SPECIAL HOLIDAY DOUBLE ISSUE
5
9 The world this year
13
14 31 In search oflndia's rare frogs
16 18
Leaders The European Union in disarray Acomedy of euros America's fragile recovery Ayear of living pigheadedly Central Asia Make a new plan, Stans In praise of particle physics Higgs ahoy! Letters
Asia 63 Kazakhstan at 20 Not-quite-eternal Nursultan 64 Logging in Cambodia Dead wood 64 China's economic planning Prudent and proactive 66 India's political paralysis Gasping for breath 68 A Delhi centenary Pomp and frolics
81
20 On defence, Georgia,
35 The founding fathers'
religious beliefs
39 40 42 44
47 Brazil's servant
problem 52 The admirable
adventures of Master Anthony Knivet
59 Why China fails at football
infrastructure, Africa, foie gras, Jesus, Greece, Europe
82
United States American veterans A hard homecoming Winter strikes Chicago Shovel ready New Mexico's governor How to grab Latinos Lexington The Republicans flirt with fratricide
84
The Americas 57 Argentina's president Cristina prepares to defy gravity 58 Peru's government By the right, march 58 Canada and climate change Kyoto and out
82
85 Coffee and revolution in Cairo 93 How Martin Luther went viral
Middle East and Africa Africa's population Miracle or Malthus? South Africa Fat is bad but beautiful Syria's opposition Gaining ground Kenya and Dickens Great expectations
Europe 89 The EU and the euro Game, set, mismatch 91 France's presidential election Another Dominique 92 Protests in Russia Putin the boot 92 Belgian massacre
97 A Downing Street
Christmas story
105 The joy of walking the Dales Way
109 Lessons from the East India Company
119 Ernest Dichter, the man 71 Sun Tzu and the art of
who made advertising sexy
soft power 77 South Korea: the
one-shot society
~~
Contents continues overleaf
6 Contents
The Economist December 17th 2011
101 102
102
103 104 124 Whythebestbeeris Belgian
Britain The coalition and Europe State of the union Threats to financial services Success and the city The view from Norway and Switzerland In with the out crowd Natural resources Mine what you wish for Bagehot How Britain could Leave Europe
International 107 Euphemisms Making murder respectable
130 Buttonwood Snobbery towards commerce 132 Economics focus One nation overdrawn Science and technology 137 The Higgs boson Fantasy turned reality? 138 Climate-change summit Adeal in Durban 140 Body hair The not-so-naked ape
147 148 149
113 114 135 The strange but valuable science of crowds
115 115
116
141 Albrecht Durer's business model
Business French nuclear energy Under pressure Japan Inc shops abroad Have yen, will travel Avon boots out its boss Andrea's adieu Labour relations in America Boeing bullied Schumpeter Who's best at innovation?
Finance and economics 127 The euro crisis Damned with faint plans 128 European banks Staggering to the rescue 128 Seasonal giving Keeping up with the Santas
149
Books and arts BotticeLLi and his bankers Gold, God and forgiveness Fra Angelico Haloes and holiness The City of London Of word and bond Free wiLL and the brain Who's in charge?
164 Economic and financial indicators Statistics on 42 economies, plus a closer Look at corporate defaults Obituary 166 Christopher Logue Possessed by Homer
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9
In a year marked by mass protests, the awakening that swept the Arab world stood out. The Arab spring was sparked by rallies in Tunisia that followed the self-immolation in late 2010 of a young market worker angered by police harassment. He died in hospital in January, prompting thousands to take to the streets in sometimes violent clashes that forced the longtime president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, to flee to Saudi Arabia. Emboldened by the outcome in Tunisia, protesters soon rose up in other Arab countries. Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians filled the centre of Cairo and camped in Tahrir Square to call for Hosni Mubarak to step down. After three decades in power, Mr Mubarak withstood only three weeks of strife. Although frail, he eventually stood trial (due to resume soon) for the deaths that occurred when his security forces tried to quash the protests. Elsewhere, Yemen's president fled in June and eventually signed a transition deal to end his 33-year reign; Saudi troops helped to put down unrest in Bahrain; and reform was embraced in Morocco and Jordan. But the Arab spring was met with stiff resistance in Syria, where protests were brutally put down by Bashar Assad's regime, resulting in s,ooo deaths so far. In Libya Muammar Qaddafi caused a civil war after he tried to crush an opposition movement that spread from Benghazi. NATO aircraft enforced a no-fly zone, endorsed by the Arab League, in support of the rebels. After a summer of conflict, Qaddafi was captured
by rebels in his home town and swiftly killed. He had ruled Libya since 1969.
would have sought greater fiscal union, opening a rift with Europe.
As heard on the streets
Portugal was given a €78 billion ($116 billion) bail-out; Ireland obtained a second rescue package, of €24 billion. But Italy caused the most anxiety. Its bond yields soared amid doubts it could avoid a bail-out, the scale of which would dwarf those provided to other countries. While they debated swingeing budget cuts, Italians had to endure more lurid allegations about Silvio Berlusconi's sex life. He eventually resigned as prime minister and was replaced by Mario Monti, who appointed a cabinet of technocrats.
In Israel450,ooo people marched on one day to air a range of grievances about declining living standards. In Chile students and schoolchildren seeking reform to education brought teaching to a halt. Corruption was thrust to the top of the political agenda in India after thousands flocked to support Anna Hazare, a veteran anti-graft campaigner who went on a hunger strike. Around 10o,ooo protested in Wisconsin against curbs on public-sector unions. The Occupy movement camped out near Wall Street and other financial centres. Russia's prime minister, Vladimir Putin, hatched a plan to run for president again in 2012. But his coronation might not run so smoothly this time. His United Russia party did not do as well as expected in parliamentary elections (amid allegations of ballot fraud), after which anti-Putin dissidents took to the streets in Moscow's biggest protests for years. In China calls on the internet for a "jasmine revolution" were met with new curbs on the media and social networks and by armed police descending on public places to stop people from "strolling".
. * \· ~ * * There were also large protests in many European countries, including Britain, Portugal and Spain, in response to austerity. The crisis in the euro zone lurched from summit to summit, each applying stickingplasters rather than the major surgery required. Britain vetoed a treaty change that
Markets responded to every twist in the tortuous negotiations to provide Greece with a second rescue package and restructure its debts; creditors were asked to wipe off so% of the value of Greek bonds. Stockmarkets recorded their most volatile trading sessions, in terms of swings of losses and gains, since the height of the financial crisis in 2008; most indices ended up down for the year. European banks struggled to obtain funds in the markets, forcing more of them to turn to the European Central Bank and raising fears of another credit crunch. As debate raged about giving the ECB more powers to address the crisis, it intervened to ease the strain with the Federal Reserve and other central banks. In September the IMF warned that the world economy "is in a dangerous new phase" and lowered its overall growth forecast to 4% for 2012, and to 2% for advanced economies. Brazil and China began to ease monetary policy and focus on boosting growth. Beset by high inflation, India raised interest rates, but it, too, was another "hot" economy that started to cool. America's economy also struggled to regain a sure footing, hindered in part by a disheartening political failure
to reach a compromise on reducing the deficit. After months of talks Congress increased the limit on the federal debt ceiling to avoid a default just ahead of a Treasury deadline. The nth-hour deal did not stop Standard & Poor's from downgrading America's AAA rating for the first time. America's total outstanding public debt rose above $15 trillion. The spending cuts implemented under Britain's Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition began to bite. In May the Lib-Dems suffered huge losses in local elections and in a referendum they had championed on switching to the Altemative Vote system. In August English cities experienced their worst riots and looting in decades.
Japan suffered its biggest catastrophe since the second world war when the most powerful earthquake in its history generated a tsunami that swept away entire towns and villages in the north-east. The disaster was compounded by the meltdown of three reactors at the tsunami-damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant. At least19,000 people were killed by the earthquake and tsunami, which also caused severe disruption to manufacturing supply chains. Unmade in Manhattan
Jaws dropped in May when Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested in New York on charges of sexually assaulting a hotel maid. After the boss of the IMF was paraded in handcuffs, many in France, where he was the putative presidential candidate for the Socialists in next year's election, suspect-
~~
10 The world this year
~
ed a conspiracy. The charges were eventually withdrawn after the maid's credibility was destroyed. Christine Lagarde replaced Mr Strauss-Kahn as the head of the IMF; the Socialists crowned Frant;ois Hollande as their candidate for president.
The Economist December 17th 2011 people. He then went on a shooting rampage, killing 69 mostly-teenage participants at a Labour Party camp. Drugs-related violence continued to plague Mexico, but even Mexicans were shocked when a notorious cartel attacked a casino in Monterrey in August, killing at least 52 people, most of them women. Dilma Rousseff's first year in office as Brazil's president was marred by corruption scandals that caused several government ministers to resign, including the sports minister in charge of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics.
American special forces located and killed Osama bin Laden in May during a daring raid. Despite rumours that he moved constantly to evade capture, bin Laden was found living comfortably in a compound in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad. His death brought celebratory crowds onto the streets of New York and Washington. In September America commemorated the tenth anniversary of the September nth attacks. America's mission in Abbottabad caused fury in Pakistan. The earlier arrest of a CIA man who worked at the American consulate in Lahore over a shooting incident led to a diplomatic furore. The deaths of more civilians in American drone attacks and the killing of 24 Pakistani troops by aN ATO helicopter in a friendly-fire incident put the relationship under yet more strain. America declared an official end to the war in Iraq, as its last troops pulled out. But the year was punctuated by bombings and shootings, including dozens of co-ordinated explosions on a single day in August that killed 89. The war in Afghanistan rumbled on. The tranquillity of the Norwegian summer was shattered when Anders Behring Breivik, a right-wing extremist, set off a car bomb in Oslo, killing eight
0 come all ye faithful! The race to become the Republican Party's presidential candidate started, minus early favourites such as Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie, and Sarah Palin. Mitt Romney led for much of the year, but Newt Gingrich surprised many by surging to the front of the pack in late November. Voting begins in Iowa on January 3rd.
The junta in Myanmar began loosening its repression. Some political prisoners were freed and Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the democracy movement, was given greater
freedom. Hillary Clinton became the first American secretary of state to visit the country in 56 years, but the regime's commitment to more reform has yet to be tested. South Sudan was welcomed by the United Nations as its 193rd member state, after the South voted overwhelmingly for secession from the rest of Sudan. The Palestinians also began their more tricky bid for full statehood at the UN. After UNESCO recognised Palestine as a full member, the United States cut its contribution. The UN declared a food crisis in Africa as "famine" for the first time in almost 30 years, when drought affected 10m people in the Horn of Africa. The loss of Steve Jobs, Apple's visionary leader, who died at the age of 56 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer, caused some to question whether the company would ever be the same. Apple did briefly become the world's biggest company by market capitalisation, but it also faced growing competition from devices run on Google's Android. The biggest insider-trading case to date came to court. Raj Rajaratnam was found guilty
and sentenced ton years for securities fraud while running Galleon, a hedge-fund firm. Thank you and goodbye
Rupert Murdoch's legendary business acumen seemed to fail him when the British newspaper division of his News Corporation empire became embroiled in a phonehacking scandal. The revelation that the phone of a murdered 13-year-old girl had been hacked by journalists at the News of the World caused a public uproar and led to the permanent closure of the sensation-seeking tabloid. The UN marked October 31st as the day when the world's population reached 7 billion people, most of whom are expected to turn up in London for the Olympics next summer. Other economic data and news can be found on Pages 164-165
13
A comedy of euros Britain had a bad summit, but the euro zone had a worse one AS YOU read this, lawyers are .1"'\.busily drafting a European fiscal "compact" designed to restore discipline to the euro zone's economies. In the new year all but one of the European Union's 27 members are to start thrashing out this treaty's details. Meanwhile the British government, having fallen out with all its 26 partners, is promising that it will remain a central part of the union-and that London will remain Europe's financial capital. All is well. Except that it isn't. Merely to set out these purported achievements of the latest EU summit in Brussels is to show how hollow they are (see page 89). Once again Europe's leaders have failed to solve the euro crisis. The new treaty could easily be killed by the markets or by its rejection in one or more euro-zone country. The EU has suffered plenty of disappointing summits without the sky falling in-a good many of them in the past year. But unlike the marathon dispute over a new constitution, the euro is in a race against time because markets are pushing countries to insolvency. As investors and voters lose faith, the task of saving the single currency grows harder. Sooner or later, the euro will be beyond saving. This summit also threatens to change the nature of the Euand not in a good way. One reason is that it has plotted a misguided course for the euro. The other is that Britain, long ambivalent about its membership, has moved closer towards dropping out, even if that would be more by accident than design. An EU without Britain would be more parochial and less liberal. An EU without the euro might not exist at all. Is it really that bad? For all the fuss about Britain, the main failure in Brussels was to draw up a plan to save the euro. That requires a trade-off. Governments need to bind themselves to credible fiscal rules that provide incentives for good behaviour. They need to assume some form of joint liability for debts, with only the well-behaved benefiting from the shelter of Eurobonds. In return the European Central Bank (ECB) needs to give total support to all solvent members. That would leave much to do, especially to unleash growth and to reform the banking system. But investors would at least see a clear path ahead. Instead there was another fudge, with neither the governments nor the ECB doing enough. In the run-up to the summit, the ECB extended its support for euro-zone banks-in effect lending them unlimited cheap money. That will help the banks and might in theory feed the demand for euro-zone sovereign debt. But it hardly counts as the "big bazooka" investors want, if only because the banks are wary of taking losses on ever larger stashes of government debt. Moreover, the ECB remains adamant that it cannot intervene as the lender of last resort to euro-zone sovereigns. The governments did even less. True, the leaders pledged extra money in the form of loans to the IMF and left open the possibility of boosting the euro zone's own rescue fund. But
there are already signs that not all the cash will turn up as promised. And the fiscal compact that was the summit's centrepiece is flawed. The idea is to write fiscal discipline into national constitutions and harness the EU's institutions to punish profligacy and excess. But such a compact will not safeguard the euro against future booms and busts. Until financial markets crashed in 2008, Spain and Ireland were hailed as economic stars, with lower public-debt burdens and healthier budgets than Germany. By the time their public finances went visibly wrong, it was too late. Worse, the compact will not resolve today's troubles. The package dwells too much on austerity, and too little on growth. That risks aggravating the deep Europewide recession threatening next year, which could prompt a downgrade of the entire zone's credit ratings and cause economies to miss their deficit targets-triggering still more austerity. Although the compact was greeted as the acme of European solidarity, it is more likely to provoke strife. The summit poured cold water on the idea of Eurobonds, in which all members would share some or all of the troubled economies' burden of debt. Instead the adjustment is being imposed almost entirely on deficit countries, guaranteeing that it will be long and painful. If in the coming years elected governments that impose austerity stir up civil unrest, outside enforcers in the EU will before long become a target for popular rage. Already governments that agreed to the idea of a compact are warning that its ratification depends upon the detail. The Irish government is under pressure to hold a referendum that it would struggle to win. Parliaments from Slovakia (in the euro) and the Czech Republic (outside) could balk. France's opposition presidential candidate, who is leading in the polls, says he would renegotiate the deal to get Eurobonds and a more active ECB. All across Europe there are murmurs that Germany, which has benefited so handsomely from the euro, is asking too much of everybody else. A poor hand misplayed However did David Cameron, Britain's prime minister, manage to unite them all? The answer is through a combination of political expediency, inept tactics and fumbled diplomacy. Mr Cameron's plan was to seek safeguards for the single market and to subject some parts of financial regulation to unanimous approval, in exchange for backing a new treaty. When he failed to get what he wanted, he withheld his support. In Mr Cameron's defence, he has to contend not only with Conservative Eurosceptic backbenchers, but also a Eurosceptic public-just as Germany's Angela Merkel and France's Nicolas Sarkozy also have domestic political constraints. Furthermore, Britain has real cause to worry about financial regulation. London is host to by far the biggest financial-services industry in Europe-in some areas it has as much as 90% of the Eu's business. The European Commission, egged on by the French and others, has produced many daft proposals to regulate it, as well as suggesting a financial-transactions tax. But if the politics was expedient, the tactics and the diplomacy were not. Mr Cameron knew what he wanted, but went ~~
The Economist December 17th 2011
14 Leaders ~ about getting itthe wrong way. He presented a last-minute uni-
lateral demand that would have partially overturned the principle of majority voting on single-market rules, which Britain itself first put forward under Margaret Thatcher over 20 years ago. Had he prepared the ground with other governments in advance he might have succeeded. Had he talked to fellow centre-right leaders on the summit's eve instead of staying out of their political group, he would have known that he could not. Mr Cameron's veto was self-defeating. He may have briefly basked in his backbenchers' praise, but if his aim was to protect the City and the single market, he has failed. Both are threatened more by Britain's absence from the summits of up to 26leaders that will now take place than by Britain's participation in a treaty of 27 that placed no constraints on it. For decades, British diplomacy has been guided by a determination to keep a seat at the table. It has worked: Britain has not been outvoted on a serious piece of financial-services legislation. Instead of closing the door, mend the fence If the euro collapses, or the treaty is stillborn, Mr Cameron may yet claim that he was right all along. It would certainly make his veto seem less momentous. However, other European countries will not soon forget Britain's attempt to hold the summit to ransom at a vital moment-and to protect financial services, which many of them blame for the crisis. And the Tory Eurosceptics and their Liberal Democrat coalition part-
ners are already at each other's throats (see page 101). At its worst, this might be the start of a process by which Britain falls out of the EU (see Bagehot). Yet it does not have to be- so long as Mr Cameron is prepared to mend fences and align his tactics with a strategy to be part of Europe. He has made a start by withdrawing his futile threat to block the use of the EU's buildings and institutions by the 26 members of the new treaty. As power shifts in Europe, there will be more opportunities. Britain can help other non-euro countries who gibe at the new treaty's strictures as well as euro-zone countries that want to resist protectionism or overregulation-including Germany. At the very least Mr Cameron should make up with Mrs Merkel, who had previously fought hard to keep the British at the table. A compromise that gives Britain some reassurance about the City and thus lets Mr Cameron return to the table may still be possible. Remember, his recalcitrance at the summit means that the new bulldog Cameron is better equipped to face down the Little Englanders. The question is not whether he can recover Britain's position, but whether he is ready to do what it takes. Ultimately, the euro zone faces a similar choice. Its members could strike a grand bargain that deploys the ECB's balance-sheet and some form of Eurobond in exchange for fiscal integration. The question is not whether they can save the currency, but whether enough of them are prepared to pay the price. This summit suggests not. •
America's fragile recovery
A year of living pigheadedly America will be a tad cheerier than Europe in 2012-but it should be so much better still
I
America's GDP %cha nge on previous quarter at
an nual rate
HE euro zone is probably alT ready back in recession. The emerging markets are starting to
show signs of slowing down. Thank heavens, one might say, for America, which is finishing the year with the nearest thing 2009 10 11 to good economic news to be found on this benighted planet. Growth in the third quarter clocked in at around 2%, and in the fourth quarter it looks likely to be significantly stronger than that. Unemployment is edging downwards, the Dow is back up at around 12,000, house sales are rising and spending on consumer durables, most notably cars, is improving at a fairly cheerful clip. Might America, as so often in the past, provide a locomotive for global growth in 2012? Sadly not. That is partly because the economy, on closer inspection, is less speedy than it first appears. But it is also because America's politicians look likely to do nothing whatsoever to help growth in 2012. Indeed, the immediate priority is to stop them doing yet more harm to it. The current rate of growth is actually pretty anaemic, amounting to no better than a return to the long-term trend. After the depths plumbed in the recession (GDP fell by 3.5% in 2009), many hoped for a more impressive bounce-back. But the damage done to individual balance-sheets is still weighing down on the recovery. Nor is that recovery generating new jobs at anything like the rate it needs to if it is to put a serious
dent in unemployment and get demand moving again. America's robust population growth means that employment has to rise by around 10o,ooo jobs a month merely to keep pace with the expanding labour force. And the main reason that the unemployment rate fell so impressively in November was not that a lot of jobs were created, but that a larger number of people became discouraged and stopped looking for work. If you add those unhappy people back into the workforce, the true rate of unemployment is nearly a point higher than the official 8.6%; add in all those in part-time work who want to work full time, and the rate is ovens%. And all of this, of course, assumes that the euro does not collapse; if it does, the consequences for the American banking system would make the bankruptcy of Lehman seem like a picnic. For God's sake, stop bickering The fate of the euro is something over which Congress has no control. But it does have the power to tip the recovery back towards recession if it fails to break a political deadlock that was still unresolved as The Economist went to press. Extensions to unemployment benefit and a job-boosting cut to the payroll tax are both set to expire at the end of this year, unless they are renewed by Congress. Add in the exhaustion of the last funds from Barack Obama's 2009 stimulus package, and the implied fiscal contraction could be as much as 2.6 percentage points of GDP in the first half of the year. Cynically, given their avowed enthusiasm for cutting taxes, the Republicans in Congress are threatening to sabotage extension ~~
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The Economist December 17th 2011
16 Leaders ~ of the
payroll tax cut by linking it to an entirely unrelated matter-approval for a new pipeline bringing oil from Canada's tar sands to Texas's refineries. As has become the norm in America, the negotiation seems set to continue right up until the last moment. Even authorisation of ordinary spending (the government lives hand-to-mouth, as most of this year's budget has not been yet passed) is being taken to the brink. Even if this do-nothing n2th Congress manages to avoid mutilating the economy, it seems unlikely to do anything to help it. It looks clear that nothing of substance will be passed till after the presidential election on November 6th. This is both a disgrace and a tragedy: there are plenty of ideas that could boost employment. Schemes to back small businesses,
set up an infrastructure bank or offer assistance for firms that hire the long-term unemployed are all marooned. Federal aid to the states, all of whom are having to pass tough budgets which will further contract demand, won't be restarted. That leaves one, rather distant, hope: that, in the lame-duck period between the election and the next Congress, prompted by the imminent expiry of George Bush's tax cuts at the beginning of 2013, America's politicians will sit down and finally hammer out the grand bargain the country so desperately needs, with the tax increases delayed in exchange for sensible reforms to spending and the tax code. There is a genuine chance that will happen. But between now and then, a lot of companies and jobs could be lost. •
Central Asia
Mal<e a new plan, Stans The biggest instability facing the region's dictators is the lack of any mechanism to succeed them
AR from being at the heart of a happening continent, for much of modern times Central Asia stagnated on the periphery. Now, 20 years after breaking from the Soviet Union, things are changing for the "Stans". For one thing, huge and growing quantities of oil and gas are being uncovered. Seven-tenths of all the increase in oil output outside OPEC is coming from Central Asia. Led by Kazakhstan, an energy boom is under way. Partly because of that, pipelines, roads and railways are reshaping the continent. A pipeline opened in 2009 that runs for 7,oookm (4,400 miles) from gasfields in Turkmenistan to energy-hungry China. Railway plans are ambitious. China's schemes would mean that by 2025 a Shanghai resident could reach his tailor in London's Savile Row by train in two days. The "central" is being put back into Central Asia. East-west links are forming between Europe and East Asia which may one day knit the Eurasian land mass together. Some, notably America's secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, talk of the northsouth possibilities too. America will need a new regional policy once it pulls its troops out of Afghanistan, and Mrs Clinton's "New Silk Road" conjures visions of Turkmenistan piping gas to India and the markets of Astana groaning with Afghan fruit. It is an attractive prospect, but not, at present, a realistic one. It would be crazy to put a pipeline through unstable Afghanistan. Nor has the Silk Road ever flourished without Iran's participation, something America is hardly likely to promote. As far as Central Asian rulers see it, Afghanistan's chief exports are militant Islam and drugs. A greater danger still lies in Central Asia's domestic politics, in which change has been regrettably absent. With the exception of democratic Kyrgyzstan, where recent bloodshed hardly inspires confidence, Central Asia is run by ex-Soviet strongmen. Islam Karimov and Nursultan Nazarbayev have ruled Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan respectively since 1989, and Emomali Rakhmon has run Tajikistan since 1992. Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov is a spring chicken, ruling Turkmenistan only since 2006. But he takes after his late predecessor, who had a gold statue of himself revolve to face the sun.
F
All these men, who dislike each other, have rigged elections, muzzled the media and gone after opponents. The most populous country, Uzbekistan, is perhaps the most repressive. Torture is widespread. In 2005 in Andijan, Uzbek soldiers fired on protesters, killing hundreds if not thousands of them. For a mix of secrecy and repression, however, Turkmenistan takes the biscuit. In July a lethal and suspicious explosion at an ammunition dump outside the capital, Ashgabat, was not reported within the country. The secular strongmen fear social instability and militant Islam. But conflating ordinary piety with extremism risks bringing into existence the very thing they fear. Meanwhile, nepotism flourishes, stifling growth and creating inequalities. Political energies are chiefly spent securing the interests of immensely wealthy ruling families and a narrow group of oligarchs around them-none wealthier than Kazakhstan's (see page 63). Even as they solicit foreign investment, the elites put their own money and mistresses in London or Zurich. Further down the governing apparatus, Soviet habits die hard. One Western adviser calls Kazakhstan's tax and customs "officially sanctioned rackets", while the judiciary is up for sale. And Kazakhstan is Central Asia's most fragrant economy. Stop fawning Central Asia, thus, is not as stable as it seems. It might not take much-a powerful earthquake ineptly handled, growing protests by the dispossessed or, especially, a bungled successionfor the brittleness of these nasty, brutish and long regimes to show. Russia and China, competing for energy supplies, will not point this out to autocrats. But European governments should stop letting Central Asian dictators off the hook. They could start in Kazakhstan, by far the most open place. Mr Nazarbayev spends fortunes on having Western public-relations firms, lobbyists and a former British prime minister, Tony Blair, burnish his image. Britain's Prince Andrew has been far too friendly with Central Asian dictators as well. Europeans would do better by pointing out that Mr Nazarbayev's image would shine brighter if he paved the way for a more plural politics-and for a successor who is not one of his family or from his circle of cronies. They should do this before stability suddenly turns to brittleness. •
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The Economist December
18 Leaders
17th 2011
In praise of particle physics
Higgs ahoy! The elusive boson has probably been found. That is a triumph for the predictive power of physics
the trick is often to IoneNaskPHYSICS, a question so obvious no else would have thought of posing it. Apples have fallen to the ground since time immemorial. It took the genius of Sir Isaac Newton to ask why. Of course, it helps if you have the mental clout to work out the answer. Fortunately, Newton did. It was in this spirit, almost so years ago, that a few insightful physicists asked themselves where mass comes from. Like the tendency of apples to fall to the ground, the existence of mass is so quotidian that the idea it needs a formal explanation would never occur to most people. But it did occur to Peter Higgs, then a young researcher at Edinburgh University, and to five other scientists whom the quirks of celebrity have not treated so kindly. They, too, had the necessary mental clout. They got out their pencils and papers and scribbled down equations whose upshot was a prediction. The reason that fundamental particles have mass, the researchers calculated, is their interaction with a previously unknown field that permeates space. This field came to be named (with no disrespect to the losers in the celebrity race) the Higgs field. Technically, it is needed to explain a phenomenon called electroweak symmetry breaking, which divides two of the fundamental forces of nature, electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force. When that division happens, a bit of leftover mathematics manifests itself as a particle. This putative particle has become known as the Higgs boson, whose possible discovery was announced to the world on December 13th (see page 137). Physicists demand a level of proof that would in any other human activity (including other scientific ones) be seen as ludicrously high-that a result has only one chance in 3.5m of being wrong. The new results-from experiments done at CERN, the world's premier particle-physics laboratory, using its multi-billion-dollar Large Hadron Collider, the LHC-do not individually come close to that threshold. What has excited physicists, though, is that they have got essentially identical results from two experiments attached to the LHC, which work in completely different ways. This coincidence makes it much more likely that they have discovered the real deal. If they have, it would be a wonderful thing, and not just for science. Though nations no longer tremble at the feet of particle physicists-the men, and a few women, who once delivered the destructive power of the atom bomb-physics still has the power to produce awe in another way, by revealing the basic truths that underpin reality. Model behaviour Finding the Higgs would mark the closing of one chapter in this story. The elusive boson rounds off what has become known as the Standard Model of physics-an explanation that relies on 17 fundamental particles and three physical forces (though it stubbornly refuses to accommodate a fourth force, gravity, which is separately explained by Albert Einstein's gen-
eral theory of relativity). Much more intriguingly, the Higgs also opens another chapter of physics. The physicists' plan is to use the Standard Model as the foundation of a larger and more beautiful edifice called Supersymmetry. This predicts a further set of particles, the heavier partners of those already found. How much heavier, though, depends on how heavy the Higgs itself is. The results just announced suggest it is light enough for some of the predicted supersymmetric particles to be made in the LHC too. That is a great relief to those at CERN. If the Higgs had proved much heavier than this week's announcement implies they might have found themselves with a lot of redundant kit on their hands. Now they can start looking for the bricks of Supersymmetry, to see if it, too, resembles the physicists' predictions. In particular, in a crossover between particle physics and cosmology, they will be trying to find out if (as the maths suggest) the lightest of the supersymmetric partner particles are the stuff of the hitherto mysterious "dark matter" whose gravity holds galaxies together. A critique of pure reason One of the most extraordinary things about the universe is this predictability-that it is possible to write down equations which describe what is seen, and extrapolate from them to the unseen. Newton was able to go from the behaviour of bodies falling to Earth to the mechanism that holds planets in orbit. James Clerk Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism, derived in the mid-19th century, predicted the existence of radio waves. The atom bomb began with Einstein's famous equation, E=mc 2 , which was a result derived by asking how objects would behave when travelling near the speed of light. The search for antimatter, that staple of science fiction, was the consequence of an equation about electrons which has two sets of solutions, one positive and one negative. Eugene Wigner, one of the physicists responsible for showing, in the 1920s, the importance of symmetry to the universe (and who was thus a progenitor of Supersymmetry), described this as the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics". Not all such predictions come true, of course. But the predictive power of mathematical physics-as opposed to the after-the-fact explanatory power of maths in other fields-is still extraordinary. Some might see the hand of God in such predictability. The Higgs boson is, indeed, known to headline writers as the God particle (though the sobriquet was actually first given by a bowdlerising editor, who shortened an author's reference to "that god damn particle"). Others will prefer to stand in awe of a universe that they suspect began as a quantum fluctuation in pre-existing nothingness. And yes, there are calculations explaining how that could have happened, too. Both sides, though, should be in awe not merely of the universe, but also of the men and women who have stripped, and continue to strip, that universe of its mystery-and do so without diminishing the wonder of it all. So, at a time when the future of human affairs seems particularly uncertain, a Christmas toast to the predictability of physics. •
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Cutting defence spending SIR- I was grateful to be mentioned in Lexington's column on defence spending (November 26th), though he misread the main argument in my book, "The Wounded Giant". In fact, I support the idea of roughly $400 billion in defence-spending reductions over ten years. That amount was mandated back in August in the initial tranche of cuts under the Budget Control Act. What I oppose is the additional $500 billion or so in ten-year cuts required under the subsequent "sequestration" of defence spending that was mandated because of the failure in November of the so-called supercommittee. Even achieving the $400 billion in savings will be hard and require cutting muscle rather than just fat, but it is a judicious response to America's budgetary and economic plight. Achieving $400 billion in savings will require change, such as adjusting the traditional two-war paradigm for determining the size of ground combat forces to what I call a "1 plus 2" construct, with enough capacity for one big regional war plus up to two substantial multinational stabilisation missions at a time. Money could also be saved by having the navy rotate crews by aeroplane, leaving many ships overseas for one to two years at a stretch, to avoid wasting time in ocean transit. This would allow the navy to sustain current deployment practices in the crucial western Pacific and Persian Gulf with a fleet of 250 ships, instead of the current 285 or the navy's preferred 315 to 325. MICHAEL O'HAN LON
Brookings Institution Washington, DC
Opinions in Georgia SIR- Although it is true that there is now a new com petitiveness in Georgian politics, the polling figures you cited need clarification ("Misha challenged", December 3rd). You said that the "popularity" of Bidzina Ivanishvili is pegged at17% as opposed to 42% for
the ruling party. In fact, pollsters rarely talk about popularity. The closest term in their lexicon is "favourability", and Mr Ivanishvili's favourability rating is far above 17 points. Indeed, he is currently fiercely competitive with the governing party on this score. IRAKLI TRIPOLSKI
Spokesman for Bidzina Ivanishvili Tbilisi
Economic analogies SIR- The headline to your article on the British government's plans to boost spending on infrastructure projects, "Weapons of mass construction", triggered a simultaneous chuckle and a deep frown (December 3rd). The government's gamble on a hefty, PR-minded investment in infrastructure to revive a battered economy could prove as elusive and damaging as Tony Blair's punt on what Sad dam Hussein didn't have concealed in Iraq. Perish the thought that the Cameron-Osborne-Clegg axis hasn't conspired to build its own weapons of economic destruction through a risky wager based on shifting sands rather than solid foundations. PAULCONNEW
St Albans, Hertjordshire
Village life SIR- Contrary to the assertion in your recent Economics focus on using randomised trials to assess aid programmes, the Millennium Villages project in rural Africa is making timely progress towards the UN's millennium development goals (MDGs) (December 3rd). The gains are on several fronts, including increased agricultural production and farm incomes, and reductions in disease burdens and hunger. The project is now halfway through its ten-year horizon, and we look forward to further gains in the second half as we work towards the MDGs. The second phase of the project emphasises business development through farmer co-operatives. You cited an unpublished
study claiming little progress at the site in Kenya. That study has many methodological problems. One is obvious: the authors didn't realise that some of their "control" villages actually received direct interventions from the Millennium Villages project. Ironically, the "negative" study confirms the large gains in agricultural productivity achieved by the Kenyan Millennium Village.
(John12:8) has usually been taken as conveying a sense of self-aggrandisement that is inconsistent with the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount. In "Palm Sunday", Vonnegut suggests that]esus's words are a joke, intended to rebuke Judas as in: "Don't worry about it, Judas. There will still be plenty of poor people left long after I'm gone." LYNN KERR
Kingston, Canada
JEFFREY SACHS
Director Earth Institute at Columbia University New York
Ducking the issue SIR- You missed the point on why foie gras is inhumane ("How much is too much?", December 3rd). Animal-lovers will not be satisfied by research that teaches farmers how to produce an enlarged duck liver that is less diseased. Their overriding objection is to the method of forced feeding that is used to make foie gras. It is hard to see how the ducks will suffer less as a result of the new findings. They will still have large pipes shoved down their throats and bear the ill effects that come with a grossly enlarged liver, a liver which, any way you slice it, is still much larger than anything their wild ancestors would have developed. JONATHAN WADLEY
Animal Protection and Rescue League San Diego
Incensed about myrrh SIR- It may be true that Christianity has nothing comparable with the jokes made by Muhammad that are listed in the Hadith ("Two mullahs went into a bar. ..", November 26th). But Kurt Vonnegut once pointed out that jokes are easily lost in translation. For example, when an expensive ointment was used to anoint Jesus's feet, Judas complained that it should have instead been sold to benefit the poor. Jesus's reply that, "The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me"
Short back and sides, please SIR -I was surprised not to find the usual reference to Anders Borg's ponytail in your article praising Sweden's fiscal stability ("Out and happy", December 3rd). Maybe you found it inappropriate to mention it in light of the finance minister's recent support for a haircut on Greek government debt. MARTIN GUTJAHR
Zurich
A tale of two Europes SIR- I always enjoy the literary references that you sneak into your articles, such as "The best of times, the worst of times" in Bagehot's column on Franco-British relations (December 3rd). However, I recall that at the end of this partieular Dickens classic the Brit loses his head and the French carry on knitting. Surely that outcome would not be the far, far better thing that David Cameron has ever done. Perhaps this week Bagehot should call on Jacob Marley for some vision. "A Christmas Carol" was first published on December17th1843, and has a much sweeter outcome. CHARLES COLE
Oakton, Virginia • Clarification: A letter last week from the Civil Aviation Authority described Thomas Cook as a "struggling" travel agency. This was our description , not the regulator's . Letters are welcome and should be addressed to the Editor at The Economist, 25 StJames's Street, London SWlA lHG E-mail:
[email protected] Fax: 020 7839 4092 More letters are available at:
Economist.comfletters
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130 Finance and economics
The Economist December 17th 2011
Buttonwood I An ancient snobbery towards commerce remains
N CHRISTMAS DAY, millions of 0 Britons will gather around the television to watch "Downton Abbey", a nostalgic soap opera set in the days of country houses and dignified butlers. Back then, gentlemen cultivated the land (and occasionally went to war); they did not run a business, a task far beneath their station. In living memory, some middleclass Britons would not allow delivery boys to come to their front door; the tradesmen's entrance was at the side. This sniffy attitude towards commerce was not confined to Britain, nor did it die out with liveried footmen and debutante balls. Aristocrats across Europe were equally suspicious of the nouveaux riches. And their modern descendants, the middle-class intelligentsia who populate the continent's universities and staff its public sector, have a tendency to despise the businesspeople who generate the wealth needed to fund their way of living. There is great distaste at the idea that political choices should be dictated by "the markets"; investors should just hand over their money and not ask whether it will be paid back. French politicians will defend to the death the agricultural subsidies granted to their farmers. After all, the farmers comprise la France profonde, the heartland of villages and vineyards. But the same politicians are withering about the idea that David Cameron, the British prime minister, might relegate Britain to the fringes of Europe in order to protect the country's financial-services industry. One can see a similar attitude in the debate about Germany's role in creating the current euro-mess. Who are these Germans, with their work ethic, their competitive industrial sector and their success in exporting to Asia? Other Europeans may regard Germany with grudging admiration, but they see it less as an ~
they did not buy a ticket*. Few children get the equivalent of €10,000 in Christmas presents. Nevertheless, for a kid, Christmas is the equivalent of a Wall Street trader's bonus. The competitive attitude can be almost as palpable. American Jews are a case in point. The festival of lights, Hanukkah, is a relatively minor Jewish holiday, celebrated not long before Christmas. It is sometimes called "Jewish Christmas", and the holiday season in families with a mixed religious background has been dubbed "Chrismukkah". Ran Abramitzky, Liran Einav and
example to be copied than as a tiresome nag, forever blathering about fiscal probity. Let the Germans soil their hands with trade while the rest of us live off the prosperity it brings. Perhaps these attitudes go all the way back to the ancient Greeks and Romans. Their elites had slaves to attend to their needs. Their lives were not idle, but the path to respectability was through military service or farming, rather than trade. However, it was the merchants bringing the grain from north Africa to Rome who kept the empire fed. These attitudes persisted through the Middle Ages, when moneylending was a despised activity to be left to minorities like the Jews; sovereign risk in those days was the danger that the king would imprison or execute his creditors to avoid repayment. When mankind began to escape the Malthusian trap of subsistence living in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the attitude towards the new industries was one of disgust for the "dark, Satanic mills". Admittedly, manufacturing is now seen in a rather more positive light. A far smaller
part of the economy, it is bathed in nostalgia: real men making real things. Once a job on a production line was a soul-destroying drudge; nowadays that label has fallen on service-sector jobs in call centres and fast-food restaurants. Apart from technology, the three most successful industries of the past so years have been finance, pharmaceuticals and energy. Look at the way those sectors are portrayed in films and in TV dramas and the same attitudes prevail. Financiers are unthinking brutes, whose obsession with numbers is a form of autism. Multinational drug companies are vast conspiracies selling products with fat margins and hiding their deadly side-effects. Energy companies are despoiling the planet. All these industries are, of course, legitimate subjects for criticism. But such lofty attitudes towards commerce are easy to adopt in a relatively rich society, in which few have to worry where the next meal is coming from. Europeans have had a pretty privileged existence over the past half-century or so, riding on the back of America's global dominance. But the economic power is shifting towards Asia, a region where many people are prepared to work hard to get ahead and business isn't always a dirty word. Eventually, the great estates like Downton Abbey fell into decay. The cost of maintenance soared while death duties depleted the owners' capital; the servants found better-paying jobs in manufacturing. The aristocrats were forced to discover a head for business, turning their estates into safari parks and their conservatories into tea shops. As their populations age and their relative economic weight declines, Europeans may need a similar change in attitude towards the sordid business of earning a national living. Economist.comfblogsjbuttonwood
Oren Righi of Stanford University studied the behaviour of Jewish parents in America and found that families with children under 18 celebrate Hanukkah more intensely. The fewer Jews there are in a given county (and therefore the higher their exposure to Christmas), the more they spend on holiday-related products. Austrians and Germans with a Turkish background are another example. There is no Muslim holiday close to Christmas. The competitive pressure has instead led some to behave like many atheists: they simply celebrate Christmas without its religious
connotations. According to EthnOpinion, a Vienna-based market-research institute, almost one in seven Austrians with a Turkish background observes the holiday. "The overall approach is very pragmatic," says a German-Turkish author and psychologist, Deniz Baspinar. "Even the Christmas tree in Turkish homes is no longer the ironic statement it once was." • * "The Effects of Lottery Prizes on Winners and Their Neighbors: Evidence from the Dutch Postcode Lottery", by P. Kuhn, P. Kooreman, A. Soetevent and A. Kapteyn, by the American Economic Review
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132 Finance and economics
The Economist December 17th 2011
Economics focus One nation overdrawn I
Lessons for Europe from America's history
federal government's presence was minuscule. Its total expenditures were usually less than 2% of gross domestic product (compared with 25% now), not much different from the European Union's expenditures today as a proportion of the Eu's GDP, and the overwhelming share went to national defence. America did not become a transfer union until the New Deal of the 1930s. Nor did the federal assumption of state war debts in 1790 mean the entire country was thereafter liable for the debts of individual states, as European nations would be under proposals for Eurobonds. In the 1820s and 1830s many states borrowed overseas to fund canals and other internal improvements. Jonathan Rodden of Stanford University says some investors in such bonds apparently thought the federal government stood behind them. But that expectation was shattered when, following the depression of the late 1830s, nine states defaulted. In subsequent decades, most adopted balanced-budget laws to limit the growth of their debts. Michael Bordo of Rutgers University says the lesson for Europe is to ban bail-outs and stick by the rule.
N THE frantic race to save the euro, many Europeans have Isuccessful sought inspiration from the United States, perhaps the most monetary union in history. Germany's council of economic experts has proposed a debt "redemption pact" modelled on the American federal government's assumption of state debts in1790. To European federalists, America demonstrates that monetary union cannot survive without fiscal union. And proponents of a European lender of last resort to insulate sovereigns from liquidity crises note how America can still borrow at 2% thanks to a deep and liquid government bond market backstopped by the Federal Reserve. Look more carefully, however, and the American example is more complicated. Fiscal and currency union did indeed kickstart America's early economic development. But fiscal and monetary frameworks were so rudimentary that they contributed little to nation-building. America began life as a fiscal basket-case. The federal and state governments were deeply in arrears on loans taken out to finance their war for independence from Britain; federal debt traded at so cents on the dollar, state debt for 20 cents or less. Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury secretary, considered it vital to America's economic health to re-establish faith in the national credit. He proposed in 1790 that the federal government assume the states' war debts and then arrange a new schedule of payments and interest to refinance all of the republic's unpaid bills. Holders of the restructured bonds would be encouraged to exchange them for capital in a new central bank that would issue a uniform currency to unify the states' financial systems. Foreshadowing the rifts within Europe today, Hamilton's plan was deeply divisive. Virginia and other southern states that had paid off their debts resented being asked to pay taxes to bail out the others. Hamilton at one point feared for the future of the union if his plan did not pass: "Our credit will burst and vanish; and the States separate, to take care every one of itself." Virginia eventually withdrew its opposition in return for having the nation's new capital located on its borders. But Hamilton's success at forging a fiscal union did not mean America now also had a fiscal policy that would transfer resources from strong states to weak. For the first century of America's existence, the
If at first, you don't succeed As for monetary union, America twice created central banks in its early years and then dismantled them because of populist dislike. Private, state-chartered banks issued their own currencies which often traded at a discount to those of other banks, depending on a bank's perceived ability to redeem the currency in specie (gold and silver). Rapid growth in the western states led to perpetual shortages of money, high interest rates and, it appears, balance-of-payments deficits with eastern states. Those deficits were financed by eastern capital as specie moved into western banks. But western banks still habitually issued more bank notes than even that increased specie could back, leading to inflation. Peter Rousseau of Vanderbilt University notes the Second Bank of the United States would sometimes accumulate the banknotes of weak banks and present them en masse for redemption. If the bank could not comply, it failed. This had the effect of forcing deflation on those regions with failing banks, and thus redressing the balance-of-payments imbalances that had developed. But it also fuelled resentment at the bank and in 1832 President Andrew Jackson vetoed the renewal of its charter. America spent the next 8o years without a true central bank, and as a consequence suffered repeated banking panics and depressions. But the economic union, if anything, grew tighter (with the exception of the South, before and after the civil war). For all the shortcomings of America fiscal and monetary institutions, capital and labour did move freely from state to state. When one state suffered higher unemployment, its people left for better opportunities in another. By one estimate, the north-east and south-Atlantic regions' share of the labour force declined from 93% in 1800 to 52% in 1860, while the Midwest's share grew from less than 1% to 23%. Today, Europeans remain far less mobile than Americans, despite the EU's free market in labour. This is probably the result of linguistic and cultural barriers and of inflexible labour laws. The ultimate lesson of America, then, is that what holds an economic union together has less to do with fiscal and monetary institutions than the desire of its people for closer political cohesion. That is an example that Europe is struggling to emulate. • For details of sources, look online at www.economist.comj lessonsforeurope
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The Economist December 17th 2011
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that you are French. You are walking along a busy ItheMAGINE pavement in Paris and another pedestrian is approaching from opposite direction. A collision will occur unless you each move out of the other's way. Which way do you step? The answer is almost certainly to the right. Replay the same scene in many parts of Asia, however, and you would probably move to the left. It is not obvious why. There is no instruction to head in a specific direction (South Korea, where there is a campaign to get people to walk on the right, is an exception). There is no simple correlation with the side of the road on which people drive: Londoners funnel to the right on pavements, for example. Instead, says Mehdi Moussaid of the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, this is a behaviour brought about by probabilities. If two opposing people guess each other's intentions correctly, each moving to one side and allowing the other past, then they are likely to choose to move the same way the next time they need to avoid a collision. The probability of a successful manoeuvre increases as more and more people adopt a bias in one direction, until the tendency sticks. Whether it's right or left does not matter; what does is that it is the unspoken will of the majority. That is at odds with most people's idea of being a pedestrian. More than any other way of getting around-such as being crushed into a train or stuck in a traffic jam-walking appears to offer freedom of choice. Reality is more complicated. Whether stepping aside to avoid a collision, following the person in front through a crowd or navigating busy streets, pedestrians are autonomous yet constrained by others. They are both highly mobile and very predictable. "These are particles with a will," says Dirk Helbing of ETH Zurich, a technology-focused university. Messrs Helbing and Moussaid are at the cutting edge of a youngish field: understanding and modelling how pedestrians behave. Its purpose is not mere curiosity. Understanding pedestrian flows makes crowd events safer: knowing about the propensity of different nationalities to step in different directions could, for instance, matter to organisers of an event such as a football World Cup, where fans from various countries mingle. The odds of collisions go up if they do not share a reflex to move to one side. In a packed crowd, that could slow down lots of people. The Economist December 17th 2011
In 1995 Mr Helbing and Peter Molnar, both physicists, came up with a "social force" computer model that used insights from the way that particles in fluids and gases behave to describe pedestrian movement. The model assumed that people are attracted by some things, such as the destination they are heading for, andrepelled by others, such as another pedestrian in their path. It proved its worth by predicting several self-organising effects among crowds that are visible in real life. One is the propensity of dense crowds spontaneously to break into lanes that allow people to move more efficiently in opposing directions. Individuals do not have to negotiate their way through a series of encounters with oncoming people; they can just follow the person in front. That works better than trying to overtake. Research by Mr Moussaid suggests that the effect of one person trying to walk faster than the people around them in a dense crowd is to force an opposing lane of pedestrians to split in two, which has the effect of breaking up the lane next door, and so on. Everyone moves slower as a result.
Up close and personal Another self-organising behaviour comes when opposing flows of people meet at a single intersection: think of parents trying to shepherd their children into school as other parents, their sprogs already dropped off, try to leave. As people stream through in one direction, the pressure on their side of the intersection drops. That gives those waiting on the other side more opportunity to go through, until pressure on their side is relieved. The result is a series of alternating bursts of traffic through the gates. This oscillation in flows is clever enough to have got Mr Helbing wondering about its application to cars. Traffic-light systems currently operate on fixed cycles, with lights staying green on the basis of past traffic patterns. If those patterns are not repeated, drivers are left to idle their engines for too long at red signals, raising emissions and tempers. Mr Helbing thinks it is better to have decentralised, local systems, which-like parents at the school gates-can respond to a build-up of traffic and keep the lights on green for longer if need be. City authorities agree: Mr Helbing's •• ideas will soon be implemented in Dresden and Zurich.
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Trying to capture every element of pedestrian movement in an equation is horribly complex, however. One problem is allowing for cultural biases, such as whether people step to the left or the right, or their willingness to get close to fellow pedestrians. An experiment in 2009 tested the walking speeds of Germans and Indians by getting volunteers in each country to walk in single file around an elliptical, makeshift corridor of ropes and chairs. At low densities the speeds of each nationality are similar; but once the numbers increase, Indians walk faster than Germans. This won't be news to anyone familiar with Munich and Mumbai, but Indians are just less bothered about bumping into other people. Another problem with assuming people act like particles is that up to 70% of people in a crowd are actually in groups. That matters, as anyone trying to get past shuffling tourists knows. It also leads to some lovely fine-scale choreography when small groups are squeezed. Observations of pavement crowds in Toulouse in France show that clusters of three and four people naturally organise themselves into concave "v" and "u" shapes, with middle members falling back slightly. If a group of three people cared about moving quickly, they would behave like geese and form a convex "v", with the middle member slightly in front to forge a path. Instead, they adopt a formation that enables them to keep communicating with each other; talking trumps walking. Mr Moussaid's solution to such complexity has been to build a model based less on the analogy between humans and particles and more on cognitive science. Agents in this new model are allowed to "see" what's in front of them; they then try to carve a free path through the masses to get to their destination. This approach produces the same effects of lane-formation in crowds as the physics-based models, but with some added advantages. In particular, boffins think it could help make emergency evacuations safer. Simulating evacuations is a big part of what pedestrian modellers do-the King's Cross underground fire in London in 1987 gave the field one of its starting shoves. One big danger in an emergency is that people will follow the crowd and all herd towards a single exit. That in turn means that the crowd may jam as too many people try to force their way through a single doorway. The physics-based models do have an answer to this problem of "arching" (so called for the shape of the crowd that builds up around the exit). Their simulations suggest the flow of pedestrians through a narrow doorway can be smoothed by plonking an obstacle such as a pillar just in front of the exit. In theory, that should
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have the effect of splitting people into more efficient lanes. In practice, however, the idea of putting a barrier in front of an emergency exit is too counter-intuitive for planners to have tried. The cognitive-science model offers a more palatable option, that of experimenting with the effects of changes in people's visual fields. Mr Moussaid speculates that adaptable lighting systems, which use darkness to repel people and light to attract them, could be used to direct them in emergencies, for example. Where the cognitive approach falls down is in the most packed environments. "At low densities, behaviour is cognitive and strategic," says Mr Moussaid. "At high density, it's about mass movement and physical pressures." At a certain point crowds can shift from a controlled flow to a stop-and-go pattern, as people are forced to shorten their stride length and occasionally halt to avoid collisions. This kind of movement can develop into something much more frightening, known as crowd turbulence, when people can no longer keep a space between themselves and others. The physical forces that are imparted from one body to another when that happens are both chaotic and powerful: if someone falls over, others will be unable to avoid them. Science meets religion Working out precisely how and when these transitions happen is tough. Bringing a real-life situation under control once a stopand-go pattern has started is equally hard. So the trick is to ensure that serious crowding is avoided in the first place. From big events such as the London Olympics to the design of new railway stations, engineering firms now routinely simulate the movement of people to try to spot areas where crowding is likely to occur. A typical project involves using off-the-shelf software programs to identify potential bottlenecks in a particular environment, such as a stadium or a Tube station. These models specify the entry and exit points at a location and then use "routing algorithms" that send people to their destinations. Even a one-off event like the Olympics has plenty of data on pedestrian movement to draw on, from past games to other set-piece gatherings such as, say, city-centre carnivals, which enable some basic assumptions about how people will flow. Once potential points of congestion are identified, more sophisticated models can then be used to go down to a finer level of detail. This second stage allows planners to change architectural designs for new locations and identify when to intervene in existing ones. "There should be many fewer crowd disasters given what we now know and can simulate," says Mr Helbing. The biggest test possible of these tools and techniques is the haj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia that Muslims are expected to carry out at least once in their lives if they can. With as many as 3m pilgrims making the journey each year, the haj has a long history of crowd stampedes and deaths. Indeed, video footage of a haj stampede is used by lots of modellers to validate their simulations of crowd turbulence. The Saudi authorities have brought in consultants in recent years, focusing in particular on the layout of the Jamarat Bridge, where pilgrims perform a ritual in which they throw stones at three pillars. By making the crossing one-way, and changing the shape of the pillars so that people can stone them from a number of locations, they have improved the bridge's safety. But according to Paul Townsend of Crowd Dynamics, a Consultancy that has worked on the pilgrimage, the risks remain significant. He thinks that the use of gates that could be opened and shut would help to manage the flow. Yet the haj presents some very specific difficulties beyond its sheer scale. Part of the problem is not having a clear idea of how many pilgrims will turn up, which makes planning difficult. Another issue is the nature of the crowd. "Pilgrims on the haj have the attitude that, if I die there it is God's will," says Mr Townsend. "There is a willingness to get more and more dense in the space." Scientists can model many aspects of pedestrian behaviour, but religious fervour is a step too far. • The Economist December 17th 2011
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The Higgs boson
Also in this section
Fantasy turned reality?
138 The Durban climate conference 140 The point of body hair
Those searching for the Higgs boson may at last have cornered their quarry
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Pinning down physicists about whether they have actually discovered the Higgs boson is almost as hard as tracking down the elusive subatomic beast itself. Leon Lederman, a leading researcher in the field, once dubbed it the "goddamn" particle, because it has proved so hard to isolate. That name was changed by a sniffy editor to the "God" particle, and a legend was born. Headline writers loved it. Physicists loved the publicity. CERN, the world's biggest particle-physics laboratory, and the centre of the hunt for the Higgs, used that publicity to help keep the money flowing. And this week it may all have paid off. On December 13th two of the researchers at CERN's headquarters in Geneva announced to a breathless world something that looks encouragingly Higgsy. The Higgs boson, for those who have not been paying attention to the minutiae of particle physics over the past few years, is a theoretical construct dreamed up in 1964 by a British researcher, Peter Higgs (pictured above), and five other, less famous individuals. It is the last unobserved piece of the Standard Model, the most convincing explanation available for the way the universe works in all of its aspects except gravity (which is dealt with by the general theory of relativity).
The Standard Model (see table) includes familiar particles such as electrons and photons, and esoteric ones like the w and z bosons, which carry something called the weak nuclear force. Most bosons are messenger particles that cement the others, known as fermions, together. They do so via electromagnetism and the weak and strong nuclear forces. The purpose of the Higgs boson, however, is different. It is to inculcate mass into those particles
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which weigh something. Without it, or something like it, some of the Standard Model's particles that actually do have mass (particularly the w and z bosons) would be predicted to be massless. Without it, in other words, the Standard Model would not work. The announcement, by Fabiola Gianotti and Guido Tonelli-the heads, respectively, of two experiments at CERN known as ATLAS and CMS-was that both of their machines have seen phenomena which look like traces of the Higgs. They are traces, rather than actual bosons, because no Higgs will ever be seen directly. The best that can be hoped for are patterns of breakdown particles from Higgses that are, themselves, the results of head-on collisions between protons travelling in opposite directions around CERN's giant accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Heavy objects like Higgs bosons can break down in several different ways, but each of these ways is predictable. Both ATLAS and CMS have seen a number of these predicted patterns often enough to pique interest, but not (yet) often enough to constitute proof that they came from Higgses, rather than being random fluctuations in the background of non-Higgs decays. The crucial point, and the reason for the excitement, is that both ATLAS and CMS ~~
138 Science and technology ~ (which
are located in different parts of the ring-shaped accelerator tunnel of the LHC) have come up with the same results. Both indicate that, if what they have seen really are Higgses, then the boson has a mass of about 125 giga-electron-volts (Gev), in the esoteric units which are used to measure how heavy subatomic particles are. That coincidence bolsters the suggestion that this is the real thing, rather than a few chance fluctuations. It also bolsters physicists' hopes for the future. The Standard Model, though it has stood the test of time, is held together by a number of mathematical kludges. Most of these would go away, and a far more elegant view of the world would emerge, if each of the particles in it had one or more heavier (and as-yet undiscovered) partner particles. The masses of these undiscovered partners, though, are related to the mass of the Higgs. The bigger it is, the bigger they are. And if they are too big, the LHC will not be able to find them, even in principle. Fortunately for the future of physics in general, and the LHC in particular, a Higgs of 12SGev is light enough for some of these particles to be found by the machine near Geneva.
Wake up, little Susy This model of a world of heavy partner particles that shadows the familiar one built up by the Standard Model is called Supersymmetry, and testing it was the real purpose of building the LHC. The search for the Higgs is a search for closure on the old physical world. Susy, as Supersymmetry is known to aficionados, is the new. The particular superness of the symmetry which it proposes is that every known fermion is partnered with one or more hypothetical bosons, and every known boson with one or more fermions. These partnerships cancel out the kludges and leave a mathematically purer outcome. For this reason, Susy is top of the "what comes next" list in most physicists' minds. It might also answer a question that has puzzled physicists since the 1930s. This is: why do galaxies, which seem to rotate too fast for their own gravity to keep them in one piece, not fly apart? The answer always given is "dark matter"-something that has a gravitational field, but does not interact much via the three forces of the Standard Model. But that is simply to label it, not to explain it. No such particle is known, but Susy predicts some, and as they are the lightest of its predictions, they should (if they exist) be within the LHC's range. If, that is, what Dr Gianotti and Dr Tonelli hope that they have seen is real. It might not be. As Rolf-Dieter Heuer, CERN's boss, once quipped, physicists know everything about the Higgs apart from whether it exists. Technically, that is still true. Despite their having analysed some 380 trillion collisions between pro-
The Economist December tons since the LHC got cracking in earnest in 2010, CERN's researchers have yet to see signs of the Higgs in an individual experiment that meet their exacting standard of having only one chance in 3.5m of being a fluke. The actual number at the moment is more like one in 2,ooo. But that does not take account of the coincidence between the results of the separate experiments. And more data are being crunched all the time, so it should not be long before the result is either confirmed or disproved. If it is disproved there will, after all the brouhaha, no doubt be a period of chagrin. And then the search will resume, for there are still unexplored places out there where Dr Higgs's prediction could be hiding. After a 47-year-long search, physicists would not give the hunt up that lightly. •
Climate-change summit
A deal in Durban DURBAN
Something came out of it. Which is probably better than nothing
THE early hours of December nth, after days and nights of exhausting, ofItenNthree ill-tempered final negotiations, the United Nations' two-week-long climatechange summit in Durban ended with an agreement. Its terms-even assuming they are acted upon-are unlikely to prevent a global temperature rise of more than 2°C, which is the stated aim of the whole UN climate "process". Indeed, they might easily allow a 4°C rise. Yet with many governments distracted by pressing economic worries, the deal was as much as could have been expected; perhaps a little more. Its core is a quid pro quo between the European Union and big developing-country polluters, especially China and India. For its part, the EU will undertake a second round of emissions abatement under the existing UN arrangement, the Kyoto protocol, after that protocol's main provisions
17th 2011
expire at the end of 2012. This will prolong the life of a treaty that imposes no emissions-cutting burden on any developing country. In return, countries both rich and poor have agreed to negotiate a new regime by 2015, and to bring it into effect by 2020. Crucially, this will require sacrifices by poor counties as well as rich ones. The deal, which was reached despite last-ditch resistance from China and India, and despite little enthusiasm for it from America, promises to break a divisive and anachronistic distinction between developed countries and developing ones (which are deemed to include places like South Korea and Saudi Arabia as well as China and India). Since developing countries as defined by Kyoto are now responsible for 58% of global greenhouse-gas emissions, their exemption has both poisoned the waters of the UN process and rendered it ineffective. The developing-country polluters, however, were not a pushover. The Indians held out for 36 hours after the summit was supposed to have ended, even when most other elements of a deal were in place. Their particular objection was to the insistence of the EU and its allies that the successor to Kyoto must be legally binding on all parties. With the prospect of no deal looming, the European and Indian delegations were urged to go "into a huddle" in the middle of the conference hall and work out a compromise. It was the Brazilians, though, who came up with the necessary weasel words. The new deal is not to be "legally binding". It will, instead, be "a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force." What that may mean is anyone's guess-which is the whole point. The Kyoto protocol actually is legally binding, but it contains no provisions to enforce penalties against those who fail to do what they agreed to. This has allowed Canada, for example, to miss its target, massively, with impunity. (Indeed, shortly after the meeting ended Peter Kent, Canada's environment minister, said his country now planned to pull out of Kyoto altogether.) Unless penalties for failure are inserted into the successor protocol, or instrument, or outcome-which China and India would almost certainly not allow-it is hard to imagine how it would have greater force . The agreement was, nevertheless, sufficient for the EU to claim success. A more important matter is the scale of the putative future regime's ambition to curb global warming. The Durban agreement includes an acknowledgment that there is a widening gap between the mitigation efforts currently promised and those needed to keep warming within the broadly recognised 2°C safety limit. It remains to be seen whether this will spur the signatories to take the costly actions that closing this gap would require. The Kyoto-
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precedents are not good. Agreement was also reached on a range of other climate-friendly measures. The most notable of these was the broad design of a global Green Climate Fund. This will funnel some of the $100 billion a year that rich countries have promised to make available to poor ones by 2020, to help them cut emissions and adapt to climate change. There was, however, little discussion on the question of exactly where the promised money would be found. A cynic might reflect that all this signals how toothless the UN process has become. Yet the Europeans' efforts were appreciated by many poor countries, particularly African ones and some small island nations which feel their very existence is threatened by global warming. The support these places gave to the Eu's proposals made it harder for the Indians and Chinese to decry them as a developed-world plot against the poor and helpless.
The rich are different The Indians do, however, have legitimate cause for worry. They fear the imposition of costs they can ill afford, and which will constrain their country's ability to grow and thereby lift millions out of poverty. China, the world's biggest polluter in total, whose average emissions per head are already higher than those of some European countries, will worry less. It seems resigned to having to undertake more stringent emissions-cutting. Indeed, its recent heavy investment in renewable energy and energy-efficiency schemes suggests it sees profit in this. America, by contrast, has reason to be glad of the outcome, in theory. It has long bewailed the asymmetry between rich and poor that is written into the Kyoto protocol. This was the ostensible reason why it failed to ratify it. Yet it was apparent in Durban that the American negotiators had little enthusiasm for almost any part of the international process. Their objections to some parts of the deal-though roundly denounced-were in fact perfectly reasonable. They are worried, for example, that the proposed global fund will be run by the UN, a recipe in many people's eyes for inefficiency and sloth. The Americans would like it to be controlled by an independent body, in the way the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is. It is a shame they could not get their way. And yet, that the world's most powerful country-whose researchers have made a vast contribution to climate science-was reduced to a bit-part in negotiations over the climate's future was unfortunate, both for the world and for America. Next time the Americans demand China, India or Brazil take bold steps for the global good, on trade or security, that recalcitrance will no doubt be remembered. •
The Economist December 17th 2011 Body hair
The not-so-nal<ed ape Human body hair, once thoughtto be an evolutionary relic, has a real job to do
UCH ink and many electrons have M been spilled on the question of human hairlessness: why, as Desmond Morris put it in the title of a book published in 1967, Homo sapiens is "The Naked Ape". This lack of hair has been attributed to everything from a putative aquatic period in the species's past to the advantages of displaying a healthy skin to members of the opposite sex. Less attention has been paid, though, to the fact that humans are not really hairless at all. Per square centimetre, human skin has as many hair follicles as that of other great apes. The difference is not in the number, but in the fineness of the hair that grows from those follicles. These fine human hairs do not seem to be performing any of the functions of their counterparts in more hirsute species (insulation and, through colouration, either signalling or camouflage). So what are they for? That is a question addressed by Isabelle Dean and Michael Siva-Jothy of Sheffield University, in Britain, in a paper in Biology Letters. Their conclusion is that humans have fine body hair to serve as an alarm system. Ms Dean and Dr Siva-Jothy were testing the idea that fine body hairs (known, technically, as vellus and terminal hairs) are there to alert their owner to creepy crawlies such as bed bugs, which might be intent on biting them, and that the hair may also get in the way of such arthropods' activities, giving the owner more time to react before he is bitten. The standard "lab rat" for this sort of experiment is the university student, and Ms Dean and Dr Siva-Jothy managed to recruit 29 eager volunteers for their study-19 men and ten women. Each had
a patch of skin on one arm shaved, marked with a pen and surrounded by petroleum jelly (to fence the bed bugs in), and a commensurate patch on the other marked and surrounded, but not shaved. It was then time to get the bed bugs out. The bugs in question had been fed a week previously, and then starved, so they were eager to eat. Volunteers were asked to look away while a researcher put a bug on one of the skin patches. The volunteer was then supposed to record, using a press-button counter, the number of times he perceived the insect moving on his skin. The difference was significant. When the bug was on a hairy patch it was detected, on average, every four seconds. When it was on a shaved patch, more than ten seconds elapsed between detections. Moreover, the bugs seemed to find it harder to locate a good spot to bite when they were surrounded by hair. Though no volunteer was actually bitten, because the vigilance of the watching researcher meant the insects were removed when they extended their probosces prior to biting, bugs on hairy skin took about a fifth longer than those on shaved skin to attempt to bite their hosts. In both cases men (who are hairier than women, as measured by the density of follicles and the length of the vellus hair) were better off than women when the bugs were released on unshaven patches of skin, though there was no significant difference between the sexes when they were shaved. The upshot is that, whatever the reason why human body hair has shrunk, one reason it has not disappeared completely is because it warns and protects those who sport it from the attentions of hostile insects.
Good night. Sleep tight. Mind the bugs don't bite
N JULY as Albrecht Durer was packing up to return to Icome Nuremberg from Antwerp, he received a message. Would he at once to do a portrait of Christian II, King of Denmark, 1521,
who happened to be in town? Naturally he dropped what he was doing, and went. One did not turn down kings. Durer drew Christian's sad-eyed, fur-swathed figure in a charcoal sketch that still survives, kept in the British Museum. The king then asked, would he paint him in oils? Again Durer said yes, and did so in record time, a couple of days. When it was done, he found 30 florins pressed into his hand. Soon afterwards, he left for home. For Durer, this was an unusual incident. Then so, he had been for some years the most famous artist in northern Europe; but he was not in essence a court painter. He thought of such people as "parasites", hanging round great men, waiting for a commission to fall from the lordly lips. He, by contrast, was an independent busiThe Economist December 17th 2011
nessman. He made his money not by grovelling, but by selling copies of the woodcuts and engravings printed, since 1495, at his workshop in the centre of Nuremberg. He was not even a member of a guild, for there were no artists' guilds in the city: he was a free individual, unaffiliated, making money and a reputation purely for himself. His journey of 1520-21 was simply a business trip. The bales he was packing up as he left Antwerp had originally been stuffed with printed engravings and woodcuts, loose or bound as books, which he or his agents were selling, or sometimes giving away, all over the Netherlands. Some of these-the "Nemesis", with Great Fortune teetering on her globe, the "Melancholia 1", with Melancholy surrounded by instruments of learning, and the "St Jerome", with the saint sitting snugly in his cell with dog and lionalready qualified as bestsellers. Copies had been sent ahead to be sold before he arrived, building up excitement and publicity. It was easy to meet demand, however high he fanned it. Though the fundamental work, carefully incised in mirror-image with knife or burin on the wood or copper plate, was every bit as laborious as drawing, it could then fly out in hundreds of copies. Durer or his assistants just inked a wood or copper plate and cranked a lever. Thanks to the printing press he had bought, he was never in thrall to a publisher; his book of extra-large printed woodcuts of the Apocalypse, which had made his fame in Nuremberg, was the first to be both illustrated and published by a great artist. He could now replicate and communicate his art. In 1520, for example, he sent a whole set of prints to Raphael's studio in Rome (he had hoped to impress Raphael himself, but the master had just died), and expected prints of Raphael's work in return. Artists no longer needed to meet, or ship precious works along dangerous roads, to show each other what they could do. Durer was not the first artist to exploit the joy of the new medium, but he was the most assiduous and influential-and the best. Painting, to be honest, rather bored him now. What was the good of slaving away for weeks over a panel, preparing the ground with layers of colour, paying half a stiver (at 24 stivers to the florin) for a porpoise-bristle brush, and two stivers to the boy who ground the colours, and a hefty 12 florins for an ounce of good ultramarine, if only a few could see it? Of course a fine altarpiece, installed in a commercial hub such as Frankfurt or Ghent (where he had silently worshipped Jan van Eyck's stupendous "Adoration of the Lamb") could be a grand advertisement for a painter. But the public on the other side of the rood screen often couldn't see them, or had to pay, as he had to (one stiver to the sacristan) to view them. Painting was noble work, but it seemed suddenly elitist and restricted. And slow. A good oil portrait, carefully done, might take a week and bring in, on average, ten florins. He could charge that for ten •• 141
ALBRECHT DURER ~ full-sheet
prints, which took hardly any time on his press. Compared with that near-instantaneous wonder, the time and effort of painting suddenly seemed intolerable. A huge commission, such as the immense "Madonna of the Rose Garlands" of 1506 that now hangs, much restored, in Prague, could tie him up for months. To lay and scrape the ground alone took many weeks. "My picture ... is well finished and finely coloured," he wrote to a friend when the Madonna was at last complete; "[but] I have got. . .little profit by it. I could have easily earned 200 ducats in the time." Durer was always keenly aware that he could make much more money by engraving. At a florin a sheet, or 12 stivers a halfsheet, or six stivers for his quarter-sheets of small Passion scenes, he could easily make about 400 florins a year. (The mayor of Nuremberg, at the ,\. time, enjoyed a yearly salary of 6oo flo. rins.) It was steady money, too, where painting was unpredictable. Durer conI ,\;,~ ..i. cluded, as he wrote to a customer in 1509, \ • \ .! that "I shall stick to my engraving, and if I had done so before I should today be a richer man by1,ooo florins." !' The art market was widening rapidly, and he was doing much to widen it singlehanded; his wonderful "Knight, Death and the Devil" could now be had for the cost of "I shall stick to a rabbit-fur coat; his half-sheet of St Anthony reading, with Nuremberg's spires piled my engravmg, in the background (see illustration on next page), for the price of a basket of raisins. and I had His quarter-sheet prints-some devotion- done so before al, some hotly topical, concerned with comets or monstrous births-were being I should today bought by market-goers, shopkeepers, be a richer even artisans, to mark the place in their , prayer b oo I<S, to give as new year card s, or man simply to collect, as pieces of art. That had never been possible before; but in Nuremberg, a fine city of 50,000 people, there were plenty of would-be connoisseurs. People bought from his shop directly, but he had branched out, too. By 1497 he was using Contz Schwytzer to handle his print sales in far-flung places. In Nuremberg Durer's aged mother often sold his prints for him, keeping some of the money for her own small needs. To the Frankfurt fair he sent agents, but also his wife Agnes, a plain and untidy young woman on the evidence of his drawings, but apparently a willing business partner, and eventually the sole inheritor of the 6,874-florin estate he left when he died in 1528.
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A masterpiece for nothing This market, however, was evidently not one he could control. Though Durer set a mental price for his work, based precisely on labour, materials and how good he thought it was ("a wonderful artist should charge highly for his art. No money is too much"), the buyer in the market-like the rich man in his hall, when his portrait was done-could still insist on paying only what he thought it was worth. Sometimes a recipient did not pay for a picture at all, seeming to think it had no cost, or was a present. Occasionally Durer used them that way himself, almost frittering them away, piling print on print to get something he wanted. His "works of art" (as he referred specifically to his printed woodcuts and engravings) were often simply exchanged for services, such as the help given by stableboys and servants, or the useful permit granted by the Bishop of Bamberg that enabled him to pass free through the dozens of town gates and customs points along the Rhine. Art was currency in other ways, too. Hosts were thanked for hospitality with a quick charcoal sketch, which Durer valued at a florin. Aristocratic or merchant customers bartered his works for
142
rings or jewels, whose value he could only guess. The shrewdest could exploit Durer's weakness for sweets (marzipan, candied citron, barley sugar, sugar canes "just as they grow") and his equal weakness for curiosities-buffalo horns, bits of bamboo, spears from Cali cut, monkeys, coral, parrots, or anything at all from Mexico, "the new land of gold". He would often pay, or barter, over the odds for such things: a whole set of prints (30 florins to him) in exchange for an ivory whistle and "a beautiful piece of porcelain". The bales that went home from his trips were stuffed with oddities, some of which can still be seen in his pictures. Durer's own estimate of what his work was worth was based, first of all, on his own skill. He knew he was good. He could do things that astounded other artists: as when the great Giovanni Bellini asked to see the "special brushes" with which Durer painted long tresses of hair, and found they were simply common-orgarden half-stiver ones, floated over the paper to make rippling parallel lines. Durer could depict like no one else the fur on a dog, the tiles on a roof, the inner life of a clump of grasses; but he could also infuse a scene with horror, piety or drama, through his mastery of human form. When he said he had done a work "carefully", as he often did, he meant it. His "Praying Hands", for example (left), wonderfully cross-hatched in white chalk on blue paper, was only one of dozens of preparatory sketches for an altarpiece that contained, in its central panel alone, 13 full-sized figures. His pride in his own work extended to everything he did. ("How pleased we both feel when we think well of ourselves," he wrote to his best friend, the humanist Willi bald Pirckheimer, "me with my painting, you con vostralearning!") At a time when artists did not sign their names, he put his, or more often his" AD" monogram, not only on finished pictures but even on the smallest, roughest sketches: an outline of a limb, a scribble of a pillow, a blur of brown and grey brushed quickly in his sketch book as he paused by a roadside quarry on a journey. The monogram was never forgotten. Again, he was not the first to do this; but no one else remotely did it to his extent. It was a necessary precaution, of course. Artistic rivals had long slandered each other and trashed each other's work; Durer's enemies said he didn't know how to use colour, for example ("though I've shut them up ...and everyone now says they have never seen such beautiful colours"). In Venice Durer thought the Italian painters might try to poison him. But the new technology produced a much more pervasive danger: that an artist's printed output would be so quickly and thoroughly copied and pirated that his work would be diluted and his good name undermined. Clinging on to authorship, in an age of open access, was as hard then as now. Durer twice went to court to defend his sole use of his trademark, in Nuremberg and in Venice, and twice won the case. The guilty parties were made to remove his monogram from their prints. Merely copying "AD", however, was not adjudged a crime. The crime was to sell the fake print as an original. From then on, therefore, false monogrammed prints "after Durer" kept appearing, confusing collectors to this day. A trademark was not the only identifier Durer put on his pictures. He left lines of commentary on the sketches, and gave the finished engravings elaborate marble tablets explaining his subject and his purpose. He wanted to tell the world that he, Albrecht Durer of Nuremberg, had done this: that it was made, gemacht, with his genius and effort. That word seemed to carry a particular weight and satisfaction with him. He made sure it applied to his prints, as well as his paintings. It went along with Gewalt, literally "control", his special word for exercising his artistic power, first the limner and then the re-creator of everything he surveyed. "The imagination of a good artist", he wrote, "is full of forms." In his exquisite landscape watercolours of the 1490s-painted with a sense of light not seen again till Cezanne-his AD is usually placed at the centre top, commanding the scene like the sun.
The Economist December 17th 2011
~~
ALBRECHT DURER
Yours for half a florin ~
Joking around once in a letter to Pirckheimer, he called himself (in very choice Venetian) poltrone di pintore, a poor fool of a painter. He didn't mean it. He knew that in Italy or the Netherlands he moved among masters, was "a gentleman" and was every bit the equal of "Roger" [van der Weyden], "Hugo" [van der Goes] or "Giambellin" [Bellini]. The treatment of artists as international celebrities, rather than mere journeymen, was very new; but Durer's engravings had established his reputation all over Europe. In Bruges he was wined and dined on the town, given a tour, accompanied home with many torches and shown "great honour", as he happily noted. In the Antwerp painters' hall, "where everything was of silver. .. as I was being led to the table, everyone on both sides stood up as if I was some great lord." This sort of thing still surprised him, but less and less. It was his due. His due, too, was a large pension. Though Durer was not a court artist, the Emperor Maximilian !-whose magnificent hooked profile he drew in 1518 "in a little room high up in the castle" of Augsburg-had commissioned him to work on designs for a grandiose triumphal arch. All that drawing, Durer reckoned, ought to be worth 100 florins a year, since "I have served him for three years at my own expense." Maximilian, naturally generous beyond his means, granted him that sum for life. It was supposed to come from the imperial tax paid each year by the city of Nuremberg, but Maximilian died too soon to enforce it, and Durer fought for years to be paid. Financially, he could probably have managed without it. As a matter of self-esteem he could not, and would not. That self-esteem blazed from his pictures. Before Durer, an artist would sometimes appear in his paintings half-hidden, as one of the crowd. Durer, however, painted himself to fill the frame. That was new. He portrayed himself in 1493, just betrothed, holding sea holly (the betrothal flower) and with fashionable slashed sleeves; he painted himself, most famously, in 1500, gazing fullface at the viewer from a nimbus of long flowing hair (see the first illustration of this piece). This was not just the artist as Christ, but the artist as worthy of contemplation, worthy of attention in himself. It is perhaps unsurprising that his earliest surviving picture, drawn in silverpoint on paper at the age of 13 with astonishing facility, was also of himself. That picture could be identified later because Durer wrote on it, proudly, "This I drew myself from a mirror in the year 1484, when I was still a child." With him, pictures were also self-exploration, a record of his feelings and experiences on a certain day at a
The Economist December 17th 2011
certain time, the equivalent of the journals and personal letters that men and women were only just beginning to write. "I produced these two faces when I was ill," he noted over two particularly anguished sketches of the head of the dying Christ, in 1503. "The colour marks where the pain was," he wrote over a small, later drawing of himself in his underwear, pointing to his side. He drew himself with a headache as a teenager, and as a relatively old man, at 44, he drew his emaciated and completely naked body in savage, unsparing chalk. Daily minutiae were noted too, since anything might be useful in a painting. A lumpy cushion was drawn several times. He recorded at length, in the Netherlands, the details of the walrus he drew and where it was caught. Most strangely, he also painted a watercolour, and appended a description, of a storm of rain in one of his dreams. The least event was interesting. The most inward, passing thing was of public consequence. Durer often seems to be carrying on a conversation with the people he imagines looking in on his life, that day or in years to come: constantly updating his progress, his ideas and his image of himself. Prints, by their nature, were less personal; but he also made sure he featured in those. His AD monogram was seldom confined to a corner. It swung from the Tree of Good and Evil in Eden, as Eve curiously and delicately took the apple from the mouth of the snake.lt was scratched on the floor of the room where Gabriel appeared to Mary, and incised into the lid of the stone tomb that awaited the body of Christ. Most shockingly, it appeared on the nailheads hammered into Christ's hands on the cross. Durer thus became an actor in the tableaux he had drawn, and especially in the sacred or biblical scenes. He lurked beside the fateful tree. He hurt Christ, or buried him, himself.
Remember me! There was a Lutheran undertow to this. Durer took a keen interest in "Dr Martin", eagerly keeping up with his tracts, and writing pages of agonised invective in his journal when he heard, in May 1521, that Luther had been taken into custody. He remained a stalwart Catholic himself, eagerly queuing to see relics and with his rosary ever in his pocket, but he did not want the church ("the Gates of Hell", as he thought) laying down the law in his life. Popes, church Fathers, doctrines were all obstacles to "the holy pure gospel" and Christ's redemptive grace, and they appeared in Durer's prints under the hooves of his four apocalyptic horsemen, trampled in the mire. Already, as if those hated objects had gone, he was making his own way through the Bible in his drawings and engravings. His avatar, with no churchman's voice to lecture him, could linger in the scenes he chose. This was what the new technology allowed everyone to do. The Vatican could ban books, as it banned Luther's. But it could not stop Durer, as a free thinker, reading the ancient sacred words in a new way, and making his pictures accordingly. (He wrote often, too, of "free painting", in which an inspired artist no longer needed to copy a master and could follow his own rules.) His own interpretation was as good as any bishop's: merely as a man, his thought and work had value. Merely as a man, too-despite his spindly pain-racked body, and charcoal Death on his skeleton horse crying "Remember me!" into his ear-he could multiply those thoughts and works endlessly through the new world as well as the old. Perhaps as much as any other craftsman, even in the modern age, Durer represented human talent and ingenuity made boundless by a machine. • 143
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164
. . .
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Economic data Current-account balance
Budget balance
Interest rates, %
latest 12 months, $bn
%of GDP 2011 t
%of GDP 2011 t
10-year gov't bonds, latest
-3.1 +2.9 +2.3 -1.5
-8.7 -1.8 -8.3 -8.8
%change on year ago
Gross domestic roduct United States China Japan Britain
latest
qtr*
2011 t
+1.5 03 +9.1 03 nil 03 +0.5 03
+2.0 +9 .5 +6.0 +2 .0
+1 .8 +9.2 -0.3 +0.9
Industrial production latest +3.9 +12 .4 +0.4 -1.7
Oct Nov oct Oct
Consumer rices Unemployment latest 2011 t rate*,% +3.5 +4.2 -0.2 +4.8
Oct Nov oct Nov§
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Euro area Austria Belgium France Germany Greece Italy Netherlands
+1 .4 +2 .8 +1.9 +1.6 +2.5 -5.2 +0.8 +1.1
03 03 03 03 03 03 02 03
+0.6 +1.3 -0.5 +1.6 +2 .0 na +1.2 -1.1
+1 .6 +2.9 +2 .1 +1 .6 +3.0 -5 .3 +0.6 +1 .5
+1 .3 +2 .7 +4.8 +2 .1 +5 .7 -12 .2 -2.7 -12.2
Oct Sep Sep Oct Sep Oct Sep Oct
+3 .0 +3.4 +3.8 +2.5 +2.4 +2 .9 +3.3 +2 .6
Nov Oct Nov Nov Nov Nov Nov Nov
+3.2 +5.6 -0.3 +4.4
8.6 Nov 6.1 2010 4.5 oct 8.3 Septt
-469.9 +259.3 +139.1 -40.9
02 03*** oct 02
1.90 3.54 0.98 2.09
6.37 78.1 0.65
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10. 3 Oct 4.1 Oct 6.6 Octtl 9.8 Oct 6.9 Nov 17 .5 Sep 8.5 Oct 5.8 Novtt
-82.6 +11.2 +7 .0 -67.8 +189.6 -29 .9 -79.0 +66.0
Sep -0.5 -4.1 1.97 0.77 0.75 02 +2.6 -3.6 2.99 0.77 0.75 Jun +1.7 -3.8 4.43 0.77 0.75 Oct -2.4 -5.8 3.16 0.77 0.75 Oct +5.2 -1.0 1.92 0.77 0.75 Sep -8 .4 -9.5 37.28 0.77 0.75 Sep -3.7 -4.0 7.15 0.77 0.75 02 +7.1 -4.2 2.26 0.77 0.75 ~~n____ .!Q&~ __ .!!il_.:t..O.:.§. ___ _ .:E~ _ .±.2Jl..!:!!!v_ _:t-l:_0___2_b~ e!_ ___ :2_6_& ~t _ _ _il& ___ -.£,'2._ __ _2 ..2§ ____ ~.?J. --- Q}.2. _ Czech Republic +1.5 03 na +2 .1 +1.7 Oct +1.8 Nov +1 .9 8.0 Nov -5 .6 03 -3 .1 -4.6 3.83 19.8 18.9 Denmark -0.2 03 -3.3 +1.1 -0.1 Oct +2.6 Nov +2.7 4.2 Oct +22.2 Oct +5.7 -3.9 1.83 5.74 5.59 Hungary +1 .4 03 +2 .0 +1.5 +3 .0 Sep +4 .3 Nov +3 .9 10.8 octtt +3.2 02 +1 .5 +1.2 9.01 236 207 Norway +3.8 03 +5.8 +0.8 -5.6 Oct +1.2 Nov +1.4 3.3 Sep§§ +70.2 03 +13.6 +13.1 2.19 6.00 5.93 Poland +4.2 03 na +3 .8 +6 .4 Oct +4 .8 Nov +3 .9 11.8 Octtl -26 .1 Oct -4.8 -6 .0 5.95 3.52 2.98 Russia +4.8 03 na +4.0 +3 .6 Oct +6.7 Nov +8.5 6.4 Octtl +86 .3 03 +5.0 -0.8 4.73 31.9 30.7 Sweden +4.6 03 +6 .6 +4.1 +4.7 Oct +2.8 Nov +2.8 6.7 Novtl +39.7 03 +6.7 nil 1.57 7.02 6.81 Switzerland +1.3 03 +0.9 +1.8 +2 .3 02 -0 .5 Nov +0.4 3.0 Nov +86 .1 02 +13 .3 +0.8 0.73 0.95 0.96 Turkey +8 .2 02 na +7 .5 +7.3 Oct +9 .5 Nov +6 .3 9.2_Augtl -1_8.6 Oct _::9 .8 -1.8 9.48 1.89 1.52 Australia +2.5 03 +3 .9 +1.7 +0 .8 03 +3 .5 03 +3.4 5.3 Nov -32 .6 03 -2 .3 -2.6 3.86 1.01 1.01 Hong Kong +4.3 03 +0.4 +5 .4 +2 .0 02 +5.8 oct +5 .1 3.3 octtt +14.3 02 +4.2 +1.8 1.27 7.78 7.77 India +6.9 03 na +7 .6 -5 .1 Oct +9.4 Oct +9.0 10.8 2010 -46 .2 02 -3.5 -5.4 8.72 53.7 45.4 Indonesia +6.5 03 na +6.5 +8 .0 Oct +4.2 Nov +5.3 6.8 Feb +3.6 03 +0 .4 -1.0 4.18 ttt 9,085 9,023 Malaysia +5 .8 03 na +4.5 +2 .7 Oct +3.4 Oct +3 .3 3.3 Sep +32.7 03 +10.4 -5 .6 3.07 ttt 3.18 3.13 Pakistan +2.4 2011.. na +2 .4 +5 .1 Sep +10.2 Nov +12.2 5.6 2010 -0.2 03 -1.3 -5.9 13.78ttt 89.6 85.7 Singapore +6.1 03 +1.9 +5 .1 +24.4 Oct +5.4 Oct +5 .1 2.0 03 +49 .2 03 +17.7 +0.6 1.58 1.31 1.31 South Korea +3.4 03 +3 .0 +3 .8 +6 .2 Oct +4.2 Nov +4.2 3.1 Nov +22 .2 Oct +2 .0 +2.4 3.74 1,156 1,155 Taiwan +3.4 03 -0.6 +4.4 +1 .4 Oct +1.0 Nov +1 .5 4.3 Oct +38.6 03 +8 .0 -2.7 1.28 30.3 29 .8 Thailand !_3.5 03 +2 .1 +2 .5 -l?& ~ +4.2 !!£v__+i:_2_ .Q..4.Jun __ _ +1_3.1. Oct_ _ +4.1 -2.9 _ .].23 31.3 30:.1 Argerrtl na +9.1 02 +10.2 +8 .5 +4.3 Sep +9.7 oct .. * +9.9 7.2 Q3tl +1.1 02 -0.3 -1.4 na 4.28 3.97 Brazil +2.1 03 -0.2 +3.0 -2 .2 Oct +6.6 Nov +6 .7 5.8 octtl -47 .3 Oct -2.2 -2.7 11.17 1.88 1.70 Chile +4.8 03 +2 .6 +6.3 -0.8 Oct +3.9 Nov +3.2 7.2 octttll -1.2 03 -0.5 +0.2 2.18ttt 521 474 Colombia +5.1 02 +8.5 +5.1 +5 .2 Sep +4.0 Nov +3 .4 9.0 Octtl -10.6 02 -2.7 -2.5 3.50 ttt 1,937 1,908 Mexico +4.5 03 +5 .5 +3 .9 +3 .6 Sep +3.5 Nov +3.3 5.0 octtl -10.0 02 -1.9 -2.9 6.42 14.0 12.4 ~!!!!~e~ __ _:!jl_~ __ .!:!_a_ .±_2Jl. ___ .±.?~~-+1_8Jl..!:!!!v_ .±?£}___ ~~~ ---+1_6,Q~ -- .:':§& ___ -2,£_ __ ....§..2?!.!!. ___ .2.·~ ----~ Egypt +0.3 02 na +1 .8 -1 .8 02 +9 .1 Nov +10 . 2 11.9 Q3 tl -2.8 02 -1 .7 -10 .0 7.55 ttt 6.02 5.80 Israel +5.1 03 +3 .4 +4.4 +7 .1 Sep +2.7 Oct +3.3 5.6 03 +1.8 03 -0 .1 -2.8 3.63 3.81 3.59 Saudi Arabia +6.7 2011 na +6 .7 na +5.2 oct +4.9 na +75 .3 201otll +25.9 +14.3 na 3.75 3.75 South Africa +3 .1 03 +1.4 +3 .1 +1.7 oct +6 .0 oct +5.0 25 .0 o3u -11.6 03 -4.1 -5.5 8.14 8.44 6.82 *%change on previous quarter, annual rate. tThe Economist poll or Economist Intelligence Unit estimate/forecast. tNational definitions §RPI inflation rate 5.2 in November. **Year ending June. ttLatest 3 months . II Not seasonally adjusted . §§Centred
3·month average. ***Unofficial estimates are higher. ttt oollar-denominated bonds. *** Estimate.
The Economist December 17th 2011
Economic and financial indicators 165
Markets
%change on Dec 31st 2010 Index one in local in $ Dec 14th week currency terms United States (DJIA) 11,823.5 -3.1 +2 .1 +2.1 China (SSEA) 2,334.9 -4.5 -20.6 -17.9 Japan (Nikkei 225) 8,519.1 -2.3 -16.7 -13.5 Britain (FTSE 100) 5,366.8 -3.2 -9.0 -10.5 ~'!!d~(~I?_TS1) ___ D,~U _ _:? ..Q_ _ :!.4.1. _ -1§1. Euro area (FTSE Euro 100) 712.2 -5.8 -20.4 -23.2 Euro area (OJ STOXX 50) 2,205.9 -5.9 -21.0 -23.7 Austria (ATX) 1,752.4 -6.7 -39.7 -41.8 Belgium (Bel20) 1,986.9 -4.7 -22.9 -25.6 France (CAC 40) 2,976.2 -6.3 -21.8 -24.5 Germany (DAX)* 5,675.1 -5.3 -17.9 -20.8 Greece (Athex Comp) 659.6 -3.9 -53.3 -55.0 Italy (FTSE/MIB) 14,430.0 -7.8 -28.5 -30.9 Netherlands (AEX) 292.2 -4.0 -17.6 -20.5 Spain (Madrid SE) 819.0 -5.6 -18.4 -21.2 Czech Republic (PX) 853.8 -3.0 -30.3 -34.1 Denmark (OMXCB) 340.4 -4.1 -20.3 -22.8 Hungary (BUX) 16,774.8 -2.5 -21.3 -30.7 Norway (OSEAX) 413.8 -4.9 -14.9 -17.6 ~land ~~) ____ lZ,~~..L ..:.E __ l_O _i _ -]J.2 Russia (RTS, $terms) 1,369.7 -6.7 -19.1 -22.6 Sweden (OMXS30) 939.3 -4.0 -18.7 -22.1 Switzerland (SMI) 5,719.1 -0.8 -11.1 -13.1 Turkey (ISE) 51,339.0 -6.9 -22.2 -36.5 Australia (All Ord.) 4,249.8 -2.3 -12.3 -15.1 Hong Kong (Hang Seng) 18,354.4 -4.6 -20.3 -20.4 India (BSE) 15,881.1 -5.9 -22.6 -35.5 Indonesia (JSX) 3,751.6 -1.1 +1.3 +0.5 ~§'~J!
