rise

I'd forgotten how good this site is and through it I got back to another I used to skim occasionally (skim, mainly because my economics aren't up to proper understanding). But the discussion about the Economist rings true. For a while I liked the Economist because of the insanely clever captions (oh yeah I are deep), then I got some reasonably good analysis out of it, then it started to get tedious and then it descended into a pro-US stance that seemed disconnected from any proper analysis, or from reality for that matter. The structural imbalances in the US economy are well recognised, but for some reason these didn't seem to matter. And an economy where the gap between the haves and have nots appears to still be widening isn't a good thing either, although the Economist doesn't seem to mind.

A lot of us do mind. Common sense and a fleeting acquaintance with history will tell us that people don't like to be obviously downtrodden forever. A few of those points are made here.
Finally, this is just like being back in Algeria or Burma, where the minute-by-minute doings of President Boumedienne and U Ne Win respectively were breathlessly reported to a downtrodden people looking for relief from their threadbare lives. As they say in the classics, we've come a long way, baby.

Today's title refers to this, not this. But you knew that.

Update: Talk about tales of the bleeding obvious. What did they expect to happen? Oh yes, I remember now, carpeted with roses.