How the World Works
A farewell to How the World Works
Coverage of politics, the economy, and globalization will continue, but the branded blog will not
Topics: Globalization, How the World Works
Not quite six years ago, Salon encouraged me to launch How the World Works, a hybrid blog/column originally envisioned as “a conversation about globalization.” Some umpteen zillion posts later, the experiment is coming to an end, as part of larger changes at Salon you’ll be hearing about soon.
No, I’m not going anywhere, and yes, I’ll still be writing about most of the same things I currently cover (though maybe with a little bit less emphasis on Washington horse-race politics). There are interesting projects in the works, some of which will incorporate more honest-to-goodness reporting than I’ve been doing for a while. There’ll still be an RSS feed for everything I write, but it’ll be hooked to my byline rather than the title “How the World Works.”
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Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon. On Twitter, @koxinga21. More Andrew Leonard.
Operation treason?
Why markets are tanking: The Fed's new plan admits the economy is in trouble but doesn't come close to fixing it
Topics: Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve, How the World Works
![Operation treason? Operation treason?](http://web.archive.org./web/20121017155923im_/http://media.salon.com/2011/09/placeholder_operation_treason-460x307.jpg)
If the stock market reaction is any indicator, the early reviews of Ben Bernanke’s latest scheme to juice the economy, “Operation Twist,” are negative. At 1 p.m. ET, the Dow Jones industrial average was down nearly 360 points.
Deciphering investor psychology is never straightforward, and particularly so recently, when there are so many potential reasons for fear and panic: our amazingly dysfunctional U.S. Congress, the ongoing European drama, and the steady drumbeat of negative economic indicators. But today’s tremors can be tied to the Fed’s announcements on Wednesday fairly easily.
The statement released by the Federal Open Market Committee was the most downbeat of the entire year to date. After months of telling us that the slowdown was caused by temporary factors that would ameliorate before the end of the year, the Fed was forced to acknowledge that there are “significant downside risks to the economic outlook.”
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Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon. On Twitter, @koxinga21. More Andrew Leonard.
Facebook’s enraging status update
The social media network annoys its users, again, with a confusing revamp. There must be an agenda here, somewhere
Topics: Facebook, How the World Works, Social Media
![Facebook's enraging status update Facebook's enraging status update](http://web.archive.org./web/20121017155923im_/http://media.salon.com/2011/09/facebooks_enraging_status_update-460x307.jpg)
Like, oh, around 750 million other users of Facebook, I logged on to the world’s biggest social media network this morning and was immediately annoyed. Facebook had changed its user interface, again. Gone was the “Most Recent” button, which allowed users to see what their friends have posted in a simple, straightforward, chronological order. Now Facebook was indulging, again, in outright effrontery: employing its own secret algorithmic sauce to highlight what it considered the most important “top stories,” while mixing in other recent posts far below.
Facebook also added a “Ticker” at the top right hand side of the page, which provided a real-time Twitter-like stream of status updates from all my friends. When I first checked it, it was packed with complaints about the new interface change. Judging solely from comments from my friends, people don’t want Facebook deciding what’s most important, Facebook’s suggestions were wrong, irrelevant and insulting, and why oh why oh why can’t Facebook leave a good thing alone?
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Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon. On Twitter, @koxinga21. More Andrew Leonard.
Does Google deserve the Microsoft treatment?
The search engine giant is feeling the antitrust heat. Not all of it is justified -- but some is
Topics: Google, How the World Works
![Does Google deserve the Microsoft treatment? Does Google deserve the Microsoft treatment?](http://web.archive.org./web/20121017155923im_/http://media.salon.com/2011/09/does_google_deserve_the_microsoft_treatment-460x307.jpg)
Here is what happens when one company controls 40 percent of the $30 billion U.S. online advertising market and 65 percent of online search. The knives come out — and they’re sharp.
It’s been a long year for Google. In February, European antitrust regulators launched an investigation into whether Google was using its search results to privilege its own services over those of competitors. In June, the Federal Trade Commission started looking into whether Google’s relationship with handset manufacturers using the Android operating system improperly promoted Google search. In August, Texas’s state attorney general joined the fun. And on Wednesday, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition, and Consumer Rights. The name of the hearing: “The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?”
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Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon. On Twitter, @koxinga21. More Andrew Leonard.
Jennifer Granholm’s plan to fix America
The former Michigan governor bears globalization's worst scars, but still itches for a fight. Watch out, Rick Perry
Topics: China, Globalization, How the World Works, Jennifer Granholm, Rick Perry, U.S. Economy, Unemployment
![Jennifer Granholm's plan to fix America Jennifer Granholm's plan to fix America](http://web.archive.org./web/20121017155923im_/http://media.salon.com/2011/09/placeholderjennifer_granholm-460x307.jpg)
Jennifer Granholm, the former governor of Michigan, has a story she likes to tell about the Chinese. Granholm visited China in March. At one meet-and-greet, a Chinese official buttonholed her and asked when the U.S. was going to implement a national energy policy. By her own account, Granholm hemmed and hawed, mentioning the rise of the Tea Party and the inability of the current Congress “to get its act together.”
Granholm and I are sitting in a corner office of a building on the University of California at Berkeley campus, where Granholm is spending a year of “sabbatical.” She leans over her desk, looks me in the eye, and demonstrates how the the Chinese official rubbed his hands together like a kid unable to contain his glee right before unwrapping Christmas presents. “‘Take your time,’ he tells me,” says Granholm. “‘Take your time.’”
She shakes her head as if in disbelief at how short-sighted the American political establishment has become. Her point is obvious, and oft-repeated during the course of our interview: In a globalized world, the U.S. economy will not thrive unless we get serious about targeting strategically important sectors of the economy. The rest of the world is playing the economic development game for keeps, while the U.S. seems willing to abandon the board all together.
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Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon. On Twitter, @koxinga21. More Andrew Leonard.
Hot spots of the Great Recession
States with high jobless rates are populous and politically important. States with low rates are neither
Topics: Great Recession, How the World Works, U.S. Economy, Unemployment
![Hot spots of the Great Recession Hot spots of the Great Recession](http://web.archive.org./web/20121017155923im_/http://media.salon.com/2011/09/hot_spots_of_the_great_recession-460x307.jpg)
What can we learn about the Great Recession from Friday’s release of state unemployment numbers? Overall, not a whole lot changed in August from July: 26 states reported unemployment rate increases, 12 states recorded rate decreases, and 12 states reported no change at all.
But a look inside the numbers, at the five worst and five best states, is unhappily revealing. The states with the five highest unemployment rates are Nevada (13.4 percent), California (12.1 percent), Michigan (11.2 percent), South Carolina (11.1 percent) and Florida (10.7 percent.) Nevada, California, Michigan and South Carolina all registered unemployment increases in August, compared to July. Florida held even.
The states with the lowest unemployment rates are North Dakota (3.5 percent), Nebraska (4.2 percent), South Dakota (4.7 percent), New Hampshire (5.3 percent) and Oklahoma (5.6 percent.)
The combined population of the five worst states: 73,864,261.
The combined population of the five best states: 8,380,933.
The unavoidable conclusion: Unemployment is bad and getting worse in some of the most highly populated regions of the United States.
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Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon. On Twitter, @koxinga21. More Andrew Leonard.
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