The current issue of The New Yorker features a lengthy look at China’s Wenzhou train disaster of last July, calling it “the disaster that exposed the underside of the boom.” Author Evan Osnos examines both the minutiae of the crash, which officially left 40 dead and 192 injured, along with the societal context: “Scandal, of one kind or another, has become the backbeat to China’s rise.” This incident, more so than many others, has been the tipping point for China’s citizens and the global community to tsk-tsk out loud about the quantity of eggs being broken for the country’s ... Read More
Could China’s Communist Party Have Jumped the Shark at Wenzhou?
October 15, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
The Corrections
August 28, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
THE MORASS THAT IS CALIFORNIA POLITICS today may have originated in mid-January of 1896, when a middle-aged man boarded an eastbound train in Oakland. With his ex-soldier’s ramrod bearing and his red-gold hair turning gray, the traveler was not likely to have gone unrecognized. He was Ambrose Bierce, the West’s most famous newspaperman, who used his San Francisco Examiner column to skewer fools and rogues, as well as to coin the acerbic definitions later collected in his Devil’s Dictionary. (Example: “PEACE, n: In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of ... Read More
The Tip Jar Shall be the Downfall of this Great Republic, Evidence from 2012 and 1916
August 17, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Tipping is an aristocratic conceit -- "There you go, my good man, buy your starving family a loaf'' -- best left to an aristocratic age. The practicing democrat would rather be told what he owes right up front. Offensively rich people may delight in peeling off hundred-dollar bills and tossing them out to groveling servants. But no sane, well-adjusted human being cares to sit around and evaluate the performance of some beleaguered coffee vendor. The above happens to have been written by Michael Lewis in 1997. But in its argument and diction, it could pretty well pass for an excerpt from the ... Read More
Searing Look at Rio’s Homicidal Police
November 11, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Brazil doesn’t make the Top 10 of Transparency International’s annual list of the most corrupt countries–it’s tied with Cuba and Montenegro at No. 69 out of 178 — but you’d never know that after watching Elite Squad: The Enemy Within, a white-hot blast of cinematic righteousness that makes Rio de Janeiro look like ground zero for sleazy dealings, extrajudicial police executions and political chicanery. Directed by José Padilha, whose 2002 documentary Bus 174 detailed how police incompetence turned a Rio bus hijacking into a disastrous media circus. This film is a sequel to his ... Read More
Corruption Leads to More Corruption
June 6, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Once upon a time, there was a monarchy. Like many governments, it required a number of people — dukes, knights, lords, etc. — to function. These people were chosen based on their proximity or loyalty to the royal family, which was itself royal because it had more money and land than other families. The members of the court were rewarded for their service to the royal family, and they drew their power from having more money and power than everyone else. Back in the days of monarchies, government officials who were in with the king (and/or queen) were, to a large extent, allowed to do ... Read More
The Oxymoron of ‘Business Ethics’ Proves Its Worth
March 11, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
The business-ethics think tank the Ethisphere Institute has for the last few years been quantifying the ethical spine of corporations, calculating their “ethics quotient” as a measurement of several-dozen criteria like philanthropic giving, enforced codes of ethics and anti-corruption compliance. Looking back on the financial services research, a pattern emerges. “We had very poor scores for Wachovia, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup,” said Alex Brigham, executive director of the institute. Also low on the list were Bank of New York, Wells Fargo, Countrywide and UBS. ... Read More
The Rational Ruffian: Why Crime Pays
October 8, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
Shady activities like smuggling, bribery and murder would seem to be a black hole for economists, who thrive on data collected from direct observation. Yet like a pair of academic gumshoes, Edward Miguel, an associate professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and Raymond Fisman, professor of social enterprise at Columbia Business School, have learned to trace the paper trails of underworld crime. In their new book, Economic Gangsters: Corruption, Violence and the Poverty of Nations, the two economists use real-world clues to uncover the secrets of criminal (but ... Read More
