| Product: |
The Economist |
| Date: |
24/09/00 (57 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Detailed articles on most issues.
Disadvantages: Occasionaly, a lack of detail on some parts of the world.
The Economist is the best newspaper for detailed studies of (1)issues (eg. the importance of the internet) and (2)countries (eg. Moldova, in the Sept 23 2000 issue).
Some examples -
LETTERS : Canadian Melissa is in the Ivory Coast and has Malaria. She goes to a clinic. The doctor gives her pills for male sexual dysfunction...
LEADER : "The anti-capitalist protesters...are right...that the most pressing...issue of our time is third-world poverty." The item points out the success of the capitalist USA. "America has an unemployment rate less than 4% and real wages are growing..."
POVERTY IN EASTERN EUROPE (including MOLDOVA) :
The article tells us about Maria, from Moldova, who has an epileptic son. Maria earns about 50 pence a day. Her son's medicine costs half her monthly earnings.
In the battered parts of Eastern Europe "many schools have to close in the winter for lack of heat....teachers often go unpaid."
THE AMERICAS :
We learn a little more about Peru, its President Fujimoro, and his adviser Mr Montesinos (allegedly a former friend of the CIA). Opponents of Mr Montesinos have accused him of ordering death-squad killings, taking protection money from drug traffickers....
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY :
"For most of human history, growth in world output per head averaged little more than 0.1% a year." That has now changed, thanks to steam power, railways, electricity, the car and now COMPUTERS.
"Today's average chief executive earns 475 times as much as the average factory worker...the new economy is rewarding some more handsomely than others..."
According to The Economist East Asian countries like Singapore and Malaysia are likely to benefit more ftom IT than Africa or Latin America. Africa lacks the required economic and legal institutions; Latin Americans are not so well educated as the Chinese of Singapore.
ANTI-CAPITALIST PROTESTS :
The article refers to the fears that the poor are being left behind, the environment is being harmed, bosses care more about profits than people, GM crops are being unleashed on us... But The Economist is still in favour of capitalism and globalisation.
INVESTING :
An article points out that the weighting of stocks in global stockmarket indices are being recalculated. This could help British shares and hurt Japanese and German shares!
OIL PRICES :
The Economist examines the options... It tells us that the rich industrial economies now use only half as much oil per dollar of GDP as they did in the 1970s.
BOOK REVIEWS :
These include THE BLIND ASSASSIN by Margaret Atwood.
MARKET INDICATORS :
The Economist presents a Creativity Index (measuring the amount of innovation in a country). Top comes the USA, followed by Finland. Singapore comes third because it imports technology. Next come Israel, Britain and Hong Kong.
Near the bottom are lots of South American countries and countries of the former Soviet Bloc.
So, lots of interesting information about the world.
economist.com is modernising its site to make it more attractive. It's worth a look.
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