George DeMartino on economic ethics from The Economist: Finance and economics

The author of "The Economist's Oath" on the need for ethical debate within the economics profession and why some will ardently disagree. Listen to that Economist podcast here.

"Is Your E-Book Reading Up On You?" from NPR by MARTIN KASTE

E-books are quickly going mainstream: They represent nearly one out of 10 trade books sold. It's easy to imagine a near future in which paper books are the exception, not the norm. But are book lovers ready to have their reading tracked? Most e-readers, like Amazon's Kindle, have an antenna that lets users instantly download new books. But the technology also makes it possible for the device to transmit information back to the manufacturer. "They know how fast you read because you have to click to turn the page," says Cindy Cohn, legal director at the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation. "It knows if you skip to the end to read how it turns out."

Listen to the NPR All Things Considered podcast on this story. Read the full NPR feature story here. See this story from the Economist, as well; it's on the state of the retail side of the book business, in which it states, in part:

The context for all this activity is a technological transformation in bookselling that has devastated bookstores. Amazon, whose Kindle became the first e-reader to achieve critical mass, ahead of Apple’s iPad, announced a further innovation on December 8th, making books published on the Kindle available through web browsers. This came hot on the heels of Google’s announcement that it is launching its own e-books and online e-reader. Borders, which has lost money in each of the past ten quarters, has only recently launched its e-reader, called Kobo, in partnership with Indigo, a Canadian bookseller. One of the apparent goals of Borders in offering to buy Barnes & Noble is to get its hands on its rival’s superior e-book technology. That includes the nook, an e-reader which hit the market far sooner than the Kobo, though later than the Kindle.

Read that full Economist article, here.

The father of vertical farming from The Economist

Dickson Despommier, author of "The Vertical Farm", on the concept, what it might look like and the eco-cities of the future.

View the video here. The Economist also notes:

The idea is that skyscrapers filled with floor upon floor of orchards and fields, producing crops all year round, will sprout in cities across the world. As well as creating more farmable land out of thin air, this would slash the transport costs and carbon-dioxide emissions associated with moving food over long distances. It would also reduce the spoilage that inevitably occurs along the way, says Dickson Despommier, a professor of public and environmental health at Columbia University in New York who is widely regarded as the progenitor of vertical farming, and whose recently published book, “The Vertical Farm”, is a manifesto for the idea. According to the UN’s Population Division, by 2050 around 70% of the world’s population will be living in urban areas. So it just makes sense, he says, to move farms closer to where everyone will be living.

Read that full feature, at the Economist.com. See also: Public Produce: The New Urban Agriculture, Farms: Vertical Farming, 15 Living Walls, Vertical Gardens & Sky Farms

Look again: Reform of China’s financial sector has slowed. This might prove dangerous: China's financial system - from The Economist

A week ago, The Economist had this to say about the China and its economy, from within the context of a review of the book, Red Capitalism:

Anyone who is overly impressed with the apparent resilience of China today would do well to read a new book by two bankers who have worked there for many years, Carl Walter and Fraser Howie. “Red Capitalism” avoids the standard approach to Chinese analysis, which uses mounds of macroeconomic data that even Chinese regulators acknowledge are replete with flaws. Instead, the authors examine how China’s financial system has grown from pretty much nothing three decades ago into the dynamic, bewildering and possibly doomed set of institutions that fill the landscape today. The book is, in many ways, a story of remarkable progress. In 1974 a delegation to the United Nations led by the future Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, almost never left home because there wasn’t enough cash in the banking system—the entire Chinese banking system—to pay for the delegates’ plane tickets. Conditions worsened even further after that. By 1978, when Mr Deng returned from yet another political exile to assume power, China’s formal financial system had shrunk to a single institution, the People’s Bank, whose head office was made up of 80 people buried within the Ministry of Finance. [...] Skipping ahead, China now has more dollars than it can spend and its financial system is populated by a constantly expanding array of institutions. This is no accident. As “Red Capitalism” describes, it was Mr Deng’s goal, pursued with the vital support of his immediate successors, President Jiang Zemin and Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, who pushed through changes that were thoughtful, often brutal, and sometimes mistaken.

Read that Economist article, here. The Financial Times mentioned the book in "China starts crackdown on insider trading":

Mainland China’s markets are notoriously opaque and speculative. Everyone, from small retail investors to top fund managers, appears to trade on tips from contacts who claim to have “inside” information. “If you ask any Chinese investor whether they think a chairman or executive of a company is trading in their own stock, nine out of 10 would expect that to be the case just as they would expect a government official to be taking bribes,” says Fraser Howie, co-author of Red Capitalism and other books on China’s stock markets. Last week’s announcement marked the first time the Chinese cabinet has publicly addressed the issue of insider trading and was interpreted by investors as a signal of the government’s determination to head off a new stock bubble.

Read that full FT article here. See also: Out of the Red: Investment and Capitalism in Russia, Capitalism's Brutal Comeback in China (Red Banner Reader), Out of the Red : Building Capitalism and Democracy in Postcommunist Europe, Red Capitalism: An Analysis of the Navajo Economy

The best books of 2010 from The Economist: Books and arts

It wasn't a good year for big analytical books, but 2010 yielded some very fine books on Russia and China.

Download the podcast of that Economist discussion here. First that list:

Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime. By John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. Sleazy, personal, intrusive, shocking and horribly compulsive, particularly about Hillary Clinton and John McCain. By two American journalists, one of whom, John Heilemann, worked for The Economist until 1995. The 2008 presidential race as high-quality political porn.

If you don't care for podcasts, and/or you need that information, right this minute, check this printed/published page out. Second on that list:

The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama. By David Remnick. Beautifully written, artfully constructed and full of new detail about the president—from his Hawaiian childhood to the Indonesian interlude and his years in Chicago, by the editor of the New Yorker.

Books of the year from The Economist: Books and arts

The best books of 2010 were about Barack Obama and the secret world of China's communist rulers, as well as on the spread of surfing, how prosperity evolves, how the West rules (for now) and the travels of the hare with amber eyes.

This is a straight out list of The Economist's best books of the year. Download the podcast here. See also: Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers, Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory, Molotov's Magic Lantern: Travels in Russian History, Curfewed Night: One Kashmiri Journalist's Frontline Account of Life, Love, and War in His Homeland

Simon Tay on America and Asia from The Economist: Books and arts

The author of "Asia Alone" discusses the rise of China and why its neighbours hope for continued American engagement in the region [...]

Listen to the Economist podcast here. See also: Asia Alone: The Dangerous Post-Crisis Divide from America, A Mandarin in the Making: Reflections by Ngiam Tong, Pacific Asia 2022: Sketching Futures Of A Region, Reinventing ASEAN

Simon Tay on America and Asia

The author of "Asia Alone" discusses the rise of China and why its neighbours hope for continued American engagement in the region.

Download the podcast from The Economist magazine here. See also: Asia Alone: The Dangerous Post-Crisis Divide from America, Khiva to Samarkand - The remarkable story of a woman's adventurous journey alone through the deserts of Central Asia to the heart of Turkestan, Pacific Asia 2022: Sketching Futures Of A Region, Biography - Tay, Simon S. C. (1961-): An article from: Contemporary Authors Online

More senior staff changes: Out goes the general from The Economist: Full print edition

In comes the pol: WHEN fighting two wars, trying to stop Iran building nuclear weapons and facing a continuing danger of terrorist attacks, few things matter more than cool decision-making in the White House. That is why the departure last week of General James Jones (above), Barack Obama’s national security adviser, has prompted frenzied analysis. Was he planning to leave anyway? Or was he pushed because Bob Woodward disclosed in his latest book that the former NATO commander had a low opinion of the president’s inner circle of political advisers, calling them, among other things, the “politburo” and “the Mafia”? The answer seems to be: a bit of both. As Mr Obama said in a fulsome Rose Garden send-off, General Jones had never intended to stay for a full term. On the other hand, the leaks in Mr Woodward’s “Obama’s Wars” show that deep tensions have existed inside the president’s national-security team. In part this was a clash of personalities. Most generals believe in a chain of command, and General Jones appears to have resented the fact that some of those who worked for him had better access to the president than he did himself. He forced one such underling, Mark Lippert, out of the White House altogether. But another, Tom Donilon, has now been promoted to become national security adviser in the general’s place. ...

Check out the full Economist story here. See also: The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008

Mass murder from The Economist: Books and arts

How Stalin and Hitler enabled each other's crimes.

Download the excellent review by the Economist here. See also: Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives, Deathride: Hitler vs. Stalin - The Eastern Front, 1941-1945, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe (Vintage), War of the Century - When Hitler Fought Stalin

Space exploration: To infinity and beyond from The Economist: Full print edition Showing man worlds he had never seen

IN THE summer of 1977 two American spacecraft were launched on what is arguably the grandest mission ever: the exploration of the outer planets of the solar system and the space that lies beyond. More than three decades later, they have become the farthest man-made objects from Earth, reaching out in the darkness to overtake earlier missions to oblivion. The Voyager spacecraft have not only clocked up a far better understanding of the outer planets, they also illustrate mankind’s third great age of discovery, according to Stephen Pyne in a fascinating new book. ...

Read the full Economist article here (subscription required).

Henry Luce: American dreamer from The Economist: Full print edition

The man who gave a name to the American century: The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century. By Alan Brinkley. Knopf; 544 pages; $35. Buy from Amazon.com: AT 14, though not later in life, Henry Robinson Luce was a great supporter of a revolution, the Chinese revolution of 1912. He wrote to a friend who was visiting Luce’s missionary parents in China, welcoming him to “a great land, peopled by a great nation, endowed with a great past, overshadowed by a greater future.” It was, he added, “the greatest and most stupendous Reformation in all history.” ...

Read the Economist piece on the book, here (subscription required, or you can do a cache search on Google for the bulk of it). Check this YouTube video out as well (from the Book TV channel).