中国の言論弾圧悪化:産経新聞記事から
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問題の論文は「現代化と歴史教科書」と題し、中国近代史研究の第一人者として知られる中山大学（広州市）の袁偉時教授が執筆した。教授は、（毛沢東時代の）反右派闘争、大躍進運動、文化大革命の３大災難を経た後、人びとは１９７０年代末になって「狼（おおかみ）の乳で育った」ことを知ったが、中学の歴史教科書を読み「今も青少年が狼の乳を飲み続けている」のに驚いたと書き出す。
教授によると、「狼の乳」とは「誤った思想や文化、観点」を指し、●（●＝都の者を登）力群元宣伝部長が７９年の学術シンポジウムで使ったという。「狼の乳」の実例として、教授は１８６０年の英仏軍による円明園（北京郊外の清朝離宮）焼き討ち事件と、１９００年の義和団事件に関する教科書の記述を指摘した。
円明園事件について、教科書は「（５９年、清朝と天津条約調印のため英仏公使が上陸しようとした際）天津・大沽砲台の将兵が侵略軍の艦船４隻を撃沈し、上陸を強行した９００余人を撃退、数百人を死傷させた。一帯の人民も銃砲弾の雨をくぐって戦士を支援、高度の愛国の熱情を表した」（一部略）と記述。
袁教授は、この翌年、英仏軍が再侵略、北京を占拠し莫大（ばくだい）な賠償金に加え、円明園焼き討ちを招いたのは、愚昧（ぐまい）な清朝皇帝らの大罪であり「愛国英雄の壮挙ではない」と断じた。
同様に教科書が、８カ国連合軍の侵略に抵抗した愛国行動としている義和団事件についても、北京を中心に殺人、放火、略奪の限りを尽くした義和団を「非人道的、非文明的集団」とし、その結果、６年分の財政収入に相当する賠償金や列強による領土分割を招いたと述べた。
袁教授は、日本の歴史教科書を批判しながら、中国の教科書も「西洋人は侵略者であり、中国人には何をやっても理があり、たたえねばならない」との「愛国主義（教育）の要求」に沿い、盲目的民族感情をあおっていると批判した。
この批判は歴史の解釈権を握る共産党には許容できないものだった。李大同編集長によると、中国青年報編集長は論文を一部削除して掲載に同意したが、今月２４日、宣伝部が「冰点」の停刊を命じた。宣伝部は「帝国主義列強の中国侵略を肯定、歴史の事実に反し、新聞宣伝の規律に違反、中国人民の感情を傷つけ社会に悪影響を与えた」と断じたという。
李大同氏は公開状を発表して処分に反発。その中で、昨年も（１）５月２５日付の台湾人記者による台湾の実情報道（２）６月１日付の平型関の戦いに関する記事（３）胡啓立元政治局常務委員による胡耀邦氏の回顧記－などを宣伝部が批判したと明らかにし、宣伝部の報道規制は「国民の権利の侵犯」と非難した。
中国では近年、報道規制が強まり、最近も北京の新聞「新京報」で、編集長への圧力に抗議するストもあった。共産主義青年団の機関紙の中国青年報でも一昨年、デスクと記者の処分問題で同紙名物記者が公開状で、報道干渉に抗議した。
報道規制は活字・放送メディアだけでなくネット情報にも及んでいる。当局は、報道は党と人民の「喉舌」、つまり宣伝道具と主張、党や指導部のイメージを損なったり、社会不安を招いたりの記事はご法度だ。
その論理からすれば、従来の共産党の史観と宣伝に反した袁偉時教授の論文は“党への挑戦”ということになる。ただし教授によると、この論文を３年余り前に発表したときには、問題にされなかったという。客観性が基本の科学的発展観を唱える胡錦濤政権下で言論弾圧が進む現状に、保守派台頭の政治的背景を指摘する声も少なくない。
【2006/01/30 東京朝刊から】
アメリカの健康保険の危機：economist
Desperate measures
From The Economist print edition
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The world's biggest and most expensive health-care system is beginning to fall apart. Can George Bush mend it?
GEORGE BUSH had big ideas for his second term. He promised to fix Social Security, America's public pensions system, and revamp the tax code. Despite his best efforts, Social Security reform sank last year. Rejigging the tax code has proved so politically tricky that the White House dare not push it. With almost three years to go, Mr Bush seems less a radical reformer than a struggling lame duck.
White House officials, desperate to show that the president still has a domestic agenda, have now changed the subject—to health care. The buzz in Washington, DC, is that health-care reform will loom large when Mr Bush gives his annual state-of-the-union address on January 31st. Al Hubbard, Mr Bush's top domestic policy adviser, adds that the focus will be on ideas that control costs, boost access and improve quality.
Health care? The idea seems preposterous. How can an administration that is too timid to push tax reform tackle one of the most complicated challenges facing America's economy? What's more, the timing looks terrible. Mr Bush's team is under fire for botching its biggest health-care initiative to date, the introduction of a prescription-drug benefit for elderly people covered by its Medicare programme. Thanks to bureaucratic tangles, thousands of poor old folk have been denied drugs they used to get free, and more than 20 state governments have had to step in to pay for the medicines. Republican lawmakers dread what this fiasco may cost them in November's mid-term elections.
Yet Mr Bush may be able to push more radical change in American health care than anywhere else. Both politicians and the public recognise that spiralling health-care costs are a problem—second only to the Iraq war, according to a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll. Those costs are a big reason for the sluggish growth in workers' wages, the widespread perception that America's middle class is being squeezed and the huge job cuts at Ford this week.
America's health system is a monster. It is by far the world's most expensive: the United States spent $1.9 trillion on health in 2004, or 16% of GDP, almost twice as much as the OECD average (see charts 1 and 2). Health care in America is not nearly as rooted in the private sector as people assume (one way or another, more than half the bill ends up being paid by the state). But it is the only rich country where a large chunk of health care is paid for by tax-subsidised employer-based insurance.
This system is a legacy of the second world war, when firms, hamstrung by wage controls, used health insurance as a way to lure in workers. It means that, according to census figures, around 174m Americans get health coverage from their own, their spouse's or their parents' employer. Another 27m buy health insurance individually, for which they do not get a tax subsidy. The government picks up the tab for 40m elderly and disabled Americans (through Medicare) and about 38m poor (through the state-federal Medicaid scheme). That leaves around 46m uninsured, though many of these, whether students or workers, go without insurance by choice. In practice, they get emergency care at hospitals, which is paid for by higher premiums for everyone else.
Set alongside other rich countries, which typically offer all their citizens free (or very cheap) health care financed through taxes, America's system has some clear strengths. Consumers get plenty of choice, and innovation is impressive. One survey of doctors published in Health Affairs claimed that eight of the ten most important medical breakthroughs of the past 30 years originated in America. Equally clearly, the American system has big problems, notably inadequate coverage (no other rich country has armies of uninsured), spotty quality and high cost.
Huge discrepancies lurk within the system. John Wennberg, Jonathan Skinner and Elliot Fisher of Dartmouth College have pointed out that Medicare spends more than twice as much on people in Miami than in Minneapolis, and, if anything, results are better where spending is lower. Up to 30% of Medicare spending, they concluded, is wasted. Poor treatment is rife: a study by the Institute of Medicine has suggested that medical error is the country's eighth-largest cause of death.
For decades, American health-care spending has outstripped income growth, by an average of 2.5 percentage points a year. There have been clear cycles within this trend: for instance, herding employees into managed-care schemes, notably Health Maintenance Organisations (HMOs), which negotiated discounts with doctors and restricted the services available to patients, helped slow down health inflation in the mid-1990s. But voters loathed HMOs, there was a political backlash and in the late 1990s costs shot up again. Although the pace of medical spending has slowed slightly recently (to 7.9% in 2004), spending has risen by 40% since 2000. Typical insurance premiums have gone up by more than 60%.
With medical inflation far outpacing inflation in general, American firms are scaling back the health coverage they offer. The share of workers who receive health insurance from their own employer has fallen from almost 70% in the late 1970s to around 50% today. In the past five years, the proportion of firms offering medical benefits has fallen from 70% to 60%, with the steepest decline among small firms and those employing the low-skilled.
Those employers who do offer health insurance have pushed more costs on to workers by raising co-payments and deductibles (the expenses before insurance kicks in). Employer-provided health coverage for retirees, once common, has shrunk, although America's big carmakers, including Ford and General Motors, are still hobbled by having to provide it. Mr Hubbard's assessment is stark: “The private market is broken.”
At the same time, the burden on government is about to soar. Add together Medicaid, Medicare and other publicly financed health care, such as that for ex-servicemen, and the public sector already pays for 45% of American health care. (The total is nearer 60% if you include the tax subsidies.) But as America's firms limit their health-care spending and, particularly, as the baby-boomers retire, that share will rise sharply. On current trends, federal spending on health will double as a share of the economy by 2020. That would mean much higher taxes, something Americans do not want to pay.
With employers limiting their exposure and government unable to fund its commitments, America's health system will unravel—perhaps not this year or next, but soon. Few health experts deny this. Nor do they disagree much on the sources of the problem. Health markets are plagued with poor information, inadequate competition and skewed incentives.
Since most bills are paid by a third party (the insurance company or the government), neither patients nor doctors face real pressure to control costs. Overall, Americans pay only $1 out of every $6 spent on their health care out of their own pockets. Doctors are generally paid for individual services and so have an incentive to perform too many procedures. The huge tax subsidies for employer-purchased health insurance encourage expensive care. Rapacious lawyers and the risk of being sued exacerbate the tendency towards unnecessary “defensive” medicine.
The first question is whether to try to make America's imperfect market work better, or to accept that markets cannot work in health care and focus more on government regulation. The second is whether to go for incremental reform or a comprehensive overhaul.
The history of American health policy is littered with failed efforts at radical change. Harry Truman wanted to create a system of national health insurance in the 1940s. When Canada introduced its government-run health system in 1971, many American politicians hoped to do the same. The biggest recent effort was Hillary Clinton's health-care plan of 1993, which mandated health-insurance coverage for all delivered through carefully regulated health alliances with price caps. All these efforts failed, thanks to the enormous power of health-care lobbies and Americans' horror at anything that smacked of “socialised medicine”.
Today's debate is scarred by those failures, though some brave health experts still favour comprehensive reform. The Physicians Working Group, for instance, argues that America has to move to a single-payer system, as in Canada or Britain. Victor Fuchs and Ezekiel Emanuel, two prominent health experts, argued in the New England Journal of Medicine last year that the current mess should be replaced with a universal system of health vouchers funded by a hypothecated VAT. In a new book from the Brookings Institution called “Can We Say No?”, Henry Aaron, William Schwartz and Melissa Cox argue that America will sooner or later have to ration health care, though they are coy about exactly how.
Washington's politicians, however, have shown little appetite for radical change. Their focus is still on expanding coverage rather than controlling costs. The biggest recent policy initiative, the 2003 decision to add drug coverage to Medicare, was the biggest expansion of a government health programme since 1965.
Some states have been thinking more radically. Massachusetts, for instance, may require everyone to have minimum insurance, with the state helping poorer people with subsidies. Maryland has a new law that requires all large employers to spend at least 8% of their payroll on health care, supposedly to prevent the state's Medicaid system having to pick up the tab. Though that particular law has more to do with Wal-Mart-bashing than health care, unions are pushing for similar legislation in 30 states.
The most interesting innovations, however, have come less from think-tanks or politicians' offices than from within the health-care industry. One trend, called “Pay for Performance”, is to shift doctors' and hospitals' incentives towards providing more efficient and better care, by measuring quality and adjusting payments accordingly. According to Karen Davis, president of the Commonwealth Fund, a health-care research foundation, there are now around 100 “Pay for Performance” initiatives in place. Early evidence suggests that they are having some effect.
The second shift within the health-care industry has been to change patients' incentives with more cost-sharing and larger deductibles. If patients pay more of the upfront costs of their health care, the argument goes, they will become more discerning consumers. And some of the cost saved by employers can be put into special Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), which workers can tap to pay routine health costs. Once the account is empty, workers are responsible for paying for their health care until their deductible is reached. This should make them think twice before visiting a specialist when they get a sore throat.
The trend towards HSAs was given a big push by a tax change in 2003 that was part of the Medicare drug legislation. Provided that an individual buys health insurance with a high deductible (at least $2,100 for a family), he can put the equivalent amount of money into tax-free accounts, whose balances can accumulate over years.
The number of people with high-deductible plans is still relatively small: only 2.4m in early 2005, according to government figures. But health economists expect HSAs to grow rapidly, as ever more employers offer them to try to control costs. A new survey by consultants at Deloitte shows that in these kinds of plans, in 2004-05, costs rose by less than half as much as in traditional ones.
The Bush agenda picks up both these new trends. Without much fanfare, Medicare too has been introducing its own incentive schemes. Hospitals must now provide proofs of quality to qualify for some Medicare payments. Medicare is also experimenting with bonuses for hospitals and doctors that improve their quality and efficiency. Where Medicare leads, many others may follow.
The White House's main focus, however, is the private market. One goal is legal reform. Mr Bush has already pushed (unsuccessfully) for laws that cap payments for medical malpractice lawsuits. He will keep trying. His health advisers would also like to deregulate the health-insurance market, freeing it from the stifling rules, imposed at state level, that can raise the cost of an insurance plan by as much as 15%.
Chiefly, Mr Bush wants to accelerate the trend towards consumer-driven health care. One uncontroversial idea is to encourage doctors and hospitals to provide more information on the cost of treatment. The other is to cut taxes. Mr Bush's team wants to eliminate the bias in favour of employer-purchased, low-deductible health insurance in America's tax code, not by reducing the existing tax subsidies for employers, but by increasing the tax subsidies for individuals.
This philosophy is conveniently summarised in a new book, “Healthy, Wealthy and Wise”, by three economists with close ties to the White House, Glenn Hubbard of Columbia University (formerly Mr Bush's top economic adviser), and John Cogan and Glenn Kessler of the Hoover Institution at Stanford. They argue that since it is politically impossible to get rid of tax subsidies for employer-based health insurance, the best way to eliminate the tax bias towards high-cost insurance is to make all health spending tax-deductible and expand HSAs. Legal, insurance and tax reform together, they argue, could reduce America's health spending by $60 billion and cut the number of uninsured by between 6m and 20m. Since overall medical spending would slow, the authors reckon their suggestions would cost a modest $9 billion a year.
To an administration that believes the answer to every problem is lower taxes, the appeal of these ideas is obvious. Many health experts, however, are deeply sceptical, both about whether the shift to higher-deductible plans will actually reduce health-care inflation and, even if it does, whether the government should encourage this trend with more tax cuts.
The logic of consumer-driven health care assumes that unnecessary doctor visits and procedures lie at the heart of America's health-care inflation. And it assumes that individual patients can become discerning consumers of health care. Both are questionable. Most American health-care spending is on people with chronic diseases, such as diabetics, whose health care costs many thousands of dollars a year, easily exceeding even high deductibles.
Instead, critics worry that greater cost-consciousness will deter people, particularly poor people, from essential preventive medical care, a trend that could even raise long-term costs. A classic study by the Rand Corporation in the 1970s showed that higher cost-sharing reduced both necessary and unnecessary medical spending in about equal proportion.
Nor is it obvious that people actually behave like discerning consumers in health care, even when they have information. Proximity of hospitals and word-of-mouth reputation often matter more to patients than published quality indicators. Sceptics of consumer-directed care like to point to Bill Clinton, who chose to have his heart surgery in a hospital that New York state rates as having merely average mortality rates for such operations.
The truth is that the shift to consumer-directed health care and greater cost-sharing involves a culture change that may take decades. It will also come at the price of greater inequality. The burden of health spending will be shifted on to those who are sick, and not just because people will pay a greater share of their health costs themselves. High-deductible insurance policies are attractive to the young and healthy. But as these workers leave traditional insurance, the risk pool in other insurance plans will worsen and premiums will rise even faster. The real losers will be poorer workers with chronic illnesses.
American health care has already become more unequal as employers have cut back, and this will continue. The Bush team argue that “fairer” tax treatment will slow cost rises and enable more people to get basic insurance. The opposite is more likely. Bigger tax subsidies for health care are, if anything, likely to raise overall spending. Worse, since most tax breaks benefit richer people most, more tax incentives are likely to bring more inequality. They will also reduce tax revenue and worsen the budget mess.
Mr Bush's health-care philosophy has a certain political appeal. It suggests incremental change rather than a comprehensive solution. It reinforces existing industry trends. And it promises to be pain-free. Unfortunately, it will not work. The Bush agenda may speed the reform of American health care, but only by hastening the day the current system falls apart
19世紀インドの王女愛用のスリッパ盗難
１９世紀にインドの王女が愛用していたスリッパがカナダ・トロントのバータ靴博物館から盗まれた。
スリッパにはダイヤモンドやエメラルド、金など１６万カナダドル（約１６００万円）相当の宝飾品がちりばめられている。
スリッパに「歴史的な価値がある」とする博物館関係者は、犯人が宝石をばらして売り飛ばすのではないか、と気をもんでいる。（トロントＡＰ）
ZAKZAK 2006/01/26
宝石がちりばめられたスリッパを愛用したなんて、すご～い。
インドのマハラジャという言葉は、アンデルセンの童話にも出てくる。
中野愚連隊少年逮捕
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「中野愚連隊」は高校の同級生らによる１０人前後のグループ。同課は、８人は逮捕容疑を含めて２００４年２月―０５年７月に、主に女性を狙ってひったくりや強盗計１９件を繰り返し、現金など計約１１６万円相当を得ていたとみている。
調べでは、男子生徒らは０４年１０月４日、豊島区西池袋の路上で、ピザ宅配中の大学生（２１）を「金を出せ」と脅して顔を殴り、売上金約１０万円を奪うなどした疑い。
男子生徒らは「遊ぶ金が欲しかった」と話しているという。（共同）
(01/25 15:57)
アメリカの狂牛病の真相
159 - 衆 - 農林水産委員会 - 13号 平成16年04月27日 ○山田委員
エール大学神経病理学科外科部門の研究チームの検討を含め複数の研究で、剖検によりアルツハイマー病
あるいは痴呆症と診断されていた患者の三―一三％が実際はクロイツフェルト・ヤコブ病に罹患していた
ことが判明したとしている。米国では毎年アルツハイマー病と診断される患者が四百万人、痴呆症患者は
数十万人が発生していることから、最も少なく見積もって一万二千人以上のクロイツフェルト・ヤコブ病患者
が検出されず、公式統計に含まれない可能性がある。 注：12万人以上と思われる
実際、アルツハイマー病と診断された死亡患者数は一九七九年には八百五十七例であったものが、
二〇〇〇年には五十倍以上の五万例近くとなった。
159 - 衆 - 農林水産委員会 - 7号 平成16年03月18日 ○松木委員
記事の中に、アメリカでは、アルツハイマー病あるいは痴呆症と診断される人が年間四百万人いるそう
なんです。複数の研究機関の合同研究によると、このうち三から一三％が実際はヤコブ病であったことが
判明しております。少なく見積もっても十二万人はヤコブ病の公式統計に含まれていない可能性がある。
「アルツハイマーや若年性痴呆の中に変異型ヤコブ病患者が」・・米国牛輸入再開に京大医学部教授衝撃的指摘
http://news18.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/dqnplus/1120196765/
【ｖＣＪＤ】牛海綿状脳症（ＢＳＥ）と同じ病気“日本人発症しやすい”…厚労省研究班
http://news16.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/scienceplus/1088575874/l50
少年ギャング団リーダー逮捕のニュース
自動販売機を壊して現金を盗んだとして、神奈川県警少年捜査課は25日、同県愛川町の無職少年（19）を窃盗の疑いで逮捕した。少年は黒いシャツを着て集まる「大和ブラックギャングスター」のリーダー。県警はこれまでにひったくりなどを繰り返していたこのギャング団のメンバー7人を窃盗容疑で逮捕している。
このギャング団は「窃盗はご法度」というルールを持っていたが、多くのメンバーが遊ぶ金ほしさにひったくりや自販機狙いの窃盗を繰り返していたという。
調べによると、少年は昨年11月10日、同県厚木市七沢に設置された清涼飲料水の自販機をバールで壊して現金1万1000円を盗んだ疑い。 (11:00)
またまた高金利について債務者勝訴の最高裁判決
「日掛け金融」の高利貸し付けは違法…最高裁判決
零細事業者を対象にした高利貸し付けが認められている「日掛け金融」の業者に対し、利息制限法の上限金利を上回る超過利息の返還を債務者が求めた訴訟の上告審判決が２４日、最高裁第３小法廷であった。
上田豊三裁判長は、「高利貸し付けが認められるには、連日の取り立てなど、日掛け金融の条件を現実に守らなければならない」との初判断を示し、業者による超過利息の徴収は違法だとした。そのうえで請求を棄却した１、２審判決を破棄し、返還額の審理のため福岡高裁に差し戻した。債務者側の逆転勝訴が確実になった。
貸金業規制法や出資法は、約１３００社に上る日掛け金融業者について、〈１〉少額ずつ連日集金〈２〉１００日以上の返済期間を設ける――などを条件に、利息制限法の上限金利（年１５～２０％）よりも大幅に高い５４・７５％の利息を徴収することを認めている。
業者側はこれらの条件を緩やかに解釈して営業してきたが、判決は、条件を極めて厳格に守ることを求めており、業界はすでに徴収した超過利息（過払い金）の返還などを迫られそうだ。
この訴訟は、佐賀県内の飲食店経営者ら２人が、「ダイヤモンドリース」（清算手続き中、福岡県久留米市）に、過払い金約１７３万円などの返還を求めたもの。
判決などによると、同社は１９９６年７月、当時の日掛け金融の上限金利（１０９・５％）で経営者に５０万円を貸し付け、さらに計１５回の追加融資をして、２０００年１２月まで取引を続けた。その際、集金を休む日が多かったうえ、１００日の返済期間が経過する前の追加融資を繰り返した。
サラ金の金利上限が最高裁の判決でさがりそう
消費者金融金利 最高判決の衝撃
憲法には国民は法の下に平等であるとあるが、現実はそうではないケースがままある。当事者同士の話し合いでいかようにでもなるというのが実態だ。
それを証明したのが消費者金融関連の２つの法律である。(１)利息制限法の上限金利は15～20％(２)出資法での上限金利は29.2％で、これを破れば刑事罰が科せられる。
金融業者は高い金利を取りたいから出資法の上限スレスレで営業を続けてきた。これ以上の金利は刑事罰が科せられる29.2％と違法性のない15～20％の間が、まさにグレーゾーン。主管官庁が違う２つの法規制の間がさまざまな業者が生き延びる根拠となっていて、４年前の国会では「４年後に見直す」という取り決めで、議員立法による審議が決まっていた。そして今年が、その見直しの年である。
そんなタイミングを見透かすかのように画期的な判決が最高裁第２小法廷で言い渡された。貸し手が強く要求しても、利息制限法(年利15～20％)を超えた利息の支払い要求は無効、というのである。
この判決は事実上「金貸しの仕事は利息制限法の範囲内だ」ということを知らしめた。大手貸金業者は押しなべて大打撃だが、ここに至るまでの紆余曲折は大変だった。「東京都のある業者は、数年前から出資法の金利を解禁し、現行の29.2％を33％台に持ってくるのが悲願だった」(事情通)
それも、最高裁の判決でパー。“高利貸”の野望を打ち砕いたことになる。
【笹子 勝哉】
サラ金の貸し出し債権を、証券化によって買い取るというスキームにより、どこかの投資家が高金利の利回りで大もうけしている。もう、それができなくなるかも。
アメリカの赤字：Economist記事
America's dark materials
From The Economist print edition
The United States' current-account deficit is a figment of bad accounting. If only
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STARE at something long and hard enough, and it will begin to swim before your eyes. Economists have been scrutinising America's current-account deficit for years now, and they are no closer to agreeing on what they are looking at. Now two economists at Harvard doubt whether the deficit even exists. Ricardo Hausmann and Frederico Sturzenegger first put this claim in a working paper* released last November. Your correspondent has blinked twice since then, but the claim has not gone away. On the contrary, it is gathering moss† .
At the heart of the argument is a well-known paradox. In the mainstream view, America is now the world's biggest debtor. Thanks to its chronic trade deficits, it stood $2.5 trillion in the red at the end of 2004. And yet it still somehow manages to earn more on its foreign assets than it pays out to service its much bigger stock of debts: $36.2 billion more in 2004.
Most economists conclude that America earns a higher return on its overseas assets (eg, EuroDisney) than foreigners earn on investments in America (eg, Rockefeller Centre). They don their anoraks, immerse themselves in the data and try to work out why this might be so. Messrs Hausmann and Sturzenegger turn the question on its head. It is not the $36.2 billion of income that is the mystery, they say. The anomaly lies in the $2.5 trillion of debt. If America is still coming out ahead of foreigners, then, contrary to popular belief, it must still be a net creditor. America must have more foreign wealth than we can see.
The two authors have borrowed a name for this invisible wealth: dark matter. In theoretical physics, dark matter is the stuff in the universe that we can identify only by its gravitational pull. For the Harvard economists, dark matter is foreign wealth, the existence of which we can infer from the income it provides.
How much of it is out there? You can calculate a price for an asset from the earnings it provides. Messrs Hausmann and Sturzenegger elect to value America's net foreign assets at 20 times their annual earnings, which corresponds to a 5% rate of return. Valued at this ratio, America's national “portfolio” of foreign assets and liabilities is really worth $724 billion, not minus $2.5 trillion. What is more, if its foreign assets are as stable as the authors say, it follows that “the country has not been running a deficit.”
Messrs Hausmann and Sturzenegger were the first to name dark matter, but not the first to discover it. In his book, “The United States as a Debtor Nation”, published last year, William Cline, of the Institute for International Economics, performed the same calculation, backing out the value of America's net foreign assets from the income they generate. (Instead of calling it dark matter, Mr Cline, evidently not a born marketing man, called it “capitalised net capital income”.)
Mr Cline agrees with the dark materialists when they say there is “something misleading about calling a country that makes money on its financial position the world's largest debtor”. But sadly he does not think Americans can stop worrying. After making $36.2 billion in 2004, America made just $4 billion on its net foreign assets in the first three quarters of 2005. If it continues on its present trajectory, it will shell out about $190 billion in 2010, Mr Cline calculates. Using Messrs Hausmann and Sturzenegger's methodology, America's net foreign assets would then amount to minus $3.8 trillion. A dark matter indeed.
Apart from its name, the dark matter thesis appeals because of its simplicity. Philip Lane, of Trinity College, Dublin, thinks it too simple. It matters, he says, what a nation's foreign wealth is composed of. Foreigners hold a lot of American debt (bonds and bank loans), whereas America holds a lot of foreign equity, especially foreign direct investment (FDI). This has two implications. First, what America pays to foreign creditors depends a lot on interest rates, which have been unusually low in recent years. Second, the value of America's assets depends on the risks they carry. Yet Messrs Hausmann and Sturzenegger apply the same valuation ratio indiscriminately to bonds, equities, trade credits and bank loans on both sides of the balance sheet.
That said, there remains a big gap in reported profitability between American FDI and FDI in America that risk alone cannot explain. Perhaps taxes can. To dodge the revenuemen, a multinational company might report artificially high profits in a low-tax jurisdiction abroad. This tax arbitrage, Mr Lane points out, can shift money from one line of the current account to another. But it does not change the size of the deficit one jot.
To Messrs Hausmann and Sturzenegger, mainstream attempts to explain away dark matter look a bit desperate. Fond of their cosmological analogies, they liken them to the labours of medieval astronomers, trying to fit anomalous movements of the planets into their Ptolemaic model of the universe.
But the authors' thesis raises anomalies of its own. By their own account, dark matter should be stable. It stems from abiding features of the American economy, such as managerial know-how, a prized but uncounted commodity that Americans export to their subsidiaries abroad. But as Ed McKelvey, of Goldman Sachs, points out, America's exports of dark matter seem to jump up and down wildly from year to year: $351 billion in 2004, $1.2 trillion in 2003, just $172 billion in 2002. Dark matter seems to fluctuate at frequencies that are not structural, nor even cyclical. Perhaps they are best described as epicyclical.
Not all physicists regard dark matter as an elegant theoretical solution to the mysteries of the universe. Many think it is a bit of a fudge. Just a few months before the concept was introduced into economics, two theorists were hoping to dispel it from physics. Physicists, you see, expect beauty as well as truth from their theories. Economists, alas, must settle for one or the other.
ホリエモンの記事:economist
Still livin' on the edge
From The Economist print edition
Takafumi Horie, dotcom challenger of Japan's corporate elite, may have taken a step too far
IN A land of dark-suited, largely anonymous executives, it is hard to miss the jeans, sneakers and spiky hair of Takafumi Horie, founder of livedoor, an internet and finance company. A survivor of the internet bubble in the late 1990s, the brash 33-year-old is known for his outspoken defiance of old-style corporate Japan—as well as his love of the spotlight and gorgeous women. After starting his first internet company, aptly named Livin' On The Edge, a decade ago when he was still a student at Tokyo University, he dropped out of school to ride the internet wave, advising like-minded students to do the same.
Even in its early days, people took note of his company, tucked away in the back streets of Shibuya, Tokyo's hotspot for the young. Since then, Mr Horie has made a fortune: first by listing his company on Mothers, a stockmarket for start-ups run by the Tokyo Stock Exchange, and then by using the profits to buy livedoor, a defunct internet-service provider. Chiefly through financial engineering (his company, renamed livedoor in 2004, has split its stock 30,000-fold) and a succession of often surprising mergers and acquisitions, the market value of the empire Mr Horie built rose to about ¥930 billion ($8 billion) at its peak. Livedoor controls around 50 companies, including an accounting-software house, an online travel agency, a securities company, a mail-order retailer and a second-hand car firm. In the year to last September livedoor's profits quadrupled, to ¥15 billion.
Yet on January 16th it was Mr Horie who was taken by surprise. His company, now located in Roppongi Hills, a prestigious Tokyo landmark, was raided by prosecutors and investigators from the Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission (SESC), on suspicion of securities-law violations. They also raided his home in a probe that lasted until dawn.
The investigation is centred around livedoor Marketing, an advertising affiliate, which is suspected of having deceived the public in October 2004 by announcing that it would buy Money Life, a publisher, through a share swap—when it already controlled the firm through a private-investment arm. If the deception is proven, that would amount to market manipulation, a serious offence. Prosecutors also suspect livedoor Marketing of fiddling its accounts so as to boost its share price. Investigators are digging to see the extent of Mr Horie's involvement.
Such was the shock caused by the investigation that on January 17th livedoor shares lost ¥100 billion in stockmarket capitalisation, while the benchmark Nikkei share index saw its largest one-day drop since last April (see article ). The scandal sent politicians scrambling for cover. Mr Horie had stood for election last September as an independent, but one strongly backed by Junichiro Koizumi, the prime minister. Mr Horie was a vocal supporter of Mr Koizumi's plans to privatise the post office—the central issue of the whole campaign. He took on Shizuka Kamei, one of the staunchest opponents of Mr Koizumi within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, and lost.
While many locals, especially the smirking corporate old-guard, seem already to have judged Mr Horie and condemned him, he still has support. After all, financial jiggery-pokery is a pretty traditional activity in Japan. “Everyone in the international community is watching this closely, because of concerns that this could represent selective enforcement against an aggressive young entrepreneur,” says a foreign lawyer based in Tokyo.
If the prosecutors make their allegations stick, it would be a huge setback for a man who has helped shake Japan out of its stolidity. Mr Horie's first real brush with fame came in 2004 during a crisis in baseball. The rising popularity of soccer meant that baseball was losing fans and money. When one of Japan's two baseball leagues was threatened with collapse and the players went on strike, Mr Horie stepped in—offering to buy a cash-strapped team and promoting new ideas to revitalise the sport. His actions prompted other investors to get involved. Although Mr Horie did not ultimately buy a team, he won a reputation as the man who saved Japanese baseball.
Mr Horie also introduced to Japan the hostile takeover, with his brazen bid to take a controlling stake in Nippon Broadcasting System (NBS), a radio station—which, because of a complicated system of cross shareholdings, was regarded as a bid to gain control of Fuji Television, Japan's biggest commercial television station. Fuji fought a bitter and emotional battle over the airwaves and in court against the interloper; while livedoor fought cunningly by skirting the rules—buying shares during after-hours trading, enabling it to avoid disclosure. The Financial Services Agency somewhat belatedly plugged the loophole. The two-month conflict was finally resolved last April, through an amicable settlement in which livedoor sold its stake in Fuji (for a tidy profit), and Fuji made an investment in livedoor. Mr Horie's actions helped change the way Japanese companies do business and have prompted other high-profile hostile bids. Yet there has also been a backlash against the financial liberalisation that Mr Horie has taken advantage of. Under current law, foreign companies can only buy Japanese firms with cash, rather than using their own shares. This rule was due to be scrapped. But after the livedoor-Fuji battle, the government decided to postpone the change for another year.
Mr Horie's emblematic status ensures that he has been at the heart of the unresolved struggle in Japan between those who look to markets to determine such things as who should own companies and those who think that Japan's stockmarket today is overrun by short-term adventurers and the companies that cater to them. The chances of a backlash, especially from the corporate old-guard, will depend on whether Mr Horie continues to live on the edge, or whether he has just walked over it.