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24Keep in mind the next time you are in China and find yourself choking on the foul air that the things making the air foul are counted as positives for GDP. If you adjust Chinese GDP for environmental degradation and for over-investment in things that will never be used, it falls in size by 30-50 per cent. Much of this would show up as non-performing loans in most economies but since such loans are never recognised in China, it will show up as slower growth in future years.
Clyde Prestowitz, quoted in China may not overtake America this century after all, by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in The Daily Telegraph
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Richard Brody’s take on “Iron Man 3” which he calls “a minor masterwork of synergy between actor and director”: http://nyr.kr/YAZDy9
Love and Madness in the Jungle
A financier and his wife build a mansion in the jungles of Costa Rica, set up a wildlife preserve, and appear to slowly, steadily lose their minds. A spiral of handguns, angry locals, armed guards, uncut diamonds, abduction plots, and a bedroom blazing with 550 Tiffany lamps ends with a body and a mystery: Did John Felix Bender die by his own hand? Or did Ann Bender kill him to escape their crumbling dream?
| Outside | May 2013
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Karzai Said He Was Assured of Cash Deliveries by C.I.A.
The C.I.A. money, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan told reporters, was “an easy source of petty cash,” and he suggested that some of it was used to pay off warlords and power brokers.I will admit to a certain level of skepticism when this story “broke,” since an almost identical story was first filed in 2010 by the Washington Post. However, what’s making this story readable is Karzai’s continued brazen comments with regard to what the CIA’s been up to, to include this particular gem:
Asked why money that was used for what would appear to be justifiable governing and charitable expenses was handed over secretly by the C.I.A. and not routed publicly through the State Department, Mr. Karzai replied: “This is cash. It is the choice of the U.S. government.”
He added, “If tomorrow the State Department decides to give us such cash, I’d welcome that, too.”
I’d be more surprised by Karzai’s approach, except for the fact that I remember a particular district governor once telling a room full of USAID, DoS, and military personnel that if someone would just give him $10,000, he’d fix a particular problem to everyone’s satisfaction.
At some point you kinda have to give the guy props for a certain level of “transparency,” no?
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