Color revolutions in the former Soviet Union A bit faded, but still bright enough multinationals from emerging markets. Articles marked with this icon will only be printed in the UK edition of The Economist.
Only compare
For all their confusion, the aftermath of the Rose Revolution and the Orange Revolution still offer plenty of evidence to combat such defeatism. Similarly, foreign direct investment (FDI) – the purchase of companies and the construction of factories and offices abroad – should also flow from the rich to the poor, along with managerial and entrepreneurial ability.
Time to stand up and be counted
Many Wall Street watchers expect any decline to be mild and short-lived, thanks to the adrenaline rush of lower interest rates (financial markets expect the federal funds rate to fall by more than a percentage point this year, to below 3% ) and export growth cushion. The weak dollar and strength in emerging economies will indeed boost exports, although – if a recent slowdown in foreign manufacturing orders is any guide – by less than in 2007.
The grim arithmetic
GEORGE BUSH flew in to a fanfare of bugles and cynicism at the start of his Middle East tour this week. But while Mr Bush has persuaded them to talk about ownership of Jerusalem, the borders of a putative Palestine and the fate of Palestinian refugees, they remain far apart.
Please try to focus
Helping Kenya
A beautiful mind
Canadian labour standards
SIR – Your article on Canada's foreign workers created a false impression of our project, which will connect Vancouver International Airport by rail to downtown Vancouver and suburban Richmond (“Not such a warm welcome,” November 24 ). Once we had demonstrated the need for foreign workers, the contractor had to prove that all federal and provincial employment standards, including wage standards, would be met before the workers could enter Canada.
Religious meetings
Our first choice was to hire local workers, but no Canadians applied due to both the massive construction boom underway in preparation for the Winter Olympics and the demand for workers in the oil and gas industry. A campaign might gain more support if it claimed that workers were paid as little as C$3.56 an hour and had it reprinted as fact in The Economist, but that claim was rejected by the British Columbia Labor Relations Board.
Problematic words
The Italian fashion
The idea that Mr Obama can live up to expectations is "the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen". Mrs. Clinton's remarkable comeback came in the same state where her husband billed himself as the "Comeback Kid" after coming in second in 1992.
The sweet-talking preacherman
Mr. Obama's loss to Hillary Clinton was all the more painful because almost everyone (including the Clintons themselves) expected him to win by a landslide. Mr. Obama was the first person to put "change" at the center of his campaign.
An end to poetry
Despite irregularities in the vote tabulation, now is not the time to throw away [Kenya's] strong democracy,” he said. Mr Reagan had a lasting influence not only because he forged a coalition but also because he was right on the biggest issues of his time - the importance of shrinking government and confronting communism.
The value of values
Thus, he predicted an era of what he himself calls the "three R's" - "revision, correction and restart" of the revolution. Last year, the president suddenly announced that he was creating the PSUV as the "only party" of the revolution.
Moderate success
It was consigned to oblivion on December 23 by a near-unanimous vote of the state parliament. Most of the victims were Kikuyus from Mr. Kibaki's tribe, the country's largest and wealthiest, accounting for about 22%.
The violence spreads
By far the quietest part of the country has been the Kikuyu highlands that stretch north of Nairobi to the slopes of Mount Kenya. Factors contributing to the darkness include the disruptive impact of one of the fastest rates of population growth in the world, the failure of public education systems, and the persistence of social traditions often ill-suited to the urban lifestyle that is now the Arab norm. It may be a good thing that the personality-based leadership of the 1960s and 1970s has fallen out of fashion.
The devil you know
They can trumpet privatization programs that reduce the role of the state, while glossing over the fact that many of the beneficiaries are regime cronies. Political scientists have long blamed oil wealth – and the rentier economy that so often accompanies it – for the survival of Arab authoritarianism. Arab governments have reversed this refrain: by appropriating national energy resources and other rents, they neatly rid themselves of the need to levy heavy taxes and thus obtain the consent of the governed.
Let them learn about the world
That is why Saakashvili got 52 percent of the vote in a country where he has undergone radical reforms. By listing a series of projects – the abolition of advertising on state television, an end to the 35-hour working week, a requirement for companies to boost profit sharing – he also showed his micromanagement style, without raising an eyebrow. That would not be the case at Der Spiegel (“The Mirror”), Germany's leading news weekly, where the staff are in control.
Allies or rivals?
HANGOVER in the new year is in the great tradition, but this year the heads of consumers (and wallets) are. Business volumes in the large financial services sector have recently fallen at the fastest pace since the depths of the recession of the early 1990s, according to a report this week by the CBI, an employers' organisation. Lenders said they expected further sharp declines in the first three months of 2008.
Feel the future in the instant
In Uruguay, another former ruler, Juan María Bordaberry, is on trial on charges related to murders and "disappearances" in the 1970s. For political scientists, especially those who have studied the phenomenon of "Muslim democracy" in the belief that the Turkish case could set a precedent for others, the recent unrest in Pakistan and the assassination of Benazir Bhutto has been a great tragedy in a crucial country. which had the potential to develop a new concordat between Islam and open politics. Vali Nasr, a professor at America's Tufts University, describes "Muslim democracy" as a new and potentially decisive force in the non-Arab parts of the Muslim world.
From Cairo to California
But the news wasn't so good in the United States; it had the worst record of the countries surveyed. America reduced “susceptible” deaths by just 4% during that period; it fell to the bottom of the table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free.
Circular arguments
Lawyers who wanted to get Mr. Piëch to admit even the slightest knowledge of the tricks were disappointed. Last year, Starbucks' stock price fell 42%, making it one of the worst performers on the NASDAQ stock exchange. This year, McDonald's plans to add Starbucks-style coffee bars to nearly 14,000 of its U.S. restaurants — the biggest diversification the company has ever attempted.
So much to do, so little time
Christophe de Margerie, the boss of Total, believes that global oil production may be nearing its peak. But no one went as far as Mr. de Margerie when he argued that the oil industry was nearing its peak. In the third quarter of last year, Total was the only one of the "big ones" that recorded an increase in production.
The nuclear option
Total risked US sanctions when it invested in Iran in the 1990s; further investments are partly held up by arguments with the government over the distribution of the proceeds. In fact, in 2004, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) noted that five companies from emerging Asia had entered the list of the world's 100 largest multinationals as measured by foreign assets; Another ten companies from emerging economies reached the top 200. In 2006, foreign direct investment (including mergers and acquisitions) from developing economies amounted to US$174 billion, 14% of the world total, bringing these countries to 13%.
Meet the new boys
Since UNCTAD's first analysis in the early 1970s, there has been concern about the power that companies from rich countries have in poorer ones. In the 1960s, the French fretted over le défi américain as IBM, Ford, General Motors, Dow Chemical and ITT spread their tentacles across Europe; in the 1980s it was America's turn when Japanese companies bought Hollywood and Manhattan. UNCTAD is turning its attention to a new form of global business: investment is now increasingly flowing from South to North and from South to South, as emerging economies invest in both the rich world and less developed countries.
The rationale
Another Brazilian company, Vale, has taken advantage of its home country's vast, cheap iron ore resources to become one of the world's leading suppliers. This is the approach of Mexico's Cemex, one of the world's largest suppliers of concrete mix. The secret of a company's success is the consistent development of its own management style.
The future is Mittalic
Success in one developing country led Mr. Mittal to opportunities on the other side of the world. One of the most reliable measures is the Economic Cycle Research Institute's (ECRI) weekly leading index. SachsenLB, a much smaller regional bank with exposure to many sub-prime assets, has taken refuge in the arms of the largest.
A problem shared
But this result is caused by the 'big five' blowouts (including the implosion of the Japanese banking system in the 1990s). If all US subprime borrowers defaulted and only half of the $1.3 trillion lent to them were recovered, losses of $650 billion would amount to about 5% of GDP – which is comparable with the smallest of the five major crises. There are now so many of these articles, and the databases linking them together are so good, that it is possible to use scientific methods to explore the bibliome in itself, just as any of the other, wetter 'omen' can be investigated.
It looks good on paper
Ten years ago, Mr. Schlink's celebrated bestseller, "The Reader," dealt with a similar subject. Even in the revolution against King George and his pesky emissaries, Mr. Keller sees no clear break with the past, but “the product of almost two centuries of colonial policy.” Why, Mr. Keller wonders, has not one yet been written entitled “The Imperial Bureaucracy.”
How it all ballooned
Just seven years after the ratification of the First Amendment in 1791, Congress enacted the Sedition Act making it a crime to bring "into contempt or dishonor." His final chapter, set in the apocalyptic wilderness of the Camorra's smoldering waste heaps, is inspired—and prescient, as the garbage crisis unfolds in Naples. The exact meaning of the word (in its post-Seussian sense) is difficult to pin down, as David Anderegg, a child psychologist and academic, argues in this thoughtful and warmly sympathetic book.
Striving to do badly
IN THIS age of blinking attention spans, medieval ivory collecting – the passion of the late Kenneth Thomson, 2nd Baron Thomson of Fleet – has seemed counterintuitive for more than forty years. As Flashman collected the tinware – the Victoria Cross, the Queen's Medal, the San Serafino Order of Purity and Truth (“richly deserved”), both he and Mr. Fraser knew it was sheer terror driving him, delirium funkens, plus a big amount of happiness. After the beautiful Fetnab (who "knew the ninety-seven ways of love... although... the seventy-fourth position turns out to be the same as the seventy-third, but with your fingers crossed"), came Lola Montez and Cassie and Susie de Bawd; and , most beautiful of all, the Indian princess Lakshmbai, her “beautiful golden nudity”.
Packed in a tea-chest
As for the military virtues, “the best you can do with them is hang them on the wall in Bedlam.” This was why there was no better man than Mr. Fraser to stumble upon the Flashman story. The prospects for 2008 are still bleak, according to The Economist's monthly survey of economists (see article).
