Blog v op-ed 
Matthew Yglesias: “I’m thrilled that Paul Krugman has a column at the Times because the Times op-ed page is very influential and Krugman’s voice is invaluable. As a reader, however, I’d actually be much more interested in reading a Krugman-blog. The same is true, I would venture, of just about every columnist whose work I like. This, however, is a rather unstable situation. The value of the op-ed writer really only lies in the fact that more people read op-ed pages than read blogs. But as more and more people start reading blogs, the mere prestige factor of the column will decline. Eventually, I think, the format will vanish in favor of the greater flexibility afforded by online media.”
Sounds like another version of Dave’s bet.
Great leaders of the world, part XLIV
BBC News:
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Reports from Turkmenistan say President Niyazov has ordered the closure of all the hospitals in the country except those in the capital, Ashgabat. |
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The order, announced by a government spokesman, is part of the president’s radical health care policies. |
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Thousands of medical workers have already been sacked under the plan. |
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Civil rights activists have accused the president of sacrificing public services in favour of vast projects that glorify his regime. |
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President Niyazov apparently took the decision to close the hospitals at a meeting with local officials on Monday. |
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“Why do we need such hospitals?” he said. “If people are ill, they can come to Ashgabat.” … |
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At the same time, the president has also ordered the closure of rural libraries, saying they are pointless because village Turkmens do not read. |
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Criticism of the president is not allowed in Turkmenistan, but civil rights activists abroad say he has destroyed social services while spending millions of dollars of public money on grand projects, such as gold statues of the leader and a vast marble and gold mosque, one of the biggest in Asia.
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Shortly after the break-up of the Soviet Union, the magazine I edited ran a series of who’s who features about the new countries of the former Soviet bloc. Covering the “stans” was particularly difficult, as so few people had any good information on them at the time.
I recall two tidbits from that feature. Niyazov was trying to get people to call him Turkmenbashy (leader of the Turkmens) rather than his rather Slavic name. And his neighbouring president, Islam Karimov in Uzbekistan, listed water skiing as one of his interests. As journalists sometimes do, we had “water skiing and gross human rights violations” as his recreations in early versions of the pages.
More hours, please
Tyler Cowen’s latest China snippet is striking:
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Taiwanese factories in Dongguan [a city between Hong Kong and Guangzhou and a major centre of manufacturing] are facing a problem. According to a news report in the United Daily in Taiwan, over a thousand workers at a factory, which produces goods for big brand names such as Nike, demonstrated for two days and damaged equipment and factory cars. 500 armed police arrived and quashed the riot. Several leaders were arrested. |
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The main cause for the riot was the limitation [sic] on working hours at the factory. The shorter hours have been requested by US companies so as to avoid criticism from various groups on long working hours. However, the mainly migrant workforce want to work longer hours so they can earn more [emphasis added]. Consensus had been reached by the US companies, the Taiwanese-invested factory and local government that the maximum working hours per week should be set at 60 hours [which is still a breach of Chinese Labour Law, but less than other manufacturing plants]. However, this reduction in hours was unsatisfactory for the workers and the resulting riot was serious.
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World Bank: which is worse?
Depending which source you read, there have been two names floating around as likely World Bank presidents to succeed Jim Wolfensohn. The Financial Times reckons Paul Wolfowitz is in the lead. The New York Times plumps for recently fired Carly Fiorina.
Here’s Mark Schmitt on Wolfowitz:
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If you were the Bush entourage, securely back home after a nicely scripted European trip, confident that you won’t have to pretend to like Jacques Chirac or any other people who speak foreign languages for a long time, what would be a good way to quickly send the signal that all that stuff about cooperation, consultation, multilateralism was about as serious as, oh, “humility” in foreign policy or “uniter not a divider”? |
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Hmm, this requires some real creativity. A devious, twisted mind. Can’t invade another country — no troops left. Don’t want to bother Congress, too much trouble up there already. Apparently a lot of them didn’t have such a pleasant vacation last week, since dealing with pissed-off seniors is a little harder than getting garcon to bring extra ketchup for your fois gras. |
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“I’ve got it,” says the quiet guy with the most devious imagination of all: “We’ve got that vacancy at the World Bank. Let’s put Paul Wolfowitz in there. Make the world come begging to him for their precious money.”
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Not to be outdone, Dave Taylor vents his spleen on Carly:
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Am I the only one who finds this all surreal? She’s gained experience, but not the kind we’d want in the World Bank. I’m sorry, but when I look at Carly’s track record, I don’t see a “proven record in the corporate world”, I see a self-aggrandizing ego-centric manager who never stopped to understand or appreciate the culture and values of the company she ran, a CEO who embodies all that business guru Jim Collins warns against in his best-selling book Good to Great. |
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The world’s poor, the third-world nations, and the global economy deserve someone smarter, more savvy, and more in tune with the culture and values of the organization that she leads.
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