Ray Fisman of Slate writes, "it's a classic stereotype, and not just on Wall Street: Men aggressively compete; women collaborate and nurture." And indeed, this gender-essentialist explanation gets trotted out to explain everything from the wage gap to the problems of women's professional sports. But according to economists, competitiveness may be (surprise, surprise) culture-dependent. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh gave male and female students an adding task, and told them they could win a monetary reward for each correct solution, or for beating other players in the tournament. Men were twice as likely to choose the tournament, despite the fact that they were no better at adding than women. But when economists Uri Gneezy, Ken Leonard, and John List (the last is referenced in Superfreakonomics) performed a similar experiment, using a ball-tossing game instead of adding, the results were more complicated.

Gneezy, Leonard, and List tested their game on members of the Maasai and Khasi ethnic groups. The Maasai, of Tanzania, are a patriarchal society, and as with the Pitt students, men showed greater competitiveness. But the Khasi of northern India are more matriarchal, with property passed down through the mother's line. Among them, women were in fact more competitive. Fisman writes,

If competitive instincts aren't hardwired into the male mind, there may be hope for us to find a balance between the Khasi and Maasai ways of socializing the next generation (though social norms are very slow to change). At a minimum, we can work harder to equip young women with the knowledge and skills to compete in what remains a man's world.

I'm not sure why it has to remain a "man's world," but it is interesting to note that competitiveness may be more a feature of social power than of gender. What this shows — beyond the fact that women aren't naturally shrinking violet — is that human behaviors are malleable. I participated in a lot of psych studies in college, and one of them leapt to mind when I read about the competition research. The study started out with a word search, in which I had to find a bunch of words like "adversary," "enemy," and "battle." Then I and a male student participated in a mock labor negotiation — I was management. I'm pretty pro-labor-union in general, and I also like to think of myself as fair and generous — right after the negotiation, I assumed we'd arrived at a just compromise. Then the researchers showed us what percentage of each of our goals had been met, and it turned out I'd wiped the floor with the guy. Much of this could have been coincidence, but I also realized later that the word search was a "priming task," and that I'd probably been primed to be a hard-nosed negotiator.

As Fisman notes, the financial crisis has called into question "whether all-out competition is the best way of managing our economy." And competitiveness may not be the best way to approach interpersonal relationships either. But one thing is clear: it can be learned. If we need to, we can teach girls be just as competitive as boys, but — again, as Fisman says — it might be a better idea to teach everyone to be a little more cooperative.

Are Men More Competitive Than Women? [Slate]

In an "explanatory note" on the text, Levitt and Dubner admit (in somewhat disingenuous "we're-so-bad" fashion) that their previous book, Freakonomics, lacked "a unifying theme." Superfreakonomics sort of has one — the authors write in the introduction that "it seems to be part of the human condition to believe in our own predictive abilities — and, just as well, to quickly forget how bad our predictions turned out to be." Their aim is to provide a lighthearted and eclectic corrective to this stodgy short-sightedness — a challenge to the status quo, complete with jokes.

Some of their revelations are quite interesting. Particularly timely in light of the recent horror in Richmond is their takedown of the standard view of the Kitty Genovese story. Genovese's death has become a symbol of the apathy of Americans — and New Yorkers in particular — in the face of suffering. A New York Times account of the event famously began, "for more than half an hour 38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens. [...] Not one person telephoned the police during the assault; one witness called after the woman was dead." In fact, the number of witnesses was more like six, and one of them may have called the police in time to save Genovese — but they were slow to respond because they thought it was a domestic violence call. As Levitt and Dubner frame it, the Genovese story is less about uncaring bystanders and more about incompetent police and sensationalizing reporters. They roll this information together with a critique of modern altruism research to form a convincing argument that people at large are neither as evil nor as good as they're sometimes made out to be.

Levitt and Dubner are less enlightening on the subject of women in the workplace. We've already critiqued their discussion of prostitutes, but a drop in hookers' relative wages isn't the only social development they try to pin on "the feminist revolution." The other is the decline in the quality of schools, which they blame on women's entry into high-paying professions that had previously been closed to them, like medicine and law. Levitt and Dubner write,

As a consequence, the schoolteacher corps began to experience a brain drain. In 1960, about 40 percent of female teachers scored in the top quintile of IQ and other aptitude tests, with only 8 percent in the bottom. Twenty years later, fewer than half as many were in the top quintile, more than twice as many in the bottom. It hardly helped that teachers' wages were falling significantly in relation to those of other jobs. "The quality of teachers has been declining for decades," the chancellor of New York City's public schools declared in 2000, "and no one wants to talk about it."

The authors don't suggest that we turn back the clock on feminism in order to benefit schoolchildren, but they do question whether women have really profited from their increased opportunities. They mention the wage gap, then contend that because women take fewer finance classes and more "career interruptions" than men, they are actually choosing their lower wages. Levitt and Dubner write, "while gender discrimination may be a minor contributor to the male-female wage differential, it is desire — or lack thereof — that accounts for most of the wage gap." It's hardly a new argument, and their question, "could it be that men have a weakness for money just as women have a weakness for children?" isn't particularly groundbreaking. They don't explain why women should bear the full responsibility for educating schoolchildren, or how districts might make teaching more competitive with other professions. By bookending their discussion of women's work with talk about working girls, Levitt and Dubner try to make their arguments sound hip and different — but really, blaming women not only for their own lower wages but also for the problems of society is pretty darn conventional.

Then there's Levitt and Dubner's discussion of global warming. This part of the book has gotten a lot of media play — Levitt talked about it on The Daily Show — and it's likely to be the most controversial. To be clear, the authors don't argue that global warming doesn't exist — they just don't think we need to cut back on fossil fuels in order to stop it. Rather, they champion a series of cool-sounding inventions like a hose that would squirt sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, blotting out just enough light to cool the earth. These plans sound interesting, and it's not clear whether the scientific and environmental communities are considering them seriously. Part of this lack of clarity may have to do with the fact that Levitt and Dubner portray Al Gore and everyone else who believes in carbon reduction as at best a bunch of stick-in-the-muds and at worst a cult. They write,

[T]he movement to stop global warming has taken on the feel of a religion. The core belief is that humankind inherited a pristine Eden, has sinned greatly by polluting it, and now must suffer lest we all perish in a fiery apocalypse.

In response to ideas like the sulfur dioxide hose, Levitt and Dubner quote Al Gore as saying, "I think it's nuts." It's unclear if that's all he had to say, or if he perhaps had an inkling that he was about to be portrayed as the "patron saint" of a misguided religion and decided to clam up. Whatever the case, it's hard to evaluate the "geoengineering" ideas the authors present because the larger scientific community doesn't get to have a say. The authors have a stake in appearing contrarian and cool, and they don't give much space to the lame-os who might disagree with them.

Levitt and Dubner write in their introduction that "we're trying to start a conversation, not have the last word." If their book really does spark a discussion about creative ways to reverse global warming — or to improve schools, for that matter — that will be all to the good. Unfortunately, right now Superfreakonomics looks like that very dangerous thing, a little bit of knowledge. Casual readers may pick it up, find out that women don't want higher wages and that a special hose will save the world, and assume that neither social nor environmental change is necessary. Because as much as Levitt and Dubner portray themselves as upstarts, many of their ideas just give people permission to behave as they always have. And as much as they claim to want to open a dialogue, they don't really give the other side its say.

SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, And Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance [Amazon]

To my amusement, the Fast Company profile must have originally been named "Cassandra's Revenge" judging from the URL. In the heavily gendered article (Hertz is described as "seduc[ing] Bono;" being "teacup-size"; having a "waifish figure" and is spotted with "pink fishnets" and a "hot pink blackberry") Danielle Sacks describes exactly why Hertz is causing an international sensation:

Few academics have leaped from the critical fringes to the role of prophet as adroitly as Hertz. Wielding her contrarian message — that markets need to serve the interests of people as much as they serve companies or shareholders — Hertz has been campaigning for the past decade against the mantras of mainstream economists, urging a more ethical form of capitalism. But her message isn't some yoga-infused spiritual quest. As she explained in her 2001 European best seller, The Silent Takeover, it is about the unsustainability — environmentally, socially, and economically — of laissez-faire capitalism and the idea that markets are stable. If the surge of corporate power was going to leave governments relatively impotent, Hertz argued, then those corporations themselves needed to fill the void. "She moved the conversation from what corporations can do to be socially responsible to a much more profound examination of the boundaries of corporate behavior and public behavior and where they have failed," says Debora Spar, who was a dean at Harvard Business School for nearly two decades and is now president of Barnard. "She's much more radical."

Hertz — part activist, part detective — argues that both economics and business need to be put back into the human social context. "Over the past 30 years, economics became a narrow field completely out of touch with reality," says Hertz, 41, who sees the discipline as a jigsaw puzzle. "I don't believe you can reduce the world to a mathematical formula. I start with the world, assume it's complicated, and ask where can I get help from a whole range of disciplines." Drawing on subjects as diverse as anthropology, physics, geopolitics, and neurology, Hertz's economic vision is at once eclectic and holistic, which may explain her apparent ability to foresee dangers and opportunities others do not. It is also relentlessly pointed, serving an explicit agenda — making corporations realize that they can no longer operate in their Adam Smith — designed bubble. "I really believe in a globalist agenda, but globalization isn't just allowing companies to trade freely all over the world. It's about what types of rights and responsibilities come with that," Hertz says. With inequality surging, resources diminishing rapidly, and the earth's very future in question, capitalism-at-all-costs is no longer an option, she insists: "I have problems with this very extreme form of capitalism where the pendulum has swung so far in one direction, where the focus is completely on the short term, and no one is thinking about the consequences."

Can I get a hell yeah?

Hertz has since devoted her career to debunking economic myths. After a year, she quit her World Bank job and spent another four years in Russia while getting her PhD in economics and business at Cambridge. Hertz published a book indicting the World Bank and the IMF for imposing American-style capitalism on Russia without contemplating the social cost. "It was never about being anti-capitalist," she says. "I realized that how an economy functions is not just about a market anonymously distributing things but also the way people relate to each other, their beliefs, the way power is distributed. All of that was being ignored." She points out that life expectancy in Russia has fallen by 15 years since the early '90s. Says punk fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, a fan of Hertz's work: "Noreena looks at economics from the other side. From the people it suppresses. This is what punk is all about."

The punk economist spent years honing her ideas, railing against "Gucci Capitalism" since the 1990s. The premise of her work is simple: our systems are broken, and social equality will pay a major role in forming this new economy.

Hertz says that even though many necessary shifts — like caps on banker pay — haven't happened yet, there are already indications that challenges to laissez-faire capitalism are taking shape. Anglo-American market dominance, she says, will be contested by emerging economies like those of Brazil, China, and India, whose votes are likely to be given greater weight by the World Bank and the IMF. At the same time, some countries are starting to question the notion that mere GDP defines success. France, based on recommendations from Nobel Prize economists Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, recently announced it would de-emphasize GDP in favor of other factors such as quality of life and the environment. (Hertz points out that a country's "health" most often correlates with its levels of inequality, now at an all-time high in the United States.) To shake up the old boys' networks, countries such as Norway and Spain have passed legislation that will require company boards to have 40% women. Hertz, too, is helping to drive these developments: She's working with banks like ING to unite investors, environmental NGOs, and other groups in a dialogue about the thorniest global problems.

As Hertz points out repeatedly over the course of the piece, Smith style "consumption above all else; the market will fend for itself" philosophies are laughably out of date. Interestingly, Adam Smith is always the fall guy for consumption based capitalism, but that wasn't his original intent. As Muhammad Yunus writes in World Policy Journal:

The need for reviewing the basic structure of capitalism has seemed appropriate on many occasions, but never so clearly as it is today. Indeed, in light of the current global economic crisis, there is strong support for a major overhaul of the system. In my view, one major change in the theoretical framework of capitalism is necessary-a change that will allow individuals to express themselves in multi-dimensional ways and address the problems left unsolved or even intensified by the existing conceptual framework. And although my proposal may be viewed as a significant change in the structure of capitalism, it is actually very consistent with what Adam Smith elaborated so brilliantly in his Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759. [...]

Even if we can overcome the immediate crises we face, we will still be left with fundamental questions about the effectiveness of capitalism in tackling such unresolved problems as persistent poverty, lack of access to health care and education, and epidemic diseases. In my view, the theoretical framework of capitalism that is widely accepted today is a half-built structure-one that prevents Adam Smith's "invisible hand" from operating as he believed it should, transforming the pursuit of individual gain into general social benefit through the workings of the marketplace.

In a sense, we have chosen to disregard half of Smith's message. His landmark book, The Wealth of Nations, has drawn all the attention, while his equally important Theory of Moral Sentiments has been largely ignored. The present theory of capitalism holds that the marketplace is uniquely for those who are interested in profit only. This interpretation treats people as one-dimensional beings; but people are multi-dimensional, as Adam Smith saw so clearly two and a half centuries back. While we have a selfish dimension, we also have a selfless dimension.
The prevailing theory of capitalism, and the marketplace that has grown up around the theory, makes no room for the selfless dimension of people. If the altruistic motivation that exists in people could be brought into the business world, there would be few problems we could not solve.

Yunus then maps out everything that is wrong with the current system:

The financial system has broken down because of a fundamental distortion of its basic purpose.

Credit markets were originally created to serve human needs-to provide business people with capital to start or expand companies. In return for these services, bankers and other lenders earned a reasonable profit. Everyone benefited. In recent years, however, the credit markets have been distorted by a relative handful of individuals and companies with a different goal in mind- to earn unrealistically high rates of return through clever feats of financial engineering. They repackaged mortgages and other loans into sophisticated instruments whose risk levels and other characteristics were hidden or disguised. Then they sold and resold these instruments, earning a slice of profit on every transaction. All the while, investors eagerly bid up the prices, scrambling for unsustainable growth and gambling that the underlying weakness of the system would never come to light.

Let's be clear here. What we are currently practicing isn't capitalism. It's a perversion of the original system, designed within a rigged system, set to benefit a few. And innovators like Yunus and Hertz are primed to lead us into a brave new market - or they would, if we were willing to listen.

(Image Credit: Josh van Gelder for Fast Company)

Goldman Sachs's Griffiths Says Inequality Helps All [Bloomberg News]
How an Economist's Cry for Ethical Capitalism was Heard [Fast Company]
Economic Security for a World in Crisis (PDF) [World Policy Journal]

CNN asks if women are "saviors of the world's economy," noting increasing earning and spending power:

For companies, the growing economic power of women would seem an obvious market to capture. But according to a global study by the Boston Consulting Group, women feel at best underserved by companies, and at worst ignored.

"The current way companies appeal to women is to take a male product and paint it pink," said Michael Silverstein, a partner at BCG and coauthor of "Women Want More," a book based on the study results.

Shrink it and pink it strikes again! However, the most out of touch industry is also the industry that would most want to take advantage of women's new found wealth:

For women, the worst offender is the financial services industry. The BCG survey of 12,000 women in 40 regions around the world found that financial services — such as providing ibanking, investment and insurance products and advice — are worst at connecting with female consumers.

In doing so, the industries risk alienating the greatest growing spending bloc on the planet, Silverstein argues. Whether in the workforce or not, women are increasingly the drivers of consumer spending. Women globally control $20 trillion in annual consumer spending; by 2014 that could climb to $28 trillion.

The article also discusses trends in China:

The economic story of burgeoning economies such as China is also the story of "factory girls," young women who have found new spending power as a result of new economic opportunities. Despite the financial crisis, domestic spending in the first nine months of this year was up 15 percent, driven in large part by women under the age of 35, said Shaun Rein, managing director of China Market Research Group.

"Women are starting to make as much, if not more, than men, especially in third and fourth-tier cities," Rein said.

Interestingly, the factory girls phenomenon doesn't just discuss changes in the workplace and in domestic spending. It also represents the changing ideas about a woman's worth, particularly in rural areas of China.

In the Women's Review of Books, Xujun Eberlein reviews Leslie T. Chang's Factory Girls:

In an intimate, nonjudgmental voice, Leslie T. Chang's refreshingly rendered Factory Girls opens up the fascinating and gritty world of female migrant workers. While many of the young women find economic improvement, their rudderless lives raise the question of whether this new migration is a progression or regression in Chinese women's emancipation.

Before the free-market economic reforms, China's urban women largely enjoyed equal status in society and the family. This was because, for various political and economic reasons, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) strongly promoted woman's equality, albeit within the larger frame of collectivism, in which individuals were cast as part of a social machine. Meanwhile, in the countryside, the traditional patriarchal system maintained its grip. In the village I was sent to in the 1970s, girls were regarded as nothing but dowry-debt. The birth of a baby girl always made her parents miserable. In one instance, a poor young mother tried to stage a "falling-off-the-cliff accident" to get rid of her infant girl; fortunately the baby survived. Only one young woman in the village had a middle-school diploma; most had not gone beyond the second grade because they were needed for work. Few showed any interest in education.

This kind of sex discrimination in rural areas has a long history; it is not the result of the one-child policy as some Westerners believe. In fact, the policy was not implemented until 1979, after I had left the village, and even then, the enforcement of the policy was often lax in the countryside, as reflected in Factory Girls.

Some of the major shifts in power dynamics were explored through the story of Min, a migrant worker who had recently gotten a factory job and started contributing to the family:

Not education, but money changes Min's status in her family. Two years after going out, Min lands a high paying job. She is able to send back big money and expensive gifts. Her relationship with her parents changes:

Min was able to dictate family affairs from afar. She monitored her father's purchases and rejected his business plans, and the fact that she had sent home $1,300 gave her such authority.

What the government was unable to do in the twentieth century, money may do in the twenty-first. While Chang never heard a single person express anything like a feminist sentiment, one can reasonably guess that the role of young women in the migration may eventually eliminate rural discrimination against girls and women.

Reading through these articles, I wonder how much can be achieved by removing women's dependence on men, either financially or through societal mandate. How much has capitalism helped women seeking equality, and how often has capitalism hindered women's advancement?

Women: Saviors Of the World Economy? [CNN]
Anomie In The New China [Women's Review of Books]

Earlier: "Shrink It And Pink It" Gets Slaughtered By The Femme Den

A new article in the Daily Beast highlights the stories of two such women, Amina and Habiba. (The names in the article were changed for privacy.) Habiba enjoyed a thriving childcare business, until one horrific day:

Habiba's kindergarten at the end of a narrow and dusty alley is still open, but only barely. A year ago, laughter and the sounds of children playing floated from the new two-story white house with rows of little red and yellow chairs filling its freshly painted living rooms. Then Habiba's son was kidnapped by men demanding more than $25,000 from his mother, an outrageous sum for an entrepreneur saddled by startup debt and struggling to keep capital flowing through her young business. Fearing for her own safety and that of her other children, she shuttered her classrooms and moved her family to Pakistan while she awaited word from the men who took her son. The family's life savings vanished as Habiba spent what cash she had to cover travel and living expenses in Peshawar. By the time she returned to Afghanistan months later, her customers were gone, her business was hobbled and her debts had mounted. [...]

Female entrepreneurs now see their families threatened regularly. Sons, nephews, and sometimes the entrepreneurs themselves are abducted by thugs demanding tens of thousands of dollars, a death knell for businesswomen in a capital-starved country where banks don't tend to lend to small businesses, particularly ones owned by women without either collateral or a track record. The Afghan National Police have proved powerless to rein in the criminality now menacing the entrepreneurs the nation needs, if it is ever to stand on its own two feet without the financial backing of the increasingly impatient international community. (Habiba's son was released after being held for about six weeks.)

As tragic as Habiba's story is, the problem touches the lives of many women in Afghanistan. The article explains how many women turned toward entrepreneurship in the wake of the Taliban's reign of terror, as traditional options for employment closed in the face of extremism. As Afghanistan struggles to rebuild, women who are creating and managing businesses are the government's best hope toward steering the country's future. Sadly, with so many women being targeted, the hopes for women - as well as the economic health of the country - are slowly dribbling away.

For Amina*, an entrepreneur who owns a petrol distribution firm, it is too late for protection. Her small business grew steadily during the past few years, with revenue climbing after she opened a gas station convenience store. Criminals caught on to her success, however, and kidnapped her. Her family scrambled to gather the more than $100,000 in ransom money her abductors demanded, eventually winning her release, but she now owes friends and relatives tens of thousands of dollars. Profits Amina saved to grow her enterprise are gone-instead of financing investment, those dollars now fund her kidnappers. The fledgling entrepreneur's dream of expanding her distribution operations to neighboring provinces is destroyed and her company has run out of working capital. It is likely her dozen employees will soon be jobless.

Like Habiba, Amina was eager to build her business and help rebuild her nation. These entrepreneurs, like many others in Afghanistan, relied upon their ventures to support their extended families and to fund their children's education. Now, drained of cash and out of hope, they are eager to leave the country. But that might bring more danger, not less.

Reports like these underscore how important it is to take a full, comprehensive approach to solving a societal problem. As wonderful as microloan programs like Kiva can be, if women are persecuted for exercising these opportunities or for growing their businesses, all of our best efforts will be for naught.

Thugs Plague Women Entrepreneurs [The Daily Beast]

Ostrom is also the fifth woman to win a Nobel this year, a new "record." Ostrom, who teaches at the Indiana University, Bloomington, and has a Ph.D. in political science, describes the honor as an "immense surprise," adding, "I'm still a little bit in shock." She will share the $1.4 million prize with Oliver Williamson, but does not plan to keep her half for herself, explaining she intends to devote the proceeds to supporting research and funding graduate students.

Americans Ostrom, Williamson Win Nobel Economics [Washington Post]
Ostrom, Williamson Win Nobel Prize For Economics [Wall Street Journal]
Elinor Ostrom And Oliver E. Williamson Win Nobel In Economic Science [New York Times]

We've already talked a bit about HRC's global master plan and the resistance to her efforts, but Times Correspondent Mark Landler really asks some powerhouse questions here really digging into the heart of the obstacles facing women. Most prominent in the discussions are the economic power of women and the links between gender oppression and terrorism.

Landler poses a query that is really asked in the realm of women's rights. When so much discussion focuses around awareness and not solutions, it was really refreshing to see this question appear:

Q: Do you have a point of view about what should come first: Do you empower women economically and then hope that they seize a political role for themselves? Or do you seek to give them more legal and political standing and hope that they can win a place in the economic sphere?

Clinton: That's a great question, because I think the historical record would show both routes have worked. Women were not particularly economically empowered when we finally included the right of women to vote in our Constitution. So women's rights were expanded in 1920, and that opened up a lot of doors to women to see themselves in different roles, including economic roles, outside the home.

India's been a democracy for 60 years, and remarkably extended the vote to everyone, every caste, to both men and women equally. So women have been given the right to vote, but without economic empowerment, they didn't have the influence that their votes should have brought, which is why the government of India has made such a big point of extending economic and political opportunity equally to women.

And when we visited SEWA, the Self-Employed Women's Association [in India], those women had the vote before they were born, but being economically empowered, being able to stand up for themselves inside their families, on the streets of their villages, is giving them a sense of autonomy and authority that just their vote couldn't have.

A discussion of economics (alongside discussions of literacy, education, and access) is crucial in fighting gender discrimination. As we discussed before, lacking access to capital can have dire consequences for women. It leads to them seeking out men for financial stability and being at the whim and mercy of that man. It also a way for women to be controlled, even in more developed nations. The power to earn and retain one's own money, to purchase and own property, and to work should be fundamental rights for every citizen. Landler presses even further with one solution that has gained a lot of popularity: microlending.

Q: In your travels as secretary of state, you've focused heavily on the role of microlending. Is there a reason in these early days that you've tended to emphasize the economic over the political?

Clinton: [...] I am also struck by every international public-opinion poll I've ever seen, that the No. 1 thing most men and women want is a good job with a good income. It is at the core of the human aspiration to be able to support oneself, to give one's children a better future. Microenterprise is uniquely designed to empower women because - through the trial and error of its development, going back to Muhammad Yunus's invention of it in Bangladesh - women are much greater at investing in future goods than the men who have participated in microcredit have turned out to be. And they are also very reliable in paying back, because they are so eager to have that extra help and recognition that microcredit provides.

So, I don't make a distinction between economic empowerment and political, social empowerment; I think it's fair to say both need to go hand in hand.

Landler also brings up an interesting link between terrorism and gender-based oppression:

Q: There are counterterrorism experts who have made the observation that countries that nurture terrorist groups tend to be the same societies that marginalize women. Do you see a link between your campaign on women's issues and our national security?

Clinton: I think it's an absolute link. Part of the reason I have pursued it as secretary of state is because I see it in our national security interest. If you look at where we are fighting terrorism, there is a connection to groups that are making a stand against modernity, and that is most evident in their treatment of women.

What does preventing little girls from going to school in Afghanistan by throwing acid on them have to do with waging a struggle against oppression externally? It's a projection of the insecurity and the disorientation that a lot of these terrorists and their sympathizers feel about a fast-changing world, where they turn on television sets and see programs with women behaving in ways they can't even imagine. The idea that young women in their own societies would pursue an independent future is deeply threatening to their cultural values.

But, there's an interesting part in Landler's line of questioning where HRC falters a bit. It is a question often asked by women's rights activists and others who are wary of the cause of gender equality being co-opted (and then later discarded) to score political points. If we are aggressively pursing and denouncing the way some nations treat women, why do we give a pass to others? Landler asks:

Q: Many of the countries where the abuses against women are most prevalent are also countries that have a vital strategic importance to the United States: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, India. How can you aggressively advocate for women without jeopardizing those strategic relationships?

Clinton: Well, in a number of these strategic relationships, there's a commitment to advancing the roles and rights of women. In India, the changes that have been made are remarkable. There are still tens of millions of very poor women, but women have assumed more and more responsibility; they are seen in public positions and increasingly economic ones, where their stature is accepted by society.

When I meet with the Chinese leadership, as I just did in the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, they have women who are part of their leadership team, and women who are assuming greater and greater economic and political roles.
[...]

In other societies where we have strategic security interests, it's a challenge to move the agenda forward in a way that includes women's issues. When we did our strategic review on Afghanistan, we said very clearly, We can't be all things to all people in Afghanistan. We have to focus on a few critical concerns. But one of them was the role of women, and women's participation in society.

She doesn't even touch Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. Now, I can understand that global politics is a volatile game, and it may be easier and more efficient to focus on criticizing enemies than to alienate allies. But, if women's rights around the globe are that much of a cornerstone to our global strategy, wouldn't it be problematic to keep working with countries that participate in gender based oppression?

Either way, the interview (conducted in just 35 minutes) makes for insightful reading and adds a great deal of insight into trends to watch for while Hillary Clinton continues in her role as Secretary of State.

(Aside: The interview actually brings up far more issues than I can discuss in one blog post. Bookmark this page for future reference - I've asked some of my friends who work in counterterrorism, homeland security, and international politics to weigh in with their thoughts and opinions later in the week. Stay tuned.)

A New Gender Agenda [NY Times Magazine]

Earlier: Hillary Clinton, Women's Rights, & Colluding With Global Misogyny

Alptraum says:

The reason for condom scarcity in straight porn, ultimately, is you: the consumer. Porn companies make porn without condoms because that is the kind of porn that patrons want to see. And porn companies want to give you what you want-it's how they make a living.

As evidence, Alptraum cites the drop-off in sales (particularly abroad) by Wicked Pictures, the only condoms-required porn company in the States and the movement, even within the condom-heavy gay porn genre, to go condom-less.

Alptraum does, however, point to why the gay porn industry became a majority condom-use industry in the first place: the activism of the consumers.

Fair point, but condom-only porn has thrived in the gay community largely because condoms have long been a charged political issue, and because the community has banded together to promote and support condom-only porn. Activists have spoken out against bareback sex, while publications and reviewing bodies have refused to acknowledge its existence.

This is, of course, because of the LGBT community's concern with promoting bareback sex as a fantasy, given the risks inherent in it and what was a higher prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the gay male community.

In America, however, the number of women living with HIV/AIDS is rising — and, according to the AIDS charity Avert, three-quarters of all new HIV cases come from heterosexual sex. They add:

In the USA, African American and Hispanic women account for 80 percent of AIDS cases, even though they represent less than one fourth of all women. Generally in industrialised countries, the epidemic has had a disproportionate affect on women in marginalised sections of the population, such as ethnic minorities, immigrants and refugees.

There is, in fact, an equally good argument for the porn industry — and its consumers — to be concerned about the message they're sending about the fantasy of safe bareback sex.

Alptraum implies that the debate about bareback sex in straight porn comes down to whether one feels that it's the industry's place to impose standards on consumers' fantasies or respond to consumer demand.

Some argue that more prevalent use of condoms in porn could help sex up the image of safer sex. Then again, there are those who feel that porn's job is to entertain and satisfy fantasies, rather than educate-and if I'm a responsible, tax-paying, condom-wearing citizen, don't I have a right to enjoy a little condom-free porn in my private time?

Which is a fair analysis, to a degree. But it ignores the part the pornography industry plays in creating fantasies, and reinforcing them.

While Alptraum argues that consumers seeking bareback porn will, if the legitimate U.S. industry migrates to more condom usage, en masse leave them behind in favor of international movies or online (including amateur) porn that does feature bareback performances, she's assuming that condom usage — or the lack thereof — really plays a significant role in what pornography people choose to consume. And it would seem that it is more likely that there is a percentage of people — perhaps the same percentage of people that would turn down sex if protection was required? — that would change their consumption habits if they have to see condoms, most people wouldn't spend that much time thinking about it.

But, in addition, there's another factor to consider. If the industry is, by default, condom free, how much protection does that leave for performers — and especially women, as the risk of transmission is higher — to demand to use condoms for their performances? The answer is likely: probably none. If, by Alptraum's reasoning, using condom while filing means movies make less money, then performers in those movies will make less money. Women that demand partners use condoms during "regular" movies will be marginalized, paid less, relegated to non-penetrative scenes or simply not hired. And yet everyone recognizes that, for the safety of the performers, it's far preferable to use condoms than not.

The porn industry has often been accused of exploiting its female performers to fulfill the sexual fantasies of its audience to the detriment of those performers — and many of its stars, from Jenna Jameson to Sasha Grey have gone to great lengths to try to portray a more positive and less-exploitative image of the industry. Yet, over and over again, the industry publicly argues against protecting its performers and makes not effort to allow or even encourage them to protect themselves to preserve the bareback fantasies of many consumers who would probably not engage that much unprotected sex with strangers, regardless of a piece of paper that deems them safe as of a certain date.

Unsafe At Any Deed: Porn, Condoms, & HIV [Blackbook]

Related: Women, HIV and AIDS [Avert]

The problem, such as it is, is that too often women read crap like this from people who are actually serious so, in a vacuum, it seems almost realistic that someone would actually believe stuff like this:

Of course there will always be a place in the world of business for exceptional women. Women also have an important role to play in jobs that are too demeaning for men, like teaching. But the general employment of women is another matter. Indeed, working women almost certainly caused the credit crunch by bringing a second income into the average household, pushing property prices up to unsustainable levels.

Pick a right-wing, "traditional values" anti-woman conservative, and it's just a little too easy to imagine something like that coming out of his mouth.

Newton then "suggests" that the cure for unemployment and government spending is twofold: eliminate many women's jobs and eliminate most women from the work force. Consider the issue of unemployment.

There were 221,301 men on the live [unemployment] register last month and just under one million women in work.

Surely at least half these women have a partner who is earning? Surely at least half would be happier at home? One half of one half is a quarter and one quarter of a million is roughly 221,301. I think we can all see where this argument is going.

It would be ludicrous to suggest that women should be sacked purely to give men their jobs. In many cases, their jobs should be abolished as well.

It's the shotgun marriage of traditional gender roles and the conservative desire to reduce the size of government at any cost! It's practically the right-wing political platform!

But if you hadn't caught Emerson's tongue stuck firmly in his cheek yet, he then cites supposed statistics from the "Center Gender Mainstreaming Unit" — which, naturally, doesn't exist (except in the Philippines).

Further benefits of sacking women have been uncovered by the Central Gender Mainstreaming Unit at the Department of Justice. According to its research, twice as many woman as men travel to work by bus and train, potentially halving the impact of cutbacks in public transport. However, it is probable that three-quarters of the Central Gender Mainstreaming Unit's staff are women, so these figures should be taken with a pinch of salt.

So what, exactly, is Emerson satirizing besides himself and other conservatives? The idea that men, and men alone, caused the worldwide financial crisis.

In short, women were the driving force behind the greed, consumerism and materialism of the Celtic Tiger years and it was female employment that funded their oestrogen-crazed acquisitiveness.

Satire aside, it's a fair point — particularly in the United States, outrageous consumer spending and a lack of savings isn't limited to one gender. The banking crisis was touched off by the mortgage crisis and both contributed to the financial crisis that most economists had been predicting because of everyone's willingness to spend money they didn't actually have. There's little compelling evidence outside of stereotypes about how women and men supposedly innately act — as, obviously, they aren't trained by the financial sector's reward system to take risks to make profits — to suggest that removing men from the financial sectors would have headed off the financial crisis. While I think that it is a good idea to examine gender diversity in the financial sector (as well as most other sectors) and strive for more equitable representation in all industries, making male-dominated industries female ones for the sake of supposed innate traits of women is about as absurd as suggesting women leave the work force en masse to get men out of unemployment.

Working Women Almost Certainly Caused The Credit Crunch [Irish Times]
Would You Eve It? [The F Word]

Related: That's All Jokes [BBC]
Gender Mainstreaming [TESDA Women's Center]

Earlier: Could Women Have Saved The World?

She starts off with the obvious:

Increased spending on family planning (including contraceptives) would generate about as many direct and indirect jobs as any other health expenditures, and probably more than an equivalent tax cut.

I mean, obviously. If the government gives money to people for expenditures — especially when, unlike last year's tax rebate, they can't use to to pay down debt — it stimulates the economy. Getting a birth control prescription means a doctor's visit (paying the doctor, nurse and receptionist at a minimum), a Pap smear (lab worker) and getting the prescription filled (pharmacist and potentially the check-out person) — let alone the workers who manufacture the pharmaceuticals and packaging who will get paid and the potential necessity for follow-up care.

Folbre, though, says it's more than that:

The long-term benefits include significant reductions in unplanned births and abortions. Teenagers, in particular, would benefit. A research paper by Melissa Kearney and Phillip Levine finds that recent state-level Medicaid policy changes reduced births among teenagers by more than 4 percent. The authors offer estimates of the cost per averted birth, which could be compared with the social costs - to children, parents, and society - of unwanted pregnancies.

That paper, in fact, estimates that each averted birth due to the very changes in Medicaid policy that Pelosi and Obama allowed Republicans to scare out of the stimulus package would save the government $6,800 (in 2003 dollars).

But beyond the immediate economy-stimulating effects of allowing women better access to contraception and the cost savings of contraception over unwanted pregnancies, there's more:

In a now-classic article entitled "The Power of the Pill," economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz document the ways that greater access to oral contraceptives increased women's access to higher education and better-paying jobs. A more recent article by Martha Bailey, entitled "More Power to the Pill" details its positive effects on women's paid employment.

Surprise! In a society that offers no particular economic or social benefits to women who have children and, in fact, does little or nothing to help them achieve educational or vocational benchmarks (like, say, providing access to affordable child care) if they happen to do so outside of a traditional marriage, women that can afford to use contraceptives and not get pregnant tend to get more education and thus better jobs.

But, hey. John Boehner and the Republicans don't give a shit about actual economics or the lives of poor women. They're just looking to score political points and get re-elected in two years. Most of us had hoped that the Change(TM) that Obama was going to bring to Washington meant more that he would get important shit done, not that he would just reverse the Bush Administration's policies of not talking to the opposition. If the alternative is caving on all that important shit to change the "tone" in Washington, I'm happy for the city to keep singing off-key while the President rams whatever he said he wanted through Congress.

Sex and the Stimulus [New York Times]

Related: Subsidized Contraception, Fertility, and Sexual Behavior [Social Science Research Network]
The Power of the Pill: Oral Contraceptives and Women's Career and Marriage Decisions [RePEc]
More Power to the Pill: The Impact of Contraceptive Freedom on Women's Life Cycle Labor Supply [Quarterly Journal of Economics]

Earlier: Obama, Pelosi Cave On Contraceptive Funding

According to the Economist, researcher Guido Heineck discovered that,

using the British Household Panel Survey, which in 2005 asked questions to determine the psychological profile of respondents, that certain traits correlate with higher wages. But the relationships differ for each gender. For example, being neurotic is correlated with lower wages for women, but is not significant for men. Women also benefit from being conscientious, but possessing that trait does not have much bearing on male income.

In addition, "being agreeable is correlated with lower earnings for both genders," because, apparently, no one has ever been able to combine courtesy with authority, and as such anything less than utter tyranny is regarded as a sign of passive weakness. Meanwhile, being extroverted and outgoing did absolutely no one any good, and "being open to new experiences," with all its sinister implications, resulted in higher wages for folks of both sexes.

In short: conscientious, unneurotic women open to new experiences (of the inappropriate or foreign office varietal?) have "upper management" written all over them, where they'll govern with high-earning neurotic male sourpusses over a bunch of friendly extroverts. It is noteworthy that, of the paragraph citing the laxness extended to male neuroses and conscientiousness, an Economist reader rejoicing in the name of "Doug Pascover" wrote, "The second paragraph is nothing but good news. I'll drink to that, alone!" You're on your way, mister.

It Pays To Be A Mean Neurotic...If You're A Man [Economist]

• John McCain's had some more time to think about John Lewis's words of caution about the level of racial intolerance and violence coming out in this election season. He thinks John Lewis' words were unacceptable. [CNN]
• Of course, he probably didn't read this article about how calling an African-American political figure a socialist has a long and unfortunate history dating back to efforts to make African-American political leaders — and their fight for equality — seem foreign and scary. [American Prospect]
• Or this one about how too many white people subconsciously associate white people with America and black people with foreign stuff. [Washington Post]
• Or this one, about how people think only the white working class voters of the Midwest count as an authentic political coalition. [American Prospect]

• Meanwhile, Barack Obama's got a new economic plan that involves you being able to access your retirement savings more easily and puts a 90-day moratorium on foreclosures. [NY Times]
• But the McCainiacs definitely read that because their on-again-off-again new economic stimulus plan is back on again for tomorrow, which is totally the way to avoid looking erratic. [TPM Election Central]
• And Nancy Pfotenhauer Pfuckingsucks still fucking sucks and is forced to, giggling, accuse über-conservative Bill Kristol of buying into Obama's hype. [Think Progress]
• Oh and, yes, Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize in economics. I sort of feel bad now that I skipped reading his book in college. [NY Times]

SPENCER: It is 8:11 a.m. and the dude sitting near me at the BWI airport 50s-kitsch diner counter just ordered a 20 oz Miller Lite
MEGAN: Well, at least is isn't a 40? I am sitting in the hallway outside of security watching the tourists parade on by and watching the security people wonder what I'm doing. The security lady says it's coldest in the hallway between the A and B gates, a truth to which I can currently attest.
SPENCER: Interesting fact about the difference between A & B gates: for the purpose of eating or using the bathroom, you're better off using B, even if your flight is at A. No bathrooms at A, and the only stuff to eat is like Arby's and such.
MEGAN: Ooh, I remember that but please don't remind me how much I need to pee after all that coffee I drank to be awake enough to drive you up here. So, I feel like we should lead off with the story about how when Jesse Jackson suggested castrating Barack Obama, he also dropped the n-word, in reference to, well, pretty much every African-American person in America.
SPENCER: Also I bought an issue of Wired for the first time ever — I had a girlfriend who subscribed and my lack of interest in the magazine was a minor issue between us — because Julia Allison is on the cover and I still do not exactly know who she is, but she has extremely impressive cleavage.
MEGAN: Really? If you wanted a picture of impressive cleavage, you didn't have to pay for it.
SPENCER: Ah yes. You know who's upset that she doesn't get to use the N Word? Internment-camp apologist Michelle Malkin. Yes you have very impressive tits and I would never say otherwise.
MEGAN: I prefer that such knowledge be widespread, I will admit it. Also, how much does Michelle Malkin really suck, truly?
SPENCER: Hahahaha the waitress just brought me the Miller Lite by mistake
MEGAN: Dude, the man bought you a beer, it's only polite to accept.
SPENCER: I suppose with my Blackwater t-shirt and tattoos I look like the sort of air traveller who'd have a beer with his omelet
MEGAN: I can't believe that you're getting hit on by dudes this morning and I am not, I need to step up my game.
SPENCER: What is it with right-wingers and their desire to say the n-word? Like, what's in it for you?
MEGAN: Spencer, I mean, obviously, it's not faaaaaair that black people get to use the "n" word and get to be all offended about it when other people do. It's, like, practically anti-American. It's hating on our freedoms (to be racist, disgusting sonsofbitches).
SPENCER: Life is unfair to Michelle Malkin but I feel it is so for reasons independent of her inability to type the N-word.
MEGAN: I don't think like is unfair to MM. I think she is probably pretty damn content with her life. If we want to talk unfair lives, we'd talk about my life. Or yours.
SPENCER: So what are we supposed to believe follows from the apparent fact that Jesse Jackson used the N-word? The significance is...? My life is pretty great right now: I'm about to fly to Austin to attend and speak at a conference of the anti-American terrorist supporting left. i shaved my mustache down and grew out my beard so i could look like a Salafist.
MEGAN: Well, I think it's the hypocrisy of him being part of the campaign to get rappers and the like to stop using it.
I did notice your beard was longer, but I don't notice when the 'stache is shorter, I'll admit.
SPENCER: Oh that was Jackson? Should I blame him for the fact that Nas' record is called Untitled and not N Word? I feel like this is the sort of thing that only a non-black person could possibly find hypocritical
MEGAN: Yes, he was one of the anti-n-word campaign which, frankly, I'm not completely opposed to as I cringe when I hear someone say the word regardless of race, but it is the height of hypocrisy to moralize about it publicly and then use it privately. And/or to threaten to cut off the balls of the first black candidate for President when he suggests that some black men should take responsibility for their children when you've knocked up your mistress.
SPENCER: Like, I don't agree with this argument, but there's nothing a priori hypocritical about saying the n-word but not wanting prominent black figures to use it as the titles of their books or albums or movies or what-have-you. I don't think it's hypocritical! oftentimes I say things in unguarded moments that it's better not see print/publication/distribution. that's an issue of judgment, not hypocrisy. as Dave Chappelle taught us, a world in which everyone constantly keeps us real is not one we'd actually like to live in.
MEGAN: Well, I think that if you're going to argue for a word to be banned from use, then it shouldn't be a word that you're wont to drop yourself. Also, I'm mostly just disappointed in Jesse Jackson the way I am in Geraldine Ferraro, because I thought he was so awesome when I was a little kid and now he's just another big jerk. Plus, whenever I hear Rainbow Coalition, I think Rainbow Connection and now I feel like he has besmirched Kermit.
SPENCER: Have you ever listened to his "I Am Somebody" speech? It's beyond awesome. liberals should remember their history — we tend to think of the 80s as a wasteland of Reaganesque triumphalism but there were some real high points, and Rev JJ's 1984 convention speech is one of them
MEGAN: No, I completely agree. 1984 is really the first election I remember (him and Geraldine being little girl highlights of mine) and so that's really the source of my disappointment.
SPENCER: Jesus fucking CHRIST the Miller Liters are shouting out "Strong Island" to some women who sensibly left the diner-counter in a hurry. ok now i need you to explain something to me
MEGAN: Oh, God, I'm glad I'm not with you right now.
SPENCER: On our internal FDL email listserv, my blogospheric colleagues noted that there was a near-riot at an IndyMac branch in California. I have no idea why or what happened, nor what IndyMac, like, is, so I'm counting on you to explain.
MEGAN: Um, so, I take that back, a woman just sat down next to me out here and started clipping her toenails.
SPENCER: Done with breakfast now!
MEGAN: Ok, so, IndyMac: was a bank in California, still sort of is. The Feds moved in last Friday after it was determined that they didn't have enough money to meet their depository obligations because of tighter credit and foreclosures. Though, it might be eventually facing fraud charges.
SPENCER: and this is Housing-Crisis-related?
MEGAN: Yes, mostly. I mean, housing crisis and financial mismanagement, which are basically being seen as one and the same these days. But, so, like, if you didn't know, any savings accounts and CDs and the like are insured by the federal government up to — and only up to — $100,000.
SPENCER: I did not know
MEGAN: And the FDIC has determined that up to 10,000 IndyMac customers have deposits in excess of the FDIC limits, which is like up to $1 billion in uninsured deposits, and the FDIC expects to have to pay $8 billion + for the bail out. But those people with more money in than the FDIC insured, those people will basically be considered the bank's creditors and will wait years or more to get their money back (if they ever get their $$ back), which is why people were freaking the fuck out yesterday
SPENCER: Okay, I think I found the incident in question — it appears to have occurred in the San Fernando Valley:

Police ordered angry customers lined up outside an IndyMac Bank branch to remain calm or face arrest Tuesday as they tried to pull their money on the second day of the failed institution's federal takeover.
At least three police squad cars showed up early Tuesday as tensions rose outside the San Fernando Valley branch of Pasadena-based IndyMac.

So this is a riot of the formerly-rich?
MEGAN: Welcome to the Depression, and why the government started the FDIC in the first place, though it does provide a significant financial disincentive for banks to not do a great job self-regulating. Well, "formerly rich"
SPENCER: or is it only bloggers who don't have $100,000-plus in the bank these days?
MEGAN: I mean, some of these people, that might be their retirement savings because when you get within 5-10 of retirement you're told to take your money out of the stock market and put it in insurable, risk-averse assets.
SPENCER: Whoa you used the D-word
MEGAN: Ben B can come by and flog me later.
SPENCER: I am sure when I arrive at Netroots Nation there will be no shortage of invective on this, and i don't mean that pejoratively. Oh hey could I refer back to yesterday's CH for a second?
MEGAN: Which part? I know not the food parts...
SPENCER: The Iraq/Afghanistan parts
MEGAN: Sure
SPENCER: My friend Elle Reeve — someone else that TNR fucked over — read yesterday's CH rather attentively, as her husband Scott, a rather unfortunately infamous Iraq veteran, is scheduled to return for his second Iraq tour in the fall and she grounded yesterday's discussion of the Obama/McCain debate over Afghanistan/Iraq troop levels in a really compelling way, so I hereby introduce CH readers to the awesome Elle Reeve:

Obama wants to send two brigades to Afghanistan, and now McCain wants to send three. Where would these dudes come from? They're not going to pluck guys from one war zone and deposit them in another, right? So will troops scheduled for Iraq get sent to Afghanistan instead, and the guys in Iraq won't be replaced as their deployments expire? If Obama's elected and starts pulling out, wouldn't guys in Iraq have shortened deployments, while the guys in Afghanistan would still be deployed for 15 months at a time?

MEGAN: Oh, geez, that sucks that he got re-upped.
SPENCER:

Scott's brigade is mechanized, so there's little chance he'd be sent to Afghanistan, since tanks and Bradleys don't work well with mountains, right? The brigade is set to be in Iraq through near the last of Obama's 16 months. So what will happen to last of the guys in Iraq? Will they pull out of less volatile areas first? Because his co-workers totally deserve someplace nice in Kurdistan after serving in Baghdad last year. Basically, I'm looking to seize on any possibility that he'll be in a marginally less dangerous area. Or an area I can sneak in to. Kidding! Sort of. Give me the illusion of control.

Given that I need to board a plane in like 10 minutes, I sympathize deeply with Elle's desire for the illusion of control
MEGAN: I mean, who doesn't? I always prefer to have the illusion that I have any control over anything. And have a kickass time in Austin!

• Want to hear Jesse Jackson say something embarrassing and regrettable about cutting Obama's nuts out that is probably even more regrettable considering the supposed context is some shit about how Barack Obama needs to stop focusing so much on taking black men to task for being bad role models? Then turn on O'Reilly at 8! Yeah, I'm choosing beer in this case. [Drudge]
• Test missile launches always seem like the ten million dollar equivalent of showing up at your ex-boyfriend's party with some hot dude you blow at around midnight in the corner, in full view of at least three of his closest friends. Which is to say, they're just sort of inexplicably lame to me but it's the sort of behavior that shows you know exactly how to fuck with dudes. [WSJ]
• Sure you can get mad at Obama for supporting this rotten warrantless wiretapping retroactive immunity crap, but do you really think "swing voters" would buy that he doesn't support the U.S. Constitution solely on grounds that he's an Allah-worshiping terrorist? [Salon]
• Handy "analogy for the whole fucking economy" of the day #1: My grandfather's people are about to start getting paid in Euros. [WSJ]

• Handy " " " #2: High-flying super expansionary company employing 17,000 mostly unskilled uneducated Americans and some untold number of Chinese sweatshop workers goes down the tubes because it never really made money in the first place, and as it turns out its actual "earnings" came mostly from the same sweet loans and real estate kickbacks that have sent the rest of the system into disarray, but at the end of the day some rich Penn guys and Sarah Jessica Parker will get paid. [WSJ]
• Oh yeah so the market fell today, led by companies involved in those mortgage thingys, putting the S&P 500 index officially in the same "bear" category as the Dow. [WSJ]
• Angela Merkel does not have a crush on Obama, but her foreign minister does, which I guess means this whole awesome saga is playing out in Germany about some speech he wants to give before the Bradenburg Gate. [Breitbart]
• A depressing way to remind oneself that Istanbul is not actually the capital of Turkey. [NYT]

• Yet another tale of a creepy pageant mom who spends $600 a month on beauty treatments on her 11-year-old daughter. • A new study shows that women who are already "subfertile" worsen their chances of infertility by drinking coffee. • More weird studies! Adults who were born at a low birth-weight tend to leave the nest later in life. • A father in Georgia killed his 25-year-old daughter after she said she wanted to divorce the husband with whom she had an arranged marriage. • A neighboring town to Gloucester, MA mocked the towns now infamous "pregnancy pact" teens in a July Fourth Horribles parade. • Ew! A woman spent half of her day with a baby bat hiding in her bra before she noticed it. • The family of the woman who died on the floor of the Kings County Hospital psychiatric ER plans to sue the city and call for criminal charges. • Could a gene variant make women more prone to alcoholism through endorphin release? Well, it happened in some lab mice. • Two tween-aged girls are missing from a foster home in California, as is their parent's Lexus. • Violence between romantic partners is common among college students with men most likely to perpetrate sexual violence and women more likely to perpetrate physical violence. • Doctors are planning to introduce a cheaper (and less effective) form of in vitro in Africa, where infertility and a stigma attached to it can be stronger than in the West. • Cute video of the day! My favorite Japanese doggy troublemaker gets more than he bargained for when he tries to play with a pack of 5000 dachshund pups!

MOE: Morning Megan! Nice weekend? Good thing I already know the answer to that question because there are like ninety things we need to discuss this morning, and like, none of them is George Carlin! We should maybe start with how they abandoned that whole election idea in Zimbabwe after Mugabe made the truly salient point in a speech that "How can a ballpoint pen fight with a gun?" And Mugabe has so much more than a gun, and he's been wielding them liberally to assassinate pretty much everyone with the combination of courage, integrity, idealism and purposefulness to openly oppose him.

MOE:

One such target was Better Chokururama, a 31-year-old activist with an appetite for bravado and fisticuffs, nicknamed “Texas” for both the cowboy hats he favored and the moniker of a torture camp from which he once escaped. He was abducted on April 19, and his legs crushed by his captors with boulders.
He said in an interview afterward, as he lay with both legs in casts, that he had told his captors “that beating people would not change anything because the opposition had beaten the governing party, ZANU-PF, in the elections.”
“They laughed loudly,” he said, “then threw me out of the moving vehicle.”

MEGAN: Ah, Zimbabwe. Is it sad, or accurate that I wonder if his statement was coerced? Because he only just got back to the country, and I can't imagine that Better Chokururama (or the 86 people killed, or the 10,000 who've been injured or the 200,000 refugees) would prefer not to cast their vote for Morgan Tsvangirai right now than wait for... something. Mugabe's death or whatever, not that his hand-picked successor will likely be any different.
MEGAN: It almost makes me wish I'd watched the end of Last King of Scotland only when the white dude fucked Amin's wife I was like, ok, seriously, I don't really need to see how this ends, it ain't gonna be good.

MOE: I'm not reading you re whether the statement was coerced. "Beating people will not change anything" or "They threw me out of the moving vehicle." The rest of his story, which I omitted, has him getting captured again with some other activists whose bodies showed up a few days later. But there's some other news that I kind of want to get to starting with how the chairman of the chief financial regulatory agency was about as worthless during the whole Bear Stearns debacle as…the old CEO of Bear Stearns! He missed most of the conference calls for birthday parties and went on vacation with his family. Guess that's what you get for expecting someone to police people making nine figure pay packages on a six figure salary!
MEGAN: Well, I meant whether Morgan Tsvangirai was coerced to drop out of the race. He got back from exile to avoid being coerced and dropped out within hours. It seems suspicious to me.

MOE: Ugh, what the FUCK is a former Orange County congressman Reaganite lose doing fucking regulating our financial sector…Oh Morgan Tsvangirai's statement that the election was a violent illegitimate sham of a political process and that he didn't want to start a civil war?
MEGAN: And re: Chris Cox, that's what you get for hiring a guy stupid enough to be a conservative Republican in New Jersey who wasn't exactly known for being hte most go-to Congressman ever to run a regulatory agency when his political ideology is based around smaller government i.e., not regulating. The only good thing about Chris Cox at the SEC is that he's not in Congress anymore.
MEGAN: And by Jersey, I meant California, sorry.
MEGAN: Well, I mean, they already have a civil war. They also put another top party leader in prison and charged him with treason, not that anyone's seen him since.

MOE: Yeah a fucking Reaganite knownothing donothing, God I fucking can't stand those ideological free marketeers whose understanding of the financial sector begins and ends at best with some P.J. O'Rourke essay.
MEGAN: Do people really still read O'Rourke?
MEGAN: Also, he was a Congressman. I'll bet he thought the SEC gig was a step up with fewer actual responsibilities because he has more staff to hold his soft, white hand and do everything for him. Why would he miss a birthday party for regulating anything? He never did in Congress I'll bet you.

MOE: But in the wake of the internet bubble which was followed by the corporate malfeasance fest which was followed by the options backdating debacle how the fuck does someone like Cox get that job? And can Obama make hay out of this? Because I'd rather that than make um oil out of corn but that's neither here/there!
MOE: If anything it makes Obama look less hot to the Brazilians:

“We made a series of mistakes by not adopting a sustainable energy policy, one of which is the subsidies for corn ethanol, which I warned in Iowa were going to destroy the market” and contribute to inflation, Mr. McCain said this month in an interview with a Brazilian newspaper, O Estado de São Paulo. “Besides, it is wrong,” he added, to tax Brazilian-made sugar cane ethanol, “which is much more efficient than corn ethanol.”

MEGAN: But it's the market! The market! Market failures will be regulated by the market and so regulation just damages the ability of the market to correct itself which it will do if you don't overregulate it and so Chris Cox is just doing his job by not regulating the market because regulating it would damage it!

MEGAN: Well, it's a tariff, not a tax, and it's not just on sugar-based ethanol it's on all imported ethanol but McCain's point remains valid. It's incredibly ineffecient and not environmentally sound policy to put tariffs on imported ethanol as a way of additionally subsidizing the construction of ethanol plants in the Midwest that can only be used for corn instead of whatever plant is cheapest. But that's US ag policy: those little family farmers that hardly exist anymore need your tax dollars, dammit, and if a few hundred million or more need to go to multinationals to make sure that a couple farmers won't sell out to them anyway, well, that's the trade-off we all accept to continue fetishizing the family farm.
MOE: Yeah and just to put a number on that…the last agriculture bill was $370 million, yes?

MEGAN: It was a lot, let's just go with that...
MOE: Because fucking agribusiness is so cash strapped right now the leading corn syrup supplier is only commanding a 31% premium over the market price of its shares Man, take a fucking look at this chart. If only I'd been pissed off about ethanol back when I was busy being pissed off about …oil!
MEGAN: Oh, well, ethanol was a better oxegenate for the environment than MTBE, and it seemed so environmentally friendly when the corn growers were all lobbying for it to be a corn-oxygenate back in the day. I mean, it's whole fucking purpose is to allow us to continue driving the exact same automobiles in the exact same way while marginally reducing emissions.
MOE: Anyway suffice it to say the corn industry hasmore than enough money left over to convince America the corn industry is good for America.

MEGAN: It is good, see, sweet delicious corn!
MEGAN: So yellow, so environment-y!
MOE: Ok check out this segue. So that last story was about the corn industry's public relations push to remind Americans that High Fructose Corn Syrup really isn't any worse for you than sugar…and guess what has HFCS in it? Ensure nutritional beverages…Al Qaeda logistics mastermind Abu Zubayda! Which is just one of the numerous fascinating facts we learned from yesterday's A1 Scott Shane story on the interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Did you read that? I highly recommend it.
9:30 AM
MEGAN: Ensure is so disgusting, it's supposed to be a supplement for old people and instead they're marketing it as a meal-replacement solution for healthy people and it's not. Talk about sick PR. But, no, I didn't read the story. I'm sure it's bad.
MOE: Okay, so let me guide you through the important parts of the story: I think the "little farmer guy" who turned in KLS in hopes of earning a quick $25 million and resettling himself and his family under a new identity in the US has to be my fave. Do you think there is some gated community tailored for, like, lottery winners and successful plaintiffs in massive malpractice suits where they could just sort of hide that guy away? Because that could be a fun movie starring Kal Penn.
MOE: But I guess mostly it's a profile of the lead interrogator Deuce Martinez, a wonky egghead analyst who skipped waterboarding classes and played "good cop"

MEGAN: I would snitch on anyone for $25 million, I'm just saying. Didn't we discuss a few weeks ago that the CrimeStoppers programs always end up paying out a ton more money when the economy sucks? I feel like we did.

MOE: Hahaha I really wish I remember what the fuck I read a few weeks ago but I'm just saying I don't think you could interrogate that out of me. Anyway, the whole thing was, well, KLS was waterboarded and subjected to other miscellaneous forms of torture a hundred times, but yeah aren't we sick of talking about the whole torture thing? More weird details! KLS wrote poetry to Deuce's wife! He was captured a few days after the informant sent a text message "I'm with KLS." He was originally transported to Thailand! (Or maybe that was Abu Zubayda) ... Thailand and the US are so close they didn't even have to tell the Thai PM. And Poland is "the 51st state." Really the whole "secret prisons" things seemed to be improving our relations with a lot of foreign countries before Dana Priest discovered them and Bush had them all flown back to Guantanamo.
MEGAN: The Poles just want to be part of the Visa Waiver Program and will do anything to get it. They're the only country in the EU at this point without it, if I recall correctly, but Congress keeps talking about and never passing a bill to let them into it and DHS has no idea.

MOE: I guess we have to talk about campaign finance today. But first I'd like to draw the readers' attention to this handy guide to why you can't really blame the war for the crap economy, despite what Stiglitz says, and even Stiglitz says the war has only added like $5 or $10 to the price of oil, but basically the point is that every globalization has its discontents and our objectivist malcontents didn't pay attention to that when they were setting policy so now we have more discontents over here while some folks in India and China are starting to enjoy better lives/deeper carbon footprints. ANYHOW
MEGAN: Prosperity brings global warming hooray! But only the rich can afford to reduce their carbon footprints. And I always find it difficult to believe that people really think that the war brings the bad economy when war generally makes the economy better. It was one of the reasons Hitler and WWII were initially so popular in Germany — taking shit over improved the economy almost immediately. War spending did its part for ending the Great Depression, etc.

MOE: Well yeah but as Stiglitz pointed out in 2003 Iraq was hardly "total war" and the economic benefits were thus hardly going to be evenly spread around. And as this report points out tax cuts, airline bailouts and No Child Left Behind played their early part in deficit spending. Oh man there are really cute dogs on my Fox News right now. Oh how sweet and all their owners have swaddled them in American flags and "freedom"-themed accessories!
MEGAN: Do they have freedom-themed leashes?

MEGAN: Yeah, I mean, while Bush was cutting taxes he was also presiding over the largest expansion in government history. I was at a speech by Andy Card in 2005, I think, and he went through all these verbal gymnastics to deny that the Administration had expanded the government which made the ambassador from an unnamed country next to whom I was seated marvel at his stones. It basically required that he exempt from consideration the Defense Department or DHS, which are (naturally) where all the increases have been, so it was absurdist in its brilliance. Sort of like if you don't want to be quoted, just curse every other word.
MOE: Hey, speaking of the defense budget is Israel trying to save us some money by just bombing Iran for us? Because that's awfully generous, considering all those fears we are about to elect that Muslim Marxist guy to lead the country and who knows what that means for the Jews…
MEGAN: Well, I mean, we are a leetle busy right now, I think we thought we'd be done enough in Iraq (the same way we're, like, totally Mission Accomplished in Afghanistan) that we could've started bombing Iran on our own.

MEGAN: Anyway, so, campaign finance?
MOE: Oh right, that's not my issue. And I must admit, I was occupied with this crazy Botox bandit story…and also vaguely transfixed by some story they're running on Fox now about some woman who lit up on an airplane, and in her mugshot she just looks kind of drunk or high so it kind of makes sense that she would do that, especially with fares so high these days you'd think you could do whatever you damn well please — ha! On my Virgin flight they wouldn't even let me use the blanket during takeoff, which was insane — and anyway, oh yes, Obama. We should talk about this. I guess it's disappointing but not surprising? I dunno

MEGAN: Well, but they all opted out of public financing for the primary and there were rumors McCain was going to for the general. Plus, I mean, it restricts him to $85 million which is maybe one of the reasons that, you know, Democrats don't go to states they "can't" win and ditto with Republicans and so everyone fights for Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida and concedes the others to one another.

MOE: I will say that even if it is blatantly hypocritical it also appeals to that side that worries about his ability to play dirty/be pragmatic/blahblah. Which seemed to be a big concern of Clintonites.
MEGAN: Oh, sure. I mean, I think the real issue is that 99% of Americans probably don't know anything about the public financing system so they whole OH MY GOD WHAT HAS HE DONE thing is probably right over their heads.
MEGAN: Which is why it's smart, release the video, let the talking heads pontificate for 24 hours just before the weekend, then release a new ad and start airing it in red states and let them think about that.

MEGAN: But, also, I think he makes an interesting point. Public financing comes from the $3 check-off on your tax return, so it's like small donations from small people funneled through the government. He's got 1.5 million donors, half of which are small-amount donors. He's practically creating his own public financing system, it's just one in which there are no limits on what he can spend after the convention.
MEGAN: Which is an interesting thing, actually. The party that has the Presidency gets the last convention, which means that the party without it gets a week or more where they are hamstrung by the public financing limits and hte incumbent party is not. In 2004, it was a full two weeks because the Dems went before the Olympics, then the Olympics and then the Republicans went and Bush became subject to the spending limits.
MOE: Hey check this out we're using one percent less gas than last year! And this is unrelated but here's a pleasant photo of a highway in Beijing, where starting July 20 they will also be using less gas, for obvious reasons. Okay, now I'm headed to Peggy and Brooks. Krauthammer and Krugman both wrote today about McCain's offshore drilling blah blah, one of them is for it and one of them is against it I'll let you guess who!

MEGAN: Gosh, so hard! Also, by the way, the DC metro system had 2 top-10 ridership days this week alone, and they're blaming it on gas prices.
MOE: David Brooks likens Obama to Mr. Rogers playing Ari on Entourage. (Would that be good for the Jews?) Anyway, he proceeds to do exactly the thing I was talking about where Obama actually gets praised for "selling out" in a move that should disappoint his starry-eyed media fans but actually makes them cream their pants because they are ashamed of their idealism and also, masochists:

MOE:

This guy is the whole Chicago package: an idealistic, lakefront liberal fronting a sharp-elbowed machine operator. He’s the only politician of our lifetime who is underestimated because he’s too intelligent. He speaks so calmly and polysyllabically that people fail to appreciate the Machiavellian ambition inside.

MEGAN: I think it's funny that Clinton supporters either think he's the worst of the Chicago political machine or a naive waif and never anything in between.
MOE: Although uh Noonan isn't feeling the sentimentality shame so much today:

In a way, the world is a great liar. It shows you it worships and admires money, but at the end of the day it doesn't. It says it adores fame and celebrity, but it doesn't, not really. The world admires, and wants to hold on to, and not lose, goodness. It admires virtue. At the end it gives its greatest tributes to generosity, honesty, courage, mercy, talents well used, talents that, brought into the world, make it better.

MEGAN: Yeah, she was on Scarborough this morning and they all got maudlin about Tim Russert.
MOE:

That's what we talk about in eulogies, because that's what's important. We don't say, "The thing about Joe was he was rich."

MEGAN: Also, her site is down.

MEGAN: Off-topic, our friend Calderone has the story of the wacky Hardball ad about Michelle's supposed make over and an even funnier fake one for Cindy McCain.
MEGAN: I also think the whole thing is funny, like Michelle needs a fashion makeover? The figures aren't dancing ladies in the Obama ad as much as fake runway models
MOE: I hate sentences like that. How many eulogies have any sort of basis in the reality of someone's life? I went to a very rich guy's funeral once. All the eulogies were like "great guy worked hard loved the outdoors cared about his family" and meanwhile half the family is sitting there seething over what a cold unemotional terror he'd been. But yeah, I dunno. Anyway I failed to mention that the Bush Administration's spying on Americans thing may, like the shitty economy and the shady no-bid multibillion dollar overbudget defense contracts and chaos/anarchy/fear in Iraq, get to outlive the Administration.

MEGAN: I also love that the Dems rolled over on retroactive immunity for telecoms as part of it, giving just enough judicial oversight to make it look like there will be some if we aren't paying attention, but little enough that it will make any difference to the telecoms.

MEGAN: So what did you miss most about the States besides good burgers? I was shocked in Europe in 1998 when I got served a horsemeat hamburger.
MOE: Well annoyingly I missed that you already covered the story of the rush to buy ships to drill for oil in the News Roundup, which is an interesting tale of the insatiable demand for deep-sea rigs, which cost half a billion dollars apiece, not that that's that's a big deal when, you know, just by way of example, Exxon's earnings before interest/taxes/depreciation/amortizaiton for the past 12 months (during which oil futures have probably averaged half today's price) was $77 billion…
MEGAN: And, hey, if we built them here (ha!) it could revitalize the dying shipbuilding industry.

MOE: South Korean shipyards are making most of these things, incidentally. Didn't we used to have shipyards in this country? I feel like they've all been turned into luxury condo developments and office parks. Where are the world's cruise ships and container ships built?

MEGAN: I think the only thing our few remaining shipyards build are navy vessels. I'm sure the cruise and container ships are all built in low-wage, non-union countries.
MOE: Yeah but that doesn't really describe South Korea and it definitely doesn't describe Singapore.
MEGAN: I have two words that do, though: industrial subsidies.
MOE: Hahaha yes and its evil cousin INDUSTRIAL POLICY.
MEGAN: We have an industrial policy! It's called reducing the capital gains tax! And R&D tax credits.

MEGAN: Well, we could discuss this article in which a former DeLay staffer bothers to notice that Republicans are losing in moderate states by being too Christian conservative and not Republican enough, and rejects calls for the party to get more conservative and praises Rahm Emanuel.
MEGAN: So, he's making friends.

MOE: Is it possible to be in an industry that manufactures single products that weigh thousands of tons, provide the backbone of billions of dollars of global commerce, are giant combustible moving targets for terrorism and pirates and cost $500 million apiece and are generally ordered in eleven or twelve figure (often government) contracts…and not involve the government? No. And you know, shipping isn't going anywhere and shipbuilding = jobs. So why does it seem like the EU and the US just, like, gave that industry to Asia while they took the aerospace stuff? Admittedly I don't fucking know anything.
9:10 AM
MEGAN: I think the margins aren't that great, subsidies aren't passing muster with the WTO and we'd rather spend our government money on bombs and guns than big ass ships.
MOE: See, that is just our problem. The "the margins aren't that great" problem. Well, guess what, Samsung Heavy just raised prices $100 million, so 25%, and they know they could charge more. So the margins are pretty damn good now, because you're not just going to see someone open a competing shipyard specializing in deep-sea vessels down in Bangalore. Beyond that, with all the government intervention, the opaque accounting of the contracts involved, blah blah blah, the margins can seem almost impossible to calculate. Whatever, "the margins aren't that great" is just code for "it's hard." It's hard because the capital expenditures are huge, the labor costs are huge, and the price of fucking up is huge. But the thing about those cyclical industries we're always trying to get out of: for all those reasons the jobs aren't going anywhere.

MEGAN: I don't know that it's just capital intensivity, though. We have plenty of capital intensive industries in this country (like: heavy equipment manufacturing, for whom I used to lobby) that has survived despite it being cyclical and all the rest. I'm going to guess that the reason military shipbuilding has survived while commercial hasn't is partially because the margins on the military contracts are better.
MOE: Hahaha today on Fox they're trying to get everyone to back down from the accepted conventional wisdom that lifting the ban on offshore drilling would take 7 years to have an impact by finding some nutjob who claims it will only take 2. Since so much sentiment is packed into oil prices I suppose he could be right, but then we'd be willing that the markets are somewhat irrational or something?
MOE: Oh god now they're talking about the laxative cake.
MEGAN: I mean, it would take that long to have an impact on supply, not that I think supply is the problem or that drilling offshore would have a huge impact on it. But I'm sure the markets would get all irrationally exuberant about it and prices would dip briefly and then continue on their steady upward path.
MOE: Ah, Obama opted out of public financing.
MEGAN: Because the system is broken! And he has lots of money.
MOE: I love how all the people behind this inane Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less campaign are citing polling data that tells us 64% of Americans "Expect It Will Lower Prices." I wonder what those 64% of Americans thought invading Iraq would do! Besides destroy Al Qaeda which was financed by Saddam Hussein who was the half-brother of Barack Hussein Obama's Indonesian father?? Speaking of which, Iraq oil contracts…did you read that story?

MEGAN: 64% of Americans expect it will lower prices because the news media keeps repeating the fact that John McCain and George Bush want to do it to lower prices.
MEGAN: I didn't read the Iraq oil contracts story but, let me guess... corruption?
MOE: Well, the winners of the "unusual" no-bid contracts were Exxon, Shell, BP, Total and Chevron, who won out over some 40 companies including Chinese and Russian ones, and while they only last a year they give those companies a head start international observers are headscratching etc. etc.

It is not clear what role the United States played in awarding the contracts; there are still American advisers to Iraq’s Oil Ministry.

MOE: Here the Iraq is calling it a "stop-gap measure" just to get people in and digging etc. etc.
MEGAN: Right. Because what Iraq needs is obviously more US and European-based multinationals exploring for oil that everyone knows is there. Talk about capital intensive industries.
MEGAN: Once they're in there, they'll stay and everyone knows it.
MOE: And all but Chevron were original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company so it's really like a Restoration of sorts!
MEGAN: Aw, how sweet, it's like a family reunion! Only with more money!
MOE: Holy shit two Bear Stearns executives were just arrested at their homes for…knowingly bilking some investors out of $1.6 billion

MEGAN: Wow, the government cares about that now? Also, by the way, Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) hs called for the nationalization of U.S. oil refineries.
MOE: Right I'm reading about that. The "Drill Here Drill Now Pay Less" of the Left is apparently some outfit called Oil Change International, or at least they're spinning it that way. Remember that Crappy Hour a few glorious months back when we actually read long stories where we discussed the pros and cons of the global shift toward the nationalization of oil? Yeah I don't really remember either.
MEGAN: Do I remember Crappy Hour yesterday?

MEGAN: Hey, do you remember when we were all shocked that the Air Force mistakenly sent nuclear components instead of batteries to Taiwan? Well, it turns out that they're actually missing like 1,000 sensitive nuclear parts and that's why the dudes got fired. Hopefully we didn't ship those to, like, China or something.
MOE: That reminds me there was something in the paper about Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou's new China policy which isn't really a new policy, it's just more like an attitude, because Ma is "mainland Chinese" meaning his first language is Mandarin and he came over with Chiang Kai-shek and the last president was a "native Taiwanese" meaning his first language was Hokkien and for most of his adult lifetime he was one of the majority of the population who had Japanese colony nostalgia (this nostalgia did not go over well with the mainland Chinese) .. anyhow but see, we're missing the real meme here, which is Larry Sinclair at the National Press Club.
MEGAN: I sooooo wanted to go, but I had to blog yesterday.
MEGAN: By the way, the HuffPo story on it is even more epic.

MEGAN: I love, too, that they get Clinton supporters on the record being all like, well, the crazy guy might be telling the truth, he really could've sucked Obama's dick.
MOE:

And pay Sinclair did — for the venue and its microphone, as well as for a kilted lawyer (with a suspended license) named Montgomery Blair Sibley, who informed those assembled that his preferences in dress were arrived at as a way to secure comfort for his unusually large sexual organs. "I don't know why men wear pants," he said with a poker face. "It's a function of male genitalia. If you're size normal or smaller, you're probably comfortable with [pants]. ... Those at the other end of the spectrum find them quite confining."
"I asked him to wear a suit and tie," Mr. Sinclair said ruefully. Then, he admitted to suffering from a brain tumor.

MOE: What?
MEGAN: I know, how sad are you that we weren't there? By the way, Sibley was the DC Madam's lawyer and is somehow connected to Larry Flynt and Sinclair was hinting around that he was going to have a special surprise guest so the media showed because they thought Larry Flynt would be there.