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It’s good to be able to admit you can screw up. Let’s hope Obama’s public honesty sets a trend. The context for this CBS interview was the news that senior appointments in the new US administration have not been entirely honest in their tax dealings with the national revenue. (In the UK, The Guardian is running an interesting piece of journalism about the international tax-avoiding activities of major corporations).
In the enormous picture, Obama’s national economic stimulus bill is now nearly law and you can help a communal effort to read it here if you are a glutton for well-intentioned economic blah.
Pork-barrel politics is an old phrase in US politics and reflects the need to pass benefit down to voters, constituents and supporters. The behaviour is common to all political cultures – and one of the biggest problems in the US (and perhaps here) in the past decade or more, is that the benefits of increasing wealth (as granted by government) have really been disproportionately awarded to the richer sections of society. Much of the ‘pork’ in Obama’s bill is being directed much lower down the economic food chain where there is a lot of economic distress and pent-up need for help.
Politically, Obama might be hoping this near trillion-dollar gift will help stop the return of public support to protectionist ideas – American steel for American construction. This sort of behaviour would disrupt current economic global trade and almost certainly provoke retaliation from other economic blocs like the EU and China. Most historians believe ‘protectionist’ sentiment and policy was one of the things which confirmed the length of the great economic depression of the 1930s.
UPDATED: 9am Tuesday 3rd. There is a brief match report at the above link now too – although regrettably, the very inclement weather appears to have left the teams short of many participants. A shame.
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The reader’s editor at The Guardian news organisation writes in response to critical correspondence about cartoonist Steve Bell’s editorial cartoon work.
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Pleasantly strange is the killer lyric. Kudos to Oren Lavie for the song and video directors Yuval & Merav Nathan. Oh, and the weather – from the Telegraph.
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Once upon a time there was a bank which catered to all of the people, even the ones without much money. Its success in attracting depositors, based in no small part by its transparent fee structure, made it a target for privatisation in the 1980s and it eventually ended up as a part of Alliance and Leicester (which is now owned by the Spanish banking conglomerate, Santander). It is good to see Peter Mandelson appears to remember the social value of this sort of financial structure.
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Click the picture for the cartoon
The Prime Minister is off the the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland today. The World Economic Forum which runs the event is charmingly described as a not-for-profit organisation, which does sound like most of the rest of the global population.
The World Economic Forum is an independent, international organization incorporated as a Swiss not-for-profit foundation. We are striving towards a world-class corporate governance system where values are as important a basis as rules. Our motto is ‘entrepreneurship in the global public interest’. We believe that economic progress without social development is not sustainable, while social development without economic progress is not feasible.
(The typo in this paragraph is as it is on the WEF site)
The theme for the annual meeting this year is ‘Shaping the post-crisis world’ which is a nice reassuring phrase aimed, presumably, at sending a positive message of control and understanding of the economic situation. Whether this careful branding bears any relation to the facts on the ground is another thing entirely. What do you think?
UPDATED: 4pm. Jeff Randall guests writes in The Telegraph on the recent British experience – and kudos to whoever found that picture from The Associated Press (AP).
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The full report is downloadable from here. This phrase stuck out from a skim read.
In the longer term, there are significant structural and competitive challenges, which will change the shape of the sector and its prospects in its home market.
These structural challenges arise from the transition to digital economies, and with that, the dwindling of the advertising pound and the retail margin that, in the past, funded substantial parts of both our traditional media and new media.
Section 3.1: The economics of digital content – page 37
UPATED: 4pm. Speedy analysis from Robert Andrews of Paid Content here.
UPDATED UPDATE:4.30PM. Response from Martin Belam at Currybet.net which is seemsmuch crosser terse about the report. His digital comparison table on key trends (which are arguable) is particularly good.
AND: 9pm. Jemima K wonders where the reference to any small business innovation is – which is, come to think of it, a very good point – and you may read TechRadar here too.
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Head of a Pinguis Cattus - common, or, garden fat cat
Luke Johnson, chairman of Channel 4, offers some blunt talk about where the economic things are – clip from the FT. The official global opinion from the IMF (International Monetary Fund) is here.
You simply can’t have a system which rewards nastiness over niceness and which offers no consequences for those who commit cowardly anonymous attacks and then act surprised when people don’t know where to draw the line.
