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Except that Russia's debt/GDP ratio is 16%, USA's 106% (one hundred and six). Source: IMF
https://www.imf.org/external/p...

It has been a bad month for the US: firstly the CIA torture reports (that put the US on par with Zimbabwe as for human rights), then Obama gave in to Castro, basically ending another "cold war" but this time with USA's political defeat, and finally the Sony Pictures' hacking. All of this doesn't justify this pathetic anti-Russia trolling though.

Rent seeking refers to all largely unproductive, expropriative activities, which bring positive return to the individual but not to society (Krueger (1974)).

Who gave you the idea that we have to significantly reduce our standards of living to combat global warming? Only the CO2 production causes problems, and there's lots of alternative energy technologies on the cusp of being truly cost competitive - if not for the vast direct and indirect subsidies to the fossil fuel industry it would already be crumbling under the onslaught of cheaper alternatives.

Fact check: people like the parent poster are claiming things like "the (nebulous) cost of road congestion", "the cost of the Iraq war", and "cost of 'pollution'" as "fossil fuel subsidies".

So, go ahead and buy the line that Immerman is selling... enjoy your $10/gallon gas thanks to additional taxes, because any price less than that is "subsidized" according to people like Immerman. The "cheaper alternatives" his ilk claim are available don't exist they play disingenuous semantic games by redefining traditional fuels as far more expensive than they actually are, a "problem" to be corrected by taxes on traditional fuels, according to them.

I, for one, don't wish to wear a hair shirt forced upon me by misanthropic crusaders that want to tax away my remaining discretionary income in order to prop up their imaginary eco-utopia. Go live in a poor house by yourself, Immerman, and enjoy your oxymoronic claim of maintained standards of living while simultaneously having massive regressive tax increases on consumables like fuel and food.

Shesh, nope. First, what tax subsidies are you talking about? There is no way Coal is subsidized, nor is oil and gas.

Do a little research. Here's a starting point.

So the IMF calculated the "subsidies" they found to be $500 Million in the US http://www.imf.org/external/np... and the site *you* send me to is claiming BILLIONS? Something is amiss here. I smell a rat, so lets ask some questions.

WHAT is a subsidy to you? A "special" tax break? A check that gets issued from the government directly to a producer? Neither of these exist. What we have is a bunch of people (like the authors of pricefoil.org) who are not above misleading people to trick them into believing their cause is just. They are LYING to you.... Wake up!

Shesh, nope. First, what tax subsidies are you talking about? There is no way Coal is subsidized, nor is oil and gas.

The IMF reckons that subsidies before tax to fossil fuel industries was about half a trillion dollars in 2009. So you might be mistake about that. (Or 1.9 trillion if you count externalities).

electric rates so low that renewables are simply not viable.

PV solar is ridiculously cheap because of a glut, but wind turbines are becoming genuinely cheap and efficient. They're both viable in certain circumstances and places. PV solar is viable if it is generated at the point of use, as so circumvents the need for the infrastructure of the grid. Wind is viable in certain climates. Geothermal is viable if you have the geology. Hydro is also viable if you have the geography.

Solar is simply NOT viable yet for industrial or even small scale use outside of areas that have the correct kinds of weather (even then it's all but marginal and has really long ROIs). It's going to be cheaper to make electricity by natural gas for a LONG time, especially over solar.

Prices are dropping and efficiency is increasing. I agree that taking into account costs associated with the grid, PV is generally not at grid parity. But people are talking about hitting grid parity with PV by the end of the decade. And for a roof-top unit supplying power to the house, it is already better than grid in many places. (assuming that this means that the transmission costs can be ignored).

The ratio of CEO compensation to average worker compensation is now approximately 10 times its value in 1950. This is approximately commensurate with the average increase in the Dow average adjusted for inflation.

But why should CEOs receive the entire benefit of a growing economy when all actors have contributed to that growth? CEO compensation has no correlation with company performance.

As I see it, the problem has nothing to do with a free vs. a coerced market. The problem is that the market of executive compensation is entirely divorced from the market at large. "Stockholders... vote... for whatever the management recommends no matter how poor the management’s record of accomplishment may be". This is what I mean by oligarchy: a few privileged elites have control over this smaller market without the essential feedback cycles that stabilize prices in the larger economy.

The issue is that the market value of labor has plummeted in relation to productivity and in relation to the value of top earners. In the 50s one could work part time at a minimum wage job and pay rent and college tuition and walk away with a degree free and clear. Today, just to pay rent, one needs roommates or more than one part-time minimum-wage job, let alone any ability to pay for education in order to get a better job.

1950:
$0.75/hour * 20 hours * 50 weeks = $750 wages
$42 * 12 months = $504 rent
$35 * 4 quarters = $140 tuition

2013:
$7.25/hour * 20 hours * 50 weeks = $7250 wages
$602 * 12 months = $7224 rent
$3917 * 2 semesters = $7834 tuition

I believe that raising the average wage will have a better impact on the economy as a whole than raising executive compensation. I believe that income inequality is a social ill that should be addressed through policy -- not by Marxian state capture of the means of production and not through Randian private hoarding of the means of production, but through a hybrid realistic approach like "all employees should receive stock options or profit sharing if executives do".

The IMF has a report that pegs the total world-wide subsidies to fossil fuels at about $1.9 trillion per year.

It's cheaper because the oil tycoons aren't paying for all the costs of burning the stuff (they're actually getting huge tax breaks instead).

Other social aspects will be affected too — such as bosses not retiring for longer, thus slowing down careers of the underlings.

Obviously, it would ultimately be a good thing for society, but not without quite some upheaval and costs. By trusting the government to spend the research dollars, that are already taxed away from us, we may have slowed this particular research down a bit...

Here, try starting with wikipedia's pretty map of socialist countries by duration.

You missed the "at some point in their history" part.

Quoting you: "most of the countries in Africa, South America, Asia, Eastern Europe, etc... are socialist"

Notice where they are mostly located? Ah yes, Africa, South America, Asia, Eastern Europe...

Notice how most of the countries in Africa and South America are colored grey?

If you're going to argue against that, you're going to have to provide your own special definition of what a socialist country is

This is a more reasonable statement. I'd like to note that you haven't provided a definition either, but let's disregard that for a moment.
Socialism generally refers to collectively held resources and the amount of collective spending.

The latter is still not easy to determine, but the following tables give an indication:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending#As_a_percentage_of_GDP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates

The former is also tricky, but again, an indication can be found here (first graph):
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2013/res050813a.htm

Of course there are many, many, foot notes to be added to the above, but that only supports how wrong it is to make such a sweeping statement like you did. Unless you can come up with a usable definition of socialist and the numbers to classify countries as such.

Australia's GDP in 2012 is $1.57 Trillion according to the IMF.

It's insane to compare a country with a company. But still, Australia does have 15 times the economy of Apple.

Re: BRICS as an organisation not a casual grouping.

I stand corrected. I didn't realise they had formalised their relationships to that degree.

Nonetheless, it's hard to see India, for example, siding with China in a dispute with the US. Or Brazil.

Lower the risk of exposure to a volatile borrower (US start playing nasty with China would be seen as volatile)?

Let see

* India buying IMF gold - among the reasons - diversifying India's reserves (under the milder term of "foreign exchange reserve management") and a larger voting share in the IMF;

* Brazil - even if at a record high reserve level, probably quite f**ked in this respect - the exposure to US securities seems quite high. Anyway, here's something interesting: Brazil prepared to lend reserves from the nation's central bank (CB) to help finance the rescue package for the European Union - looks like a (risky?) attempt to diversify to me.

Re: BRICS as an organisation not a casual grouping.

I stand corrected. I didn't realise they had formalised their relationships to that degree.

Nonetheless, it's hard to see India, for example, siding with China in a dispute with the US. Or Brazil.

Lower the risk of exposure to a volatile borrower (US start playing nasty with China would be seen as volatile)?

Let see

* India buying IMF gold - among the reasons - diversifying India's reserves (under the milder term of "foreign exchange reserve management") and a larger voting share in the IMF;

* Brazil - even if at a record high reserve level, probably quite f**ked in this respect - the exposure to US securities seems quite high. Anyway, here's something interesting: Brazil prepared to lend reserves from the nation's central bank (CB) to help finance the rescue package for the European Union - looks like a (risky?) attempt to diversify to me.

oops, there's your link with the facts, from IMF itself: http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/glance.htm

By the way, the World Bank was created at the same conference.

Bilderburgers laugh derisively at your attempts to undermine the World Bank, IMF, ECB, and the 'Almighty Dollar' with your pathetic 'currency'. However...Bernie Madoff is intrigued by your ideas and wishes to subscribe to your newsletter.

There are plenty of young men with rifles running around the Afghanistan hills who hate the West...or what little they know of it...but that does not make them into terrorists capable of carrying out a sophisticated act of terror in another country.

Erm... I'm pretty sure $200,000 is going to be out of reach for the people he mentioned given that their GDP per capita is only $589.

This is a bit muddled. For a while, NASDAQ allowed flash orders, but this has been done away with, IIRC.

Not from what I've read. Ok so the key piece I was missing was that now anyone can do it. But if you don't have the special contacts, property and cash to co-locate and server farms, you can't take advantage. The reality is special people get special privileged access.

Also, you are wrong that people can put in orders ahead of other people. That's simply not how it works. What people are doing is simply to predict where other people are about to put orders in, and when they think it opportune, to trade against those live orders in the market. Of course, anyone would be against someone being allowed to jump the queue, but this is just a strawman argument.

Flash orders as explained here http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2010/03/dodd.htm are exactly jumping the queue. It's also explained here: http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/13124-computerized-front-running-another-goldman-dominated-fraud-.html. The situation is of course more complex than I made it out to be, but the fundamental issue is, HFT have a special advantage and siphon money out of the economy. This takes away from people that would ostensibly make better use of it circulating it back into the economy on products and services.

Also, you have not addressed the previous question. You weren't the one asked, but you did reply to it.

I did address the question of value in a couple of places. It's been shown before that contrary to the commonly proposed reason for tax cuts, rich people do not commonly spend a lot of money. They tend to save it and sit on it and take it out of circulation. This and the above adds up to negative value. We (society) are harmed by the existence of HFT in this context. If it was just simple arbitrage as you are arguing, we wouldn't be having this argument, but that's not what is going on.

I hate to break it to you but there is no such agreement.

The exact scope of the Western world is somewhat subjective in nature, depending on whether cultural, economic, spiritual or political criteria are employed.

From a cultural point of view Brazil could very well belong to the West, however that is not what is being challenged here [in my opinion].

The obvious cultural, economic and political differences between Brazil and what is known today as described by the term "the West" (Western Europe, North America, Israel, Australia and New Zealand) are clear. Corruption is endemic, the justice system incapable, crime rates sky high, racial discrimination heavy, wealth distribution skewed.

It would perhaps be more pertinent to discuss this in light of Brazil's present and future economic situation.

As of today Brazil is not a developed country according to the IMF, OECD or the UN.

It is perhaps most clear when considering the unequal nature of Brazilian society and Brazil's ranking according to the Human Development index. Brazil is ranked far below the average OECD country (Figure #1).

I think the report speaks for itself: "By looking at some of the most fundamental aspects of people’s lives and opportunities the HDI provides a much more complete picture of a country's development than other indicators, such as GDP per capita."

Maybe, but those rural areas create the food that the cities need to house and feed their populations

And this is relevant how?

The roads needed to truck in supplies, heavily subsidized food programs, and greatly disproportionate distribution of state tax income as well as federal aid.

Well since the majority of the people live there, and the majority of the wealth is both generated and consumed there, then of course cities account for the most of government revenue and expenditures. It's pretty damn hard to say that cities are "greatly disproportionate" when according to the 2000 Census, 79 % of all Americans live in urban areas. If you really want to look at disproportionate spending look at the rural area. Mapping states according to federal contributors and beneficiaries (contributors receive less than $1 of federal spending for each dollar paid in taxes, beneficiaries receive more than $1 for each dollar paid in taxes), you find two curious facts. First. there's the irony of the political leanings of the states; but more importantly for this conversation, the more populous and urban states are net contributors and the less populous and rural states tend to be beneficiaries. We see this again and again by any metric and any population you choose. For instance, poverty rates for instance.

I grew up in the rural area. It sucked. I'm glad I got out, because there's simply no future there.

Well, as of April 2010, they weren't. http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2010/01/weodata/groups.htm#oem do you have evidence to the contrary?

Idiot. There are no Chinese Yuan in the SDR basket (http://fx.sauder.ubc.ca/SDR.html). The Yuan is not a freely tradeable currency, so it can't be a part of the basket. It's 11% JPY -- Japanese Yen, that is.
And it's not based on GDP, but on some intransparent calculation by the IMF (http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/sdr.HTM), which is politically influenced, simply because the IMF was set up by the US and is not a truly independent, international institution.
You got two of the most basic facts of international finance wrong. Stop being such a smart ass.

Create a single world bank or supra-national currency, uniform rules and transparent public accounting

Wait, isn't that already in the works? Well, probably not the transparent public accounting, but global currency is definitely on the mind of our global rulers.

I believe the GP is arguing about the lost opportunity of that $10 billion. There is a finite pool of cash, and many other projects that are asking for funding. Something else got the axe so the super collider could get built... given the light of the debt crises in the western nations, maybe that cash would have been better spent later rather than right now.

Fair enough, let's address those claims.

The construction of LHC was approved in 1995, way before there was a crisis in Europe. The total project cost (about half of the $10B figure according to this) is therefore spread across more than 15 years (assuming not all experiments have been run) and 20 countries. CERN's budget for last year was about $1B (see previous link) and a similar figure in 2008 and I fully expect them to spend that money on nuclear research, as per their charter; there are other organizations that concern themselves with world hunger, bank bailouts, etc.

Now, let's put the numbers into perspective.
There are *individuals* that can finance the LHC 5 times over. Speaking about countries, in 2009 Germany was the largest contributor to CERN with ~$200M, which was roughly 0.006% of their GDP.

Oh, and by the way, the discovery was made at Fermilab's Tevatron, which is both older and significantly cheaper than the LHC.

IMF World Economic Outlook says India's economy was up 7.3% in 2008, up 5.6% in 2009, and predicted to be up 7.7% in 2010. China's economy was up 9.6% in 2008, up 8.7% in 2009, and predicted to be up 10% in 2010. Meanwhile the United States' economy was up 0.4% in 2008, down 2.5% in 2009, and predicted to be up only 2.7% in 2010.

People are keeping a very close eye on emerging market economies like Brazil, Russia, India, China, Mexico, etc. They have been behind, but that means they have a lot of potential to grow, and many of them have been doing a good job at outpacing the United States' economy in recent years.

That all aside, the original comment for this thread was just stupid. In terms of comedic value it was beyond stale. Other than that it's tasteless. I don't think I've ever been on the phone with a tech support rep who was in India. Meanwhile I've been to India twice in the past few years and know that call centers are just about zero percent of their cultural identity. Just because some Americans have some exposure to this one small profession in India, they have extrapolated it into this whole stereotype for an entire country. I guess that's just ignorance.

If there is any stereotype of Americans which is absolutely accurate, it would be that Americans are ignorant.

You want the IMF website.

Or take a look at these 2 articles. We're all stuffed. - and the 2nd uses 2007 figures!

Imagine what happens if #1 in the 1st link defaults on its debts.

For about the worst pyramid scheme in history:

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2000/03/jarvis.htm

Result: 2000 people killed.

Some facts to make you feel less comfortable spouting patriottic nonsense:

1) You're wrong. The US is #26 in debt with 60% GDP. Some european countries are worse (eg belgium at 85%, france at 64), some are much better (eg holland at 46%, UK at 43%, spain at 35%).

2) US citizens don't save money, but are in debt themselves (eg creditcards). This means that most of the US debt is in the hands of foreign countries or nationals, while a large part of the european public debts is in European hands since europeans save a lot more.

3) The US imports way more than it exports (currently, the trade deficit is 600 billion (!), down from 800 due to the extremely weak dollar). Since these goods have to be bought capital flows out (eg to gulf states for buying oil). This capital flows back in the form of investments in US companies. This sounds good, but what it means is that you are selling Americal companies to foreigners to pay for your consumption. The EU countries generally have trade balance or surplus

See The World Bank and IMF for why that ain't necessarily so.

Again, how blacketh is thy pot?

"Nu unh, you are!" isn't a good argument. Even with fanciful Olde Englishe spelling.

Stocks, bonds and cash are just convenient abstractions that directly map to real property.

Stock is an abstraction for ownership. Please explain how owning ".0002% of Apple, Inc" translates to "real property". Can I claim a paperclip from their office?

You can argue all you want that such "legal entitlements" have plenty of historical precedent, but that does not make them a part of capitalism... If you want to argue about "textbook" definitions, then you've gone far, far astray.

Why? Because intellectual property is invention and stocks are abstraction? I think it's a distinction without much of a difference. Consider the difference betweeen "property" and "capital" if you want something a little more blatant. Capital is *not* an abstraction of property. It is value above and beyond the value of the property itself:

"Walk down most roads in the Middle East, the former Soviet Union, or Latin America, and you will see many things: houses used for shelter; parcels of land being tilled, sowed, and harvested; merchandise being bought and sold. Assets in developing and former communist countries primarily serve these immediate physical purposes. In the West, however, the same assets also lead a parallel life as capital outside the physical world. They can be used to put in motion more production by securing the interests of other parties as "collateral" for a mortgage, for example, or by assuring the supply of other forms of credit and public utilities.

Why can't buildings and land elsewhere in the world also lead this parallel life? Why can't the enormous resources in developing and former communist countries, which my colleagues at the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (Lima) and I estimate at $9.3 trillion of dead capital, produce value beyond their "natural" state? My reply is, dead capital exists because we have forgotten (or perhaps never realized) that converting a physical asset to generate capital--using your house to borrow money to finance an enterprise, for example--requires a very complex process. It is not unlike the process that Albert Einstein taught us whereby a single brick can be made to release a huge amount of energy in the form of an atomic explosion. By analogy, capital is the result of discovering and unleashing potential energy from the trillions of bricks that the poor have accumulated in their buildings."

"The Mystery of Capital", Herandno de Soto http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2001/03/ desoto.htm

Summary: capitalism is *not* restricted to only "natural state" economics. It not only includes non-natural ideas of property, the very essence of capitalism - capital - is a non-property according to your strict definition.

Central planning failed everywhere? Singapore? Nordic countries?

Eh? Read up a few things. If you're calling Singapore a planned economy, that is rather daring, to say the least. And scandinavians would simply shake their heads about such an assertion. Don't mix up high levels of government expenditure as percent of GDP with the absence of market economy (background).

Look closer. We aren't exactly sending in the B-52s to airdrop loads of McMuffins, LOTR DVDs, sneakers, and twinkies onto the Noble Primitive Peoples who are Honoring the Sacred Traditions of Their Ancestors. It's a pull situation much more than a push. Western culture, simply put, is addictive.

Try telling a Third World farmer who can't compete with subsidised US grain prices that you're not bombing them with Twinkies. The military, economic and cultural influences of the West are not easily separated. Western companies strongly promote their products in non-Western markets, with the economic and if necessary military backing of Western governments. "The national interest" includes business interests, and the national interest is defended and extended by force - look at what happened to Mossadegh and Allende when they expropriated the assets of Western companies.

Just in case anyone's feeling lazy, the IMF's report ranks the PRC as a whole as the 108th largest economy per capita, right behind the Republic of Congo.

Taiwan by itself ranks 36, and Hong Kong 27th. Greece ranks 26th.

What is not AMAZING is that someone on Slashdot would act like they are an expert on a subject when they were somewhat in need of education. So you think everyone was running in to buy Argentinian T-Bills while their deficit balloned in the year of their currency collapse. Umm no, governments print money trying to get themselves out of the deficit hole. For a link to how it really works go to the IMF here:

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/eds/Eng/Guide/

I suggest you do some reading..

Perhaps so, but it makes it harder for terrorists to congregate, and those avoidance measures can, of course, be tracked. It gives valuable data points in watching and tracking terrorist organizations. Also, I believe you have Godwin'd your argument. If you believe every government is highly corrupt, and it seems you do, I recommend you look here: http://www.imf.org/external/Pubs/FT/staffp/1998/12 -98/pdf/tanzi.pdf. There was, remarkably, nearly no perception of corruption in Denmark in 1998. Coincidentally, 'Scandinavianize' is a verb occasionally used by political scientists to mean 'to become an ideal democracy.' It seems, then, that government is not necessarily out to get you.

This is correct - if you look at the original data you'll see several instances where the unemployment rate is below 5% and so simply doesn't show up on that map.

Both your examples of the UK and Norway do in fact come in under 5%; UK has 4.8%, and Norway has 4.4%.

Unfortunately the gray means both "no data" AND "less than 5% unemployment".

According to the original website, the data comes from the IMF, which only has information for 29 countries available.

So, for example, they have data on the UK (4.8%) and Japan (4.7%), but not China (except for Tiawan, if you count that as part of China, at 4.6%). But all of those are colored the same - both ones with no data and ones below 5%.

So, yeah, there isn't a lot of data available, but there's more available than the map shows.

I'm not sure that I understand what you mean. At the very least you are being unclear - you provide a long list of international organisations, and say that if a nation is a member of them all (you said "and" not "or") then "your country and its citizens get to pretty much unilaterally accept the laws of your fellow member nations when it comes to this type of "crime".

Not true. In fact, a long way from true. There is not a single country that is a member of all those organisations. For a start, NAFTA and the EC are mutually exclusive. The US has trouble recognising the validity and authority of the ICC, and has stated that in certain circumstances any foreign nation wanting an extradition can go whistle. China is a member of the IMF but to get an extradition order for copyright violation agreed by them? You have to be kidding. The truth is muddied when viewed across national borders.

Did he break the law? Wrong question, as there is no "the law" when you think globally. Ask a better question.

That is a mere assertion, driven by fear and ignorance of reality. You need to get out, and stop viewing reality with tunnel vision. I notice that you are now posting anonymously now. Perhaps deep down you know that you are wrong, and fear losing your precious /. karma as a result? Very laughable if you ask me.

Here are some things you may wish to read. These things kinda suck for the respective countries, but their loss is the US's gain. And like it or not, the brain drain starts as H1-Bs:

• How To Plug Europe's Brain Drain
• How extensive is the brain drain?
• How to reverse Africa's brain drain

And now the signs that the US's recent paranoia is self destructive

Actually GDP per capita, current prices (2004):

India: $608.4

USA: $39934.3

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2005/01/da ta/dbginim.cfm

Of course Gross domestic product based on purchasing-power-parity (PPP) per capita is very close to the numbers you provided.

But the laptop costs about 230 real dollars, not 230 purchasing-power-parity dollars.

Assuming you mean the Cayman Islands, you're still going to have problems. Their monetary authority has anti-money laundering regulations which the IMF is happy enough with. So you are going to have some difficulties getting it in under the radar. Not to mention getting the account(s) open. While SWIFT could in theory move the money that quickly, you're going to have problems setting up the back-to-back transactions needed to do this.

Look at page 8: IMF Report

Pyramid scams/schemes/whatever destroyed the economy of Albania. ISTR that this resulted in a flood of refugees to Italy. Pyramid schemes hurt us all. Here's an article about the Albanian pyramid schemes.

How soon we forget...

Yes, India shouldn't get aid, since:

1: India gives developmental assistance (mostly to neighboring countries like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Bhutan).

2: It's a creditor to the IMF (International Monetary Fund).

3: It's written off loans for some desparately poor countries (mostly in Africa).

4: Foreign Aid is a very small part of India's GDP, at least when compared to Israel and Egypt. It's symbolic for India more than anything else.

5: America _now_ accounts for an insignificant amount of India's foreign aid:

"The United States accounted for 8.6 percent of all of the aid India received from independence through FY 1988, but for only 0.7 percent in FY 1989 and 0.6 percent in FY 1990." source

This is not to say that proprietary software is banned in the government. The policy will shift to allow companies that use free software solutions partipate in public concurrences. And every software used by the government, regardless of its platform, should be interoperable. No government website may carry a tag "best viewed with browser x or Y". The software developed by the brazilian IRS, that today is avaliable only for Windows, will have a Linux port. Sergio Amadeu told me this policy can be summarized in one sentence: "the brazilian government will not force anyone to use proprietary or free software". That is 100% on the spirit of free software and open source.

Nowadays the use of Windows is predominant in the brazilian government, but that will change. Many governments are considering this direction, and Brazil is just another case. The government is not anti-Microsoft, is just considering a better option for the country.

As a coincidence, I am a brasilian journalist and I have wrote a story about it. On monday you can check it out in www.jb.com.br/internet (those that don't speak portuguese will have to use Babel Fish).

Will that be all? :-)

Will that be all? :-)

Goddamn it. Punched "Submit" on my way to hit "Preview".

Here's what the links should have looked like:

• The IMF
• The World Bank
• Some anti-IMF (etc.) articles courtesy of Global Exchange
• Example of a pro-IMF (etc.) etc article at he Economist

And now slashdot can't handle my html (though, Netscape 4.5 has no problem with it). So you've got to cut and paste those last two: http://www.globalexchange.org/economy/rulemakers/ http://www.economist.com/editorial/freeforall/libr ary/index_special_collection.html

(Slashdot's alpha-quality is pissing me off today. They sold this shit?)

I've been an Economist subscriber for a few years now, and despite some problems I've been pretty impressed with it, particularly it's technical reporting. So I've been submitting Economist stories to slashdot off and on (because I'm sick of all the pointers to zdnet, cnn and msnbc)... I thought about submitting this one, but it looked like pretty lame business-think stuff to me, so of course, this is the one that made it. Whatever.

However, it is true that they can be a bit naive about computers (e.g. I remember a particularly funny article about how wonderful Object Oriented programming is because of all the code that gets reused, thereby saving oodles of programming dollars).

Anyway: the primary strength of the Economist is that they really do report on global news (unlike, say "US News and World Report", where the "world report" half of their title typically refers to one page). The Economist, on the other hand has lots of stories about things like competing consititutional conventions in Zimbabwe (have you heard about that one? Why not?).

It's a bit misleading to call it a "conservative" publication, because it's British and it has different biases than American conservatives do. They're rabidly opposed to the right to bear arms, regard the death penalty with suspicion, and they're opposed to the "War on Drugs". They're also nowhere near as hostile to the UN as American conservatives... and they're positively in love with the IMF and the World Bank (I would guess that the average American doesn't even have a clue as to what the IMF does.)

Just for the hell of it, some links on that subject:

• The IMF
• The World Bank
• Example of a pro-IMF, etc article at he Economist
• Some anti-IMF, etc articles courtesy of Global Exchange