Новости за 18.06.2020

A MAN ANGRILY quits his job in London and drives his sports car home. He awakes the next morning, draws the curtains—and finds himself in a fantastical Italianate village. Confused, then indignant, he tries to leave. But the taxis and telephones provide “local service only”. The village and its inhabitants are nameless. Number 2 is in charge, though he answers to an unseen superior. The man is told: “You are Number 6.”

A People Betrayed. By Paul Preston.Liveright; 768 pages; $35. William Collins; £30. 

Alaric the Goth. By Douglas Boin.W.W. Norton; 272 pages; $26.95 and £19.99. 

LIKE MUCH of his art, “Between the Heavens and Me”, Alfredo Jaar’s most recent video, was drawn not from his imagination but from the news. In this case it began with a report on the BBC about Hart Island off the Bronx. The prison detail at the island’s cemetery—where, for decades, indigent New Yorkers were interred in mass graves—was working round the clock to bury the unclaimed bodies of those who had died, alone and unloved, with covid-19. “My brain could not comprehend what my eyes were seeing,” Mr Jaar says. Читать дальше...

WHEN HANS CASTORP makes a midsummer visit to Davos, where his tubercular cousin, Joachim, is being treated, he expects to be there for three weeks. A job at a shipbuilding firm awaits Hans, the unassuming son of a merchant family from Hamburg. But he develops a fever, and ends up staying in the Swiss Alps for seven years. In the mountains, time moves elastically—days lengthen and years hurry past—as it can in a lockdown.

THERE IS “LOCKDOWN”. And then there is lockdown. Those who have spent the past weeks allowed out only to exercise and visit the shops might spare a thought for the passengers and crew of Polarstern (Pole Star), pictured above. Polarstern is an icebreaker belonging to the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, in Germany, and her ship’s company are in a different class of lockdown entirely. Their vessel is afloat in the pack ice of the Arctic Ocean, and communications are so minimal as to preclude phone calls, let alone Zoom.

IN A SURVEY last year 29% of Americans supported the idea that the government should make cash payments to black Americans who were descendants of slaves—twice the share that agreed in the early 2000s. As protests have rocked America in recent weeks, the idea of reparations to atone for the atrocity of slavery, as well as to reduce the persistent gaps in income and wealth between people of different skin colours, has gained further prominence. Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, has said he wants to explore it. Читать дальше...

THERE IS NOTHING new on Wall Street. Speculation is as old as the hills. So says the protagonist of “Reminiscences of a Stock Operator”, published in 1923. Quite so—but you can count on some new variations. Take the case of Nikola Corporation, which makes trucks powered by green energy. On June 8th its stock price doubled. It was then worth more than Ford. Yet it has sold no vehicles. “Sympathetic magic”, explains a seasoned investor. Nikola is named after Nikola Tesla; as is Tesla, the leading electric-vehicles firm. Читать дальше...

SINCE 2017 China’s government has described fighting poverty as one of three “tough” or “critical” battles (alongside quelling pollution and financial risk). Despite the covid-19 pandemic, it still seems confident of victory this year. In March Xi Jinping, the president, pointed out that the number of rural poor fell to 5.51m in 2019. That is only 0.4% of China’s vast population. Regional overall poverty, he said, had been basically eradicated.

THE FEDERAL RESERVE steadfastly refuses to view itself as the world’s central bank, which is a pity, because it is becoming quite good at the job. One sign of its success is the stabilisation of the world’s reserve currency. The dollar spiked by over 8% against a basket of six other widely traded currencies between March 9th and 20th, as covid-19 panicked investors. But now the greenback is roughly back to where it was at the beginning of the year.

THOSE STRUGGLING to break bad habits should take inspiration from the euro zone. During the global financial and sovereign-debt crises it did too little to shore up growth; at times monetary and fiscal policy were tightened precisely when they should have been loosened. By contrast, its response to the covid-19 pandemic has been less flat-footed. Consider the events of the first three weeks of June alone. Germany’s government, usually tight-fisted, announced a stimulus package of at least €130bn ($146bn). Читать дальше...

IT SEEMS AS if there is nobody to whom the Federal Reserve will not lend. Since the covid-19 pandemic wrought havoc on financial markets in March, America’s central bank has promised to buy up to $750bn in corporate bonds and $500bn in state- and local-government debt. It has stood behind the market for commercial paper, behind money-market funds and behind foreign central banks in need of dollars (see article). On June 15th lenders were invited to register for its “Main Street Lending Programme”... Читать дальше...

AS COVID-19 SPREAD around the world, many governments prescribed the economic equivalent of a medically induced coma. Halting the transmission of the disease meant shutting down economic activity. But to restore economies to health quickly, connections between workers and firms needed to be maintained, so that activity could pick up from where it had left off. It seems increasingly clear, though, that not everything will return to normal once covid-19 is eventually beaten. As economies adjust... Читать дальше...

THE REIMANNS are as fabulously rich as they are faceless. On turning 18, each of Albert Reimann’s nine children signed a codex, pledging to stay out of Benckiser, the family chemicals business in Ludwigshafen, Germany, and never show their face in public. Reimann died in 1984, leaving each of his offspring with 11.1% of his company. Good luck finding a photograph of any of them, including the five who have sold their stakes in the family concern. Its public face is Peter Harf, a Harvard-educated... Читать дальше...

LEE JAE-YONG has seen a fair share of prison cells. Samsung’s de facto boss, and grandson of its founder, spent nearly a year behind bars for bribery before his sentence was suspended in February 2018. Then, on June 4th, prosecutors asked a court to have Mr Lee and two other executives from South Korea’s biggest conglomerate arrested ahead of indictments on fresh charges of unfair trading, stock-price manipulation and violating accounting rules, citing concerns that they might destroy evidence.

CHINA IS IN the vanguard of new technology, from facial recognition to 5G networks. Many Chinese firms, though, rely on something from an earlier age: a hard, usually rubber chop with a firm’s name engraved on it, to be dipped in crimson ink and stamped on important documents. Chopping is seen as more authoritative than a mere signature. The 2,000-year-old tradition may seem quaint. But in China, who controls the chop controls the company.

SINCE THE emergence of the welfare state, adults who want to work have generally found themselves in one of two positions: earning a wage from their job or receiving unemployment benefits. The pandemic has led many people to find themselves in a halfway stage—furlough. This often involves the state paying a large slice of employees’ wages so that firms can keep them on the payroll during the lockdown.

TO GET A sense of diversity in tech, take a stroll on University Avenue in Palo Alto, a city at the heart of Silicon Valley. Before the pandemic, if you encountered a black person, the chances were they worked in a local shop. African-Americans account for 3% of workers at America’s five biggest technology firms (see chart) and probably less at smaller ones. About one in 50 partners at venture-capital (VC) firms is black. The figure among VC-financed entrepreneurs is one in 100. Such dismal numbers... Читать дальше...

MILAN, PARIS or New York this time of year would usually be teeming with fashionistas scrambling to get from the Balenciaga show to the Chanel party. Not in 2020. Fashion weeks have been cancelled, repurposed as posh catwalk webinars. Shops selling Hermès ties and Prada pumps are only just reopening, wondering what to do with stock of pre-covid-19 vintage. Instagram influencers normally on hand to feed the hype have nothing to snap.

FEW AMERICAN companies have done as well during the covid-19 crisis as Zoom. The lifesaver of lockdown joins a small coterie of tech firms whose product, like Google’s, you no longer need to explain to grandmas. Zoom’s staggering success was made clear this month when it reported a 169% surge in year-on-year sales during the three months to April 30th. Daily users ballooned from 10m in December to 300m in April; profits soared alongside. Even analysts, rarely the most expressive of writers, let rip. Читать дальше...

“THE SAFETY and stability of the capital has a direct impact on the overall work of the party and government.” So Xi Jinping, China’s leader, reminded officials in February, as he urged them to pay particular attention to keeping Beijing free of covid-19. For most of the past eight weeks, city officials have had reason to feel chuffed, with no new cases involving local transmission (and usually only a handful at most every day elsewhere in China). Indeed, life had returned almost to normal in the capital... Читать дальше...

POLICE ON HORSEBACK gathered in a circle to defend the statue of Captain James Cook in Sydney’s Hyde Park. Australians inspired by American protests, and calling attention to the plight of their country’s indigenous peoples, might have toppled the statue. The moment was replete with historical irony. The “discoverer” of Australia met his end on a Hawaiian beach, at the hands of a crowd of angry natives. The police seemed determined not to let it happen to him a second time.

MIGRANT WORKERS are vital to Singapore’s economy, as they make up two-fifths of the labour force. But they are not a popular cause. The worst electoral showing for the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) was in 2011, when the opposition put a call for fewer migrants at the heart of their campaign. So it is brave of the government to pick a fight with voters on the subject, with an election expected within months.

A CLINK OF the spoon against the side of the teacup: one point deducted. One too many slices of carrot on the fork: another two points lost. When Sarim was training to become a civil servant in Pakistan, he was graded on his table manners. Everyone in his class was so cautious during the test that they would barely eat, he chuckles.

THOUGH IT HAS suffered through nine years of civil war, leaving hundreds of thousands dead, in some ways Syria is back where it started. Protesters in the south-east have been chanting anti-regime slogans, the same ones that triggered the fighting. “God, the nation and freedom,” they cry, dropping Syria’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad (pictured), from the official trinity. A reporter on state television, covering a sparsely attended counter-rally, struggled to find bystanders willing to praise Mr Assad. Читать дальше...