Archive for category: Uncategorized

I limped over to the field of play and Rob put the axe in my hand while showing me how to throw it. Remarkably, defying all expectations, I hit the target. Not perfectly as Rob did every time he tossed the axe with a casualness, strength and precision that was amazing to see, but for a beginner not too long after our third knee surgery I took a bit of pride in the minor accomplishment. Of course, Rob wasn’t recovering from something as lame as knee surgery, he was in temporary remission from cancer which had spread through much of his body. Being a world renowned lumberjack (and school teacher), it is just possible he was tougher than me. He was certainly more thoughtful, erecting a tent for me to sleep in. Rob was a remarkable guy I met in college. A great athlete, an upbeat attitude, a great guy to share a drink and story with. I received word of his death last Friday while on a bike ride. With the closing of our gym due to the coronavirus crisis, the worsening of the weather in Seattle, and my generally being a fair weather bike rider, my outfits to keep warm for bike rides have become increasingly ludicrous. I look like the nerdiest character from a Mad Max movie. But given Rob was prone to dressing a bit crazily himself–he led us into town during the camping trip with everyone dressed up in crazy old western-like gear, he was a lumberjack, after all–on this bike ride I felt dressed perfectly. And perhaps just as perfect, the song Long As I Can See The Light, came on our iPhone as we rode. It was a cover of the old Credence Clearwater number by 80-year-old Louisiana Swamp Pop pioneer Warren Storm. Towards the end of the song a different voice begins singing–74-year-old John Fogerty, founder of CCR, and writer of the song. It was goddamn poignant. The light, of course, was all Rob Waibel, gone far too soon at 54.

Last night it was announced that legendary pianist and educator Ellis Marsalis, one of the great musical patriarchs of New Orleans, died after being hospitalized with Covid-19 symptoms. New Orleans has lost too many icons and legends over the last twelve months and we worry more are to come in this pandemic. RIP Mr. Marsalis. Here is a link to his performance at the 2012 Jazz Fest. Here is a wonderful tribute by his son, Wynton Marsalis.

Without further ado, in a world awash in ado, here’s what you need to know.

Japan Decoupling from China

Over the last many months, “decoupling” was the word de jour of U.S. – China relations analysts (can we get these two countries on a couch in a relationship therapist’s office ASAP?). But as we pointed out many weeks ago, Covid-19 will change supply chains more than any event since September 11. One recent example is Japan announcing it will subsidize the moving of Japanese companies production back to Japan or to locations in Southeast Asia. The Yomiuri Shimbun reports the, “government will subsidize establishing buildings and installing equipment for manufacturers that set up production bases in Japan. When firms plan to move their production centers to Southeast Asian countries, the government plans to subsidize the installation of equipment.” Japan’s government is committing up to 200 billion Yen for this effort. Japan, like other countries, is realizing it needs to diversify and spread out its supply chains. The world will be very different even after the pandemic subsides.

Editor: Note Taiwan’s numbers. 

Maybe Both China and the U.S. Lose

One of the issues we examine in our forthcoming book is China’s growing power in the world as the U.S. cedes global leadership. We read much analysis that the Covid-19 pandemic is accelerating that trend. During the global financial crisis, the U.S. was a leader in fostering cooperation around the world to contain and mitigate the crisis. During the current pandemic, the Trump Administration has barely provided leadership at home much less abroad. However, even though China has been actively trying to use the pandemic to burnish its brand and smear the U.S., it’s often facing backlash around the world. There is much anger against China in Europe, for example, where people blame China for spreading the virus, and where some of the equipment delivered by China has been found to be faulty. What’s more, China’s economy as we described last week, is badly impacted by the worldwide drop in demand. Plus, there is concern that African countries who are now impacted by the pandemic will default on loans owed to China. And as the story above about Japan decoupling shows, there is likely to be continued supply chain diversification away from China. Its economy may be greatly weakened not just in the short-term but also long-term by the pandemic. It is possible that the two strongest powers in the world both come out of this pandemic weakened as global powers.

It’s Possible Covid-19 Did Not Start in Wuhan

Three weeks ago, which is a century in pandemic time, we wrote about the “Fog of Corona,” i.e. that like in war, much of what we think we know will turn out not to be true. Specifically we wrote, “There are many things the world does not understand about the virus itself and the most effective public policy reactions to it. In fact, we are willing to wager that much of what we think we know will turn out to be wrong in the light of longitudinal studies and time.” In that vein, we bring your attention to a new study published in Nature last week by scientists in the U.S., Scotland, Australia and New Orleans (NOLA really is its own world), that suggests “The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 might have been quietly spreading among humans for years or even decades before the sudden outbreak that sparked a global health crisis.” These scientists studied the virus and its evolutionary path and determined it is possible it jumped from animals to humans many years ago, and perhaps not originally in Wuhan, China. The paper states, “It is possible that a progenitor of SARS-CoV-2 jumped into humans, acquiring the genomic features described above through adaptation during undetected human-to-human transmission.” It is still early days in the study of this virus and the pandemic so take everything, including what I write, with a large grain of salt (and maybe some anti-viral medication). As the great screenwriter William Goldman wrote about Hollywood, “Nobody knows anything.” At least not yet.

Important Last Minute Bonus Story: Masks Might Be Hugely Important

This Twitter thread will be one of the four most important things you read today. It’s about a new study on the importance of encouraging everyone to wear cloth masks. It includes the below graph with “blue countries having norms of mask-wearing for sick people, green countries having no such norms but adopting mask regulations in response to the spread of the virus, and orange countries doing neither.” Authors admit this is preliminary but they will have more data soon. Feel free to send us photos of your cloth masks.

We’re almost finished with The Sympathizer, a novel about a North Vietnamese mole in the South Vietnamese army who has an outsized ability to see and understand multiple points of view. Perhaps that’s why even though we see Covid-19 spreading darkness around our world, and worry deeply about the future, we also can see glimmers of hope and positive signs. Not least of which is the army of helpers out there. Health care workers, of course, but the neighbor offering help to our Mom, people providing daycare to relatives, Facebook groups formed to help small businesses, arts organizations and other distressed communities. In fact, the hated tech companies have been stalwarts so far in bringing people together. In addition, although I feel like I should be allowed make a citizen’s arrest of certain high level federal officials for negligent homicide, there is great progress being made in testing capabilities in the U.S. so that finally perhaps in six to seven days, America will be able to test at South Korea levels. Not only that but a whole variety of possible effective treatments are being developed around the world. Chinese scientists are making progress on understanding the virus so that we can better contain it. We don’t forget that there have been massive mistakes made by leaders in a whole host of countries, including here in the United States, but because, as we have often noted in this space, the world has continued to improve over the last 100 plus years, we are in much better shape to deal with this pandemic, almost despite ourselves. So yes, we present to you the Trump/Xi Axis of Evil Stupidity, the China Propaganda Machine and a Less Free World, all stories of darkness. But the light is seeping through. And as we showed over a year ago here, the world can lean on each other, if we just sing it loud enough.

We can’t get videos to embed in Mailchimp anymore. Any Mailchimp experts out there, please email me. In the meantime, click on the Everlasting Arms video link

Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.

The Trump/Xi Axis of Evil Stupidity

In our upcoming book about the challenge of China and how the U.S. and world should react to it, I document how the Trump Administration has trashed the post-World War II/post Cold War liberalized world order. I also explain how that “opens the door for China to remake the world order with Chinese characteristics.” More and more of the challenges in the world are transnational with a global pandemic being the obvious current one. But instead of cooperation among countries, we are often seeing competition. In addition, many countries are using the crisis as an opportunity to score points or push forward nefarious goals. Just this week alone, rather than working together, Trump provocatively called Covid-19 the “Chinese flu” while one of his officials called it “Kung Flu” to an Asia American reporter. Meanwhile, China has started a full-blown propaganda push on Corona (see story below), flew J-11 fighters into Taiwan’s airspace and is kicking out American journalists from China, including those from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. We suggest Trump, Xi* and their minions be quarantined to an island while the rest of us get to work.

*Criticism of the Trump Administration is not to say there is a moral equivalency between China and the United States. Trump is an incompetent, narcissistic buffoon, but a duly elected one with checks and balances of a liberalized, federalized society. Xi’s constraints come within an authoritarian unelected regime with no way for the people to change it or its direction. But, if we want America to improve and to continue as a functioning democracy, we must maintain a high standard on our leaders and the government—it is even more important to criticize them than China for that reason. That I have to write such a long footnote explaining this obvious fact, knowing that many people will attack what I wrote in this story, nearly causes one to despair…except that we are a fan of footnotes! Regardless of length. In fact, one day we’d like to write a book with one sentence and the rest of it a very, very long footnote.

The China Propaganda Machine

The most important step a country can take during a global pandemic is to take full advantage of it for propaganda purposes. China has obviously learned this lesson so well it could write a dissertation—in tabloid style. Early in the week, a China Foreign Ministry spokesperson tweeted, “It might be the U.S. Army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan.”  Yes, China is engaged in a worldwide propaganda effort to convince people that the virus did not start in China. They are also propagating the line that China “bought the world time” and the world is increasingly thankful for it. They did not buy the world time. A China government spokesperson retweeted fake videos of Italian citizens clapping along to the PRC national anthem, as if Italians believe China is their savior. China has also been claiming to be giving away equipment and masks to places like Italy. In fact, they are selling them. However, there are plenty of Chinese, not the government, who are generously giving aid (and comfort) in this challenging time. We ourselves received a wonderful email from a Chinese partner worried about us in Seattle: “We are deeply concerned with the situation in your area. If you need any assitance, please let us know.  We will be more than happy to offer a hand to our friends.” This is why it is so foolish and short-sighted of Trump and others to call Covid-19 the “Chinese virus” and otherwise engage in racist bullsh**. Go after China’s government strategically and intelligently, but win over the Chinese people, who often have been and continue to be, heroes in this pandemic.

World Less Free

If you are one of the many people in the world currently locked down due to Corona, and are looking for something to read to cheer yourself up, we don’t recommend Freedom House’s latest Freedom in the World Report. The world, as you’ve probably noticed, is becoming less free, and has been deteriorating since 2009.  According to the report, “64 countries experienced deterioration in their political rights and civil liberties while those in just 37 experienced improvements.” Freedom House notes that minority rights are under attack, including in democracies and spell out the bad consequences of this, “The progression illustrated how violations of minority rights erode the institutional and conventional barriers that protect freedom for all individuals in a given society.” The same with immigrants: “Attacks on the rights of immigrants continue in other democratic states, contributing to a permissive international environment for further violations.” The whole world is looking shaky, and this report documents it, “The unchecked brutality of autocratic regimes and the ethical decay of democratic powers are combining to make the world increasingly hostile to fresh demands for better governance.” And what about one of the most important countries in the world and the second-largest economy?  “China pressed ahead with one of the world’s most extreme programs of ethnic and religious persecution, and increasingly applied techniques that were first tested on minorities to the general population, and even to foreign countries.” You may want to pick up whatever crappy book Oprah’s peddling instead.

In the spring of 2003 we were returning from a trip to China and we caught a cold (the cold caught us?). A day or so later as we drove home from the office our right eye felt strange and we realized goop was streaming out of it. Not a trickle, more like a gushing river. Needless to say we found this alarming and it made driving difficult. We had no experience with something like this and were frankly considering panicking. At one point we saw a cop on the side of the road and briefly considered pulling over and asking the police what the hell was going on with our eye. But we calmed down enough to make our way home where we asked our wife, “what the hell is going on with our eye?!!!” By this time our eye was completely bright red and swollen—we looked like an extra on a demented horror movie set. Our wife also had no idea what was going on so we made a doctor’s appointment for first thing the next morning. We wore dark sunglasses at the doctor’s office lest we frighten the children and other innocents there with our incredibly gory looking eye. We were shuffled to one of the examination rooms and when our long-time doctor walked in asking how we were doing we took off our sunglasses. She looked at us and said, “that’s the worst case of pink eye I’ve ever seen.” But we did not have SARS which was running rampant in China while we were there, although during the first part of the trip one would not have known it from the Chinese media. So while we are not panicking like in the car drive home in 2003, we will act cautiously during our trip to Japan which we leave for tomorrow. In the meantime we squint at China’s excuses for not liberalizing, hold a microscope to world cancer rates and raise our eyebrows at Saudi Arabia’s treatment of a female rapper. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, announcing we are running for president…in 2044…when we’ll be old enough to be a candidate for president.

International Need to Know will be off next week during our trip to Japan but back on March 12 either from Seattle or in quarantine.

Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.

No Excuses for Not Liberalizing

Japan, South Korea and Taiwan all experienced fast economic growth over a long-time period and then as their working age populations peaked, reverted to slower economic growth. See the charts below to illustrate this. As they grew economically, they liberalized their politics. China has experienced rapid economic growth over a long-time period but its working age population has now also peaked. The China Communist Party has promised fast economic growth and by doing so has maintained power. But China’s fast economic growth is now history. So why not liberalize politically like other Asian nations did?  Undoubtedly the answer from the CCP will be that their continued rule is the only way to ensure stability in China. But if you’re going to have slow economic growth, why would people continue to give up freedom of information, assembly, speech and other freedoms? People may give up those liberties if they perceive by doing so high economic growth is guaranteed. But now that fast economic growth is over, we doubt the Chinese people will be fine with no political freedom. We delve into this much more deeply in our upcoming book on China and the U.S.

Cancer Deaths Decreasing

The world is awash in fear of the Corona virus (and if the world was more diligent about washing, perhaps we would not have so much to fear). We’re a bit nervous ourselves given we’re headed to Japan tomorrow. But one of the tragic stories of Corona in Wuhan is that patients, including those with cancer, are being ignored as the city focuses all its attention on the virus. But there is good news about cancer in general in the world. According to Ourworldindata.org, the age-standardized cancer death rate is decreasing. The overall number of people dying from cancer has increased over the years but that’s due to there being more people in the world overall (a lower percentage of a greater number of people is still high). And the cancer death rate not age-standardized has increased because there are more old people in the world and older people are more likely to get cancer. But the best way to assess how the world is doing with cancer is age-standardized cancer death rates, normalizing the data to adjust for there being more people in the world and a higher percentage of older people. The age-standardized cancer death rate is down due to fewer people smoking and better treatments now available. Let’s hope it continues to go down in the coming years, viruses or no.

Mecca Rapper is Sugar Candy

Because we miss being surrounded by music in New Orleans, let’s finish the week with a story about a female rapper in Saudi Arabia. Asayel Slay released a rap song on YouTube that led to Saudi authorities to call for her arrest. What does Slay rap about? According to the BBC, she “raps about women in the city of Mecca” calling them “powerful and beautiful.” One of her lyrics goes, “Our respect to other girls but the Mecca girl is sugar candy.” This obviously inflammatory lyric led the governor of Mecca Khaled al-Faisal to tweet, “it insults the customs of Mecca.” The video is no longer available on Youtube and Slay’s account has been suspended which if this is a decision by Youtube, makes us want to create a video criticizing Youtube. We look forward to a world where Asayel Slay is free to rap about what she wants and the world ignores D.J. Khaled (how is this guy still a thing?).

Asayel Slay – Girl Of Mecca (Official Music Video) 21,099 views

It is a little known fact that we were born in Iowa City (Editor: little known because nobody cares where you were born) though we only lived there the first year of our life. So we have no special affinity for Iowans and lament their voting Bernie Sanders either second or first in their little caucus (as of this writing they are still learning to count votes–I believe they are reduced to using corn kernels as some sort of primitive abacus). But we are on record, admittedly after a glass of wine and only in front of a small group of friends, of asserting that if the choice this fall is between 75-year-old, anti-non-white immigrants, loud-mouthed, Putin-loving Donald Trump and nearly octogenarian, anti-immigrant, Soviet Union honeymooning, hectoring Bernie Sanders, then Nate Silver calculates there is a 73.5 percent chance we will renounce our citizenship, leave the country, and move to New Orleans. Just in case, we are doing a test run to NOLA next week smack dab during Carnival season where we will watch various Krewes’ parades, Shorty Gras featuring eponymous Trombone Shorty, Bounce legend Big Freedia, and Brass Band veterans the Soul Rebels, and avoid all politics and policy while eating and drinking ourselves silly. Among the Krewe parades we plan on seeing are the Mystic Krewe of Femme Fatale, the Krewe of Pontchartrain and the Krewe of Barkus, which is a parade of dogs. In the meantime, while we prepare to eat crawfish and beignets, we regretfully report bad news on world hunger, inform you of the most valuable brand in the world and note which countries are battling homelessness best. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, tossing beads of international data from our global float.

INTN will be busy parading next week but back on February 20th. 

Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.

Bad News on Hunger

We have continued to remind people in this space that the world has consistently gotten better over the years, including the last ten. But unlike China in the early stages of the Corona Virus, INTN is nothing if not transparent and honest and so we note that the latest data on hunger and undernourishment is troubling. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization’s latest report states that, “the decades-long decline in the prevalence of undernourishment in the world had ended and hunger is slowly on the rise.” After decades of great progress in reducing hunger, it has been increasing since around 2015. Hunger continues to decrease in Asia but is rising in both Africa and South America. We wonder if the northern African refugee crisis and the catastrophe in Venezuela explain the problem. Regardless, there are 820 million people in the world suffering hunger and instead of that number decreasing, it went up the last four years. We worry that so many of the institutions and policies that led to a much improved world the last 50 years, are being cast away with resulting negative consequences.

Branding Our World

International Need to Know’s brand is golden but what are the other most valuable brands in the world? Brand Finance has the answer in their 2020 Global 500 Report which determines that Amazon is the most valuable brand in the world. In fact, the U.S. dominates with six of the top most valuable brands being American companies. China has two companies in the top ten, including ICBC bank and the insurance/financial service giant Ping An. That both of China’s top ten companies are in financial services is a bit worrying given the reports of debt and non-performing loans in that sector. On the other hand, lower on the list but rising are a variety of Chinese tech companies such as Tencent. However, one of China’s large tech companies, Baidu, saw the largest drop in brand value over the last year. Brand Finance determines brand value based on business performance, brand revenues and other categories. As you shop on Amazon for a new secure phone for Jeff Bezos, check out the list below.

Homelessness Around the World

Here in Seattle, the worldwide headquarters of INTN, you can’t escape the homeless, whether walking down the street or in casual conversations at cocktail parties. But what is going on in homelessness in the rest of the world? According to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), homelessness has increased in about one-third of OECD countries, including in the UK, Netherlands and New Zealand. But homelessness has decreased in about one-quarter of OECD countries while remaining flat in the rest. The largest decreases in homelessness were in Finland, Norway and next door in Canada. Perhaps we should study what is happening in those countries to fix our own homeless problems, including here in Seattle.

As we stood on the platform awaiting the AirTrain to take us from JFK into Manhattan, a Metro Transit Cop asked us where we were headed. We got to talking and it was clear from his accent, his friendly but straightforward gruff attitude, his frequent use of “whaddyagonnado” that he was an old school New Yorker, the kind we remember from our youth visiting our family, staying with our grandparents on the Lower Eastside. The transit cop, Frank, was born in Little Italy back when it was big but soon his family moved to Bensonhurst in Brooklyn. Today he lives in Queens and his house which he bought in 2004 is now worth over a million dollars. He said he bought it so his now 18-year-old son can still live in New York when he is older. Because, Frank told us, New York City is unaffordable now. He despaired of today’s inequality and that people like him and his Dominican-born wife now often have to live in the far-flung suburbs. We, if not exactly despairing, lament this too. We tremendously enjoyed our short weekend in NYC but the five boroughs are no longer the creativity-generating, culture-bending hive they once were. New York needs to reform its land use policies so it can start building and the Franks of the world can again live side by side with the wealthy and poor in a teeming morass of innovation. Whaddyagonna do but examine what the elites of Southeast Asia are thinking, lament South Africa’s getting poorer, and ponder Finland’s transportation decisions. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, your unimpeachable source of global data and information.

Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.

What the ASEAN Elite Think

If we chatted with the movers and shakers of Seattle, we undoubtedly would get a different answer on what are the important issues facing the city and how they felt the city was doing than if we talked to a random group of people at Denny’s. J.J’s Bar and Grill or the Dollar Store. But this demographic is important, because, well, they are moving and they are shaking all of us aroiund. Which is why we read with interest the results of a survey by Singapore’s ASEAN Studies Centre of professionals from business, government and media throughout Southeast Asia. The top three concerns of these professionals are in order domestic political instability, economic downturn and climate change. They are also increasingly worried about China’s influence in the world. A little over 60 percent of these respondents had little or no confidence in China to do the right thing. Of those who responded that China is the most influential economic power in the world (and most did respond that way), 72 percent are worried about its expanding influence. Of those respondents who deem China the most influential country politically and strategically, 85 percent were concerned about China’s rising influence. Interestingly, “Japan is the most trusted major power among Southeast Asians, with 61.2 percent of the respondents expressing confidence in Japan to ‘do the right thing’ to provide global public goods.” The world is a very different place than it was three years ago.

South Africa Getting Poorer

Last week, we reported that all but nine countries in the world are richer today than they were in 1950. But what about more recently? Most countries economies have grown since 2014, but unfortunately South Africa is not one of them. In 2012, South Africa’s total GDP was US$396 billion but now is only US$ 370 billion. GDP per capita is down since 2014 when it was US$7582 and today is US$7433. South Africa is getting poorer over the mid-term, a relatively unusual experience. It has been two decades since we were last in South Africa so we’re no experts but it’s obvious South Africa’s leadership is not getting the job done. South Africa’s infrastructure is much more developed than other African nations—they should be able to take advantage of manufacturing moving from China and other parts of Asia as other African countries are. Let’s hope they get things turned around soon.

No Free Finnish Lunch

A friend pointed us to an article describing how Finland is declining to make public transport free. It’s one of our favorite articles of 2020 so far. First, of all, we hate the phrase “making transport free,” or any service free such as those arguing for free colleges. Nothing is free, you are merely changing which people are paying for it. In the case of public transport, a government is spreading the cost to the larger public if they don’t charge the users of the service. This may, or may not, be a good idea, but it should not be sold as free transportation. At any rate, although nearby Talllinn, Estonia no longer charges users for public transport, Finland will continue to. Why? Their research indicates that “free transport systems offer no significant reduction in personal vehicular traffic, and its impact on cutting transport emissions has been limited.” This is because, according to the research, those who shift to public transport when the charge is eliminated are pedestrians and cyclists. They stop walking and cycling short distances and start taking buses and trams. Car drivers, because it saves them time, continue to drive. FinnTech research is important to learn from.