NewsTrust - All Rated Stories

Lexington: Farmers v greens

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Economist - Nov. 15 (Special Report) - In the Senate, however, every state gets exactly two votes. Sparsely-populated states are thus hugely over-represented: senators representing a mere 11% of America’s population can block any bill, since 60 votes out of 100 are needed to guarantee passage. And many of these states depend on coal, the dirtiest commonly-used fuel.

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The G20 summit: Regaining their balance

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Sep. 26 (News Analysis) - The last time the leaders of the Group of Twenty (G20) met, in London in April, their unenviable task was to steer the world economy away from a 1930s-style depression. They succeeded, thanks to an unprecedented fiscal and monetary gusher and a raft of measures to prop up teetering financial giants. But while stability has returned, much more needs to be done to put economies, and particularly their banking sectors, on a sounder footing. The group’s aim this week in Pittsburgh was to “turn a page on the era of irresponsibility” by adopting reforms to “meet the needs of the 21st century economy.” But writing a new chapter will require agreement on precisely what those needs are, and the final communiqué gave sceptics plenty to chew on.

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Barack Obama and free trade: Economic vandalism

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Sep. 19 (News Analysis) - You can be fairly sure that when a government slips an announcement out at nine o’clock on a Friday night, it is not proud of what it is doing. That is one of the only things that makes sense about Barack Obama’s decision to break a commitment he, along with other G20 leaders, reaffirmed last April: to avoid protectionist measures at a time of great economic peril. In every other way the president’s decision to slap a 35% tariff on imported Chinese tyres looks like a colossal blunder, confirming his critics’ worst fears about the president’s inability to stand up to his party’s special interests and stick to the centre ground he promised to occupy in office. This newspaper endorsed Mr Obama at last year’s election (see article) in part because he had surrounded himself with enough intelligent centrists. We also said that the eventual success of his presidency would be based on two things: resuscitating the world economy; and bringing the new emerging powers into the Western order. He has now hurt both objectives.

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Missile defence in Europe: Pie in the sky

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Sep. 18 (News Analysis) - Maybe some jam tomorrow, but none today. That is the American message to its most stalwart allies in the ex-communist world as Barack Obama’s administration shelves plans to deploy ten interceptor rockets in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic.

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A year after Lehman Brothers collapsed: The promised bland

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Sep. 15 (Editorial) - “THIS sucker could go down.” George Bush’s verdict during the worst of the financial crisis a year ago was crude but penetrating. Barack Obama, delivering a speech in New York on September 14th to mark the anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ failure, managed the opposite trick. He produced plenty of elegant phrases but little that was new, and quite a bit that was confusing.

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Green policies: Sacre vert!

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Sep. 12 (News Analysis) - WHAT is small, French and green? President Nicolas Sarkozy, who proposed on Thursday September 10th a tax on carbon-emitting sources of fuel. If it goes ahead, 17 euros ($25) will be levied, initially, per tonne of carbon dioxide. Although France would not be the first country with a general carbon tax—Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway already have them—it would be the largest economy yet.

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Free speech for me, but not for thee

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Sep. 11 (Editorial) - HILLARY: THE MOVIE” is unwatchable. From the first frame, it presents a dreary caricature of Hillary Clinton as a power-crazed harpy with no redeeming qualities. She is cynical, manipulative, dishonest and ruthless—and so on for 90 excruciating minutes. Wasn’t there at least a dog she once omitted to kick, or a child whose lollipop she didn’t steal?

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Israel and the West Bank: Prepare to freeze

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Sep. 10 (News Analysis) - THE Israeli government’s approval this week of 455 new housing units in the West Bank settlements was announced with a wink and a nod, and seems to have elicited winks and nods all round. Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, is expected soon to agree, reluctantly and under American pressure, to a temporary freeze on settlement building, and the new homes are widely seen as an act of face-saving political expediency on his part.

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The electrification of motoring: The electric-fuel-trade acid test

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Sep. 03 (Special Report) - Internal-combustion engines have dominated mechanised road transport for a century, but the past year or so has seen the arrival of a dribble of vehicles driven by electric motors. That these are the products of small, new firms, or of established non-carmaking companies, supports the Bower-Christensen thesis. But next year the big boys, encouraged by legislative pressure to produce low-emission vehicles, will leap out of the boiling water and join in. Their progress towards greenery will be an important theme of the Frankfurt motor show this month.

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Bombs in Iraq: Another bloody mess

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Aug. 13 (News Analysis) - The latest bombings in Iraq suggest that Sunni extremists are trying, afresh, to whip up war.

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Twelve questions for Anthony Zinni

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Aug. 02 (Interview) - Anthony Zinni likes to take on difficult tasks. Early in his 35-year career in America's Marine Corps he was sent to Vietnam, where he suffered injury and illness while serving as an infantry advisor to local forces and later as a company commander. He would eventually rise to the rank of four-star general and command all of America's forces in the Middle East. Following his retirement from the Marines in 2000 he served as America's special envoy to Israel and the Palestinian Authority under George Bush. More recently he was considered for the post of ambassador to Iraq under Barack Obama (more on that later).

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Pakistan and the Taliban: Better news from the frontier

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Jul. 27 (News Analysis) - Long reviled for their reluctance to fight the Islamist militancy that they themselves helped unleash, Pakistan’s generals have a rare victory to boast of. In a three-month offensive against the Taliban in North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), the army has regained control of the lofty Malakand region, killing hundreds of militants. This has done less damage to civilian life and property than two previous, failed offensives in Malakand. The local Pushtuns, over 2m of whom were displaced by the fighting, are now returning home. They mostly support the army’s efforts. This success is not hard to fathom. The Taliban’s takeover in Malakand caused an outcry not just in Washington, DC, but also in Pakistan’s own media. Many blamed it on the army, which had made several truces with the militants in Malakand. Thus goaded, the top brass launched an unusually serious attack. Having previously failed to control Swat, the Taliban’s regional base, with a division, the generals sent in three divisions. Rather than allowing the militants to withdraw in good order, this time they chased them into Malakand’s hills.

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Google v Microsoft: Clash of the titans

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Jul. 09 (News Analysis) - The announcement came as a humble blog post on Google’s corporate website late on Tuesday July 7th, but it delivers what is likely to be a dramatic shake-up for the information-technology (IT) industry. By promising to release, at some point later this year, an operating system for personal computers the online giant is launching a direct attack on Microsoft, the world’s biggest software firm.

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Migration and climate change: A new (under) class of travellers

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - By Addis Ababa, Lokichoggio - Jun. 29 (Special Report) - The International Organisation for Migration thinks there will be 200m climate-change migrants by 2050, when the world’s population is set to peak at 9 billion. Others put the total at 700m.

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America’s regulatory reforms: Obama’s opening shot

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Jun. 18 (News Analysis) - HAVING spent much of the past year putting out fires, America’s leaders are now turning their attention to preventing future blazes. Barack Obama unveiled proposals on Wednesday June 17th that would refashion the federal rules governing almost every corner of finance, pushing government much more deeply into private markets and partially rolling back a quarter-century of liberalisation.

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Iran's election: A disputed victory

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Jun. 13 (News Report) - In a confused denouement to one of the more exciting political dramas since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, electoral authorities declared the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the likely victor in a fiercely fought contest for Iran’s presidency. His claim to a 65% landslide appeared to bury the hopes of the main challenger, Hosein Mousavi, a former prime minister and relative liberal whose campaign gained rapid momentum in its last days, inspiring huge, boisterous street demonstrations. The two other contenders trailed far behind in the official count, with barely 3% of the vote between them.

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Restraints on executive pay: Attacking the corporate gravy train

Fri, 29 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - May. 29 (Special Report) - Strict limits on performance-related pay at banks could also do more harm than good. One reason American business has thrived for so long is that its leaders have had a stronger incentive to perform well than those of other countries (see chart 1). Limiting the ability of financial institutions to pay sensible bonuses will simply prolong their woes. Edward Liddy, who was brought in to run American International Group (AIG) after the ailing insurer was rescued by the government, recently gave warning that executives cannot be expected to toil 24 hours a day without being adequately compensated for doing so. Mr Liddy, who plans to leave AIG once a successor has been found, cut his base salary to $1 a year in November 2008 following howls of protest over the pay of bosses at firms that had received bail-outs.

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North Korea's nuclear test: Here we go again

Tue, 26 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - May. 26 (News Analysis) - If North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Il, hoped to panic southerners, or provoke America and others into rash and aggressive action, he will probably be disappointed. A Russian official on Monday gave warning against any “hysterical” reaction to the latest test by North Korea, but it seems likely that outsiders will not offer Mr Kim the devoted interest that he evidently craves.

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Singh when you're winning

Mon, 25 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - May. 25 (Special Report) - EVER unpredictable, Indian voters delivered their pentennial surprise on May 16th, when over 417m ballots were totted up. Reversing decades of decline, the Congress party had won the country’s month-long election, which ended on May 13th, by a bigger margin than its most enthusiastic cheer-leaders had dared dream of. Congress and its electoral allies won 261 of 543 available seats. With support from a few tiny regional parties and independents, they will have a majority in India’s 15th parliament. On May 20th India’s president, Pratibha Patil, therefore reappointed Manmohan Singh prime minister, making him the first prime minister to achieve this distinction at the end of a five-year term since India’s first, Jawaharlal Nehru.

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Barack Obama's efforts to reform health care

Thu, 14 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - May. 14 (News Analysis) - ... the real test for Mr Obama is health care, and there momentum appears to be on his side. This week health-care-industry officials promised, at his urging, to cut cost-inflation by 1.5 percentage points a year, or $2 trillion over ten years. The promise was largely meaningless: if $2 trillion in savings was lying around, a profit-maximising industry would have found them. And it remains dead-set against Mr Obama’s wish for a public insurance plan that competes with private ones. But the event had symbolic importance. Jim Horney, of the liberal Centre on Budget and Policy Priorities, says it shows the industry will not try to kill this health reform as it killed Bill Clinton’s attempt in 1994.

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Arne Duncan, golden boy of education | The golden boy and the blob

Sat, 09 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - May. 09 (Special Report) - IT IS hard to find anybody with a bad word to say about Arne Duncan, Barack Obama’s young education secretary. Margaret Spellings, his predecessor in the Bush administration, calls him “a visionary leader and fellow reformer”. During his confirmation hearings Lamar Alexander, a senator from Tennessee and himself a former education secretary, sounded more like a lovesick schoolgirl than a member of the opposition party: “I think you’re the best.” Enthusiastic without being over-the-top, pragmatic without being a pushover, he is also the perfect embodiment of mens sana in corpore sano—tall and lean, clean-cut and athletic, a Thomas Arnold for the digital age.

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Resenting the rich

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - By Saugato Datta - Apr. 17 (Poll) - (Online Debate) Vote on this question: This house believes that the rich should pay higher taxes. Do you agree with the motion? 51%voted yes 49%voted no

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Water shortages go global

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Apr. 08 (Special Report) - An alarming number of the world’s great rivers no longer reach the sea. They include the Indus, Rio Grande, Colorado, Murray-Darling and Yellow rivers. These are the arteries of the world’s main grain-growing areas. Freshwater fish populations are in precipitous decline. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, fish stocks in lakes and rivers have fallen roughly 30% since 1970. This is a bigger population fall than that suffered by animals in jungles, temperate forests, savannahs and any other large ecosystem. Half the world’s wetlands, on one estimate, were drained, damaged or destroyed in the 20th century, mainly because, as the volume of fresh water in rivers falls, salt water invades the delta, changing the balance between fresh and salt water. On this evidence, there may be systemic water problems, as well as local disruptions. Two global trends have added to the pressure on water. Both are likely to accelerate over coming decades.

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Divided we stand

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Apr. 02 (News Analysis) - Barack Obama, who remains widely popular at home and abroad, met Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, on Wednesday April 1st. Mr Obama conceded that “We're not going to agree on every point”. On the eve of the G20 summit the two men should be concerned that too little is being done to respond to the worst economic slump since the 1930s.

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Military spending - Up in arms

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Mar. 18 (News Report) - ON TUESDAY March 17th, Russia announced that it would begin a comprehensive rearmament in response to the advance of NATO into parts of the former Soviet Union. And earlier this month China said it would increase military spending by 14.9% to some $70 billion this year, continuing double-digit growth that began in the 1990s. But this pales in comparison with America's mighty defence budget. According to the latest comparable figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, America accounted for 45% of the world's military spending—$1.2 trillion in 2007—more than the next 14 biggest countries combined.

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