PlexNex

Super-Tuesday Review

Who else but The Economist has such an efficient review of what happened in politics yesterday?

CNN's coverage was quite good during the evening, too.

Charlemagne's been reading the Plex

More from The Economist...

In a post mortem following up on Microsoft's bad week, the Charlemagne column in The Economist looks to be hanging on my feed...or at least gaining inspiration from my editorial mojo.

Here's my piece on laissez-faire v. activist government -- "Once Upon a Time in America".

Charlemagne takes it quite a few steps further than my guerrilla pass, doing better research, citing Mark Shapiro's book ("Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power") and by actually being European.

In Europe corporate innocence is not assumed. Indeed, a vast slab of EU laws evaluating the safety of tens of thousands of chemicals, known as REACH, reverses the burden of proof, asking industry to demonstrate that substances are harmless. Some Eurocrats suggest that the philosophical gap reflects the American constitutional tradition that everything is allowed unless it is forbidden, against the Napoleonic tradition codifying what the state allows and banning everything else.

At least a comp subscription would do.

THE ECONOMIST: "Stay Vigilant"

The Economist re-caps Microsoft's bad week with lucid insight...copping my entire shtick...

But does the Microsoft case really still matter?

Many of those who called for action a decade ago no longer seem to care. Competitors have cut their own deals with Microsoft, extracting nearly $5 billion from the firm, rather than wait for this week's ruling. Microsoft's evil empire has been overshadowed by a newer, and therefore more exciting, threat in the shape of Google. And, geeks point out, the computing world has now become so interconnected that it will be hard for a single company to control it.

There's much in this argument. When Microsoft emerged as the world's most powerful software company, most computers were still stand-alone devices. Now that almost everything is wired and all kinds of services are offered online, machines and software need to be able to interconnect. There is thus a natural tendency towards common technical standards that are not controlled by one company: the internet and its open protocols are the prime example.

It's a sign that it's time for PlexNex to move on from guerrilla Microsoft crit.

The Economist: The Magazine's Magazine

There's a reason The Economist is your favorite read (after People). It oozes substance but manages through adherence to a long English/Scottish tradition of self-effacement to undercut any possible hint of self-importance. Its authority comes sentence by sentence in its Voice; and while making sense of complex and serious matters it makes light of itself and reminds the reader to attain that same healthy perspective.

The early July cover is a fine case in point. It had this picture, below, accompanied by the intriguing line, "The trouble with private equity"...

"The Trouble with Private Equity"

A great number of people in the past decade have become (more) wealthy through hedge funds and what are called "Private Equity" investment vehicles -- through managing them as well as investing in them. Whole urban real estate markets have been inflated by the sheer volume of cash flowing out of the private equity space. (It's one reason I've moved the family out of NYC).

This makes criticism of Private Equity in a venue like The Economist a bit of a sticky wicket -- readership is populated by either private equity moguls or apologists. That's why this light-hearted cover image is so strong. It begs the question, with a soft aesthetic touch, marks the presence of something like RISK(?) without hammering the point stridently or pandering to fear. It is the serene way to draw attention to certain market sectoral exuberances without spilling ones cocktail.

There is -- or must be -- a tradition of "trouble with..." covers which Economist editors may have always winked about in passing each other over the tops of the metal file cabinets in the beige hallways at Canary Warf. I specifically recall -- oh, sometime in the early 1990's -- a cover when Wall Street had had its big recovery in its long and continuing run. The cover photograph was of two camels copulating. The caption was..."The trouble with mergers".

Addison & Steele would approve.

UPDATE:

Cover was located by Nils Grotnes. Thank you, Nils.