The Economist (US) back issues from January 1999:
What follows Fidel?(economic issues facing Cuba)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... HAVANA Forty years of revolutionary fervour have left Cuba's economy in ruins and its future uncertain. But Fidel Castro remains unchallenged ON JANUARY 1st, Cubans celebrated not only the beginning of 1999, but the 40th anniversary of Fidel Castro's revolution. There ...
Cardoso tries again.(analysis of the economic issues facing Brazil)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... Brazil SAO PAULO IT WAS not supposed to be like this. When Fernando Henrique Cardoso persuaded his country's Congress to overturn a constitutional ban on incumbents seeking re-election, he seemed to have the credentials to enter history not just as the man who had ...
At last, an election in Nepal.(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... KATMANDU YET another government has collapsed in the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal. The latest political crisis arose when the prime minister, Girija Prasad Koirala, resigned after one of his partners pulled out of the ruling coalition. Though Mr Koirala has put together a new ...
Where now for the BJP?(India's Bharatiya Janata Party )(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... DELHI Facing a strengthened opposition, India's ruling party confronts progress MOTHER TERESA was no saint but a Christian zealot who terrorised those who refused to convert. Amartya Sen was slightly more deserving of his Nobel prize (for economics), but the mass ...
How sorry?(leaders from Cambodia's Khmer Rouge apologize for actions)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... Cambodia PHNOM PENH SENIOR Khmer Rouge leaders have apologised, for the first time, for the suffering they caused between 1975 and 1979 when some 1.7m people are reckoned to have died during the movement's reign of terror. Speaking to reporters in Phnom Penh, Khieu ...
Three men who frighten the party.(Chinese political activists seeking to change the communist government)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... China BEIJING China was supposed to be growing more tolerant of dissent. It isn't THE authorities dithered for months, then showed their mailed fist. Organisers of the first, open opposition to Communist rule, the Chinese Democratic Party, which declared ...
The casting-out of Mandelson.(United Kingdom cabinet member Peter Mandelson steps down )(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... IT IS hard to sum up pithily the complex mixture of emotions generated by the dramatic Christmas resignation of Peter Mandelson, one of the chief architects of New Labour, secretary of state for trade and industry, and probably the most interesting ("exotic" is his own word) man in Tony ...
Comparative sleaze studies.(political scandals in the United Kingdom)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... Tony Blair insists that there is no comparison between the rows that forced Peter Mandelson and Geoffrey Robinson to resign and the "sleaze" scandals that bedevilled the Major government. Is he right? FROM the moment that Peter Mandelson resigned from his job as trade and ...
Standing room only.(Railtrack)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... Railways John Prescott needs to sharpen the financial incentives of Britain's privatised rail companies to stop passengers being taken for a ride THE ultimatum given to passenger-railway operators to improve their services or face the loss or curtailment of their ...
Bikini brides.(British couples going abroad to marry)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... MANY a marriage has come to grief even before the wedding day, as the happy couple and their families squabble over who to invite to the ceremony and the reception; over who will sit where; and over the choice and the cost of dresses, flowers, limousines, food, drinks and photographers. No ...
Further to fall.(British interest rates)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... The economy Why are British interest rates so much higher than Europe's and America's? THREE cuts in interest rates, totalling 1.25 percentage points, brought some cheer to British borrowers in the last three months of 1998. But not all that much. Britain's official ...
A Diary for 1999.(scheduled events for 1999)
Jan 02, 1999 ... January Europe's single currency is here, and out goes the ecu. The euro will operate in tandem with local currencies in 11 EU countries (four don't want to know), and the new European Central Bank will begin to flex its muscles-but national central banks will still play their ...
That woman.(1998 events)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... President Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives on two counts-perjury before a grand jury and obstruction of justice-arising from his concealment of his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Yet the public continued to support the president: in November's elections, his party, the ...
Political fallout.(Asian events of 1998)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... Bloody street riots caused Indonesia's President Suharto to step down after 32 years. He was replaced by his protege, B.J. Habibie; unrest soon returned. A veteran opposition leader, Kim Dae Jung, became president of South Korea and freed 2,300 prisoners. Malaysia's ...
Little change.(international current events)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... After an 18-month Israeli-Palestinian impasse, Bill Clinton stage-managed an interim deal between Binyamin Netanyahu and Yasser Arafat at an American summit in October. Mr Clinton then visited Mr Arafat in Gaza. But opposition to the deal in Israel's cabinet led Mr Netanyahu to decide on ...
Leftward bent.(1998 international events)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... By the end of 1998 left-of-centre parties were in power, usually in coalitions, in 13 out of the European Union's 15 countries. Right-of-centre governments ruled the roost only in Spain and Ireland. In Germany Helmut Kohl and his Christian Democrats were beaten in a general ...
To the brink.(1998 economy)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... Global GDP growth fell by half to less than 2% and the world teetered on the edge of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. Russia defaulted on its domestic debts in August; Long-Term Capital Management, a big hedge fund, nearly collapsed. Fears of a global credit crunch were eased ...
The urge to merge.(1998 business mergers)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... It was the world's biggest ever year for mergers and acquisitions: they surpassed $2.4 trillion, 50% above 1997's total. American companies made two-thirds of the deals. Biggest of all in value terms was the union of two oil giants, Exxon and Mobil, announced in December: it will create ...
Sic transit.(1998 business and economic events)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... Robert Crandall, tough boss of American Airlines for three decades, stepped down. Alex Trotman, boss of Ford (and now a lord), quit earlier than expected. So did Anna Murdoch, who left her husband Rupert and the board of News Corp. Pfizer launched Viagra, a cure for impotence, ...
Europe juggles its jobs.(European changes)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... WHEN the European Union's accounts for any given year have been drawn up by the European Commission, and picked apart at length by the European Court of Auditors, they go to the European Parliament for final approval. Each year the auditors discover all manner of horrors in the accounts ....
A Transylvanian tragedy.(economic and political woes in Transylvania)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... VISCRI A DOUBLE tragedy continues to unfold in Transylvania, the north-western chunk of Romania that has been a haven for ethnic Germans for some eight centuries. First is the fast disappearance of an extraordinary cultural heritage, expressed partly by the medieval ...
The EU's coming wrangle for reforms and spoils.(European Union in 1999)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... BRUSSELS 1999 will not be just the year the euro was born. With Germany presiding for the next six months, the European Union has a host of other challenges JUST as well that the current crop of European Union leaders managed to rub along easily enough at their ...
Of commissars and commissioners.(Russian economy)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... MOSCOW A RUSSIAN'S mental map of the world paints America large and everywhere else small. The United States counts for most in high matters-diplomacy and finance-as well as practical ones: the dollar, for example, is Russians' best-trusted currency for saving and commerce ....
The chancellor cracks his whip.(new German chancellor Gerhard Schroder)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... Germany BONN Gerhard Schroder, the new chancellor, has profited from a row with a colleague to start asserting his authority WHEN Gerhard Schroder lets slip a beam of quiet triumph these days, the chances are someone has mentioned Jurgen Trittin. How so? Isn't Mr ...
Economic Indicators.
Jan 02, 1999 ... OUTPUT, DEMAND AND JOBS Italy's GDP grew by 0.5% in the third quarter; its year-on-year growth rate remained at 1.2%. Japan's industrial production shrank by 2.0% in November, leaving it 5.5% below its level a year earlier. In November, Japan's jobless rate reached 4.4%, the highest since ...
Financial Indicators.(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... TRADE, EXCHANGE RATES AND RESERVES Britain's merchandise-trade deficit narrowed to $2.7 billion in October. Its 12-month deficit, however, widened to $31.3 billion. The current-account balance turned positive in the year to the third quarter. In trade-weighted terms the dollar lost 0.4% in ...
Emerging Market Indicators.(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... ECONOMIC FREEDOM The Heritage Foundation, a conservative American think-tank, and the Wall Street Journal, produce an annual "index of economic freedom". This ranks countries on ten indicators of government restrictions on economic activity: trade policy; taxation; monetary policy; the ...
Turning the screw.(Japanese economy)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... Japan's economy TOKYO CAN Japan stomach higher interest rates? Since September, when ten-year government bond (JGB) yields dipped below 0.7%, yields have tripled (see chart overleaf). Masaru Hayami, the central bank governor, suggests a brighter outlook for the ...
Hold your tongue.(terminology to describe the economy)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... BEAUTY is in the eye of the beholder. This applies as much to economic figures as to the human kind. Whether an economic development is "good news" or "bad news" may depend on circumstances, or on who you are-something most scribblers tend to ignore. In the second article in our occasional ...
Short changed.(economic woes in Italy)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... ROME HOWEVER much of a challenge the birth of the euro may seem to bankers in Milan, Italy's financial centre, in the Sicilian capital of Palermo it is being seen as a disaster. The Sicilian regional government is gripped by a financial crisis. Its problem is simple: the ...
The stage is set.(euro makes debut as European currency)
Jan 02, 1999 ... Financial institutions are rushing to be ready for the euro's launch. The mood is confident, but there is no guarantee that things will follow the script THE dress rehearsals are over, the curtain is rising, and the leading players are scurrying to ensure that the performance ...
Profits of doom.(share prices and corporate profits)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... Economic growth SHARE prices in much of the world ended 1998 higher than they started it. Oddly, at the same time, the profitability of companies is shrinking, even in the world's leading economies. This begs the question of whether equity prices in rich countries now make any ...
Who'd have credited it?(MasterCard in China)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... HONG KONG READING, as one does, the fine print of a MasterCard annual report in a Chinese caf@e is a perplexing experience. China, where few ordinary citizens have a credit card (indeed, where credit-card-style revolving consumer lending is illegal), is MasterCard's ...
What next for Iraq?(United States and Britain try to stop Iraqi weapon production)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... More bombast than policy on both sides as America and Britain confront Iraq IT IS easier to start a fight with Iraq than to end one. So America and Britain discovered when they called off their four-day bombing campaign against Iraq on December 19th, only to find the Iraqis ...
Breaching the ramparts.(Moroccan immigrants illegally entering Europe)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... Morocco TANGIERS DELEGATES were getting ready to leave an immigration conference in Tangiers at the end of November when Morocco announced that yet another vessel had sunk off the coast, with 30 migrants on board. In the past five years, Spanish officials had told ...
Bolters take off.(1999 Israeli election campaign)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... Israel JERUSALEM ISRAEL'S parliament, the Knesset, having deposed Binyamin Netanyahu and dissolved itself, has now decided on a ludicrously long election campaign of nearly five months. The vote will take place on May 17th, with the likely run-off vote for prime ...
Trapped in the middle.(United Nations in Angola)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... Angola LUANDA HELL and heaven are separated by a 20-minute drive along clogged streets. The centre of Angola's capital, Luanda, is a wasteland of piled-up rubbish, broken pavements and broken people; amputees from the war and its landmines beg at every corner. At the ...
Stop the clock.(solving possible computer problems in 2000)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... Only poets can now save mankind from millennium buggery SCARCELY a year to go, and still no one can be confident that the stroke of midnight next December 31st will not release a plague of little green bugs to usher in the new millennium. Panic is rising. Every household in ...
Feeling left out.(making the list of countries with emerging economies)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... Taking part, it is said, is just as important as winning. This rule apparently applies as much to economic statistics as to sports WHEN a country competes for the first time in the Olympic games or the World Cup, it unleashes a wave of national pride-even if its athletes come ...
The damage done.(Bill Clinton impeachment case)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... Bill Clinton gave America a terrible 1998. If he will not limit the damage in 1999, everyone else must do it for him WITH every day that passes, matters get worse. The country is drifting along in a state of neglect. Legislative programmes are unheard of. Reformist debate has ...
Europe's adventure begins.(Europe introduces the euro)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... IT WILL happen over a holiday weekend, and in a way which leaves ordinary citizens more or less unaffected, as new notes and coins will not replace old national currencies for a further three years. But the nature of its launch on January 4th should not let anyone underestimate the ...
A Christmas catastrophe.(United Kingdom political scandal involving Peter Mandelson)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... Not even Tony Blair can put a positive gloss on the scandal that has just claimed two of his senior ministers TONY BLAIR is one of the world's most admired politicians. In Britain, too, his personal popularity has remained unusually high well into the second year of his New ...
Ending the war on drugs.(drug problems)
Jan 02, 1999 ... The war against drugs is either not working or succeeding at too high a cost, several recent books agree. What should replace it is harder to be certain of WAR is a dirty business, and the war on drugs involves plenty of filth: deceit, corruption and damage to civil liberties, ...
William Gaddis.(author)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... FOR more than five years William Gaddis worked on his first novel, "The Recognitions", hoping for, and half expecting, instant success. He would not, he said later, have been "terribly surprised" to get the Nobel. Quick fame came to Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Why not to him? ...
A global disaster.(AIDS virus in Africa)
Jan 02, 1999 ... PIETERMARITZBURG, HARARE, KAMPALA The AIDS virus has infected 47m people, and shows no signs of slowing. It cannot be cured. Can it be curbed? IN RICH countries AIDS is no longer a death sentence. Expensive drugs keep HIV-positive patients alive and healthy, perhaps ...
Gambling on the euro.(new European currency)
Jan 02, 1999 ... Europe's monetary union is neither bound to succeed nor doomed to fail. Leadership, circumstances and luck will combine to decide its fate THE architects of the euro, looking back this weekend on what they have achieved, are entitled to feel pleased with themselves. As recently ...
Ins and outs.(European nations not participating in the euro conversion)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... PERHAPS the biggest omission in the Maastricht treaty was the failure to clarify the status of the "outs"-the countries that decline to take part. (Britain, Denmark and Sweden have chosen to stay out; Greece would love to join but is nowhere near satisfying the Maastricht criteria for ...
Liberalism lives.(results of global opinion poll on free trade and protection)
Jan 02, 1999 ... Economic liberalism is surviving trial by recession, according to the latest worldwide opinion poll by Angus Reid and The Economist HISTORICALLY, recession is the midwife of protectionism. In good times, peoples and nations are happy to enjoy the benefits of open trade. Come bad ...
Country reports.(international economics)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... THE map above sets out, country by country, the balance of opinion in each of the countries surveyed on the respondents' own country's present economic condition, on its prospects for next year, and on the view of its people on global economic prospects. Americans are delighted ...
Trial by prosperity.(American economy)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... LOS ANGELES IF THE most urgent question for Republicans in 1998 was why there was so little outrage about Bill Clinton's morals, the most urgent question for protectionists was why there was so little outrage about the surge in foreign takeovers of American companies. ...
The science of selling.(using DNA aspects to sell cars)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... Genetics and evolutionary theory are now sufficiently engrained in the public mind for advertisers to make use of them-carefully CAR makers have long used sex to peddle their wares. Recently, however, a new twist to this old idea has developed. Or, rather, two twists-the double ...
Why mathematics = sales.(books on mathematics)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... IF AN old rule of thumb from the publishing industry is to believed, every equation included in a book halves the number sold. Yet in recent months several mathematical treatises have become bestsellers. Slim volumes have told the stories of the numbers e, p (which has also had a film ...
As I was going up the stair . . .(holograms)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... Holography DETROIT JOURNALISTS attending the Detroit Motor Show-the American automobile industry's top annual shindig-are used to seeing concept cars. These are vehicles that incorporate the sort of technological wizardry which manufacturers hope to put into their ...
Japan's new telescope.(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... Mine's bigger than yours TOKYO IN THE next few days the shutters will be coming off the world's biggest scientific mirror. It is 8.3 metres (326 inches) across, and although it sits on a mountain top on the island of Hawaii rather than in Japan itself, it is the ...
The 21st-century army.(military training via computers)
Jan 02, 1999 ... A new but risky sort of war CAMP PENDLETON, CALIFORNIA Why learning to fight by computer may not be quite good enough IN A sealed room in sprawling Camp Pendleton, a Marine Corps base in California, a young corporal is mastering the use of the most ...
Incident at Rifle River.(obscene-speech laws of Michigan)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... ON AUGUST 15th, Timothy Boomer fell out of his canoe. Naturally, he cursed, using "loudly and repeatedly . . . a most offensive vulgarity" together with "various derivatives". He was in the middle of nowhere at the time, in a wilderness area of the Rifle River near the Jack Pine Trail in ...
Dial one yourself.(entrepreneur's autopsy business expanding into franchises)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... Autopsies CHICAGO NATURE abhors a vacuum. So do American entrepreneurs. Consider a firm called Autopsy/Post Services (1-800-AUTOPSY), founded in 1988 by Vidal Herrera. The frequency with which autopsies are performed in America has been falling steadily for over ...
The incomparable Daniel Patrick.(New York Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... THE scholar warms almost instantly to his theme: "We have been so stable, apart from the Civil War, that we think it natural. Britain and the US are the only countries since 1800 not to have had their form of government changed by violence. You take stability as a given, when in fact it's ...
To fight or not to fight.(the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... WASHINGTON, DC THE accused has a seemingly simple choice: to fight it out, or to accept his punishment. But is anything in the world of Bill Clinton, the only elected president in America's history to have been impeached by the House of Representatives, truly straightforward? ...
The complications of clustering.(manufacturing industry in northern Italy)
Jan 02, 1999 ... PARMA Northern Italy is studded with thriving clusters of manufacturing businesses. Why are they so vigorous? BEAUTIFULLY made goods from northern Italy are a part of la dolce vita from Hollywood to Hong Kong. Silk from Como, wool from Biella and gold from Vicenza ...
On the tiles.(Italian tile industry)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... SASSUOLO TORTELLINI and Lambrusco pushed aside the usual machines and cutting oil last November when LB Officine Meccaniche celebrated 25 years of building machinery for making ceramic tiles at its factory on the outskirts of Sassuolo. There was every excuse for a blow-out: the ...
GEC.(Britain's General Electric Company'd role in Europe's defence industry)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... Lord Switch-off WITH a record like his, there is every reason to think that Lord Simpson, the managing director of Britain's General Electric Company (GEC), will play a big role in the reshaping of Europe's defence industry. Not that he entertains many grand designs himself: he ...
South Korean restructuring.(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... The bigger bully HONG KONG AND SEOUL EVEN those who are leery of politicians meddling in industry sense a certain justice in the dressing down that South Korea's government is giving its giant conglomerates, or chaebol. Kim Dae Jung, South Korea's president, is not ...
Not quite a billion.(the power of Chinese consumers)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... HONG KONG BY ADDING an inch to every Chinese shirt-tail, Britain hoped to keep its 19th-century textile mills running. It failed, but the promise of 1.2 billion consumers still lures traders to China. Most are disappointed: China is still largely rural and achingly poor-the ...
Central European industry.(the financial woes of Europe's largest steelworks company)(Brief Article)
Jan 02, 1999 ... Steel stolen BRATISLAVA SLOVAKIA has not had much to boast of in recent years, but it may produce the biggest corporate default in Central Europe since the collapse of communism. Creditor banks have spent the past few weeks shuffling the management of VSZ, Central ...