In a must win game at the end of the season, Ty France came up to bat, a man we had turned on months earlier for the usual reasons and a few esoteric ones personal to our baseball taste. So we were disparaging Mr. France fairly strongly, though not loudly, in the sold-out stands of T-Mobile Park when, of course, he hit a home run to give our beloved (and yet hated) Seattle Mariners the lead. The woman sitting in front of us leaped in joy and then turned around and shouted at us while laughing, “I heard you, I heard you.” For some reason people take great glee when we are proven wrong, even complete strangers sitting in front of us at a baseball game. We do not like it but we accept our cursed fate.
But we were not wrong in our memories of how incredible the movie Stop Making Sense is, which we saw shortly after the Mariners were eliminated from the playoffs (and by the way, for the woman who was sitting in front of us in the unlikely event she is reading this, the final two games Ty France did nothing to save the Mariners, much like he didn’t all season long. We were right!). But where were we? Oh, yes, the incredible restoration on the 40th anniversary of what people call the greatest concert film of all time. Which undersells it considerably. It’s one of the best films of all time. As others have written about at length, Stop Making Sense has its own narrative and character arc even though it’s a concert. And what a concert experience it is. A 90-minute groove, a band at the peak of its powers, a movie director at his best, a crew and band that truly made a helluva sum. We read that in many theaters attendees started getting up and dancing during Burning Down the House. For us, the irresistible urge to groove came the song before during Slippery People even as the backup singers and David Byrne high stepped as well. As for Ty France and his home run in the third to the last game of the season, Once in a Lifetime.
And we groove to the real news that isn’t being covered about malaria vaccines, track who is receiving FDI and plead to speak the obvious about China. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, the dancing lamp of international information, the big suit of global data.
Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.
The Real News
On Monday we scanned the headlines of The Washington Post, New York Times and other important news media sites and saw headlines about an attempt to oust the U.S. Speaker of the House, Trump’s latest trial, and LeBron James and Stephen Curry saying they’ll play in the 2024 Olympics. But not a word was spilled, not a pixel displayed to report on the newest malaria vaccine approved that day by the World Health Organization. Just a reminder for those of you playing along that 500,000 people die of malaria every day, half of those under the age of five. The R21/Matrix-M (maybe if it had a better name more news agencies would have covered it?) with 75 percent efficacy is much more effective than the previous malaria vaccine approved in 2021. We are perhaps in a new golden age of vaccines. The Covid vaccine that was developed in record time, other vaccines to prevent cancer and this anti-malaria vaccine among others. So drop the Trump and other politics headlines for a day. Never mind about the Olympics. Let’s save some time and space for a story about, well, saving a bucket load of lives…even if it’s against the rules in news to discuss how the world is getting better.
Follow the Money
Hey you all, globalization is still not going away despite some claims to the contrary. Via Visual Capitalist, we examined foreign direct investment, including inflows, and as you can see in the table below, it’s still flowing. In 2022, the U.S. and China were the two largest recipients of FDI. That makes sense given their populations and sizes of their economies. But note that China is receiving less FDI than it had previously. Or maybe it’s just moved. Singapore was the third-largest recipient of FDI last year. We’ve been reading about Germany’s economic struggles recently, including recommendations by Noah Smith to fix what ails it. So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that unlike a decade ago, Germany is no longer in the top ten of FDI recipients. The list is also notable for who is not on it. For example, Indonesia, a relatively fast-growing country with the fourth-largest population, receives less FDI than one would think. We wonder if that is changing this year and will change over the rest of the 2020s? India barely makes the top ten. We bet it will be in the top five before the decade is out. Who is likely to exit the list over the next ten years? Our bet is France will be one of them. Which African country will be in the top ten in 2033 (and we bet a lot of money there will be one). Come back in a decade and we’ll let you know.
China Corner: Muscle Shoals
We often find that people are reluctant to state not just the truth but the obvious about China, or as some people are pointing out to be more precise, the Communist Party which rules China. Case in point is China’s incursion into Philippine territory, and many other nations’ territories, in the so-called South China Sea. As you probably know, China has been building bases on other country’s territory, including on a shoal just off the coast of the Philippines. Often we’ll see news stories describing such territory as contested. In fact, rights have already been adjudicated under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. That sounds complicated but it’s pretty simple if you look at a map. For example, the Philippines shoal in question is 600 miles from China. Other territory China claims in the sea is 1000 miles from its borders. As we’ve noted in speeches, it’s a little bit like Seattle claiming Chicago is part of its city. When writing or talking about these matters we need to state the obvious. On a recent podcast we listened to one of the hosts say the U.S. and the Philippines need to be careful not to escalate the tension. That’s a bit like saying Ukraine escalated things by fighting back against Russia for invading its country. State the truth, state the obvious.
