- James Surowiecki: Why politicians are spooking the markets.
It seems crazy: the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia holds an election, and Americans’ 401(k)s go haywire. But that’s not a bad shorthand description of what’s happened to the stock market over the past few weeks. What links the two is the . . ....
- Hendrik Hertzberg: Obama vs. the spill.
For the young Presidency of Barack Obama, and for the nation, this hellish summer of discontent started in balmy spring, on the evening of April 20th, forty miles off the Louisiana coast in the Gulf of Mexico. At first, after the explosion aboard the giant oil rig Deepwater Horizon, the . . ....
- Gulf Oil Spill’s Toll on Nation’s Beaches
Fully one in five beaches off the Gulf of Mexico has been closed this season due to the effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, according to a new report issued by the Natural Resources Defense Council....
- James Surowiecki: Obama, jobs, and the G.O.P.
There is no truer truism in American politics than James Carville’s catchphrase from the 1992 election “It’s the economy, stupid.” When people discuss Barack Obama’s current approval rating, which is at its lowest level ever, they may invoke his supposed lack of . . ....
- James Surowiecki: The shrinking middle of the consumer market.
Apple’s launch of the iPad next week is a gamble in more ways than one. To start with, it’s obviously a bet that there are millions of people looking for a new way to surf the Web, watch movies, and read magazines. But it’s . . ....
- Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Could Affect Health
Gulf Coast Oil Slick Could Have Some Impact on Seafood and Air Quality...
- James Surowiecki: The crisis in customer service.
American workers are mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore. That’s the clear message of flight attendant Steven Slater’s emergence as a “working-class hero,” after he threw his job away with a tirade against passengers and a . . ....
- James Surowiecki: Why the health care bill is worth passing.
Reforming America’s health-insurance system was never going to be an easy task, given people’s natural aversion to change (not to mention Republicans’ aversion to doing anything that might help Barack Obama). But what’s made the task even more difficult is that American . . ....
- James Surowiecki: Steve Jobs’s perfectionism and Apple’s success.
As seemingly everyone on the planet knows, Steve Jobs’s defining quality was perfectionism. The development of the Macintosh, for instance, took more than three years, because of Jobs’s obsession with detail. He nixed the idea of an internal fan, because he thought it was noisy and . . ....
- James Surowiecki: The perils of economic populism.
It’s been the political equivalent of an intervention: in recent weeks, Democrats have been bombarded with advice about how they should reinvent their economic agenda. The electorate, we hear, wants Barack Obama to be more of an economic populist but less of an ambitious reformer. He has to . . ....
- James Surowiecki: The Federal Reserve and quantitative easing.
T he German and Chinese governments, Republican congressmen, the liberal economist Joseph Stiglitz, and Sarah Palin don’t agree on much. But they’re united in their opposition to the Federal Reserve’s second round of quantitative easing—or, as it’s known, QE2. According . . ....
- James Surowiecki: Can economic recovery save the Democrats in November?
Given high unemployment and flat wages, no one is going to be singing “Happy Days Are Here Again” any time soon (even if the tune was F.D.R.’s theme song). But we’ve now had three straight quarters of growth, and last month saw the creation . . ....
- James Surowiecki: Why the Chinese don’t spend.
8220;China makes, the world takes.” For decades, that has been the motto of the Chinese economy, which is built on providing an endless supply of goods for the rest of the world to buy. But these days there’s a palpable sense that this needs to change . . ....
- James Surowiecki: Private equity’s egregious tax loophole.
It’s the time of year when a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of deductions and write-offs. One select group of Americans, though, has a more pressing tax-season task on its mind: preserving a lucrative loophole in the I.R.S. code. The provision allows . . ....
- James Surowiecki: Building a smarter tax code.
The fight on Capitol Hill over whether to extend the Bush tax cuts is about many things: deficit reduction, economic stimulus, supply-side ideology. But at its core is a simple question: who counts as rich? The Obama Administration’s answer is that you’re rich if you . . ....
- James Surowiecki: Europe’s Big Mistake
In July, 2008, on the eve of the biggest financial crisis in memory, the European Central Bank did something both predictable and stupid: it raised interest rates. The move was predictable because the E.C.B.’s president, Jean-Claude Trichet, was an inflation hawk; he worried about rising oil and . . ....
- James Surowiecki: Paul Ryan’s radical budget.
Last week, when House Republicans passed Paul Ryan’s budget resolution, Ryan, the Budget Committee chairman, said that Congress had a “moral obligation” to get the country’s finances under control, and that the vote was a necessary response to a looming “debt-driven crisis . . ....
- James Surowiecki: High finance on the big screen.
When Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street” came out, in 1987, the movie’s portrait of American finance as an exhilaratingly cutthroat world ruled by corrupt traders and amoral money managers left an instant and indelible impression. But when Stone’s follow-up, “Wall Street . . ....
- James Surowiecki: Why we don’t need a debt ceiling.
In the past few years, the U.S. economy has been beset by the subprime meltdown, skyrocketing oil prices, the Eurozone debt crisis, and even the Tohoku earthquake. Now it’s staring at a new problem—a failure to raise the debt ceiling, which would almost certainly throw the . . ....
- James Surowiecki: Ratings Downgrade
When Barack Obama went to Wall Street last week to make the case for meaningful financial regulation, he took well-deserved shots at some of the villains of the financial crisis: greedy bankers, reckless investors, and captive regulators. But to that list he could have added credit-rating agencies like . . ....
- James Surowiecki: Why Banks Stay Big
Before the financial crisis, the banking industry was too concentrated and clubby. And now? It’s even more so. In the midst of the crisis, the country’s four biggest banks—Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo—actually got bigger. Thanks primarily to . . ....
- James Surowiecki: Affordable health care in Thailand and Costa Rica.
This year, a few hundred thousand intrepid American travellers will head to places like Thailand and Costa Rica, in search of something that they can’t find in the United States. They won’t be looking for Mayan ruins or ancient Buddhist temples, but something a bit more . . ....
- James Surowiecki: Wall Street, the White House, and the weak economy.
The U.S. economy is limping along. The job market is in rotten shape, and business investment is hitting historic lows. And, if you’re looking for a culprit for this dismal state of affairs, many businesspeople would be happy to point you to the White House. Companies aren’ . . ....
- Goings on About Town: On the Horizon
THE THEATRE
GREENER DAYS
March 24
“American Idiot,” at the St. James, uses the punk-inspired rock songs of Green Day’s chart-topping album to propel a post-9/11 story about the fates of a group of suburban working-class friends. The band’s front . . ....
- Sasha Frere-Jones: The Shins’ forthright melodies on “Port of Morrow.”
There is an imperfect but viable analogy to be made between the Shins’ leader and songwriter, James Mercer, and Mark Zuckerberg. Indie rock is James Mercer’s field; the Internet, Zuckerberg’s. Both men are shy and unassuming, without naturally dramatic personalities or excessive charisma. Anyone who . . . (Subscription required.)...
- James Surowiecki: Why Obama couldn’t sell the stimulus.
When President Obama unveiled an array of new tax-cut and spending proposals last week, one word was noticeably missing from his speeches: “stimulus.” Republicans, meanwhile, energetically set about decrying the plan as “more of the same failed ‘stimulus’ ” and as simply a “ . . ....
- Mark Singer: Making sense of Osama bin Laden’s porn collection.
It seems that being the world’s deadliest terrorist (even when you’re also in a first-place tie for deadest) doesn’t grant freedom from fastidiousness about one’s public image. The United States officials who, less than two weeks after Osama bin Laden’ . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Mark Singer: Making sense of Osama bin Laden’s porn collection.
It seems that being the world’s deadliest terrorist (even when you’re also in a first-place tie for deadest) doesn’t grant freedom from fastidiousness about one’s public image. The United States officials who, less than two weeks after Osama bin Laden’ . . . (Subscription required.)...
