About Michael Kinsley Michael Kinsley is an editor and columnist at Bloomberg View. His column appears on Fridays. For many years he was the editor of the New Republic and a columnist for the Washington Post. He was the founding Editor of Slate. More about Michael Kinsley Photographer: Glenna Gordon/Bloomberg China Daily, the largest English- language newspaper in China, carried a front-page headline last week: “Village Gratitude Shows Integrity of Task.” Not clear what that’s about, and the opening sentence isn’t much help: “On a hot afternoon, Zhou Yi picked up a bag of freshly boiled eggs that had been left on the doorstep of the committee office in Chaqulak village in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.” I figured this must be some feel-good story ... Continue reading →

Bankia S.A., Banco Popular Espanol S.A. Cut to Junk by S&P Facebook Epic Fail Is Decade’s Worst Large IPO: Chart of the Day By Ilan Kolet and Lee Spears - 2012-05-25T10:01:00Z Facebook Inc. (FB)’s initial public offering, which set a record for technology companies by raising more than $16 billion, also has the distinction of producing the worst return among the largest U.S. deals of the past decade. The CHART OF THE DAY compares the first five days of trading for the 10 largest U.S. IPOs from the past 10 years. Shares of Menlo Park, California-based Facebook have fallen 13 percent since underwriters sold them for $38 on May 17. The decline exceeds the 10 percent drop by MF Global Holdings Inc. in its first ... Continue reading →

China Is a Black Box of Misinformation Illustration by Clay Hickson By Junheng Li 2012-05-23T23:00:34Z To this day, many Chinese people believe that Mao Zedong didn’t know millions of people were starving in the Great Leap Forward. The agricultural production statistics were all rosy, a testament to the success of his new economic policy, while hordes of hungry masses migrated from province to province, chasing false reports of bumper crops. Thirty million or so people starved, in no small part because of the manipulation of economic data. Half a century later, China has the second-largest economy in the world, and the country has lifted about 400 million people out of poverty. The magnitude and speed of urbanization are unprecedented in the history of human civilization. ... Continue reading →

A Greek Exit Could Make the Euro Area Stronger Illustration by Partners and Others By Jacob Kirkegaard 2012-05-22T23:00:00Z A Greek exit from the euro area would inflict heavy damage in Greece and throughout Europe. It could also be one of the best things that ever happened to the currency union. Greece’s repeat parliamentary election next month will serve as a referendum on whether the country should end its 12- year membership in the common currency. An affirmative answer would trigger a cardiac arrest of the Greek economy, as the banking system collapsed and foreign suppliers refused payment in drachmas. The financial system of the euro area, by far Greece’s biggest international creditor, would suffer hundreds of billions of euros in losses. For the European economy ... Continue reading →

About Jeffrey Goldberg Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for the Atlantic, is the author of "Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror." He was formerly a Washington correspondent and a Middle East correspondent for the New Yorker. More about Jeffrey Goldberg A few weeks ago, agents of the Transportation Security Administration assigned to Washington’s Reagan National Airport stopped my mother-in- law, a very nice and unthreatening 79-year-old who was in Washington to lobby on behalf of public libraries, and asked her an enormously rude question. She had just passed through one of the TSA’s advanced imaging machines when an agent asked, rather too loudly: “Are you wearing a sanitary napkin?” My mother-in-law has a fine sense of humor, so she wasn’t terribly offended. “No. Why ... Continue reading →

Is the College Cave Age About to End? (Part 2) Illustration by Keith Shore By Mark C. Taylor 2012-05-20T22:00:59Z Excessive specialization has created a culture of expertise that has distorted higher education and had a negative impact on faculty members, students and the broader society. While global transportation, communications and information technologies have created interconnection, academic disciplines and fields have, paradoxically, become more fragmented and isolated. Universities boast of their global expansion and vision, but they are mostly siloed institutions ill-adapted to a networked world. While academic specialization has long been decried and ridiculed, insufficient attention has been paid to the influence that narrowly defined research has had on undergraduate teaching and the structure of colleges and universities. With online education taking off at traditional ... Continue reading →

Lady Gaga's Belly Button Is the Least of Indonesia's Worries By William Pesek 2012-05-18T19:31:08Z Too Sexy for Indonesia. Lady Gaga can add this bit of infamy to her resume as the nation with the largest Muslim population bars her from performing. It seems she is too vulgar to fit Jakarta's conservative culture. Some in the Philippines also are aggrieved with the singer's plans play Manila later this month. On Friday, Christian youths held protests, complaining that Lady Gaga's costumes are too racy and her lyrics too sexually provocative. And that's fine; taste and decorum are in the eye of the beholder. Malaysia, for example, likes to ban artists who show a bit too much skin, including Beyonce. I just wish there were similar outrage over ... Continue reading →

The Facebook Founder Who Unfriended America Illustration by Bloomberg View By the Editors Thu May 17 00:33:59 GMT 2012 Facebook’s initial public offering reminds us of a story. Once upon a time, there was a young man who fled his homeland (Brazil) because his life was in danger (kidnappers). Like so many before him, he came to the United States. There, in the safety of the freest, most dynamic country on earth, he got a superb education (Harvard), the opportunity to exercise his entrepreneurial zeal (Facebook) -- and the protections of the U.S. legal system to safeguard the fruits of his labor. That man is Eduardo Saverin, age 30, co-founder of Facebook and someone who stands to be worth about $2.89 billion when the company’s ... Continue reading →

Order ‘Big Short’ for an Out-to-Lunch Congress By Zvi Bodie and Cornelius Hurley Tue May 15 23:00:21 GMT 2012 For all the criticism of the Dodd- Frank Act, one thing the law does right is fill the informational and analytical blind spots that allowed our economy to unwittingly approach the precipice of disaster. Little noted among the law’s 2,300 pages and 16 titles is a section creating the Office of Financial Research within the U.S. Treasury Department. The humble pie on which JPMorgan Chase & Co. chief Jamie Dimon is now feasting should be shared generously with those in Congress who would dismantle this valuable arm of government. The OFR has the mission of collecting and analyzing data about the financial system. The results of ... Continue reading →