Monthly Archives: March 2013

Taking North Korean threats seriously

March 30, 2013 4:16 pm by Gideon Rachman

Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s faintly sinister foreign minister, is not a man who panics easily. So it is worth paying attention, to what Lavrov has just said about North Korea. “The situation could simply get out of control, it is slipping toward the spiral of a vicious cycle,” was his comment yesterday. You could dismiss this as the usual Russian criticism of US foreign policy, since Lavrov was implicitly knocking the US military exercises that seem to have provoked North Korea’s most recent, blood-curdling threats. Or you could take what Lavrov has to say seriously. I’m inclined to do the latter. There are still far too many people in the West, who treat North Korea as a joke. That could be a big mistake. Read more

Posted in Foreign affairs, North Korea | Permalink

Smart Reads March 28, 2013

March 28, 2013 2:55 pm by John Aglionby

- ‘The troika decision-making [is] baffling and the vision of the founding fathers of the single currency [is] a mockery,” argues Christopher Pissarides, an adviser to the president of Cyprus, as other small eurozone nations are feeling increasingly defensive about their economies.

- Stefan Wagstyl suggests that the latest Brics summit has exposed the limits of the five nations’ possible co-operation. (Imagine a group of five friends who get together to build a holiday house but can’t agree on what it should cost, where to put it or who should pay for it.?) Meanwhile Gideon Rachman reckons that Brazil is the only Brics country that still qualifies to be a member of the club. Read more

Posted in Foreign affairs | Permalink

FT podcast: World Weekly with Gideon Rachman

March 28, 2013 2:39 am by Financial Times

What next for the Brics?

The Brics started life as a marketing gimmick dreamt up by Goldman Sachs to promote emerging markets, but the notion has taken on a life of its own and this group of nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – are now a formal organisation who have just met for their fifth summit. In this week’s podcast, Gideon Rachman is joined by Stefan Wagstyl, editor of beyondbrics, and Andrew England, South Africa correspondent, reporting from Durban, where the group has agreed to set up a Brics-led development bank. But do the Brics matter, what unites and divides these nations, and are we likely to still be discussing this group in ten years’ time? Read more

Tags: Brazil, Brics, South Africa
Posted in China, India, Russia | Permalink

The Brics: who is the odd man out?

March 27, 2013 10:01 pm by Gideon Rachman

Join the club: leaders of the Brics (Getty)

As the Brics conclude their fifth summit, Jim O’Neill must be wondering whether it has all got a bit out of hand. Back in 2001, O’Neill – a Goldman Sachs strategist – coined the catchy acronym Bric to cover the four largest emerging markets: Brazil, Russia, India and China. Now O’Neill has lived to see his clever idea become a geopolitical fact. The question – does the Bric concept make sense? – no longer really matters. It makes enough sense for them to meet on a regular basis. Read more

Posted in Foreign affairs | Permalink

Smart Reads March 27, 2013

March 27, 2013 1:33 pm by Esther Bintliff

“The smoke was still rising as Rabbi Herschel Schacter rode through the gates of Buchenwald.” Thus begins the New York Times’ moving obituary of the first Jewish chaplain to enter the concentration camp after liberation.
The story of the 17-year-old Londoner whose news app has been bought by Yahoo for almost $30m is a tech fairytale. But some people are starting to question the narrative: Vibhu Norby argues “The Summly deal makes no sense”; and the FT’s own Lex column asks: “Yahoo pays $30m for an iPhone app that has no revenue and is made by a teenager and this is what counts as product buzz at the $25bn internet giant?”
The rest of the world may have stopped panicking about Cyprus, but on the island itself, the pain is just starting to sink in. “The whole point of the bailout was to shrink the banking sector, but they’ve destroyed our entire economy,” one Cypriot told the FT’s Josh Chaffin. From the comment section, Martin Wolf says there are at least four lessons to be drawn from the Cyprus crisis.
On Tuesday, the US Supreme Court heard arguments on Proposition 8 – California’s ban on same-sex marriage. The NYT’s Lede blog covered the day live; you can also check out the excellent Scotus Blog, which has listed all its coverage of the Prop 8 argument, including a link to audio of the arguments synced with a searchable transcript. The FT’s Richard McGregor argued in his Global Insight that whatever the result of the case, Republicans need to accept that “public opinion is moving in only one direction.”
The Guardian’s Data Blog is showcasing a graphic that illustrates a day in the life of the internet – thanks to the work of an industrious hacker.

Tags: Buchenwald, Cyprus, Proposition 8, Rabbi Herschel Schacter, Summly, Supreme Court, Vibhu Norby
Posted in Smart Reads | Permalink

Why ‘Shinzo Abe: The Sequel’ beats the original

March 26, 2013 4:56 pm by David Pilling

WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 22: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is seen on a television monitor during a news conference on February 22, 2013 in Washington, DC. Abe is in Washington to meet with President Obama and discuss economic and security ties. (Photo by Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images)

Shinzo Abe in Washington on February 22 (Getty)

It’s rare that the sequel is better than the original movie, but so far Shinzo Abe II is doing much better at the box office than its ill-fated prequel. As we approach the first 100 days in office mark, here are five differences (and a few similarities) between Shinzo Abe I and Shinzo Abe II.

1. Shinzo Abe I had a dull subtitle. Constitutional Amendment failed to excite the public and never got anywhere. Deflation Slayer, on the other hand, the subtitle for Shinzo Abe II, has got everyone talking, from bond traders and currency speculators to ordinary Japanese fed up with economic drift.

2. It is often forgotten that Shinzo Abe I, released in October 2006, had a strong opening. Abe travelled to Beijing and mended relations with China. But the movie quickly trailed off as the plot foundered on a boring and jerky narrative involving disappearing pension records and a series of ministerial scandals. Shinzo Abe II was strong even before the opening credits rolled. Many audience members were so excited that shares soared and the yen weakened even before Abe appeared in the opening scene.

3. The plot of Shinzo Abe II is intriguing. It starts off as a story about a bold economic experiment, but no one knows how it will end. Will the Japanese economy at last gain some traction after 20 years in the doldrums? Or will the gamble end in catastrophe with hyperinflation and capital flight? Read more

Tags: China, Hu Jintao, Japan, Japanese politics, Shinzo Abe, Xi Jinping, Yasukuni
Posted in Japan | Permalink

Smart Reads March 26, 2013

March 26, 2013 12:50 pm by Amie Tsang

Entrepreneurial Russians are looking for ways to get around the curbs on withdrawals and money transfers in Cyprus. According to one Russian lawyer, “If you have an account not just for yourself but for your wife, your mother, your father, your children, you can disperse the money between all the accounts of your relatives and little by little you can start moving it away”.
Nicolas Véron argues that the Cyprus bailout now cancels out some of the mistakes in last week’s package. However, the damage has already been done: Ben Hall, our Europe news editor, explains how the Cyprus has hurt the eurozone.
Pervez Musharraf was only greeted by a few hundred supporters on his arrival in Pakistan, a sign of the scepticism around self-proclaimed returning saviours.
Gideon Rachman looks the the imbalance between German strength and consistency, and the weakness of other European countries: “growing German power – and growing resentment of that power – are now the main themes in European politics. This is a historic irony, given that the main purpose of the whole European project… has been to end for ever the idea that Germany is simply too powerful to coexist comfortably with its neighbours.”
The BBC looks at why police in Zimbabwe are seizing people’s radios.
Zanu-PF’s opposition in Zimbabwe needs to accept that the electoral battleground in the coming elections will be uneven and forge ahead with its campaign if its to have any chance of beating President Mugabe’s party, according to Simukai Tinhu.

Tags: bailout, Cyprus, Europe, Eurozone, Germany, Pervez Musharraf, Robert Mugabe, Zanu-PF, Zimbabwe
Posted in Smart Reads | Permalink

From FT.com March 25, 2013

FT column: Role of Cyprus in a German Europe

By Gideon Rachman

In the end, the Cypriots swallowed the bitter medicine. Facing national humiliation and a bleak future many complain their small nation has been forced to succumb to the will of a larger, merciless power – Germany. Read more

Tags: Cyprus
Posted in Europe, Financial crisis, Germany | Permalink

Boris Berezovsky: a reading list

March 25, 2013 8:20 pm by Esther Bintliff

Boris Berezovsky in August 2012 (Getty)

Police have found “no evidence” so far that anyone else was involved in the death of exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, but are retaining “an open mind”, according to one of the detectives working on the case. It’s hardly surprising that questions remain. While one friend told the FT: “In the last few months, he was very depressed, very low. He felt beset by all the issues that surrounded him”, another – Nikolai Glushkov, a fellow Russian exile – told the Guardian’s Luke Harding: “I will never believe in the natural death of Boris Berezovsky.” It may be a while before any certainty is reached [update: police said late on Monday that a postmortem found the cause of death was “consistent with hanging”] – but in the meantime, it’s worth reading up on the life of a man whose influence over his homeland will be felt for a long time to come.

Owen Matthews recalls his first meeting with Berezovsky in 1998, at the “luxurious Logovaz Club, a restored prerevolutionary mansion in central Moscow”. In a piece full of pithy assessments (“Yeltsin may have made Russia free, but it was Berezovsky who made it for sale”; “Berezovsky was Dr. Frankenstein, whose monster was a poker-faced little KGB officer”), Matthews paints a vivid picture of the mathmetician-turned-kingmaker whose love of power contributed to his undoing.

Berezovsky posted a message on Facebook last year, asking his fellow Russians to forgive him for bringing Vladimir Putin to power. The Economist suggests that he sealed his own fall from grace by not only choosing Putin as Yeltsin’s successor, but by making a big deal of it. “Berezovsky… publicised his influence on Mr Putin’s appointment as Yeltsin’s successor so openly that he left Mr Putin with no choice but to kick him out.”

Writing for the FT, Ben Judah contrasts the Berezovsky of old – “they called him ‘the comet’, because he burnt so bright and talked so fast” – with the “insecure, self-doubting and anguished man” of recent months.

Tags: Boris Berezovsky, Boris Yeltsin, Kremlin, Moscow, oligarchs, Roman Abramovich, Russia, UK, Vladimir Putin
Posted in Foreign affairs | Permalink

The BRICs take lunch with the FT

March 25, 2013 6:40 pm by Gideon Rachman

As the BRICs assemble for their summit in South Africa, what better way to celebrate the occasion than to buy the splendid “Lunch with the FT, 52 Classic Interviews” book. The connection may not seem immediately obvious. But think about it. The BRICS have flourished through a relentless focus on commerce, and this is what the FT is trying to do, through repackaging some of our best interviews and selling them in a beautiful commemorative edition, that will take pride of place in your lovely home. When your friends see this stunning volume, with its glorious full-page colour cartoons, they will admire you for your good taste! You might even enjoy reading some of the interviews. Read more