. But she fears for the big metropolitan newspapers, which may find themselves trapped in the middle.
Not all is lost, however. Plenty of innovation is taking place, particularly at local papers, as the latest “Newspaper Next” report from the American Press Institute, an industry group, makes clear. It quotes 24 examples of newspapers becoming “information and connection utilities”, through such offerings as local internet forums.
The hero for industry optimists is Brian Tierney, a former public-relations executive who led a group of investors that borrowed heavily to buy Philadelphia’s two main dailies. He has since revived them with a vigorous marketing drive. He is also finding new ways to drum up advertising, such as introducing a business column sponsored by a local bank. People said pigs will fly before our circulation rises, Mr Tierney recalled in a recent speech, before recounting how he celebrated a rise in circulation by projecting flying pigs onto the walls of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
At the company’s annual meeting a week earlier, its embattled publisher, Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger, attempted to quash rumours that his family is preparing to jettison the firm it has owned since 1896. Carnage is expected soon as dozens of what were once the safest jobs in journalism are axed, since too few of the staff have accepted a generous offer of voluntary redundancy.
Pick almost any American newspaper company and you can tell a similar story. The ABC reported that for the 530 biggest dailies, average circulation in the past six months was 3.6% lower than in the same period a year earlier; for Sunday papers, it was 4.6% lower. Ad revenues are plunging across the board: by 22.3% at Media General, for example. In 2007 total newspaper revenues fell to $42.2 billion, not to be sniffed at, certainly, but a lot less than the peak of $48.7 billion in 2000.
Much of this decline is being blamed on the rise of the internet, which offers free, round-the-clock coverage, and which has provided a new, better home for classified advertising, once the bedrock of most newspapers’ revenue. But some of the fall in revenues is actually due to the economic slowdown in America, and especially in the housing market, which contributes a large slice of classified advertising.
The credit crunch has also come at a bad time for a group of new newspaper owners, who used loans that were readily available until last summer to buy their way into the business, but must now be having second thoughts. Sam Zell, a property tycoon who bought the Tribune Company, the owner of papers such as the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, is finding the going harder than expected. He is trying to sell assets such Newsday, a New York tabloid that is the subject of a bidding war between two other moguls, Mort Zuckerman and Rupert Murdoch, and perhaps other firms.
Mr Murdoch’s enthusiasm is a reminder that not all newspapers are suffering. He bought the Wall Street Journal last year, and is investing in a vigorous expansion of its political coverage and international news. This foray on to the traditional turf of the Times seems to be working: the Journal’s circulation is rising. Another flourishing outlet is the web-only Huffington Post, which is fast evolving beyond a series of political blogs into a fully fledged online newspaper with liberal sensibilities close to those of the New York Times.
Industry experts such as Lauren Rich Fine of Kent State University do not think that the Times is responding forcefully enough. “Now is the time to beef up its business section,” she says. Ms Fine also points out that although all newspapers are being buffeted by the internet, their ability to respond will probably depend on whether their audiences are national, metropolitan or local. The first category can afford to invest in distinctive international or business coverage, while the last can prosper by becoming “more intensely local”. But she fears for the big metropolitan newspapers, which may find themselves trapped in the middle.
Not all is lost, however. Plenty of innovation is taking place, particularly at local papers, as the latest “Newspaper Next” report from the American Press Institute, an industry group, makes clear. It quotes 24 examples of newspapers becoming “information and connection utilities”, through such offerings as local internet forums.
The hero for industry optimists is Brian Tierney, a former public-relations executive who led a group of investors that borrowed heavily to buy Philadelphia’s two main dailies. He has since revived them with a vigorous marketing drive. He is also finding new ways to drum up advertising, such as introducing a business column sponsored by a local bank. People said pigs will fly before our circulation rises, Mr Tierney recalled in a recent speech, before recounting how he celebrated a rise in circulation by projecting flying pigs onto the walls of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
May 1st 2008 NEW YORK From The Economist
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Two Days to Go!
Today, I went to see the course from Lisbon to Fatima... It´s true: there are 100 miles between the two places! And what is more appealing is that, apparently, there´s nothing special to see during the running. It will only make the route tougher! I don´t believe that the distance is doable in less thant 2 days: during the night I think it will be impossible to run. Now, it will be totally true: I will have to
BEAT THE ADAMASTOR!
BEAT THE ADAMASTOR!
Candidates' views on oil and the climate
Turning green?
DO VOTERS worry more about climate change, America’s dependence on foreign oil or the cost of filling their petrol tanks? The last may well be the most pressing. This week the president of OPEC, Chakib Khelil, raised the spectre of the price of a barrel of oil hitting an eye-popping $200. Even at nearly $120 a barrel, the current price, motorists are squealing. A poll released on Tuesday April 29th suggests that the price of petrol is the single greatest concern among voters today.
No wonder that the three candidates for president are tapping into these issues. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the Democratic rivals, both say they will do something about climate change and energy security. So does the Republican candidate-designate John McCain, and unusually forcefully for a member of his party. The politicians have been spurred along by a variety of forces, from Al Gore pointing to evidence of man’s part in causing climate change, to pressure from religious environmentalists who see a God-given duty to act as stewards of the planet. Foreign-policy types, too, worry about America’s reliance on oil from the Middle East.
Promises of fixes, from both sides of the aisle, typically involve America’s optimistic view of its technological prowess. New fuels and greener cars are seen as a big part of a solution to climate change. But, in a sign of how the three candidates are distinct from George Bush, they also favour plans for capping carbon emissions and for the introduction of a system for trading carbon permits.
The immediate concern, however, is the cost of petrol. Combined with higher food prices and a crashing housing market, energy costs are making middle-class and poorer Americans feel vulnerable. Thus the politicians promise swift action. Mrs Clinton produced the biggest basket of ideas in a speech on Monday. Following an earlier proposal by Mr McCain, she wants to suspend the federal petrol tax of 18.4 cents for the summer driving season. This would be paid for with a windfall-tax on oil companies. Exxon, for example, is sure to announce bumper profits on Thursday. She wants to ban gasoline-price “gouging” and says she would go after “speculators” whom she says are driving up prices. And she talks of hauling OPEC to the World Trade Organisation and even to American courts for anti-competitive behaviour.
Not much of this would make a difference. Her suggestion that no more oil should now be added to America’s nearly-full Strategic Petroleum Reserve would have only a marginal impact. Hitting oil companies with windfall taxes may generate revenue, which Mrs Clinton wants to put into research for green technologies (and hopefully generating what she calls “green-collar” jobs in hard-hit rust-belt states). But higher taxes could also discourage exploration and investment, curtailing supply and driving up oil prices again.
Energy economists dispute whether speculators are really responsible for much of oil’s current high price, and thus whether attacking them would do much good. In any case, spotting speculators might be tricky: oil traders, including arms of big firms such as Exxon and Chevron, help to keep the market liquid and thus generally to keep prices lower than they might otherwise be. Clamping down on them might have the opposite effect. As for “gouging”, it is not clear how much of that, versus reasonable price increases, is really going on. Isolated cases are already being prosecuted and the more could follow, for example on anti-competition grounds. Talk of hauling OPEC countries to court, essentially to force them to stop acting like OPEC, may play well among voters but seems most unlikely to convince producers to turn on the taps.
The most obvious thing that the government could do to lower oil prices would be to cut taxes, as Mr McCain and Mrs Clinton suggest. But this, of course, would encourage driving and would send more profits to the oil companies and to the exporting countries. Mr Obama has opposed suspending the tax (although he joins Mrs Clinton in wanting a windfall tax on oil companies) saying it would save consumers less than $30 over the summer, and would take much-needed money out of the fund that maintains American roads and bridges. Mrs Clinton, for her part, says that her windfall tax would prevent any raid on the highway trust fund.
Voters have good reason to worry about energy, security and their environment. But they may have to get used to more pricey petrol. Historically cheap gasoline, partly as a result of low taxes, has enabled what even George Bush has called an American addiction to oil. More pricey oil might be one factor that reduces carbon emissions. And the candidates to be president will not, in any case, have the power to pull the oil price down again, whatever they may promise now.
Apr 30th 2008 NEW YORK From Economist.com
DO VOTERS worry more about climate change, America’s dependence on foreign oil or the cost of filling their petrol tanks? The last may well be the most pressing. This week the president of OPEC, Chakib Khelil, raised the spectre of the price of a barrel of oil hitting an eye-popping $200. Even at nearly $120 a barrel, the current price, motorists are squealing. A poll released on Tuesday April 29th suggests that the price of petrol is the single greatest concern among voters today.
No wonder that the three candidates for president are tapping into these issues. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the Democratic rivals, both say they will do something about climate change and energy security. So does the Republican candidate-designate John McCain, and unusually forcefully for a member of his party. The politicians have been spurred along by a variety of forces, from Al Gore pointing to evidence of man’s part in causing climate change, to pressure from religious environmentalists who see a God-given duty to act as stewards of the planet. Foreign-policy types, too, worry about America’s reliance on oil from the Middle East.
Promises of fixes, from both sides of the aisle, typically involve America’s optimistic view of its technological prowess. New fuels and greener cars are seen as a big part of a solution to climate change. But, in a sign of how the three candidates are distinct from George Bush, they also favour plans for capping carbon emissions and for the introduction of a system for trading carbon permits.
The immediate concern, however, is the cost of petrol. Combined with higher food prices and a crashing housing market, energy costs are making middle-class and poorer Americans feel vulnerable. Thus the politicians promise swift action. Mrs Clinton produced the biggest basket of ideas in a speech on Monday. Following an earlier proposal by Mr McCain, she wants to suspend the federal petrol tax of 18.4 cents for the summer driving season. This would be paid for with a windfall-tax on oil companies. Exxon, for example, is sure to announce bumper profits on Thursday. She wants to ban gasoline-price “gouging” and says she would go after “speculators” whom she says are driving up prices. And she talks of hauling OPEC to the World Trade Organisation and even to American courts for anti-competitive behaviour.
Not much of this would make a difference. Her suggestion that no more oil should now be added to America’s nearly-full Strategic Petroleum Reserve would have only a marginal impact. Hitting oil companies with windfall taxes may generate revenue, which Mrs Clinton wants to put into research for green technologies (and hopefully generating what she calls “green-collar” jobs in hard-hit rust-belt states). But higher taxes could also discourage exploration and investment, curtailing supply and driving up oil prices again.
Energy economists dispute whether speculators are really responsible for much of oil’s current high price, and thus whether attacking them would do much good. In any case, spotting speculators might be tricky: oil traders, including arms of big firms such as Exxon and Chevron, help to keep the market liquid and thus generally to keep prices lower than they might otherwise be. Clamping down on them might have the opposite effect. As for “gouging”, it is not clear how much of that, versus reasonable price increases, is really going on. Isolated cases are already being prosecuted and the more could follow, for example on anti-competition grounds. Talk of hauling OPEC countries to court, essentially to force them to stop acting like OPEC, may play well among voters but seems most unlikely to convince producers to turn on the taps.
The most obvious thing that the government could do to lower oil prices would be to cut taxes, as Mr McCain and Mrs Clinton suggest. But this, of course, would encourage driving and would send more profits to the oil companies and to the exporting countries. Mr Obama has opposed suspending the tax (although he joins Mrs Clinton in wanting a windfall tax on oil companies) saying it would save consumers less than $30 over the summer, and would take much-needed money out of the fund that maintains American roads and bridges. Mrs Clinton, for her part, says that her windfall tax would prevent any raid on the highway trust fund.
Voters have good reason to worry about energy, security and their environment. But they may have to get used to more pricey petrol. Historically cheap gasoline, partly as a result of low taxes, has enabled what even George Bush has called an American addiction to oil. More pricey oil might be one factor that reduces carbon emissions. And the candidates to be president will not, in any case, have the power to pull the oil price down again, whatever they may promise now.
Apr 30th 2008 NEW YORK From Economist.com
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