1 Spreading scourge of corporate corruption (The New York Times) Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the Libor scandal is how familiar it seems. The misconduct of the financial industry no longer surprises most Americans. Only about one in five has much trust in banks, according to Gallup polls, about half the level in 2007. And it’s not just banks that are frowned upon. Trust in big business overall is declining. Sixty-two percent of Americans believe corruption is widespread across corporate America. According to Transparency International, an anticorruption watchdog, nearly three in four Americans believe that corruption has increased over the last three years.
The parade of financiers accused of misdeeds, booted from the executive suite and even occasionally jailed, is undermining trust. Have corporations lost whatever ethical compass they once had? Or does it just look that way because we are paying more attention than we used to? This is hard to answer because fraud and corruption are impossible to measure precisely. Perpetrators understandably do their best to hide the dirty deeds from public view. And public perceptions of fraud and corruption are often colored by people’s sense of dissatisfaction with their lives.
Company executives are paid to maximize profits, not to behave ethically. Evidence suggests that they behave as corruptly as they can, within whatever constraints are imposed by law and reputation. In 1977, the US Congress passed the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, to stop the rampant practice of bribing foreign officials. Business by American multinationals in the most corrupt countries dropped. But they didn’t stop bribing. And American companies have been lobbying against the law ever since.
2 Richer rich, poorer poor (The New York Times) A new report from the Pew Economic Mobility Project shows that when it comes to the wealth distribution, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. First Pew looked at the earnings of today’s adults compared to those of their parents’ generation, and found that the typical American in each income quintile earned more than his counterpart from a generation earlier. Unlike with income, there were not across-the-board gains for wealth. The median person in the poorest quintile has a family net worth that is 63 percent less than that of his counterpart a generation ago: $2,748, versus $7,439.
On the other hand, the top fourth and fifth quintiles by wealth have gotten richer. The median family in the top socioeconomic class today (i.e., the family at the 90th percentile) is worth $629,853, compared to $495,510 in the last generation. That’s a 27% increase in the size of the median fortune in the top income stratum. In other words, compared to the last generation, wealth has been become more concentrated in the hands (and bank accounts and houses) of the richest Americans.
Exactly why is debatable. The global markets for labor and capital have changed, of course. And the lower tax rate on capital gains — which disproportionately helps richer people, who have more capital to invest — has helped the richest amass ever higher net worths.
3 Enough of Higgs, let's discuss boson (Dawn) Media gave lots of credit to British physicist Peter Higgs for theorizing the elusive subatomic "God particle," but little was said about Satyendranath Bose, the Indian after whom the boson is named. Despite the fact that Bose had little direct involvement in theorizing the Higgs boson itself, in India the lack of attention given to one of their own was seen as an insult too big to ignore.
"He is a forgotten hero," the government lamented in a lengthy statement, noting that Bose was never awarded a Nobel Prize though "at least 10 scientists have been awarded the Nobel" in the same field.
The boson is named in honour of the Kolkata-born scientist’s work in the 1920s with Albert Einstein in defining one of two basic classes of subatomic particles. The work describes how photons can be considered particles as well as waves—such as in a laser beam. All particles that follow such behaviour, including the Higgs boson, are called bosons. Higgs, the English physicist, and others proposed the Higgs boson’s existence in 1964 to explain what might give shape and size to all matter. Laymen and the media sometimes call it the "God particle" because it existence is key to understanding the early evolution of the universe.
By then, Bose was living in his Indian city of Kolkata after 25 years running the physics department at Dacca University, in what is now Bangladesh. Bose died aged 80 in 1974. The Nobel is not awarded posthumously. The Sunday Times of India noted other eminent Indian scientists who "never got their due," including physicist G N Ramachandran who died in 2001 after making biological discoveries like collagen’s triple-helix structure and 3-D imaging used in studying the human body. It also said living Indian scientists, Varanasi-based molecular biologist Lalji Singh and New York-based E Premkumar Reddy, should be current candidates for awards.
4 Underemployment hurts youth, economy (San Francisco Chronicle) Underemployment isn't debilitating only for individuals whose career and income opportunities are stunted. It threatens economic expansion, as college-educated young adults have traditionally fueled consumer spending on clothes, technology, entertainment and cars.
Unemployment for Americans ages 20 to 24, which has topped 10% for four years, was 13.7% in June, up from 12.9% the previous month, according to the Labour Department. Employers added 80,000 jobs in June, fewer than forecast, and the overall rate stayed at 8.2%, the data showed.
Instead of indulging at the start of their career, many young people with degrees now are scrimping. Compared with five years ago, Generation Y - people born from 1981 to 2001 - is shopping more at discounters and value stores and less at premium-priced retailers, according to Kantar Media. In the end, underemployed youth will rob the US of economic and intellectual firepower, said Johns Hopkins' Newman. Underemployment can't be tracked as closely as unemployment, but we know from studies of what happened in the Great Depression there's a chronic impact," Newman said. "Young people working jobs they're overqualified for don't get trained or encouraged to advance and become successful, and both they and employers lose out."
5 Bell tolls for India's Congress party (Jagdish Bhagwati & Arvind Panagariya in The Economic Times) Politics in Asia’s two giants, India and China, has suddenly turned very uncertain. China remains in authoritarian mode, of course. But egregious human-rights violations and suppression of dissent are raising the spectre of growing internal disruptions.
By contrast, India, with its firmly rooted liberal democracy, smells to some like roses. But many believe that India, too, faces uncertain political prospects. In particular, there is widespread belief in India today that one of the country’s two main political parties, the Indian National Congress, essentially run by Sonia Gandhi and her son, Rahul Gandhi, has now run its course and will sink into oblivion.
The problem is that brand-name politics is increasingly at a discount in India, much as it is in the United States. Like the Kennedy and Bush brands, the Nehru-Gandhi label has lost its lustre in India. That is partly a function of rapidly changing demographics. Individuals born after 1975 now account for a very large proportion of the electorate. For these voters, Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi are merely historical figures, and are a distant memory even for many voters born before 1975.
6 Please give me an identity (The Economic Times) Janmejaya Sinha, chairman, Asia-Pacific of BCG says that for almost every Indian, perhapss the toughest thing to prove to the authorities is his or her identity. He concludes by suggesting, please read The Trial by Franz Kafka and then take the time to go by the seaside and yell out loud, "My name is ----, please believe me". But maybe not -- no one will. Not in India.
7 India food subsidy bill at Rs 728bn (The Financial Express) If Central and state taxes and generous subsidies coexist in India’s fuel sector, the food sector is no different. Various state-level taxes on grain procurement inflate the Centre’s food subsidy bill by almost 14%. The government’s food subsidy bill rose 14% to Rs 728bn in the fiscal year through March, contributing significantly to the fiscal deficit which grew by one percentage point to 5.8% of the country’s gross domestic product.
The parade of financiers accused of misdeeds, booted from the executive suite and even occasionally jailed, is undermining trust. Have corporations lost whatever ethical compass they once had? Or does it just look that way because we are paying more attention than we used to? This is hard to answer because fraud and corruption are impossible to measure precisely. Perpetrators understandably do their best to hide the dirty deeds from public view. And public perceptions of fraud and corruption are often colored by people’s sense of dissatisfaction with their lives.
Company executives are paid to maximize profits, not to behave ethically. Evidence suggests that they behave as corruptly as they can, within whatever constraints are imposed by law and reputation. In 1977, the US Congress passed the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, to stop the rampant practice of bribing foreign officials. Business by American multinationals in the most corrupt countries dropped. But they didn’t stop bribing. And American companies have been lobbying against the law ever since.
2 Richer rich, poorer poor (The New York Times) A new report from the Pew Economic Mobility Project shows that when it comes to the wealth distribution, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. First Pew looked at the earnings of today’s adults compared to those of their parents’ generation, and found that the typical American in each income quintile earned more than his counterpart from a generation earlier. Unlike with income, there were not across-the-board gains for wealth. The median person in the poorest quintile has a family net worth that is 63 percent less than that of his counterpart a generation ago: $2,748, versus $7,439.
On the other hand, the top fourth and fifth quintiles by wealth have gotten richer. The median family in the top socioeconomic class today (i.e., the family at the 90th percentile) is worth $629,853, compared to $495,510 in the last generation. That’s a 27% increase in the size of the median fortune in the top income stratum. In other words, compared to the last generation, wealth has been become more concentrated in the hands (and bank accounts and houses) of the richest Americans.
Exactly why is debatable. The global markets for labor and capital have changed, of course. And the lower tax rate on capital gains — which disproportionately helps richer people, who have more capital to invest — has helped the richest amass ever higher net worths.
3 Enough of Higgs, let's discuss boson (Dawn) Media gave lots of credit to British physicist Peter Higgs for theorizing the elusive subatomic "God particle," but little was said about Satyendranath Bose, the Indian after whom the boson is named. Despite the fact that Bose had little direct involvement in theorizing the Higgs boson itself, in India the lack of attention given to one of their own was seen as an insult too big to ignore.
"He is a forgotten hero," the government lamented in a lengthy statement, noting that Bose was never awarded a Nobel Prize though "at least 10 scientists have been awarded the Nobel" in the same field.
The boson is named in honour of the Kolkata-born scientist’s work in the 1920s with Albert Einstein in defining one of two basic classes of subatomic particles. The work describes how photons can be considered particles as well as waves—such as in a laser beam. All particles that follow such behaviour, including the Higgs boson, are called bosons. Higgs, the English physicist, and others proposed the Higgs boson’s existence in 1964 to explain what might give shape and size to all matter. Laymen and the media sometimes call it the "God particle" because it existence is key to understanding the early evolution of the universe.
By then, Bose was living in his Indian city of Kolkata after 25 years running the physics department at Dacca University, in what is now Bangladesh. Bose died aged 80 in 1974. The Nobel is not awarded posthumously. The Sunday Times of India noted other eminent Indian scientists who "never got their due," including physicist G N Ramachandran who died in 2001 after making biological discoveries like collagen’s triple-helix structure and 3-D imaging used in studying the human body. It also said living Indian scientists, Varanasi-based molecular biologist Lalji Singh and New York-based E Premkumar Reddy, should be current candidates for awards.
4 Underemployment hurts youth, economy (San Francisco Chronicle) Underemployment isn't debilitating only for individuals whose career and income opportunities are stunted. It threatens economic expansion, as college-educated young adults have traditionally fueled consumer spending on clothes, technology, entertainment and cars.
Unemployment for Americans ages 20 to 24, which has topped 10% for four years, was 13.7% in June, up from 12.9% the previous month, according to the Labour Department. Employers added 80,000 jobs in June, fewer than forecast, and the overall rate stayed at 8.2%, the data showed.
Instead of indulging at the start of their career, many young people with degrees now are scrimping. Compared with five years ago, Generation Y - people born from 1981 to 2001 - is shopping more at discounters and value stores and less at premium-priced retailers, according to Kantar Media. In the end, underemployed youth will rob the US of economic and intellectual firepower, said Johns Hopkins' Newman. Underemployment can't be tracked as closely as unemployment, but we know from studies of what happened in the Great Depression there's a chronic impact," Newman said. "Young people working jobs they're overqualified for don't get trained or encouraged to advance and become successful, and both they and employers lose out."
5 Bell tolls for India's Congress party (Jagdish Bhagwati & Arvind Panagariya in The Economic Times) Politics in Asia’s two giants, India and China, has suddenly turned very uncertain. China remains in authoritarian mode, of course. But egregious human-rights violations and suppression of dissent are raising the spectre of growing internal disruptions.
By contrast, India, with its firmly rooted liberal democracy, smells to some like roses. But many believe that India, too, faces uncertain political prospects. In particular, there is widespread belief in India today that one of the country’s two main political parties, the Indian National Congress, essentially run by Sonia Gandhi and her son, Rahul Gandhi, has now run its course and will sink into oblivion.
The problem is that brand-name politics is increasingly at a discount in India, much as it is in the United States. Like the Kennedy and Bush brands, the Nehru-Gandhi label has lost its lustre in India. That is partly a function of rapidly changing demographics. Individuals born after 1975 now account for a very large proportion of the electorate. For these voters, Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi are merely historical figures, and are a distant memory even for many voters born before 1975.
6 Please give me an identity (The Economic Times) Janmejaya Sinha, chairman, Asia-Pacific of BCG says that for almost every Indian, perhapss the toughest thing to prove to the authorities is his or her identity. He concludes by suggesting, please read The Trial by Franz Kafka and then take the time to go by the seaside and yell out loud, "My name is ----, please believe me". But maybe not -- no one will. Not in India.
7 India food subsidy bill at Rs 728bn (The Financial Express) If Central and state taxes and generous subsidies coexist in India’s fuel sector, the food sector is no different. Various state-level taxes on grain procurement inflate the Centre’s food subsidy bill by almost 14%. The government’s food subsidy bill rose 14% to Rs 728bn in the fiscal year through March, contributing significantly to the fiscal deficit which grew by one percentage point to 5.8% of the country’s gross domestic product.
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