WEF: Red Spider, Black Spider Redux

P. Sainath

The Hindu Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum, at the India Economic Summit in New Delhi on November 14, 2010. Photo: R.V. Moorthy

The audience, organisers, and fightersknow that sham wrestling is not to betaken seriously. But the World Economic Forum takes itself seriously.

The comforting thing about the sham wrestling 'championships' on television is that everybody knows they are a farce. Steroid-stuffed Cro-Magnons stomp the living daylights out of painkiller-primed Neanderthals. Good, unclean fun. The results are safely predictable. You should expect the 600-pound gorilla to overwhelm the 900-pound one in a staggering twist of fortune (after the bets have been laid). But the audience, the organisers, and the fighters all know the fighting is rigged and everyone's happy.

There were many, pre-television Indian symbols of this honourable tradition. As school kids, we cheered wildly as Black Spider brutally crushed Red Spider's brother in an open-air bout. The roaring crowd dispersed only after Red Spider jumped into the ring to promise us he would throttle Black Spider in a revenge match the next week, so buy your tickets in advance. (He then toddled off to dinner with Black Spider). At age 8, it was magical.

Decades later, television has given sham 'wrestling' giant audiences, made it more spectacular, but perhaps less convincing. (The close-ups are a dead giveaway). But almost everybody still knows what to take seriously and what not to. That, and the fact that they entertain more people, are what demarcate the world wrestling extravaganzas from the World Economic Forum. (Both, otherwise, fully corporate enterprises). The wrestling corporations take the money seriously. The World Economic Forum takes itself seriously, besides the money.

The WEF's first ever summit in Mumbai ended on the 14th. Its main organiser was the Confederation of Indian Industry. But both the Centre and the Maharashtra government came out in "support." The Chief Ministers of Maharashtra and Kerala (both States reporting rising farm suicides) hosted 'cultural evenings' and/or expensive dinners for this billionaires club, besides providing other forms of 'support.' The WEF's May 31 press release announcing Mumbai as the venue had this mysterious line: "The Summit will return to New Delhi in 2012 and 2014 in time for India's next national election." Wow, is the WEF running for office? And why shift from Delhi to Mumbai? Was it embarrassing for a government drowning in corporate corruption and scams to "host" the corporate world's Croesus Club in the capital?

And so, the governments that cannot add a few hundred rupees per quintal to desperate paddy or cotton growers find the means to subsidise the global billionaire fraternity. Union Ministers and Chief Ministers came down to the Grand Hyatt in Mumbai to reaffirm support.

But why? What exactly does the WEF deliver to India? Or anybody? Has it brought you staggering investments? Unlike the sham wrestling world, the WEF can predict nothing safely. (And they're hardly entertaining). When did this crowd ever get anything right? Did it warn you of the 2008 meltdown or the Euroquake? ( It did grimly observe in Mumbai that Europe is in trouble. Gee. The rest of us would never have suspected that).

Dean Baker puts it so well: "Economic forecasters are not workers like dishwashers and cab drivers who are held accountable for the quality of their work. They can be wrong every day about everything and face little risk to their career prospects." (CounterPunch, August 25, 2011).

However, by WEF standards, the Mumbai show was a bit subdued. The U.S. and Europe are reeling in crisis driven by the very economics the WEF stands for. India was still rising but not shining. Even the Planning Commission-driven India Human Development Report admits: "the average percentage of undernourished children under five years for 26 Sub-Saharan African countries was 25 per cent, about half the Indian average of 46 per cent. Weight and height of Indians on average have not shown significant improvement over the last 25 years."

India's rank in the 2011 Global Hunger Index, at 67 out of 81, places us seven notches below Rwanda which apparently handles food security better. We're also below Sri Lanka (rank 36), Nepal (54) and Pakistan (59). The GHI 2011 states flatly that its data "does not reflect the impacts of the 2010-11 food price crisis."

And the country gracing the top five when it comes to dollar billionaires now ranks 134th in the 2011 U.N. Human Development Report. Our over 55 billionaires grew their wealth at an astonishing rate in the post-1991 era. And there's the India story: the consciously constructed, ruthlessly engineered inequality of it. Just see our HDI Value in the UNHDR. It reads 0.548. Adjusted for inequality, this value falls by close to 30 per cent. India's 'multi-dimensionally poor' now exceed 612 million, as the report shows us.

But debates over India's dismal performance in giving its people the basic minimums always evade the policy framework of the past 20 years that has driven such levels of inequality. You can blame 'tardy implementation,' 'poor delivery,' anything — except the policies that have devastated hundreds of millions of poor Indians. And, of course, there is not even censure for the top guns and whizz kids.

As Baker points out, for this kind of group, there are no bad consequences. If you think that disastrous failures would hurt their record "then you don't understand economic forecasting. There is no reason to believe that forecasters are any more knowledgeable about the economy today than they were four or five years ago."

Need a good Indian illustration of this? Take Planning Commission deputy chief Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Finance Ministry Chief Economic Adviser Kaushik Basu and their multiple predictions on the economy, particularly on inflation. (Which, says CRISIL, forced Indians to spend close to Rs. 6 lakh crores extra in 36 months). With inflation close to double digits and food inflation at 10.63 per cent, they now admit, sort of, that we were, ahem, not quite as right as we are normally known to be. But we will, umm ... probably will return to being right in the near future.

Dr. Ahluwalia even admits to credibility issues popping up. "It is true that we were hoping that this [moderation in inflation] will happen earlier, to that extent our credibility becomes a question." (The Times of India, Nov. 21, 2011). And straightaway makes another prediction — "inflationary pressure would ease from the beginning of next year."

Dr. Basu believes it will start declining in December itself. If in February, says Dr. Ahluwalia, the data show that "inflation is not coming down by then, then we really don't know what we are doing." India's human development indicators suggest they haven't a clue about what they were doing for 20 years. That, however, is not so. They knew what they were doing. Constructing a world based on a trickle-down, greed-is-good, inequality-helps philosophy. It made things much worse, though not for the authors of the mess.

The WEF has gone. This time, it did not get the kind of publicity to which it is accustomed. Which brings us to the media. Who has been paying for, or heavily subsidising, the large contingents of Indian media that do the Davos Drool each year? Answer: Indian industry, which likes to have its cheerleading team along. Some of the rent-a-report crowd is from media outlets which will not spend a few thousand rupees to send a journalist to cover huge issues of hunger within the country. Switzerland is an expensive place. And Davos is at its costliest in the WEF season. Yet several Indian journalists seem to afford it.

Quite a few have had their costs, including air travel and more, covered by industry lobbies, many of whose members are major advertisers and a big source of media revenue. There are newspapers that have given Davos summits far more coverage than they have the most vital bills before Parliament. There are channels that have had "partnerships" with the CII and the WEF to cover Davos (always euphorically). Strong and rigid rules are issued to journalists on how to report. One such instruction: "Please note we cannot say "WEF"… it is the World Economic Forum and one is not allowed to call it otherwise." Wonder why? Does the acronym WEF sound too much like one of the sham wrestling outfits? Another fatwa from a television group: "the following programming from CII has to be incorporated in the programming of all channels."

Surely, the audiences watching the completely uncritical coverage of the WEF have a right to be told that the content was sponsored? When the funding is not clearly stated, when the content heavily favours the sponsor, when criticism is unknown, when correspondents are told how to fulfil their duties to their "partners' — this is what is called Paid News. But there is a pact of silence about this. A fine example of the kind of 'self-regulation' that media bosses have in mind?

The organisers, lobbies, funders, the media — all know what's happening. But not, in this case, the audiences, readers or viewers. Where are you, Black Spider and Red Spider? All is forgiven, come home.

--



Amar P. Puranik,
Sub-Editor,
Tarun Bharat,
Solapur - 413005
Hindusthan Samachar,
New Delhi - 110055

Resi. Address
960, North Sadar Bazar,
Solapur - 413003
Cell Ph. No : 09370405062
E-Mail : aamarpuranik@rediffmail.com
             aamarpuranik@gmail.com
Blog    : www.amar-puranik.blogspot.com

अमर पुराणिक
उपसंपादक,
दैनिक तरुण भारत, सोलापूर.
हिंदुस्थान समाचार, नवी दिल्ली.
फोन नं : ०९३७०४०५०६२

Media Matters : Learning to converse

Sevanti Ninan

When information and events get reported by ordinary people, traditional news organisations have to redefine their roles.

As 2011 comes to a close, the year's biggest events have mainstream media newsrooms pondering what these mean for their future. When revolutions and nuclear disasters are reported by ordinary people on mobile phones, what price conventional newsroom technology or the editorial skills honed over several years?

 At an editors' summit in Hong Kong which drew media biggies from across continents,   a few discoveries were being made. One, that leading media companies are now employing digital strategists to help them figure out how to go forward. Two, the hierarchy in the business is changing — the audience is no longer composed of passive recipients of what you choose to put out. Be nice to them — they threaten your future.

 The head of digital strategy at ZDF, Germany, was there to point gently to a need for a change in the journalists' attitude: "We have to go from being oracle to guide. The lecture is becoming a conversation.  As the audience gets more active, they receive and alter our content. Sources go direct, we lose control. Reverse your angle — the 20{+t}{+h} century info flow is changing. Don't look down at audience. Look across the table.  Make the prime time newscast a conversation with the newscaster."

 There is even a new word in the vocabulary of the media business — pro-sumption, where the producer and consumer are becoming the same.

Changing roles

Three, the description of what newsroom editors do is changing. They need to think of themselves as curators.  Someone who will decide what to take from a variety of sources for the news package he is putting out. The director for new media at Al Jazeera put it succinctly: "Monitoring, curating and then pushing it out again." In Egypt, he reminded people, the first images were both produced and distributed outside the mainstream media — the video of a youth before a water canon.

 The editor's job then becomes one of verifying local news sources. How do you do that? You look for landmarks in the video which will verify the authenticity of the location, you gauge the weather, you try to call the guy you see in the video. Get the real name and ID of every citizen journalist. Speed versus accuracy is the challenge.

 Open source was a term to describe software; now it is being used to describe sources in journalism. The managing editor of CNN Digital said that when Egypt, Japan and Libya happened in turn, they had to figure out a format to integrate citizen journalism into their reporting. Now they have a section called Open Story where they marry their own reports with those of citizen journalists.  

 Joi Ito, who is now the director of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was asked whether the tsunami in Japan had changed the perception of the media. He replied that it had changed the perception of the establishment in Japan, including the media. There was a loss of confidence in the media. Post Fukushima a new online project called safecast.org was launched, showcasing data which could help you measure nuclear radiation.  

 The role of the journalist is changing when there are many sites and sources for data, and you no longer need a journalist to find information. Instead, it becomes their job to take  different sources of information and compare. So, number four, the skill sets needed in the newsroom are changing. The future lies increasingly in what is being called data journalism. You now need people in the newsroom who understand computer programming, who understand data analysis, who understand statistics.

Curating data

In 2012, the push will be for data journalism, as field reports come in partly from citizens on the ground. As governments increasingly put data online, journalists will have to learn ways to plumb it. The editor of La Nacion in Costa Rica described how for a huge project which examined the criminal records of 1,500 electoral candidates, her paper  procured a software which the FBI uses to throw up names of people under various categories. But then because this is journalism and you have to give the right to reply no matter how many hundreds are being investigated together in a computerised operation, they had to set up a call centre to call every one of the candidates and ask them what they had to say!

 There was also a note of caution about where not to follow social media blindly. Ignore the trending on Twitter, said Ito.  To follow that could lead you down a hysterical path.

 Much of the meeting of this new formation of editors — the Global Editors Network — was about the rise of the mobile.  Have you redesigned your website for viewing on the mobile? And in a country like India, were newsrooms using them enough to get news from places where you did not have correspondents? 

 2012 can be much the same or more frenetic than 2011  depending on how much you are inclined to keep up with the Joneses in the new four-screen news ecology — TV, computer, tablet, mobile.  The anxious question being asked at the end was, what will the fifth screen be and how soon will it emerge?

--



Amar P. Puranik,
Sub-Editor,
Tarun Bharat,
Solapur - 413005
Hindusthan Samachar,
New Delhi - 110055

Resi. Address
960, North Sadar Bazar,
Solapur - 413003
Cell Ph. No : 09370405062
E-Mail : aamarpuranik@rediffmail.com
             aamarpuranik@gmail.com
Blog    : www.amar-puranik.blogspot.com

अमर पुराणिक
उपसंपादक,
दैनिक तरुण भारत, सोलापूर.
हिंदुस्थान समाचार, नवी दिल्ली.
फोन नं : ०९३७०४०५०६२

After Buzz, Google to discontinue seven more products

After Buzz, Google to discontinue seven more products

Internet search titan Google plans to discontinue seven more products, including ‘Wave’, in a bid to simplify its services further after bringing down the curtains on its ‘Buzz’ social networking, microblogging and messaging tool.

The off-season “spring cleaning” would mark the end of various Google services such as Wave, Knol, Gears, Bookmarks Lists, Friend Connect and Search Timeline, Google Senior Vice-President (Operations) Urs Holzle said in a blogpost.

In addition, Google said it will also shelve its ’renewable energy-cheaper-than-coal initiative, which was touted as an effort to drive down the cost of renewable energy.

This is the third time that Google has announced a whittling down of its products slate after they failed to generate interest among users.

Google said some of the services will stop working from next month and by next year, most of the products will be shut down completely.

“To recap, we’re in the process of shutting a number of products which haven’t had the impact we’d hoped for, integrating others as features into our broader product efforts and ending several which have shown us a different path forward. Overall, our aim is to build a simpler, more intuitive, truly beautiful Google user experience,” Holzle added.

The US-based firm said Google Wave -- which was an attempt to combine email and instant messaging for real-time collaboration -- will turn off completely from April 30, 2012.

In addition, Google Friends Connect service -- which allowed webmasters to add social features to their sites by embedding a snippet of code -- would be retired from March 1, 2012.

Google Gears, which maintains web browser functionality when working offline, will stop working from December 1 and Google Bookmarks List, a service which allowed users to share bookmarks with friends, will end on December 19.

Last month, Google announced that it will shut down its social networking product Google Buzz. In September, Google said it will close as many as 10 products, including Aardvark and Fast Flip, as it streamlines operations and focuses on areas that have “higher impact”.

China warns India against ‘providing a platform’ for Dalai Lama

China on Monday said it was opposed to any country that "provide[d] a platform" for the Dalai Lama and his "anti-China activities", in the wake of India and China last week postponing the 15th round of border talks following Chinese concerns over a Buddhist conference that was scheduled to take place at the same time in New Delhi.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said the Dalai Lama, who will speak at the conference, was "not a purely religious figure".

India and China postponed the boundary talks, which were to take place in New Delhi on November 28 and November 29, after New Delhi said it would not accede to Chinese demands to either push back or cancel this week's Buddhist conference.

While Indian officials had told their Chinese counterparts the meeting was religious and not political, China has not accepted their view.

China views the exiled Tibetan religious leader as a "splittist" who is campaigning for Tibetan independence. The Dalai Lama, however, says he does not seek independence in Tibet, and wants China to give Tibetans "genuine autonomy" in religious, cultural and educational spheres.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei on Monday did not specifically say if China had expressed its opposition to the Buddhism conference being held at the same time as the border talks, although he made clear China's opposition to India giving the Tibetan religious leader "a platform."

"I want to point out that the Dalai Lama is not a purely religious figure but the one who has been engaged in separatist activities for a long time, under the pretext of religion," Mr. Hong said. "We oppose any country that provides a platform for his anti-China activities in any form."

Indian and Chinese officials have, however, played down the postponement of the talks, maintaining that no dates had, in the first instance, been formally announced. Indian officials said they believed the talks would place in "the near future."

Mr. Hong said both sides were "in communication on relevant issues" regarding the border talks, and were also discussing the "specific agenda" of the meeting. China, he added, paid "great attention" to the next round of talks with India.

मनमोहन ने अफगान राष्ट्रपति से मुलाकात की

मनमोहन ने अफगान राष्ट्रपति से मुलाकात की

   आदू (मालदीव), 11 नवंबर :  प्रधानमंत्री मनमोहन सिंह ने आज अफगानिस्तान के राष्ट्रपति हामिद करजई से मुलाकात की। माना जा रहा है कि दोनों नेताओं ने मुख्य रूप से अफगानिस्तान की स्थिति पर  चर्चा की। दोनों नेताओं की मुलाकात मालदीव में दक्षेस शिखर सम्मेलन से इतर हुई। कहा जा रहा है कि दोनों ने अफगानिस्तान के मौजूदा हालात पर चर्चा करने के साथ ही द्विपक्षीय संबंधों की समीक्षा की।

इससे पहले आज ही प्रधानमंत्री ने नेपाल के प्रधानमंत्री बाबूराम भट्टराई से मुलाकात की थी।

भारत की सुरक्षा के लिए चुनौती पैदा कर रहा है चीन: मुरली मनोहर जोशी

भारत की सुरक्षा के लिए चुनौती पैदा कर रहा है चीन: मुरली मनोहर जोशी
गुवाहाटी, नवंबर १०: भाजपा नेता मुरली मनोहर जोशी ने आगाह किया कि चीन-भारत सीमा के करीब परमाणु मिसाइल तैनात करके चीन भारत की सुरक्षा के लिए खतरा पैदा कर रहा है। उन्होंने सीमा क्षेत्र में मजबूत साजो-सामान नहीं जुटा पाने पर केंद्र सरकार को आड़े हाथों लिया।

जोशी ने यहां संवाददाताओं से कहा, ‘‘चीन भारत के लिए चुनौती है। सीमा के दूसरी ओर चीन की तैयारियां भारत की सीमा में उसके विकास संबंधी प्रयासों के लिए चुनौती खड़ी करती हैं।’’ पूर्व केंद्रीय मंत्री ने कहा, ‘‘चीन ने तीन ओर से भारत को घेर रखा है। उत्तरी सीमा पर चीनी वायु और थल सेना संसाधनों तथा परमाणु मिसाइल प्रक्षेपण तक करने की क्षमता से परिपूर्ण हैं।’’ उन्होंने कहा कि उत्तरी और उत्तर-पूर्वी ओर के हिस्से विशेष रूप से असुरक्षित हैं। पूर्वोत्तर में रक्षा कार्यक्रम व बुनियादी सुविधाएं आवश्यकतानुसार नहीं हैं।

जोशी ने कहा, ‘‘मैंने देखा है कि पूर्वोत्तर क्षेत्र को रक्षा के नजरिये से जोड़ रहे राष्ट्रीय राजमार्ग अच्छे नहीं हैं।’’ उन्होंने कहा, ‘‘उत्तरी सीमा पर चीन ने सियाचीन के बड़े हिस्से को घेर रखा है। चीनी बल आते हैं और लद्दाख में और अब पाक अधिकृत कश्मीर (पीओके) में अपनी मौजूदगी दर्ज कराते हैं।’’ जोशी ने कहा कि उनकी सेना पीओके में आती हैं। यह उत्तरी सीमा के लिए गंभीर खतरा है। उन्होंने कहा कि केंद्र देश की सुरक्षा व हिफाजत के लिए मजबूत साजो-सामान नहीं मुहैया करा सका।

भाजपा नेता ने कहा, ‘‘मैं सरकार से सीमाओं पर तैयारियों के स्तर के बारे में संसद के समक्ष जानकारी देने की मांग करता हूं। सरकार को जनता को सुनिश्चित करना चाहिए कि वह देश की सुरक्षा के लिए पर्याप्त कदम उठा रही है।’’ भाजपा सांसद ने कहा, ‘‘चीन ने श्रीलंका के दक्षिणी कोने में समुद्री बंदरगाह के लिए बड़ी धनराशि का निवेश किया है और इस तरह से हिंदी महासागर में मौजूदगी दर्ज कराई है।’’ जोशी ने कहा, ‘‘चीन ने हाल ही में वियतनाम के बंदरगाह पर भारतीय मौजूदगी का विरोध किया था और वे नहीं चाहते कि हम वहां तेल खोजने के काम में हिस्सा लें। उन्होंने भारतीय जहाजों को वहां पहुंचने से भी रोका है।

उन्होंने कहा कि देश को इन इलाकों में चीन की डिजाइनों के बारे में पहले के अनुभवों से सीख लेनी चाहिए। विकास और सुरक्षा के लिए कोई कोर.कसर नहीं छोड़नी चाहिए। जोशी ने कहा कि अरुणाचल प्रदेश, असम और अन्य उत्तर.पूर्वी राज्यों में युद्धस्तर पर विकास कार्यों के लिए कदम उठाना जरूरी है। जब उनसे पूछा गया कि क्या देश का रक्षा बजट सुरक्षा के लिहाज से पर्याप्त है तो उन्होंने कहा कि सरकार को पता लगाना चाहिए कि क्या यह एक अच्छी नौसेना, तटरक्षक, प्रभावशाली व सशस्त्र वायु सेना के लिए पर्याप्त है।

The crisis in the developed world

The U.S. economy has plenty of resilience and ability to bounce back
    C. R. L. NARASIMHAN  

    What ails the economy of the U.S. and those of some European nations? Is there a possibility of the developed countries slipping into a recession for the second time in less than half a decade? What will be its consequences for the rest of the world? Will the U.S. be able to maintain its economic leadership?

The consensus opinion is that the U.S. economy, the world's largest, is having anaemic growth, even if it has not slipped into a recession yet. It is also clear that high indebtedness both on the part of the government and individuals has landed the U.S. and many European nations too in this predicament. However, there is far less agreement on what needs to be done to revive these economies.

The current crisis that the U.S. and Europe is facing, unlike the 2008 global crisis, is not rooted in the financial sector. The disastrous lending practices of leading banks then in the ‘sub-prime' housing loan segment landed not only the financial sector and the U.S. economy in a mess but also dragged most developed countries into a mess because of the strong global linkages. Much has been written on the culpability of the banking system in the great financial and economic crisis. But apart from being wrapped on the knuckles as it were, banks in the U.S. have not only survived but prospered.

It is a matter of great irony that while the ‘real' economies of the developed world have been tottering, their financial sector, which inflicted so much pain, has prospered. For some banks, at least, a regulatory cap on managerial remuneration, executive bonuses and so on is anathema. The days they received large infusion of public money just to stay afloat have obviously been forgotten.

Eurozone debt crisis

On the other side of the Atlantic, leading European banks, which have bought sovereign debt of Greece, Portugal, Ireland and a few other countries are under stress as the eurozone's debt crisis intensifies.

The crisis in the U.S. is a crisis of confidence, writes C. Rangarajan in a financial daily on August 22. The downgrading of its sovereign debt by Standard & Poor's (S&P) has been a unique event, bringing down the quality of American government paper by one notch.

Even though other rating agencies have retained the highest grade, the comments of S&P are noteworthy in that it attributes its action as much to the fiscal process as to the political imbroglio which almost caused the federal government to default.

Not only the rating agency, but banks and financial agencies, investors and governments around the world have questioned the credibility of a political process that apparently enabled sections of the political elite place their individual dogmas and partisan interests above national interests.

The debt reduction programme approved by the Congress and the Senate also lacks credibility. What the U.S. economy needed at this juncture was a deal that kept up spending in the short-term, with a stress on the much needed infrastructure investment and a big medium-term reduction in the federal deficit centred on a major tax reform. Instead, the deal works in the opposite direction, failing to shore up the economy in the short-term without identifying worthwhile means to reduce the deficit in the medium-term.

Besides, certain recent developments may be coincidental but do cast doubts on the state of the recovery in the U.S. Official revisions to the GDP statistics of past few years, released at the end of July, showed that the 2008 recession was deeper than what was assumed and the subsequent recovery flatter. Over the past year, output has grown by just 1.6 per cent and even that is showing signs of petering out. According to economists, if past experience is any guide, the rate of growth is such that the economy is poised to trip into a recession.

If that happens, the rest of the world, including India, will suffer. It is often argued that India's foreign trade, as a proportion of GDP, is relatively small. Hence, outside influences on the economy will be minimal. This view is too narrow as there are many other channels, besides foreign trade, that connect the Indian economy to the rest of the world.

Notably India's balance of payments has been dependent on capital flows. Uncertainty over the U.S. economy may cause capital flows to behave irrationally, often going back to the sanctuary of safe haven instruments in the U.S. On the other hand, if the U.S. Federal Reserve, as part of its efforts to provide succour to the U.S. economy, does another round of quantitative easing, that is, buying government bonds with freshly minted money, cross-border flows towards India and other emerging markets may increase exponentially, posing major policy challenges for these economies.

For all its recent troubles, the U.S. will retain its leadership position. The American dollar will remain the world's number one currency, in trade, dealing rooms and a currency of choice for governments to park their export surpluses.

Though weakened by the crisis, the U.S. economy has plenty of resilience and the ability to bounce back.

However, weak economic growth and the political squabbling do portend a diminished role for the U.S. in the days ahead.(the hindu, 28 aug 11)