Smart Reads January 3, 2013

January 3, 2013 1:49 pm by Amie Tsang
  • The fiscal cliff has been averted, but the fiscal cliff compromise could make Mr Obama’s second term painfully difficult.
  • Nouriel Roubini argues that a deal that extends unsustainable tax cuts for 98 per cent of Americans is “a pyrrhic victory for Mr Obama”.
  • Ezra Klein has looked through the nitty gritty of the deal to find the weirdest elements of it — including an excise tax on rum. (If you’re still grappling with the basics, Jonathan Chait at New York magazine has explained it all using The Big Lebowski.)
  • Young professionals of all classes in Bahrain are going underground to back the Shia uprising, while holding onto their regular jobs by day.
  • Louise Arbour has been looking ahead and put together a list of the 10 conflicts you should be keeping your eye on over the next year.
  • Critics of a planned railway from Kunming in southwest China to Vientiane in Laos say that the benefits would be felt only by China. Meanwhile the costs would be borne in Laos, possibly putting the country’s “macroeconomic stability in danger.”
  • Nearly all the world’s diamonds pass through the Indian city of Surat, changing hands “in polishing houses that grab from piles of legal and illegal stones like mix-’n'-match candy bins”, so any certificate saying they are not conflict diamonds might be worth “about as much as a crumpled ATM slip”.
  • A Japanese trucker, bored with his humdrum job, has been getting his kicks touring war zones around the world. His trips have taken him through Yemen, Egypt, Syria, and later this year, “he plans to hook up with the Taliban in Afghanistan.”
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