The ''Far Eastern Economic Review'' (, Pinyin: Yuǎndōng Jīngjì Pínglùn; also referred to as FEER or ''The Review'') was an English language Asian news magazine started in 1946. It printed its final issue in December 2009. The Hong Kong-based business magazine was originally published weekly. Due to financial difficulties, the magazine converted to a monthly publication in December 2004, and simultaneously switched to an arrangement whereby most articles were contributed by non-staff writers who had expertise in a given field, such as economists, business-community figures, government policymakers, social scientists and others.

''FEER'' covered a variety of topics including politics, business, economics, technology, social and cultural issues throughout Asia, focusing on Southeast Asia and Greater China.

Ownership

''FEER'' was set up in 1946 with seed capital provided by the Kadoories, Jardines and the Hongkong Bank. The ''South China Morning Post'', an English-language newspaper based in Hong Kong, had majority ownership of the ''Review'' from 1972. In 1986 Dow Jones, a minority shareholder since 1973, took over full ownership in a deal with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which had acquired a controlling interest in the ''Post''. News Corp bought Dow Jones in 2007.

Readership

''FEER'' targeted markets in Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Southeast Asia. It reached an elite group of readers from the government, the business world and the academic sector. The magazine had a circulation of 93,055 in 2003. In September 2006, the magazine was banned in Singapore.

History

The ''Far Eastern Economic Review'' was started in 1946 by Eric Halpern, a Jewish immigrant from Vienna, who initially settled in Shanghai and ran ''Finance and Commerce'', a biweekly business magazine. Later on, when China was in the midst of the Chinese Civil War, he decamped to Hong Kong and founded the weekly publication, ''FEER'', focusing on finance, commerce and industry.

After Halpern's retirement in 1958, Dick Wilson became chief editor and publisher. He operated an office in a colonial building along the waterfront where the Mandarin Hotel now stands. During Wilson’s tenure, coverage of the magazine extended from China and Hong Kong into other regions around the world, from Japan to Australia to India and to the Philippines.

In 1964, Wilson was succeeded as editor by Derek Davies, a Welsh journalist, who had served in the British Foreign Office. Between 1964 and 1989, the flamboyant Davies built FEER from a small weekly into one of Asia's most authoritative magazines, with a circulation of nearly 90,000. At its peak, FEER had an editorial team of nearly 100 news staff in 15 bureaus across Asia - the largest news team of any regional weekly.

After serving 25 years as senior editor, Davies was succeeded by Philip Bowring. In 1992, Bowring was forced to resign due to differences with Dow Jones' Vice President Karen Elliott House over the magazine's editorial direction.

In November 2001, Dow-Jones merged the editorial operations of the ''Far Eastern Economic Review'' and the ''Asian Wall Street Journal'' in an attempt to cut costs. In 2004, the magazine ceased to exist as a weekly and was changed to a monthly publication with Hugo Restall as its editor. In September 2009, Dow-Jones, now a subsidiary of Murdoch's News Corp, announced that the magazine will be shut down permanently.

Criticism of Dow-Jones

The magazine ceased publication in December, 2009 due to falling readership and advertising revenue. This was the reason given by its owner, Dow-Jones. But insiders cite other reasons. "Every ex-''Review'' staffer knows that its days were numbered the day Dow Jones bought it. The ''Asian Wall Street Journal'' never enjoyed the kind of readership and readers' loyalty as that of the ''Review''. And it wasn't a secret that the Americans wanted the AWSJ to supplant the ''Review''." Philip Bowring pins the blame for the ''Review''’s decline on Dow Jones. He says that its executives parachuted in from New York and wanted to homogenise the reporting. But according to Banyan, despite Dow Jones' missteps, ''FEER''s business model was based on advertising revenue which foundered when prosperity declined.

'The decision to cease publication of the ''Review'' is a difficult one made after a careful study of the magazine's prospects in a challenging business climate,' said Todd Larsen, chief operating officer at Dow Jones Consumer Media Group. In 2004, Dow Jones fired most of FEER's reporters and transformed it into a monthly publication. Articles were largely commissioned and only a skeleton editorial staff was retained. David Plott, FEER's editor at the time, described the upheaval in 2004 as a loss of one of the 'greatest concentrations of knowledge and expertise about the region assembled anywhere'.

Dow Jones proclaimed the savings from the death of ''FEER'' will "catapult the company's growth in the burgeoning Asian marketplace." In response, J. Manthorpe commented, "As the FEER has been in a vegetative state since at least 2004 when it was made a monthly instead of weekly magazine and its staff was cut from 80 to five, only two of whom are journalists, it is hard to imagine the proceeds of closure catapulting anything anywhere."

‘Dow Jones’s marketing people didn’t know how to sell it as it competed with the ''Asian Wall Street Journal'' – they ignored it and killed it by sheer neglect,’ said VG Kulkarni, a former editor at the Review.

Prior to the formal closure in 2009, ''FEER'' died many deaths—in 1992 when Bowring was forced to resign as editor; in 2001 when it was merged with the ''Asian Wall Street Journal''; in 2004 when it ceased as a weekly and was published as a monthly after being downsized to a staff of two. "The death of the ''Review'' came by a thousand cuts inflicted primarily by Karen House," said Bowring in 2004: A succession of failed makeovers and revolving editors; the dumbing-down of the magazine in an effort to make it "more readable"; moving away from hard-hitting, controversial coverage of corporate and financial scandals; a shift from in-depth coverage of business and politics to soft-centred features of the sort that appear in airline magazines.

"The final insult to the Review, and indeed to Asia, was Dow Jones' refusal to sell the title. It has had plenty of offers - which would benefit its own shareholders," says Bowring, "There is a parallel here between Time and ''Asiaweek''. Time bought locally-born ''Asiaweek'' even though it appeared to be in direct competition for readers and advertising. Not so long afterwards, Time closed ''Asiaweek'' rather than its ailing ''Time Asia''. It was corporate imperialism more than commercial sense which brought Dow Jones to buy control of the ''Review'', which was a direct competitor for niche regional advertising. It is clear that the closure of the ''Review'', as of ''Asiaweek'', represents an attack on diversity and further reduction in the variety of print media."

"The magazine lost its way because people in New York thought they understood what the readers wanted more than those who were on the ground in Asia," wrote Bowring in the ''South China Morning Post''. Bowring claims that Ms. House infused ''FEER''s editorials with the right wing and furiously pro-western sentiments of ''The Wall Street Journal''.

Under its previous editor, Derek Davies, the ''Review'' had carved a name for itself for the excellence of its economic reporting, its refusal to be cowed and its wide-ranging book reviews. When Dow Jones took over the ''Review'' it introduced pompous “editorials”, indulged in numerous revisions to the format, each more disastrous than the last; brought in large numbers of American journalists and editors at the expense of well-established writers who knew the region; moved the focus from business and politics to “innovation” and “lifestyle”, neither of which was of interest to its core readership; and dramatically reduced the scope of the book review section. When Dow Jones took control of the magazine, efforts to introduce more lifestyle features sparked protests from Review loyalists - as did its decision to make it into a monthly rather than a weekly title.

"I don't think Dow Jones ever understood what our culture was and they never really put in the effort to make the magazine succeed", said John McBeth who joined the magazine in 1979. Dow Jones turned it into a snappy, happy, trend-conscious delight for the Internet age. It was a failed effort "to lure readers who presumably don't care about thoughtful coverage of politics and economics but do want to know which wine goes with which chilli pepper". The reporting staffs of the ''Review'' and the ''Asian Wall Street Journal'' were merged in 2001. More significantly, at that time the ad sales staffs of the two publications were also merged. Two senior correspondents said they had frequently been asked by executives at Asian corporations they covered why the magazine's advertising staff were hard to reach and would often not return phone calls. "There was no effort put in," said one. "They didn't even try."

TJS George, co-founder of ''Asiaweek'', says, "In due course, Time Inc. killed ''Asiaweek'' and Dow Jones (now a Murdoch property) killed the ''Review''. Murdoch-Dow's ''Wall Street Journal'' and Time Inc.'s ''Time'' magazine now fly the American flag over Asia, unchallenged by lesser flags."

Journalism and impact

Derek Davies, editor during those glory years, and Richard Hughes, the Australian doyen of the Foreign Correspondents Club, were part of the Review legend. Davies, a hard-charging Welshman, defied numerous Asian governments and big businesses and provided a frontline forum for many talented reporters: Emily Lau, Gary Coull, Bertil Linter, David Bonavia, Ian Buruma, Nayan Chanda, Nate Thayer, Susumu Awanohara, Christopher Wood, Philip Bowring, as well as dissidents TJS George and late Mike O'Neill, who went on to launch rival, ''Asiaweek''.

Other legends include the late MGG Pillai and Tarzie Vittachi and his son Nury Vittachi, who delighted thousands by keeping up a steady patter as the guiding light of “Traveller’s Tales”, its humour column. TJS George wrote a little book taking a sceptical look at Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore, and then founded ''Asiaweek''. Alas that too went by the wayside eventually.

K. Nadarajah was felled with the enforced departure of a generation of some of the brightest from ''The Star'', Malaysia's most widely-read English language daily. The late K. Das did yeoman work as the Kuala Lumpur correspondent of the ''Review'' through the late 1970s and 1980s. Morgan Chua, a discovery of the ''Singapore Herald'', took his cartooning skills to the ''Review'' after the ''Herald'' fell foul of Lee Kuan Yew & Co. (The brightest and the best always did.)

Ho Kwon Ping of the ''Singapore Times'' went on to the ''Review'', and ended up being detained for his “pro-communist” reports. Anything nasty or sceptical was automatically labelled pro-communist in those days by Singapore's Straits Special Branch. Canadian-born Murray Heibert, the Review’s Kuala Lumpur correspondent, was jailed for reporting that a judge's wife filed a $2.4 million suit against her son's school because the school dropped him from the its debating team. The Malaysian judicial system decided that Murray had besmirched the “honour” of the judiciary.

In its more than 60 years, the ''Review'' hammered away at the walls of Asian despotism, shining a light through the chinks. It was regularly banned, especially in Singapore. And it was regularly sued. Especially, of course, in Singapore where the political family of Lee, Lee, Lee & Lee brooked no interference. A press law was promulgated in Singapore because of the ''Review''.

Its journalists have a long and honourable record of being locked up or expelled from countries throughout Asia for incurring the wrath of regional leaders whose sins or foibles it exposed.

Many of the magazine's reporters came from Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. But they were people who made Asia their home and whose clear-eyed reporting grew from a long and intense love affair with the region. They had a reputation for knowing the countries in which they worked better than any foreign correspondent and often with greater insight and better connections than local journalists.

In 1997, the Cambodian dictator Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge and author of the "killing fields" genocide, was interviewed by Nate Thayer, then the ''Review''’s Cambodia correspondent. Pol Pot was in hiding for 18 years, and Nate was the first reporter to track him down. The story was an international sensation.

“For someone who grew up dreaming about swashbuckling journalists reporting from far-flung places, there was no greater model than the Far Eastern Economic Review,” wrote one journalist. The article recalls John McBeth who, battling Suharto's oppressive regime in Indonesia, continued reporting even after losing a leg to disease. In 1975, ''FEER''’s Calcutta-born Nayan Chanda was the last reporter left in the presidential palace in Saigon when North Vietnamese tanks broke through the palace gates and unplugged the telex, cutting Chanda off mid-broadcast.

Salil Tripathi, a former regional economics correspondent for the magazine, reminisces, “FEER was special because it stared back at Asia’s businesses and politicians at a time when few journalists in the region could speak truth to power. Some of FEER’s foreign correspondents were tried, jailed, expelled, harassed or followed; some were accused of sedition, contempt of court and defamation; its editors fined, its issues banned. Leaders resented the magazine because it would not bow or kowtow. An invading army might march in, but Nayan Chanda would continue to type his story till the North Vietnamese switched off power supply. Unfazed by the malarial jungle, Nate Thayer would not give up looking for Pol Pot. With calm forbearance, Bertil Lintner would bring the Myanmarese story to the world. Ian Buruma would cast light on culture, revealing nuances the region’s elite often preferred leaving unsaid. FEER’s intrepid financial reporters would figure out who hid what assets where. I remember the sleepless week in Jakarta when the Suharto regime tottered: Margot Cohen talking to people on the streets, John McBeth checking on troop movements, Michael Vatikiotis chasing politicians and academics, while I was with Anastasia Fanny Lioe in Glodok and Tangerang, where Chinese-owned shops and malls were burnt and ransacked, prompting ethnic Chinese people and capital to flee.”

The golden age of the Review was the 25 years from 1964 when former British spy in Vietnam, Derek Davies, was editor. His weekly "Traveller's Tales" column is still some of the most delightful journalism of the last half century.

BBC reports that the closure will mark the end of an era for challenging journalism in Asia. Because of ''FEER'''s independent reporting, many authoritarian governments used to black out its pages or ban it outright, the report said. "It was a tremendously exciting place to work," said Philip Bowring, "It was the place where up-and-coming journalists would go, because they were given an opportunity to prove that they were good."

Independent journalistic establishments

Besides qualified business reports, ''FEER'' was also the pioneer of independent journalistic establishments throughout Asia. Many of the articles from the first few decades were exclusive sources of information on the development of China, such as the report on where Chairman Mao Zedong, the Cultural Revolution and the economic opening initiated by Deng Xiaoping.

Editorial

Editorial statement

For the first issue, the inaugurator, Mr Halpern, declared a brief but enduring Editorial Statement:

:"The purpose of this weekly economic publication is to analyze and interpret financial, commercial and industrial developments; to collect economic news; and to present views and opinions with the intent to improve existing conditions. Politics and economics being connatural, it will be inevitable that this publication may at times appear to transgress its primary objective by reporting on, and dealing with, political affairs. At any time and in every case unbiased and dispassionate, factual and balanced reporting will be our aim and policy."

Editorial stance

The Review aimed to report and analyze financial, commercial and industrial developments in the Southeast Asia and Pacific regions with specific emphasis on Hong Kong and China. It gathered the most incisive and provocative commentary in Asia through leaders from every ideological stripe, background and profession. Articles were selected according to their potential progress toward prosperity, security and well-being for all Asians. Besides free-lance contributions and viewpoints from professionals, ''FEER''s journalists also traveled around the region reporting from their own perspective with the intention of improving the local economic and political zone.

Reports by FEER

"China's Elite" was a yearly side-publication by the ''FEER''. Focusing on China's leading executives and their way of business, "China's Elite" was often praised as a valuable source of information on statistics, expectations and objective analysis obtained through in-depth interviews with leading businessmen in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

The "Review 200" was a tied publication by the ''Far Eastern Economic Review'' which ranked the top 200 leading businesses across Asia on an annual basis.

Published every two years since 1989 by ''FEER'', "Managing in Asia" provided entrepreneurs with a clear description and explanation of Asia's business position. The report offered valuable information in the aspects of economic outlook, business challenges and economic issues, personal investment, technology/office automation, brand perception, ownership of products, travel habits,etc.

The "Asia Lifestyles" was published in alternating years. It conducted surveys on business executives and questioned their lifestyles, habits and aspirations.

''FEER'' regularly published special reports focused on topics that were relevant and significant to Asia. For example, a special report on the HIV?AIDS epidemic was published in its July 15, 2004 issue.

''FEER'' regularly interviewed government officials and other important people who had an impact in the region and the business world. In the past, ''FEER'' has interviewed Colin Powell, the US former Secretary of State (issue date: 28 October 2004), Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of United Nations (issue date: 22 July 2004), Chen Shui-bian, the Taiwanese President (issue date: 24 July 2003), Bill Gates, Chairman and co-founder of Microsoft (issue date: 14 March 2002), and many more influential people.

In 2002 and 2003, ''FEER'' was awarded the "Excellence in Specialized Reporting" by the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA). In 2004, it was awarded the "Honourable Mention for Magazine Front Cover Design" by SOPA. In 2005, it was awarded the "Excellence in Magazines" and "Honorable Mention for Reporting on the Environment" by the SOPA.

== Censorship by governments == In late 1970s, Ho Kwon Ping, the ''Review'''s Singapore correspondent, was accused of endangering national security and fined $3,000. Lee Kuan Yew later charged ''FEER'' editor, Mr. Derek Davies, of participating in "a diabolical international Communist plot" to poison relations between Singapore and neighbouring Malaysia.

In the 1980s Lee banned the Review in Singapore after it published an article about the detention of Roman Catholic church workers.

The April 4, 2002 issue of ''FEER'' was banned in Bangladesh because its cover story, "Bangladesh: Cocoon of Terror", described the country as besieged by "Islamic fundamentalism, religious intolerance, militant Muslim groups with links to international terrorist groups."

In China the ''Review'''s correspondent, Serge Ivanovitch Kost, was arrested during the Cultural Revolution and sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment. He later emigrated to Australia.

In 2006, after the publication of an article on Dr. Chee Soon Juan, Singapore's prime minister Lee Hsien Loong and his father and minister mentor, Lee Kuan Yew, sued the publication for defamation alleging the magazine had suggested they were corrupt. The Singapore government banned the sale and distribution of the journal.

On September 24, 2008, the High Court of Singapore, in a summary judgment by Justice Woo Bih Li, ruled that the ''Far Eastern Economic Review'' and Hugo Restall, its editor, criticised Lee Kuan Yew and his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in its October 2006 article, "Singapore's 'Martyr', Chee Soon Juan". The article was based on an interview with Chee Soon Juan, an opposition party leader of the Singapore Democratic Party who battled the ruling People's Action Party and its leaders. ''FEER'' appealed but lost the case when the Court of Appeal ruled in October, 2009 that the ''Far Eastern Economic Review'' did defame the country's founder Lee Kuan Yew and his son Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Decisions by the Appeal Court are final.

Awards presented by FEER

The Young Inventors Awards (YIA) which began in 2000, was organized by ''FEER'' in association with Hewlett-Packard (HP). The purpose of the Awards program was to foster a spirit of scientific invention and innovation among students in the Asia-Pacific regions, including China, Philippines, Singapore, India and Australia. Students who won the award were socially recognized and financially supported for their outstanding efforts and projects. ''FEER''s annual Asian Innovation Awards was associated with Global Entrepolise @ Singapore, which honored Asia's emerging Technopreneur.

See also

Newspapers in Hong Kong

Media of Hong Kong

References

Telling Asia's Story By L. Gordon Crovitz

External links

Dow Jones & Company

Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA)

Salil Tripathi's website - a long-time writer for ''FEER'' from Singapore

Category:Business magazines Category:CNBC Asia programs Category:Dow Jones & Company Category:English-language magazines Category:Hong Kong magazines Category:Asian news magazines Category:Publications established in 1946

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The ''Far East'' is a term used in English (with equivalents in various other languages of Europe and Asia, Chinese '''' literally translating to "far east") mostly equivalent to East Asia (including the Russian Far East) and Southeast Asia, and sometimes South Asia for economic and cultural reasons.

"Far East" came into use in European geopolitical discourse in the 19th century, denoting Eastern Asia as the "farthest" of the three "easts", beyond the Near East and the Middle East. For the same reason, ancient Chinese people called western countries "Tàixī ()"—i.e. anything further west than the Indian subcontinent. The term is no longer commonly used, as it connotes the "orientalism" of the 19th century as described by Edward Said. From the 1960s onward terms like East Asia and the Orient had become more common. East Asia remains the common term for the region today.

Popularisation

The term ''Far East'' was popularized in the English language during the period of the British Empire as a blanket term for lands to the east of British India. Prior to World War I, the ''Near East'' referred to relatively nearby lands of the Ottoman Empire, ''Middle East'' to northwestern South Asia and Central Asia, and ''Far East'' for countries along the western Pacific Ocean and countries along the eastern Indian Ocean. Many European languages have analogous terms, such as the French ''Extrême-Orient'', Spanish ''Extremo Oriente'', Portuguese ''Extremo Oriente'', German ''Ferner Osten'', Italian ''Estremo Oriente'', Polish ''Daleki Wschód'', and Dutch ''Verre Oosten''.

Cultural as well as geographic meaning

Significantly, the term evokes cultural as well as geographic separation; the ''Far East'' is not just geographically distant, but also culturally exotic. It never refers, for instance, to the culturally Western nations of Australia and New Zealand, which lie even farther to the east of Europe than East Asia itself. This combination of cultural and geographic subjectivism was well illustrated in 1939 by the Prime Minister of Australia, R. G Menzies. Reflecting upon his country's geopolitical concerns with the onset of war, Menzies commented that:

"The problems of the Pacific are different. What Great Britain calls the Far East is to us the near north."

''Far East'' in its usual sense is comparable to terms such as ''the Orient'', which means East; the ''Eastern world''; or simply the ''East''. South East Asia and the Russian Far East might now be included in the Far East to some extent.

Concerning the term, John K. Fairbank and Edwin O. Reischauer, professors of East Asian Studies at Harvard University, wrote (in East Asia: The Great Tradition): "When Europeans traveled far to the east to reach Cathay, Japan and the Indies, they naturally gave those distant regions the general name 'Far East.' Americans who reached China, Japan and Southeast Asia by sail and steam across the Pacific could, with equal logic, have called that area the 'Far West.' For the people who live in that part of the world, however, it is neither 'East' nor 'West' and certainly not 'Far.' A more generally acceptable term for the area is 'East Asia,' which is geographically more precise and does not imply the outdated notion that Europe is the center of the civilized world."

Today, the term remains in the names of some longstanding institutions, including the Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok, Far Eastern University in the City of Manila, and the Far East University in South Korea. Furthemore, the United Kingdom and United States of America have historically used ''Far East'' for several military units and commands in the region:

British Far East Command

RAF Far East Air Force

U.S. Far East Air Force

The U.S. Far East Network

Territories and regions conventionally included under the term ''Far East''

andterritory, with flag ! Area(km²) ! Population(2008 est.) ! Population density(per km²) ! Capital ! Government ! Currency ! Official languages ! Coat of Arms |- !colspan="9" align="center" bgcolor="#F0F8FF"|East Asia |- | | align="right" | 9,598,094 | align="right" | 1,370,536,875 | align="right" | 161.0 | Beijing | Single-party led state,Socialist republic | Yuan (Renminbi) | Chinese | |- | | align="right" | 1,104 | align="right" | 6,985,200 | align="right" | 6,352.0 | Hong Kong | One country, two systems | Hong Kong dollar | Chinese, English | |- | | align="right" | 377,873 | align="right" | 127,433,494 | align="right" | 337.0 | Tokyo | Parliamentary democracy,Constitutional monarchy | Yen | NoneJapanese as ''de facto'' | |- | | align="right" | 28.6 | align="right" | 520,400 | align="right" | 17,310.0 | Macau | One country, two systems | Macanese pataca | Cantonese, Portuguese | |- | | align="right" | 1,564,116 | align="right" | 2,951,786 | align="right" | 1.7 | Ulaanbaatar | Parliamentary republic | Tögrög | Mongolian | |- | | align="right" | 120,540 | align="right" | 23,301,725 | align="right" | 190.0 | Pyongyang | Juche,Socialist Republic | North Korean won | Korean | |- | | align="right" | 100,032 | align="right" | 49,044,790 | align="right" | 493.0 | Seoul | Presidential republic | Won | Korean | |- | | align="right" | 36,188 | align="right" | 22,911,292 | align="right" | 633.12 | Taipei | Semi-presidential system | New Taiwan dollar | Mandarin with large use of Taiwanese | |- !colspan="9" align="center" bgcolor="#F0F8FF"|Southeast Asia |- | | align="right" | 5,765 | align="right" | 381,371 | align="right" | 66.0 | Bandar Seri Begawan | Absolute Islamic Sultanate | Brunei dollar | Malay, Bruneian | |- | | align="right" | 181,035 | align="right" | 14,241,640 | align="right" | 78.0 | Phnom Penh | Constitutional monarchy | Riel | Khmer | |- | | align="right" | 15,410 | align="right" | 1,115,000 | align="right" | 64.0 | Dili | Parliamentary republic | U.S. Dollar / Centavo coins | Tetum and Portuguese | |- | | align="right" | 1,919,588 | align="right" | 237,512,355 | align="right" | 123.8 | Jakarta | Presidential republic | Rupiah | Indonesian | |- | | align="right" | 236,800 | align="right" | 6,521,998 | align="right" | 25.0 | Vientiane | Socialist Republic | Kip | Lao | |- | | align="right" | 329,847 | align="right" | 27,730,000 | align="right" | 83.0 | Kuala Lumpur | Federal constitutional monarchy, Parliamentary democracy | Ringgit | Malay | |- | | align="right" | 676,578 | align="right" | 55,390,000 | align="right" | 75.0 | Naypyidaw | Military junta | Kyat | Burmese | |- | | align="right" | 462,840 | align="right" | 6,732,000 | align="right" | 14.5 | Port Morseby | Unitary parliamentaryconstitutional monarchy | Kina | Hiri Motu, Tok Pisin, and English | |- | | align="right" | 300,000 | align="right" | 90,500,000 | align="right" | 295.0 | Manila | Unitary presidentialconstitutional republic | Peso (Piso) | Filipino and English | |- | | align="right" | 707.1 | align="right" | 4,588,600 | align="right" | 6,489.0 | Singapore | Parliamentary republic | Singapore dollar | Malay, English, Mandarin, and Tamil | |- | | align="right" | 513,115 | align="right" | 63,038,247 | align="right" | 122.0 | Bangkok | Parliamentary democracy, Constitutional monarchy | Baht | Thai | |- | | align="right" | 331,690 | align="right" | 86,116,559 | align="right" | 253.0 | Hanoi | Socialist Republic | đồng | Vietnamese | |- !colspan="9" align="center" bgcolor="#F0F8FF"|North Asia |- | Russian Far East (Russia) | align="right" | 6,215,900 | align="right" | 6,692,865 | align="right" | 3.0 | Moscow | Federal semi-presidential republic | Ruble | Russian and 27 other co-official languages | |}

Cities

See also

Sinosphere

Indosphere

Four Asian Tigers

East Asia

South Asia

Southeast Asia

Russian Far East

Spanish East Indies

Far Eastern Economic Review

Y-DNA haplogroups by populations of East and Southeast Asia

Notes

References

Ankerl, Guy (2000). ''Coexisting Contemporary Civilizations: Arabo-Muslim, Bharati, Chinese, and Western''. Geneva: INU Press. ISBN 2-88155-004-5.

Whitaker, Brian (February 23, 2004). "From Turkey to Tibet". ''The Guardian''.

Category:Asia

ar:شرق أقصى an:Estremo Orient frp:Èxtrèmo-Oriant az:Uzaq Şərq zh-min-nan:Oán-tang be:Далёкі Усход be-x-old:Далёкі Ўсход bs:Daleki istok bg:Далечен Изток ca:Extrem Orient cv:Инçет Хĕвелтухăç cs:Dálný východ da:Fjernøsten de:Ferner Osten et:Kaug-Ida es:Extremo Oriente eu:Ekialde Urruna fa:خاور دور fr:Extrême-Orient fy:Fiere Easten gl:Extremo Oriente ko:극동 hr:Daleki istok id:Timur Jauh is:Austurlönd fjær it:Estremo Oriente he:המזרח הרחוק ku:Rojhelata Dûr lv:Tālie Austrumi hu:Távol-Kelet ms:Timur Jauh mn:Алс Дорнод nl:Verre Oosten ja:極東 no:Det fjerne østen nn:Det fjerne Austen pnb:مشرق بعید pl:Daleki Wschód pt:Extremo Oriente ro:Orientul Îndepărtat ru:Дальний Восток sah:Уһук Илин sq:Lindja e Largët scn:Livanti stremu simple:Far East sl:Daljni vzhod sr:Далеки исток sh:Daleki Istok sv:Fjärran östern tt:Ерак Көнчыгыш th:ตะวันออกไกล tr:Uzak Doğu tk:Uzak Gündogar uk:Далекий Схід vi:Viễn Đông wo:Penku gu Sori wuu:远东 zh-yue:遠東 zh:遠東

!honorific-prefix	The Honorable
Name	Joseph Stiglitz
Honorific-suffix	ForMemRS FBA
Order	17th Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors
Term start	1995
Term end	1997
President	Bill Clinton
Predecessor	Laura Tyson
Successor	Janet Yellen
Office2	World Bank Chief Economist
Term start2	1997
Term end2	2000
Preceded2	Michael Bruno
Succeeded2	Nicholas Stern
Birth date	February 09, 1943
Birth place	Gary, Indiana
Party	Democratic
Spouse	Anya Schiffrin
Alma mater	Amherst CollegeMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Profession	Economist }}

{{infobox economist | school tradition	New Keynesian economics | color darkorange | field Macroeconomics, Public Economics, Information Economics | influences John Maynard Keynes, Robert Solow | opposed | influenced Paul Krugman, Jason Furman | contributions Screening, Taxation, Unemployment | repec_prefixe |repec_idpst33 }}

Joseph Eugene Stiglitz, ForMemRS, FBA, (born February 9, 1943) is an American economist and a professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the John Bates Clark Medal (1979). He is also the former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. He is known for his critical view of the management of globalization, free-market economists (whom he calls "free market fundamentalists") and some international institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

In 2000, Stiglitz founded the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD), a think tank on international development based at Columbia University. Since 2001, he has been a member of the Columbia faculty, and has been a University Professor since 2003. He also chairs the University of Manchester's Brooks World Poverty Institute and is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Stiglitz is also an honorary professor at Tsinghua University School of Public Policy and Management and a member of the Executive and Supervisory Committee (ESC) of CERGE-EI. Stiglitz is one of the most frequently cited economists in the world.

Biography

Stiglitz was born in Gary, Indiana, to Jewish parents, Charlotte and Nathaniel Stiglitz. From 1960 to 1963, he studied at Amherst College, where he was a highly active member of the debate team and President of the Student Government. He went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for his fourth year as an undergraduate, where he later pursued graduate work. His undergraduate degree was awarded from Amherst College. From 1965 to 1966, he moved to the University of Chicago to do research under Hirofumi Uzawa who had received an NSF grant. He studied for his PhD from MIT from 1966 to 1967, during which time he also held an MIT assistant professorship. The particular style of MIT economics suited him well - simple and concrete models, directed at answering important and relevant questions. From 1966 to 1970 he was a research fellow at the University of Cambridge: he arrived at Fitzwilliam House as a Fulbright Scholar in 1965 and then won a Tapp Junior Research Fellowship at Gonville and Caius College. In subsequent years, he held academic positions at Yale (1970–1974), Stanford (1974–1976, 1988–2001), Oxford (1976–1979), and Princeton (1979–1988). Stiglitz is now a Professor at Columbia University, with appointments at the Business School, the Department of Economics and the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), and is editor of ''The Economists' Voice'' journal with J. Bradford DeLong and Aaron Edlin. He also gives classes for a double-degree program between Sciences Po Paris and Ecole Polytechnique in 'Economics and Public Policy'. As of 2005 he chairs The Brooks World Poverty Institute at the University of Manchester. Stiglitz is a New-Keynesian economist.

In addition to making numerous influential contributions to microeconomics, Stiglitz has played a number of policy roles. He served in the Clinton Administration as the chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisors (1995 – 1997). At the World Bank, he served as Senior Vice President and Chief Economist (1997 – 2000), in the time when unprecedented protest against international economic organizations started, most prominently with the Seattle WTO meeting of 1999. He was fired by the World Bank for expressing dissent with its policies. He was a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

He is a member of Collegium International, an organization of leaders with political, scientific, and ethical expertise whose goal is to provide new approaches in overcoming the obstacles in the way of a peaceful, socially just and an economically sustainable world. He is also a member of the scientific committee of the Fundacion IDEAS, a Spanish think tank.

Stiglitz has advised American President Barack Obama, but has also been sharply critical of the Obama Administration's financial-industry rescue plan. Stiglitz said that whoever designed the Obama administration's bank rescue plan is "either in the pocket of the banks or they’re incompetent."

In October 2008 he was asked by the President of UN's General Assembly to chair a commission entrusted with drafting a report on the reasons for and solutions to the financial crisis. In response, the commission produced the Stiglitz Report.

On July 25, 2011, Stiglitz participated to the "I Foro Social del 15M" organized in Madrid (Spain) expressing his support to the 2011 Spanish protests.

Contributions to economics

Information asymmetry

Stiglitz's most famous research was on screening, a technique used by one economic agent to extract otherwise private information from another. It was for this contribution to the theory of information asymmetry that he shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2001 "for laying the foundations for the theory of markets with asymmetric information" with George A. Akerlof and A. Michael Spence.

Before the advent of models of imperfect and asymmetric information, the traditional neoclassical economics literature had assumed that markets are efficient except for some limited and well defined market failures. More recent work by Stiglitz and others reversed that presumption, to assert that it is only under exceptional circumstances that markets are efficient. Stiglitz has shown (together with Bruce Greenwald) that "whenever markets are incomplete and/or information is imperfect (which are true in virtually all economies), even competitive market allocation is not constrained Pareto efficient". In other words, they addressed "the problem of determining when tax interventions are Pareto-improving. The approach indicates that such tax interventions almost always exist and that equilibria in situations of imperfect information are rarely constrained Pareto optima." Although these conclusions and the pervasiveness of market failures do not necessarily warrant the state intervening broadly in the economy, it makes clear that the "optimal" range of government recommendable interventions is definitely much larger than the traditional "market failure" school recognizes. For Stiglitz, there is no such thing as an invisible hand. According to Stiglitz:

In the opening remarks for his prize acceptance "Aula Magna", Stiglitz said:

In an interview in 2007, Stiglitz explained further:

Efficiency wages: the Shapiro-Stiglitz model

Stiglitz also did research on efficiency wages, and helped create what became known as the ''"Shapiro-Stiglitz model"'' to explain why there is unemployment even in equilibrium, why wages are not bid down sufficiently by job seekers (in the absence of minimum wages) so that everyone who wants a job finds one, and to question whether the neoclassical paradigm could explain involuntary unemployment. The answer to these puzzles was proposed by Shapiro and Stiglitz in 1984: "Unemployment is driven by the information structure of employment". Two basic observations undergird their analysis:

# Unlike other forms of capital, humans can choose their level of effort. # It is costly for firms to determine how much effort workers are exerting.

A full description of this model can be found at the links provided. Some key implications of this model are:

# Wages do not fall enough during recessions to prevent unemployment from rising. If the demand for labour falls, this lowers wages. But because wages have fallen, the probability of 'shirking' (workers not exerting effort) has risen. If employment levels are to be maintained, through a sufficient lowering of wages, workers will be less productive than before through the shirking effect. As a consequence, in the model wages do not fall enough to maintain employment levels at the previous state, because firms want to avoid excessive shirking by their workers. So, unemployment must rise during recessions, because wages are kept 'too high'. # Possible corollary: Wage sluggishness. Moving from one private cost of hiring to another private cost of hiring will require each firm to repeatedly re-optimize wages in response to shifting unemployment rate. Firms cannot cut wages until unemployment rises sufficiently (a coordination problem).

The outcome is never Pareto efficient.

# Each firm employs too few workers because it faces private cost of hiring rather than the social cost — which is equal to and in all cases. This means that firms do not "internalize" the "external" cost of unemployment - they do not factor how large-scale unemployment harms society when assessing their own costs. This leads to a negative externality as marginal social cost exceeds the firm's marginal cost (MSC = Firm's Private Marginal Cost + Marginal External Cost of increased social unemployment) # There are also negative externalities. Each firm increases the asset value of unemployment for all other firms by hiring. But the first problem clearly dominates since the 'natural rate of unemployment' is always too high.

Some possible practical implications of Stiglitz theorems

While the mathematical validity of Stiglitz ''et al.'' theorems are not in question, their practical implications in political economy and their application in real life economic policies have been subject to considerable disagreement and debate. Stiglitz himself seems to be continuously adapting his own political-economic discourse, as we can see from the evolution in his positions as initially stated in ''Whither Socialism?'' (1994) to his own new positions held on his most recent publications.

::Once incomplete and imperfect information are introduced, Chicago-school defenders of the market system cannot sustain descriptive claims of the Pareto efficiency of the real world. Thus, Stiglitz's use of rational-expectations equilibrium assumptions to achieve a more realistic understanding of capitalism than is usual among rational-expectations theorists leads, paradoxically, to the conclusion that capitalism deviates from the model in a way that justifies state action—socialism—as a remedy.

::The effect of Stiglitz's influence is to make economics even more presumptively interventionist than Samuelson preferred. Samuelson treated market failure as the exception to the general rule of efficient markets. But the Greenwald-Stiglitz theorem posits market failure as the norm, establishing "that government could potentially almost always improve upon the market's resource allocation." And the Sappington-Stiglitz theorem "establishes that an ideal government could do better running an enterprise itself than it could through privatization" (Stiglitz 1994, 179).

The objections to the wide adoption of these positions suggested by Stiglitz's discoveries do not come from economics itself but mostly from political scientists and are in the fields of sociology. As David L. Prychitko discusses in his "critique" to ''Whither Socialism?'' (see below), although Stiglitz's main economic insight seems generally correct, it still leaves open great constitutional questions such as how the coercive institutions of the government should be constrained and what the relation is between the government and civil society.

Politics

Clinton administration, 1993 - 1997

Stiglitz joined the Clinton Administration in 1993, serving first as a member during 1993-1995, and then as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during 1995-1997, in which capacity he also served as a member of the cabinet. He became deeply involved in environmental issues, which included serving on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and helping draft a new law for toxic wastes (which was never passed).

Stiglitz's most important contribution in this period was helping define a new economic philosophy, a "third way", which postulated the important, but limited, role of government, that unfettered markets often did not work well, but that government was not always able to correct the limitations of markets. The academic research that he had been conducting over the preceding 25 years provided the intellectual foundations for this "third way".

When President Bill Clinton was re-elected, he asked Stiglitz to continue to serve as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for another term. But he had already been approached by the World Bank, to be its senior vice president for development policy and its chief economist.

As the World Bank began its ten-year review of the transition of the former Communist countries to the market economy it unveiled failures of the countries that had followed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) shock therapy policies - both in terms of the declines in GDP and increases in poverty - that were even worse than the worst that most of its critics had envisioned at the onset of the transition. Clear links existed between the dismal performances and the policies that the IMF had advocated, such as the voucher privatization schemes and excessive monetary stringency. Meanwhile, the success of a few countries that had followed quite different strategies suggested that there were alternatives that could have been followed. The U.S. Treasury had put enormous pressure on the World Bank to silence his criticisms of the policies which they and the IMF had pursued.

Stiglitz always had a poor relationship with Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers. In 2000, Summers successfully petitioned for Stiglitz's removal, supposedly in exchange for World Bank President James Wolfensohn's re-appointment – an exchange that Wolfensohn denies took place. Whether Summers ever made such a blunt demand is questionable – Wolfensohn claims he would "have told him to fuck himself".

Stiglitz resigned from the World Bank in January 2000, a month before his term expired. The Bank's president, James Wolfensohn, announced Stiglitz's resignation in November 1999 and also announced that Stiglitz would stay on as ''"special advisor to the president"'', and would chair the search committee for a successor.

:"Joseph E. Stiglitz said today [Nov. 24, 1999] that he would resign as the World Bank's chief economist after using the position for nearly three years to raise pointed questions about the effectiveness of conventional approaches to helping poor countries."

In this role, he continued criticism of the IMF, and, by implication, the US Treasury Department. In April 2000, in an article for ''The New Republic'', he wrote:

:"''They’ll say the IMF is arrogant. They’ll say the IMF doesn’t really listen to the developing countries it is supposed to help. They’ll say the IMF is secretive and insulated from democratic accountability. They’ll say the IMF’s economic ‘remedies’ often make things worse – turning slowdowns into recessions and recessions into depressions. And they’ll have a point. I was chief economist at the World Bank from 1996 until last November, during the gravest global economic crisis in a half-century. I saw how the IMF, in tandem with the U.S. Treasury Department, responded. And I was appalled''."

The article was published a week before the annual meetings of the World Bank and IMF and provoked a strong response. It proved too strong for Summers and, yet more lethally, Stiglitz's protector-of-sorts at the World Bank, Wolfensohn. Wolfensohn had privately empathised with Stiglitz's views, but this time was worried for his second term, which Summers had threatened to veto. Stanley Fisher, deputy managing director of the IMF, called a special staff meeting and informed at that gathering that Wolfensohn had agreed to fire Stiglitz. Meanwhile, the Bank's External Affairs department told the press that Stiglitz had not been fired, his post had merely been abolished.

In a September 19, 2008 radio interview with Aimee Allison and Philip Maldari on Pacifica Radio's KPFA 94.1 FM in Berkeley, California, Stiglitz implied that President Clinton and his economic advisors would not have backed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) had they been aware of stealth provisions, inserted by lobbyists, that they overlooked.

Initiative for Policy Dialogue

In July 2000 Stiglitz founded the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD), with support of the Ford, Rockefeller, McArthur, and Mott Foundations and the Canadian and Swedish governments, to enhance democratic processes for decision-making in developing countries and to ensure that a broader range of alternatives are on the table and more stakeholders are at the table.

Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System

In 2009, Stiglitz chaired the Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System, informally known as the Stiglitz Commission, which was convened by the President of the United Nations General Assembly "to review the workings of the global financial system, including major bodies such as the World Bank and the IMF, and to suggest steps to be taken by Member States to secure a more sustainable and just global economic order".

Support to the 2011 Spanish Protests

On July 25, 2011, Stiglitz participated to the "I Foro Social del 15M" organized in Madrid (Spain) expressing his support to the 2011 Spanish protests. During an informal speech, he made a brief review of some of the problems in Europe and in the United States, the serious unemployment rate and the situation in Greece. "This is an opportunity for economic contribution social measures," argued Stiglitz, who made a critical speech about the way authorities are handling the political exit to the crisis. He encouraged those present to respond to the "bad ideas", not with indifference, but with "good ideas". "This does not work, you have to change it," he said.

Books

Along with his technical economic publications (he has published over 300 technical articles), Stiglitz is the author of books on issues from patent law to abuses in international trade.

''Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy'' (2010)

In ''Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy'', Stiglitz discusses the causes of the 2008 recession/depression and goes on to propose reforms needed to avoid a repetition of a similar crisis, advocating government intervention and regulation in a number of areas. Among the policy-makers he criticises are George W. Bush, Larry Summers, and Barack Obama.

This book does not require an economics background in order to be of value to the reader. Rather it explains Stiglitz's views on the recent economic crisis in terms which make it relevant to the average homeowner, retirement investor, and voter in the United States. He explains how without fundamental changes in economic policy and regulation the position of the US in the world political and economic arena may deteriorate significantly.

''The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict'' (2008)

''The Three Trillion Dollar War'' examines the full cost of the Iraq War, including many hidden costs. The book also discusses the extent to which these costs will be imposed for many years to come, paying special attention to the enormous expenditures that will be required to care for very large numbers of wounded veterans. Stiglitz was openly critical of George W. Bush at the time the book was released.

''Stability with Growth: Macroeconomics, Liberalization and Development'' (2006)

In ''Stability with Growth: Macroeconomics, Liberalization and Development'', Stiglitz, José Antonio Ocampo (United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, until 2007), Shari Spiegel (Managing Director, Initiative for Policy Dialogue - IPD), Ricardo Ffrench-Davis (Main Adviser, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean - ECLAC) and Deepak Nayyar (Vice Chancellor, University of Delhi) discuss the current debates on macroeconomics, capital market liberalization and development, and develop a new framework within which one can assess alternative policies. They explain their belief that the Washington Consensus has advocated narrow goals for development (with a focus on price stability) and prescribed too few policy instruments (emphasizing monetary and fiscal policies), and places unwarranted faith in the role of markets. The new framework focuses on real stability and long-term sustainable and equitable growth, offers a variety of non-standard ways to stabilize the economy and promote growth, and accepts that market imperfections necessitate government interventions. Policy-makers have pursued stabilization goals with little concern for growth consequences, while trying to increase growth through structural reforms focused on improving economic efficiency. Moreover, structural policies, such as capital market liberalization, have had major consequences for economic stability. This book challenges these policies by arguing that stabilization policy has important consequences for long-term growth and has often been implemented with adverse consequences. The first part of the book introduces the key questions and looks at the objectives of economic policy from different perspectives. The third part presents a similar analysis for capital market liberalization.

''Making Globalization Work'' (2006)

''Making Globalization Work'' surveys the inequities of the global economy, and the mechanisms by which developed countries exert an excessive influence over developing nations. Dr. Stiglitz argues that through tariffs, subsidies, an over-complex patent system and pollution, the world is being both economically and politically destabilised. Stiglitz argues that strong, transparent institutions are needed to address these problems. He shows how an examination of incomplete markets can make corrective government policies desirable.

Stiglitz is an exception to the general pro-globalization view of professional economists, according to economist Martin Wolf. Stiglitz argues that economic opportunities are not widely enough available, that financial crises are too costly and too frequent, and that the rich countries have done too little to address these problems. ''Making Globalization Work'' had sold more than two million copies.

''Fair Trade for All'' (2005)

''New Paradigm for Monetary Economics'' (2004)

''The Roaring Nineties: A New History of the World's Most Prosperous Decade'' (2003)

''The Roaring Nineties"'' is Stiglitz' analysis of the boom and bust of the 1990s. Presented from an insider's point of view, firstly as chair of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors, and later as chief economist of the World Bank, it continues his argument on how misplaced faith in free-market ideology led to the global economic issues of today, with a perceptive focus on US policies.

''Globalization and Its Discontents'' (2002)

In ''Globalization and Its Discontents'', Stiglitz argues that what are often called "developing economies" are, in fact, not developing at all, and puts much of the blame on the IMF.

Stiglitz bases his argument on the themes that his decades of theoretical work have emphasized: namely, what happens when people lack the key information that bears on the decisions they have to make, or when markets for important kinds of transactions are inadequate or don't exist, or when other institutions that standard economic thinking takes for granted are absent or flawed. Stiglitz stresses the point: "Recent advances in economic theory" (in part referring to his own work) "have shown that whenever information is imperfect and markets incomplete, which is to say always, and especially in developing countries, then the invisible hand works most imperfectly." As a result, Stiglitz continues, governments can improve the outcome by well-chosen interventions. Stiglitz argues that when families and firms seek to buy too little compared to what the economy can produce, governments can fight recessions and depressions by using expansionary monetary and fiscal policies to spur the demand for goods and services. At the microeconomic level, governments can regulate banks and other financial institutions to keep them sound. They can also use tax policy to steer investment into more productive industries and trade policies to allow new industries to mature to the point at which they can survive foreign competition. And governments can use a variety of devices, ranging from job creation to manpower training to welfare assistance, to put unemployed labor back to work and cushion human hardship.

Stiglitz complains bitterly that the IMF has done great damage through the economic policies it has prescribed that countries must follow in order to qualify for IMF loans, or for loans from banks and other private-sector lenders that look to the IMF to indicate whether a borrower is creditworthy. The organization and its officials, he argues, have ignored the implications of incomplete information, inadequate markets, and unworkable institutions—all of which are especially characteristic of newly developing countries. As a result, Stiglitz argues, the IMF has often called for policies that conform to textbook economics but do not make sense for the countries to which the IMF is recommending them. Stiglitz seeks to show that these policies have been disastrous for the countries that have followed them.

''Whither Socialism?''

''Whither Socialism?'' is based on Stiglitz's Wicksell Lectures, presented at the Stockholm School of Economics in 1990 and presents a summary of information economics and the theory of markets with imperfect information and imperfect competition, as well as being a critique of both free market and market socialist approaches (see Roemer critique, op. cit.). Stiglitz explains how the neoclassical, or Walrasian model (''"Walrasian economics"'' refers to the result of the process which has given birth to a formal representation of Adam Smith's notion of the "invisible hand", along the lines put forward by Leon Walras and encapsulated in the general equilibrium model of Arrow-Debreu), may have wrongly encouraged the belief that market socialism could work. Stiglitz proposes an alternative model, based on the information economics established by the Greenwald-Stiglitz theorems.

One of the reasons Stiglitz sees for the critical failing in the standard neoclassical model, on which market socialism was built, is its failure to consider the problems that arise from lack of perfect information and from the costs of acquiring information. He also identifies problems arising from its assumptions concerning completeness.

Papers and conferences

Stiglitz wrote a series of papers and held a series of conferences explaining how such information uncertainties may have influence on everything from unemployment to lending shortages. As the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton Administration and former chief economist at the World Bank, Stiglitz was able to put some of his views into action. For example, he was an outspoken critic of quickly opening up financial markets in developing countries. These markets rely on access to good financial data and sound bankruptcy laws, but he argued that many of these countries didn't have the regulatory institutions needed to ensure that the markets would operate soundly.

He co-authored a paper titled "Implications of the New Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Risk-Based Capital Standard" with Peter Orszag in 2002 in which they concluded "on the basis of historical experience, the risk to the government from a potential default on GSE debt is effectively zero."

Private life

Stiglitz married for the third time on October 28, 2004, to Anya Schiffrin, who works at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.

Publications

; Books:

2010, ''Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy'' ISBN 978-0393075960, W. W. Norton.

2010, ''Time for a Visible Hand: Lessons from the 2008 World Financial Crisis'' ISBN 978-0-19-957880-1, edited with Stephany Griffith-Jones and José Antonio Ocampo, Oxford University Press, 2010

2008, ''The Three Trillion Dollar War'' ISBN 978-0-39-306701-9; by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, W. W. Norton.

2006, ''Making Globalization Work'' ISBN 0-393-06122-1, Penguin Books, August 2006.

2006, ''Stability with Growth: Macroeconomics, Liberalization, and Development'' ISBN 0-19-928814-3 (Initiative for Policy Dialogue Series C); by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Jose Antonio Ocampo, Shari Spiegel, Ricardo Ffrench-Davis, and Deepak Nayyar; Oxford University Press 2006

1996, ''Whither Socialism ?'' Stiglitz, Joseph E., (Wicksell Lectures), MIT Press, January 1996.

2000, ''Frontiers of Development Economics: The Future in Perspective'', edited with Gerald M. Meier, World Bank, May 2000.

2001, ''Rethinking the East Asian Miracle'', edited with Shahid Yusuf, World Bank and Oxford University Press.

2002, ''Principles of Macroeconomics'', third edition, with Carl E. Walsh, W.W. Norton & Company, March 2002.

2002, ''Economics'', Third Edition, with Carl E. Walsh, W.W. Norton & Company, April 2002.

2002, ''Peasants Versus City-Dwellers: Taxation and the Burden of Economic Development'', with Raaj K. Sah, Oxford University Press, April 2002.

2002, ''Globalization and Its Discontents'', W.W. Norton & Company, June 2002.

2003,''Towards a New Paradigm in Monetary Economics'', with Bruce Greenwald, Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. Description and chapter-preview links.

2003, ''The Roaring Nineties'', W.W. Norton & Company, forthcoming in October 2003.

''Fair Trade for All: How Trade Can Promote Development'' (Initiative for Policy Dialogue Series C)– by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Andrew Charlton; Hardcover

2000, 3rd ed. ''Economics of the Public Sector.''

2002, ''The Rebel Within: Joseph Stiglitz and the World Bank'' by Joseph E. Stiglitz (Editor), Ha-Joon Chang (Editor), ISBN 1-898855-91-9, Anthem Press, Wimbledon Publishing Company (Paperback - February 25, 2002)

2005, ''The Development Round Of Trade Negotiations In The Aftermath Of Cancun'' by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Andrew Charlton (Paperback - January 30, 2005)

2005, ''A Chance For The World Bank'' by Joseph P Stiglitz (Foreword), Jozef Ritzen, ISBN 1-84331-162-3, Anthem Press, Wimbledon Publishing Company (Paperback - May 30, 2005)

1986, 'Economics of the Public Sector' by J.E.Stiglitz ISBN 0-393-96651-8, W.W.Norton, New York. (Re-printed 1988, 2000)

1981, 'Theory of Commodity Price Stabilization' by David M.G. Newbery and Joseph E. Stiglitz ISBN 0198284179 ISBN 978-0198284178, Oxford University Press [Hardcover: 512 pages]

''Readings in the Modern Theory of Economic Growth'' by Joseph E. Stiglitz (Editor), Hirofumi Uzawa (Editor)

; Book chapters:

2009. "Regulation and Failure," in David Moss and John Cisternino (eds.), ''New Perspectives on Regulation'', ch. 1, pp. 11-23. Cambridge: The Tobin Project.

2001, New Ideas About Old Age Security: Toward Sustainable Pension Systems in the 21st Century , edited with Robert Holzmann, World Bank, January 2001.

; Selected scholarly articles

2007, "Prizes, Not Patents" post-autistic economics review, issue no. 42

1998, Distinguished lecture on economics in government: The private uses of public interests: Incentives and institutions. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 12, 3–22.

1998, ''Redefining the Role of the State - What should it do ? How should it do it ? And how should these decisions be made?'' Paper presented at the Tenth Anniversary of MITI Research Institute, Tokyo, March 1998.

1996, The World Bank Research Observer: No 2: August 1996 by Joseph Stiglitz

1993, “Post Walrasian and post Marxian economics,” ''Journal of Economic Perspectives'', vol. 7, pp. 109–14

1993, “Market socialism and neoclassical economics,” in Bardhan, P. K. and Roemer, J. E. (eds.), ''Market Socialism. The Current Debate'', New York: Oxford University Press

1989, “Principal and agent,” in J. Eatwell, M. Milgate and P. Newman (eds.), ''The New Palgrave. Allocation, Information and Markets''. New York: W. W. Norton

1987, “The causes and consequences of the dependence of quality on prices”, ''Journal of Economic Literature'', vol. 25, pp. 1–48

1981 (with A. Weiss), "Credit Rationing in Markets with Imperfect Information", ''American Economic Review'', vol. 71, pp. 393–410

1977 (with A.K. Dixit), “Monopolistic Competition and Optimum Product Diversity”, ''American Economic Review'', vol. 67, pp. 297–308

1976 (with M. Rothschild), “Equilibrium in Competitive Insurance Markets: An Essay on the Economics of Imperfect Information”, ''Quarterly Journal of Economics'', vol. 90, pp.  629–650.

1974, “Incentives and Risk Sharing in Sharecropping”, ''Review of Economic Studies'', Vol. 41, No. 2, 219-255.

1974, “Alternative Theories of Wage Determination and Unemployment in LDCs: The Labour Turnover Model”, ''Quarterly Journal of Economics'', vol. 81, pp. 194–227

1971 (with M. Rothschild), “Increasing Risk: II. Its Economic Consequences”, ''Journal of Economic Theory'', Vol. 3, pp. 66–84

1970 (with M. Rothschild), “Increasing Risk: I. A Definition”, ''Journal of Economic Theory'', Vol. 2, pp. 225–243

; Articles in popular press:

2011, "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%", Vanity Fair, May 2011

2010, Review of

2009, "Wall Street’s Toxic Message", Vanity Fair, July 2009

2009, "America's socialism for the rich", The Guardian, June 2009

2009, "Capitalist Fools", Vanity Fair, January 2009

2007, "The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush", Vanity Fair, December 2007 Issue

2007, Where is the World Going To, Mr. Stiglitz? directed by Jacques Sarasin, First Run Features.

2002, "Implications of the New Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Risk-based Capital Standard", for FannieMae Volume I, Issue 2 March 2002

; Video and online sources:

2010, Freefall: Joseph Stiglitz at the Commonwealth Club

2008, The Three Trillion Dollar War a panel discussion with Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes regarding their new book, `''The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict''.` Feb 28, 2008 at Columbia University.

2007, Where is the World Going To, Mr. Stiglitz? directed by Jacques Sarasin, First Run Features.

World Bank Video presentation

Online access to Stiglitz published papers, at his own website

See also

List of economists

List of Jewish Nobel laureates

References

External links

Joseph E. Stiglitz at Columbia University

* Joseph Stiglitz committee chair profile at Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University

Information and the Change in the Paradigm in Economics 2001 lecture at NobelPrize.org

Profile and Papers at Research Papers in Economics/RePEc

Publications at the National Bureau of Economic Research

Column archives at Project Syndicate

Joseph Stiglitz with Matthew Bishop at the 92nd Street Y, January 2010

Interview at The Commonwealth Club, February 2010

Free Markets and the World Economy with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, July 2010

Category:Academics of the University of Oxford Category:American anti-globalization writers Category:American economists Category:American Nobel laureates Category:Amherst College alumni Category:Ashkenazi Jews Category:Clinton Administration personnel Category:Columbia University faculty Category:Development economists Category:Development specialists Category:New Keynesian economists Category:Fellows of All Souls College, Oxford Category:Fellows of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge Category:Fellows of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Category:Fellows of the British Academy Category:Fellows of the Econometric Society Category:Information economists Category:International development Category:International Panel on Climate Change lead authors Category:Jewish American writers Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Category:Members of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences Category:Nobel laureates in Economics Category:People from Gary, Indiana Category:Princeton University faculty Category:People associated with the University of Manchester Category:Public economists Category:Stanford University faculty Category:United States Council of Economic Advisors Category:World Bank Chief Economists Category:Yale University faculty Category:Keio University faculty Category:1943 births Category:Living people Category:Foreign Members of the Royal Society Category:Faculty of Sciences Po Category:Gerald Loeb Award winners

ar:جوزيف ستيجلز bn:জোসেফ স্টিগ্‌লিট্‌স bg:Джоузеф Стиглиц ca:Joseph Eugene Stiglitz cs:Joseph Stiglitz cy:Joseph Stiglitz de:Joseph E. Stiglitz et:Joseph Stiglitz es:Joseph Stiglitz eo:Joseph E. Stiglitz fr:Joseph Eugene Stiglitz gd:Joseph Stiglitz ko:조지프 스티글리츠 io:Joseph E. Stiglitz id:Joseph E. Stiglitz it:Joseph Stiglitz he:ג'וזף שטיגליץ rw:Joseph Stiglitz la:Iosephus E. Stiglitz lt:Joseph Stiglitz mk:Џозеф Стиглиц mr:जोसेफ स्तिगलित्झ nl:Joseph Eugene Stiglitz ja:ジョセフ・E・スティグリッツ no:Joseph E. Stiglitz pnb:جازف سٹگلٹز pl:Joseph E. Stiglitz pt:Joseph Stiglitz ro:Joseph Stiglitz ru:Стиглиц, Джозеф Юджин sl:Joseph Stiglitz fi:Joseph Stiglitz sv:Joseph Stiglitz th:โจเซฟ สติกลิตส์ tr:Joseph E. Stiglitz uk:Джозеф Стігліц vi:Joseph Stiglitz yo:Joseph E. Stiglitz zh:约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨

name	Charles Sobhraj
father	Hotchand Sobhraj
birthname	Hatchand Bhaonani Gurumukh Charles Sobhraj
alias(es)	The Bikini KillerThe Serpent
birth date	April 06, 1944
birth place	Saigon, Cochinchina, French Indochina (now Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam)
victims	12+
country	Thailand, Nepal, India, Malaysia
beginyear	1975
endyear	1976
apprehended	July 1976
penalty	Life imprisonment }}

Hatchand Bhaonani Gurumukh Charles Sobhraj (born April 6, 1944), better known as Charles Sobhraj, is a serial killer of Indian and Vietnamese origin, who preyed on Western tourists throughout Southeast Asia during the 1970s. Nicknamed "the Serpent" and "the Bikini killer" for his skill at deception and evasion, he allegedly committed at least 12 murders. He was convicted and jailed in India from 1976 to 1997, but managed to live a life of leisure even in prison. After his release, he retired as a celebrity in Paris; he unexpectedly returned to Nepal, where he was arrested, tried and sentenced to life imprisonment on August 12, 2004. The Supreme Court of Nepal has finally convicted him and ordered the life imprisonment, this decision was made on 30 July 2010.

While Sobhraj is widely believed to be a psychopath, his motives for killing differed from those of most serial killers. Sobhraj was not driven to murder by deep-seated, violent impulses, but as a means to sustain his lifestyle of adventure. That, as well as his cunning and cultured personality, made him a celebrity long before his release from prison. Sobhraj enjoyed the attention, charging large amounts of money for interviews and film rights; he has been the subject of four books and three documentaries. His search for attention and his overconfidence in his own intelligence are believed responsible for his return to a country where authorities were still eager to arrest him.

Early years

Sobhraj was born as Gurmukh Sobhraj to an unwed Vietnamese mother and an Indian father (a Sindhi tailor) in Saigon. The father soon deserted the family. The mother blamed the child. Stateless at first, he was adopted by his mother's new boyfriend, a French army lieutenant stationed in Indochina. However, he was neglected in favour of the couple's later children. Sobhraj continued to move back and forth between France and Indochina with the family, not feeling at home in either place. As a teenager he developed personality problems and turned to petty crime.

Sobhraj received his first jail sentence (for burglary) in 1963, serving at Poissy prison near Paris However, not only did he weather the harsh conditions of jail, he managed to manipulate the prison official into granting him special favours like being allowed to keep books in his cell, etc. At around the same time he met and endeared himself to Felix d'Escogne, a wealthy young man and prison volunteer.

After being paroled, Sobhraj moved in with d'Escogne and shared his time between moving in the high society of Paris and the criminal underworld. He soon started accumulating riches through a series of scams and burglaries. During this time, he met and began a relationship with Chantal Compagnon who was from a conservative Parisian family. On the night he proposed to her, Sobhraj was arrested for evading police while driving a stolen car. He was sentenced back to prison time in Poissy for eight months. Chantal remained supportive during his prison time. Sobhraj and Chantal were married upon his release.

Soon after, facing mounting suspicions by French authorities, he and a now pregnant Chantal left France for Asia to escape arrest. After travelling through Eastern Europe on fake documents and robbing people who befriended them, they arrived in Bombay in 1970. Here Chantal gave birth to a baby girl. While in Bombay, the couple made a good impression on the expatriate community there. In the meantime, Sobhraj resumed his criminal lifestyle by running a car theft and smuggling operation. The profits from this operation of which were used towards his growing gambling addiction.

In 1970, Sobhraj was arrested and imprisoned after an unsuccessful armed robbery attempt on a jewellery store in Hotel Ashoka. Sobhraj did manage to escape with Chantal's help and faking illness, but they were re-captured shortly afterwards. He borrowed money for bail from his father in Saigon and soon after fled to Kabul in Afghanistan.

In Kabul, the couple continued robbing tourists on the "hippie trail" only to be arrested once again. But Sobhraj escaped, the same way he had in India, feigning illness and drugging the hospital guard. This time Sobhraj fled to Iran leaving his family behind. Chantal, although still loyal to him, wishing to leave their criminal past behind, returned to France and vowed never to see him again.

Sobhraj spent the next two years on the run, using as many as 10 stolen passports and visiting several countries in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. He was joined in Istanbul by André, his younger brother. Sobhraj and André quickly became partners in many crimes in both Turkey and Greece. Both were eventually arrested in Athens. After an identity-switch plan gone wrong, Sobhraj escaped in his usual manner, but his brother was left behind. André was turned over to the Turkish police by Greek authorities. He had to serve an 18-year sentence.

Murders

On the run again, Sobhraj financed his lifestyle by posing as a mysterious drug dealer to impress tourists and defrauding them when they let their guard down. In Thailand, he met Marie-Andrée Leclerc from Lévis, Quebec, one of many tourists looking for adventure in the East. Subjugated by Sobhraj's personality, Leclerc quickly became his most devoted follower, turning a blind eye to his crimes and his philandering with local women.

Sobhraj started gathering followers by helping them out of difficult situations, indebting them to him while he actually was the very cause of their misery. In one case, he helped two former French policemen, named Yannick and Jacques, to recover their passports that he himself had stolen; in another, he provided shelter and comfort to another Frenchman named Dominique Rennelleau, whose apparent dysentery illness was actually the results of poisoning by Sobhraj. He was also joined by a young Indian named Ajay Chowdhury, a fellow criminal who became his lieutenant. Sobhraj wanted to start a criminal "family" of sorts, in the style of Charles Manson's.

It was then that Sobhraj and Chowdhury committed their first (known) murders in 1975. Most of the victims had spent some time with the "clan" before their deaths and were, according to some investigators, potential recruits who had threatened to expose Sobhraj. The first victim was a young woman from Seattle, Teresa Knowlton, who was found burned like many of Sobhraj's other victims. Soon thereafter, a young American Jennie Bollivar, was found drowned in a tidal pool in the Gulf of Thailand, wearing a flowered bikini. It was only months later that the autopsy and forensic evidence revealed the drowning to be murder.

The next victim was a young, nomadic Sephardic Jew named Vitali Hakim, whose burned body was found on the road to the Pattaya resort where Sobhraj and his clan were staying.

Dutch students Henk Bintanja, 29, and his fiancée Cornelia Hemker, 25, were invited to Thailand after meeting Sobhraj in Hong Kong. Just as he had done to Dominique, Sobhraj poisoned them, and then nurtured them back to health to gain their obedience. As they recovered, Sobhraj was visited by his previous victim Hakim's French girlfriend, Charmayne Carrou, coming to investigate her boyfriend's disappearance. Fearing exposure, Sobhraj and Chowdhury quickly hustled the couple out; their bodies were found strangled and burned on December 16, 1975. Soon after, Carrou was found drowned in circumstances similar to Jennie's, and wearing a similar-styled swimsuit. Although the murders of both women were not connected by investigations at the time, they would later earn Sobhraj the nickname of "the bikini killer."

On December 18, the day the bodies of Bintanja and Hemker were identified, Sobhraj and Leclerc entered Nepal using the couple's passports. There they met and, on December 21–22, murdered Canadian Laurent Ormond Carrière, 26, and Californian Connie Bronzich, 29. (The two victims were incorrectly identified in some sources as Laddie DuParr and Annabella Tremont.) Sobhraj and Leclerc then returned to Thailand, once again using their latest victims' passports before their bodies could be identified.

Upon his return to Thailand, Sobhraj discovered that his three French companions had started to suspect him, found documents belonging to the murder victims, and fled to Paris after notifying local authorities.

Sobhraj then went to Calcutta, where he murdered Israeli scholar Avoni Jacob for his passport, and used it to move to Singapore with Leclerc and Chowdhury, then to India and - rather boldly - back to Bangkok in March 1976. There they were interrogated by Thai policemen in connection with the murders, but easily let off the hook because authorities feared that the negative publicity accompanying a murder trial would harm the country's tourist trade.

Not so easily silenced, however, was Dutch embassy diplomat Herman Knippenberg, who was investigating the murder of the two Dutch backpackers, and suspected Sobhraj even though he did not know his real name. Knippenberg started to build a case against him, partly with the help of Sobhraj's neighbour. Given police permission to conduct his own search of Sobhraj's apartment (a full month after the suspect had left the country), Knippenberg found a great deal of evidence, such as victims' documents and poison-laced medicines. He would from then on accumulate evidence against Sobhraj for decades, despite the lack of cooperation by law enforcement.

The trio's next stop was in Malaysia, where Chowdhury was sent on a gem-stealing errand, and disappeared after giving the jewels to Sobhraj. No trace of him was ever found, and it is widely believed that Sobhraj murdered his former accomplice before leaving with Leclerc to sell the jewels in Geneva. However, some sources say that Chowdhury was spotted in Germany much later and the hunt for him is still on.

Soon back in Asia, Sobhraj started rebuilding his clan, starting in Bombay with two lost Western women named Barbara Sheryl Smith and Mary Ellen Eather. His next victim was Frenchman Jean-Luc Solomon, who succumbed to the poison intended to incapacitate him during a robbery.

In July 1976 in New Delhi, Sobhraj and the three women tricked a tour group of post-graduate French students into accepting them as guides. He then drugged them with pills which he pretended were anti-dysentery medicine. However, when the drugs started acting too quickly and the students started dropping unconscious where they stood, three of them quickly realized what was happening and overcame Sobhraj, leading to his capture by police. During interrogation, Barbara and Mary Ellen quickly cracked and confessed everything. Sobhraj was charged with the murder of Solomon, and all four were sent to Tihar prison outside New Delhi while awaiting formal trial.

Prison time

Conditions inside the notorious prison were unbearable; both Barbara and Mary Ellen attempted suicide during the two years before their trial. Sobhraj, however, had entered with precious gems concealed in his body and was experienced in bribing captors and living comfortably in jail.

Sobhraj turned his trial into a show, hiring and firing lawyers at whim, bringing in his recently-paroled and still-loyal brother André to help, and eventually going on a hunger strike. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison instead of the expected death penalty. Leclerc was found guilty of the drugging of the French students, then later paroled and returned to Canada when she developed ovarian cancer. She was still claiming her innocence, and reportedly still loyal to Sobhraj, when she died at home in April 1984.

Sobhraj's systematic bribery of prison guards at Tihar reached outrageous levels. He led a life of luxury inside the jail, with TV, and gourmet food, having befriended both the guards and the prisoners. He would walk in and out of jail whenever he wanted. Revelling in his notoriety, he gave interviews to Western authors and journalists, such as ''Oz'' magazine's Richard Neville in the late 1970s, and Alan Dawson in 1984. He freely talked about his murders, while never actually admitting to them, and pretended that his actions were in retaliation against Western imperialism in Asia.

He also needed to find a way to ''prolong'' his sentence, since the 20-year Thai arrest warrant against him would still be valid on his intended release date, leading to his deportation and almost certain execution. So in March 1986, on his tenth year in prison, he threw a big party for his prisoner and guard friends and, having drugged them with sleeping pills, walked out of the jail.

Shobhraj was quickly tracked down and caught in Goa by Inspector Madhukar Zende of the Mumbai police and had his prison term prolonged by 10 years, just as he had hoped. On February 17, 1997, 52-year old Sobhraj was released, with most warrants, evidence and even witnesses against him long lost. Without any country to deport him to, Indian authorities let him return to France.

Celebrity and re-capture

Sobhraj retired to a comfortable life in suburban Paris. He hired a publicity agent and charged large sums of money for interviews and photographs. He is said to have charged over $15 million (according to Advocate. Bishwa Lal Shrestha who is Ex. Inspector and investigated the case, framed the charge sheet and registered the case in court) for the rights to a movie based on his life.

On September 17, 2003 Sobhraj was unexpectedly spotted in a street of Kathmandu by a journalist. The journalist quickly reported this to the Nepalese authorities who arrested him two days later in the casino of the Yak and Yeti hotel. Sobhraj's motives for returning to Nepal remain unknown. He was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Kathmandu district court on August 20, 2004 for the 1975 murders of Bronzich and Carrière. Most of the photocopy evidence used against him in this case was drawn from that painstakingly gathered by Knippenberg (the original then gem dealer) and Interpol.

Sobhraj appealed against the conviction claiming that he was sentenced without trial. His lawyer also announced that Chantal, Sobhraj's wife in France, was filing a case before the European Court of Human Rights against the French government, for refusing to provide him with any assistance.

Sobhraj's conviction was confirmed by the Kathmandu Court of Appeals in 2005.

Current status

News media reported that Sobhraj's lawyer had appealed to the current French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, for intervention with Nepal. In 2008, Sobhraj announced his engagement to Nihita Biswas (aged 20) from Nepal. On 7 July 2008, issuing a press release through his fiancée Nihita, he claimed that he was never convicted of murder by any court and asked the media not to refer to him as a serial killer. Later, it was claimed that he married his fiancée on October 9, 2008, on the occasion of Bada Dashami, a Nepalese festival, in a much famed, but not publicised, wedding that took place in the jail itself. On the following day, Nepalese jail authorities dismissed the claim of his marriage. They said that Nihita and her family had been allowed to conduct a tika ceremony, along with the relatives of hundreds of other prisoners. They further claimed that it was not a wedding but part of the ongoing Dashain festival, when elders put the vermilion mark on the foreheads of those younger to them to signify their blessings.

In July 2010, the Supreme Court of Nepal postponed the verdict on an appeal filed by Sobhraj against a district court's verdict sentencing him to life imprisonment for the murder of American backpacker Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975. Sobhraj had appealed against the district court's verdict in 2006, calling it unfair and accusing the judges of racism while handing out the sentence.

On July 30, 2010 the Nepalese Supreme Court upheld the verdict issued by the district court in Kathmandu of a 20-year life term for the murder of US citizen Connie Jo Bronzich and another year plus a Rs 2,000 fine for using a fake passport to travel. The seizure of all his properties was also ordered by the court. His mother-in-law/lawyer and his wife, Nihita, expressed that they were dissatisfied with the verdict and Thapa claimed that Sobhraj had been "denied" justice.

Sobraj currently has another case pending against him in the Bhaktapur district court for the murder of Laurent Armand Carrière, a Canadian-born tourist.

Bibliography

In popular culture

The made for TV movie ''Shadow of the Cobra'' (1989) is based on Sobhraj

On the TV series ''Law & Order: Criminal Intent'', the character of Nicole Wallace, portrayed by Olivia d'Abo, is loosely based on Marie-Andrée Leclerc. In the episode "Slither" (which was originally to be titled "Serpentine"), Michael York appears as Bernard Fremont, Wallace's mentor and former partner-in-crime, who is clearly based on Sobhraj

Reports are on that Madhur Bhandarkar, who made popular reality films in Bollywood is on talks to make a biopic of Charles Sobhraj.

The punk band Bikini Kill references Sobhraj's nickname.

The video game series Dragon Quest references the nickname Bikini Killer with the spell "Bikill" which appears in almost every title in the series. The coded/modified nature of this reference indicates a certain underground phenomenon/awareness of Sobhraj's story and legacy. The spell makes a character's attacking ability much more vigorous, similar to the spell "Berserk" later incorporated in Final Fantasy games.

See also

Joshi-Abhyankar serial murders

Notes

External links

SC upholds Sobhraj conviction

Cop who investigated 1975 murders settles score as lawyer

Inspector who foiled Sobhraj

Return of the Serpent

All about Charles Sobraj, by Mark Gribben on ''Crime Library''

Asia's most infamous serial killer gets life...

Shadow of the Cobra on IMDb

Category:1944 births Category:Living people Category:French serial killers Category:French prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment Category:Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by Nepal Category:Prisoners and detainees of India Category:French people imprisoned abroad Sobraj, Charles Sobraj, Charles Category:French people convicted of murder Category:People convicted of murder by Nepal Category:People convicted of murder by India Category:People convicted of theft Category:Burglars Category:Confidence tricksters

fr:Charles Sobhraj he:צ'ארלס סובראג' nl:Charles Sobhraj pl:Charles Sobhraj sv:Charles Sobhraj

Name	Husain Haqqaniحسین حقّانی
Office	Pakistani Ambassador to the United States
Term start	13 April 2008
Predecessor	Mahmud Ali Durrani
Office2	Pakistani Ambassador to Sri Lanka
Term start2	11 May 1992
Term end2	28 June 1993
Predecessor2	Tariq Mir
Successor2	Tariq Altaf
Birth date
Birth place	Karachi, Pakistan
Spouse	Farahnaz Ispahani
Children	3 daughters1 son
Profession	Journalist
Religion	Islam
Alma mater	University of Karachi }}

Husain Haqqani or Hussain Haqqani (Urdu: حسین حقّانی) (born July 1, 1956) is the Pakistan Ambassador to the United States, appointed by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani in April 2008. Previously, he has held numerous high-ranking positions in and out of government, including as adviser to three former Pakistani prime ministers and as envoy to Sri Lanka, and has been a prominent journalist, scholar and educator. His appointment in 2008 marked a return to government service after being exiled in 1999 following criticisms against the government of then-President Pervez Musharraf.

Early life, personal and family

Haqqani was born in Karachi and was raised in a conservative but educated family in Malir, which is a relatively poor suburb of Karachi.

He began his interest in journalism while in high school. In college, he became president of the student union. He would frequently visit the library at the U.S. consulate, reading volumes of American history. Later, when students wanted to attack the consulate as part of a protest against the United States, Haqqani refused.

Haqqani has an excellent academic record with disctinctions at all stages. He received a B.A. degree with distinction in 1977 and an M.A. degree with distinction in international relations in 1980 from the University of Karachi.

Then in March 2000, he married to Farahnaz Ispahani, a former producer at CNN and MSNBC and current member of the Pakistani parliament, and the granddaughter of Mirza Abol Hassan Ispahani, Pakistan's first ambassador to Washington. Their official residence in Washington was purchased and donated by her grandfather. .

He has lived in the United States since 2002, and has developed a taste for the Boston Red Sox baseball team and news programs.

Government and political career

At the time of his appointment as ambassador on April 3, 2008, Haqqani was viewed as a respected figure on the world stage, coming to the post well versed in the ways of diplomacy and Washington. He succeeded Mahmud Ali Durrani, who became national security adviser to the Gillani government.

Prior to his appointment, Haqqani had been critical of the Musharraf regime and past U.S. support to Pakistan's military. In 2007, he told the U.S. Congress that Musharraf's decision to remove Pakistan’s chief justice was a grave mistake.

Policy direction

As ambassador, Haqqani has charted a course of increasing predictability in U.S.-Pakistani relations. He links security issues to economic ones, and has commented that the lack of a strategic foundation has plagued U.S.-Pakistani relations since Pakistan’s inception. "The U.S.-Pakistan relationship has gone up and down like a yoyo," according to Haqqani, "and the reason why…is because U.S. strategic planners have never looked upon Pakistan in its own right".

He terms the historical bilateral relationship as "erratic", citing U.S. engagement from the early Cold War to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when the U.S. government backed Afghan fighters by funneling support through the Pakistani channels. He is skeptical that completely stabilizing the relationship can be accomplished during the tenure of one ambassador, but seeks to "lay the foundations of a relationship that is multidimensional: political, military, cultural, economic and social".

He believes that -- in the wake of the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto -- a consensus exists in Pakistan that, to forge a stronger national identity, Pakistani provinces and ethnic groups must continue to unify through democratic processes, but unfortunately democracy in its true sense does not exist at all.

Other experience

Haqqani has been a campaign worker, senior adviser, ambassador, spokesperson and scholar. In 1988, he worked in the political campaign for an alliance led by Nawaz Sharif; In 1990, he was special assistant to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif; from 1990-92, he was special assistant and spokesman for Prime Minister Sharif; from 1992-93, he became one of Pakistan's youngest ambassadors, serving in Sri Lanka; from 1993-95, he was spokesman to Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto; from 1995-96, he was chairman of the House Building Finance Corporation.

From 2004-08, Haqqani was an associate professor for international relations at Boston University. In addition, he co-chaired the Project on Islam and Democracy at the Hudson Institute in Washington, and was editor of the journal ''Current Trends in Islamists Ideology''. Among his numerous writing credits are "Pakistan Between Mosque and Military" for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; "Islam’s Medieval Outposts" for the journal Foreign Policy, and "The Role of Islam in Pakistan’s Future" for Washington Quarterly.

Journalism background

Haqqani worked as a full-time journalist from 1980-88. He covered the war in Afghanistan for Voice of America radio; served as the Pakistan and Afghanistan correspondent for ''Far Eastern Economic Review''; and worked in Hong Kong as the East Asian correspondent for the London-based ''Arabia: the Islamic World Review''.

Since that time, he has steadily contributed op-eds and articles to dozens of publications, including the ''Wall Street Journal'', ''New York Times'', ''Boston Globe'', ''Financial Times'' in London, ''International Herald Tribune'', ''South China Morning Post'', ''Toronto Globe and Mail'', ''Gulf News'' and ''Le Monde''. He has also been a syndicated columnist for the ''Indian Express'' and ''Daily Star'' in Bangladesh; he has appeared regularly on television news shows for BBC, CNN, NBC, PBS, CBS and ABC, commenting on Pakistan, Afghanistan, South Asian affairs, Islamic politics and radicalism.

References

External links

HusainHaqqani.com, unofficial site

Profile at the Embassy of Pakistan in Washington, D.C.

Profile at Boston University, former Associate Professor of International Relations

Profile at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Profile at ''The Washington Diplomat''

Category:1956 births Category:Ambassadors of Pakistan to Sri Lanka Category:Pakistani diplomats Category:University of Karachi alumni Category:Muhajir people Category:Living people Category:Ispahani family Category:Ambassadors to the United States Category:People from Karachi

de:Hussein Haqqani