Текст книги "Speak and Write like The Economist: Говори и пиши как The Eсonomist"

“ Art, books, music, Hollywood, education, media

Who could paint an apple after Cézanne?

Viewers would decide in seven seconds whether or not to watch.

Michelangelo Merisi was omnisexual and died of sunstroke and syphilis, aggravated by lead poisoning from the paints he mixed.

Before the first world war the most exciting artists were French; in the 1990s they were Chinese. Now the hot new place for contemporary art is Africa.

All you need for a movie is a girl, a gun, lots of singing, melodrama and never-ending dance sequences. Or so a big chunk of the Indian audience believes. Pre-screening rituals include burning camphor inside a sliced pumpkin before smashing it near the big screen to bring good luck.

Vincent Van Gogh died in obscurity, having sold only one painting.

BP will hope that having a new partner will work out better than it did for Anna Karenina, who flung herself in front of a train after the disintegration of her relationship with her replacement Russian lover.

Pablo Picasso: «Good artists copy, great artists steal.»

No one has ever bothered to explain what «good» or «bad» jazz really is. When you see a live performance, you may be watching a 60-year-old musician playing a 100-year-old piece.

Of Nabokov's 19 fictions, no fewer than six wholly or partly concern themselves with the sexuality of prepubescent girls.

The painter was also a shrewd businessman; he mixed indigo and madder to replicate the effect of the period's most expensive pigment, Tyrian purple, which was extracted from sea snails and worth more than its weight in gold.

CNN's challenge is to attract more viewers when no one is shooting anyone or blowing anything up.

Back when newspapers were king, Charles Brownson, an American congressman, used to say that one should never quarrel with anyone who buys ink by the barrel.

Artists came to paint and sculpt, writers to write, deadbeats to die, and a large share to drink and misbehave.

Only twice did George Martin, the Beatles record producer impose himself: at the start, insisting that they replace Pete Best as their drummer, and at the end, when he agreed to record «Abbey Road» if they stopped fighting.

Socrates's bugbear was the spread of the biggest-ever innovation in communications – writing. He feared that relying on written texts, rather than the oral tradition, would «create forgetfulness in the learners' souls… they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves.» Enos Hitchcock voiced a widespread concern about the latest publishing fad in 1790. «The free access which many young people have to romances, novels and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth.» (There was a related worry that sofas, introduced at the same time, encouraged young people to drift off into fantasy worlds.) Cinema was denounced as «an evil pure and simple» in 1910; comic books were said to lead children into delinquency in 1954; rock'n'roll was accused of turning the young into «devil worshippers» in 1956; Hillary Clinton attacked video games for «stealing the innocence of our children» in 2005.

James Bond films are almost always the same: Bond is sent to an exotic location, meets and seduces a woman, gets caught by the villain, escapes, kills the villain and gets the girl.

Java sparrows are able to distinguish cubist paintings from impressionist and Japanese ones, and that pigeons can tell a Chagall from a Van Gogh, as well as discriminating between the Japanese school and the impressionist.

To build his factory, Mr Fazioli moved from Rome to Sacile, near Venice and, more important, near the Val di Fiemme, known as the «musical forest» for spruce trees yielding especially resonant wood.

This book is a gem, and there are still 91 shopping days till Christmas.

«Terminator: Genisys», a flop in America with $90m in takings on a $155m production budget, was a blockbuster overseas, earning $351m, including $113m in China. Even if big names like these have lost some of their lustre at home, abroad they can be «sort of like supernovas», the studio executive says. «They have flamed out a long time ago but the light shines on past their death.»

Unable to reach any conclusion about what art is, he turns instead to what it is not. There are plenty of things that are not works of art: for example, human excrement. Probably. But what about Piero Manzoni, an Italian artist who died in 1963 after creating an «edition» of 90 tin cans each containing 30 grams of his own excrement? The Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Gallery and the Pompidou Centre snapped them up. More fool them, you say. Others would agree, but they would be no closer to defining what art is.

Albert Einstein, a huge fan of Bach's, advised others to «listen, play, love, revere – and keep your mouth shut.»

Do orchestral conductors do anything useful?

Alfted Hitchcock, who knew about such things, explained the difference between shock and suspense. Shock is when a bomb suddenly explodes. Suspense is when viewers see a bomb beneath a table where people are peacefully chatting. Shock is seeing the tops of telephone poles and trees poking above roiling waters on one side of the two-lane causeway between Morganza and Batchelor in Louisiana – particularly when the Mississippi River is on the other side of the road. Suspense is imagining where that water will be in a few days.

Salingerspent ten years writing «The Catcher in the Rye» and «the rest of his life regretting it,» observe David Shields and Shane Salerno in a new biography and related documentary.

Art is not a mirror to hold up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it," declared Bertolt Brecht.

Herodotus describes flying snakes, fox-sized ants that unearthed gold dust, men with the heads of dogs and others with no heads at all whose eyes are set in their chests. But, as with reports of the intervention of the gods, he often distances himself by remarking that he is not sure if he can believe what he has been told.

What price the Louvre, the Parthenon or Yellowstone National Park?

Imagine a place run by film stars – vain, power-hungry, paranoid, adored. Imagine they had been in charge not for the duration of a reality television series but for decades in a territory containing 72m people and one of the world's largest cities. It would be a disaster zone, wouldn't it?

Does Cannes need to shock?

Horace Walpole always regretted the export to Russia of the legendary British art collection, fearing that it would be «burnt in a wooden palace on the first insurrection». But by a twist of fate, the sale saved the paintings. In 1789, ten years after they left, the Picture Gallery at Houghton was destroyed by fire.

«It is possible to teach every branch of human knowledge with the motion picture,» observed Thomas Edison in 1913, predicting that books would soon be obsolete in the classroom.

There is now nothing you can imagine that cannot be shown by Hollywood.

To judge a painter, you have to wait at least two centuries.

Such schmaltzy songs as «White Christmas», «Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer» and «Let it Snow» were all by Jewish musicians.

The Library of Alexandria – built during the 3rd century BC to house the accumulated knowledge of centuries – reputedly had a copy (often the only copy) of every book in the world at the time. It burned to the ground sometime between Julius Caesar's conquest of Egypt in 48BC and the Muslim invasion in 640AD. Some historians believe the loss of the Alexandrian library, along with the dissolution of its huge community of scribes and scholars, created the conditions for the Dark Ages that descended across Europe as the Roman empire crumbled from within. A millennium of misery ensued, with ignorance and poverty the rule until the Renaissance dawned.

Paul Newman's blue eyes: cornflower blue, steel blue or ice blue?

«What is America but beauty queens, millionaires, stupid records and Hollywood?» asked Adolf Hitler in 1940.

«Avatar», an enjoyable nonsense art.

No one in Hollywood cared what Emmanuelle wore, as long as she removed it. Her long, willowy body was rented out, to become the fantasy possession of thousands of devoted men. But her price was too high, and they would never have her.

Americans would sooner unplug their refrigerators than their cable boxes.

If Greece represented the first day in art, then these carved tusks and sculpted stones mark the dazzling light of its «early morning».

Last September the Boston Museum of Fine Arts bowed to public pressure and returned the top half of an 1,800-year-old statue called «Weary Herakles», which came from southern Turkey. Left to the museum by an American couple, its documented provenance went back no more than 30 years, which suggests it was looted, probably in the late 1970s. Mr Erdogan himself brought this trophy back to Turkey, reuniting the head and torso with the statue's bottom half.

A classical scholar at Winchester College and at Oxford, Frank Thompson was proficient in nine languages and a voracious reader. (He read «War and Peace» many times, once in Italian.)

«I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers,» Mahatma Gandhi once said.

Britain exports around 3 % of the world's goods and 6 % of the world's services, but the country's artists account for around 13 % of global music sales.

A sense of comedy is never far off. «Mount Sepsick! Mount Spittelboom!» cries the wicked brother in another story, groping for the magic words that will open the cave. «Mount Siccapillydircus!» he tries again in desperation.

Some may have been sudoku, tredoku or futoshiki freaks, who buy daily newspapers, extract the puzzle pages and throw away the rest.

Forgers nowadays typically favour 20th-century abstract and expressionist styles. Mimicking Jackson Pollock's drip-and-splatter paintings is easier than faking old masters such as Rembrandt. Swamped with lawsuits, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation stopped authenticating works in 1996, four decades after Pollock's death. Lawsuits continued anyway. A court even entertained a suit from a man with a painting signed «Pollack».

A publicist who specializes in selling sauce to the tabloids.

Dante's complicated ABA, BCB, CDC, DED.

Music is a mystery. It is unique to the human race: no other species produces elaborate sound for no particular reason.

Miss Lena Horne's producers once complained that she opened her mouth too wide to sing. They meant it was a Negro thing.

If you want to get a message down into the soul of a God-fearing, native-to-the-earth, rural-thinking person, one of the surest ways is through traditional country music – anyone who wants to understand the world's most politically influential tribe – the people of Middle America, who pick most American presidents – should pay attention to country music. Country music has always been the best shrink that 15 bucks can buy.

You're not going to sit down and watch the BBC world news in 3-D.

A Hollywood executive is powerful and successful largely because he is viewed as being powerful and successful… A group of terrorists is planning to kill millions of Americans. Only one man can stop them: Jack Bauer. Unfortunately, he has been imprisoned in a secret facility. And tortured. Then decapitated and fed to boars. In a typical day, Agent Bauer is shot and stabbed more often than he takes bathroom breaks, but it never seems to slow him down. That was a spoof of «24» by Dave Barry, a comic writer. All this is harmless fantasy, of course. Or is it? A disconcerting number of Americans take «24» seriously.

Introducing Huck Finn, Mark Twain gave warning: «Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.»

Michelangelo is a sculptor, a painter and an architect, he sees everything in three dimensions. It is as though he has put the human body on a spindle and is turning it back to front in one view.

More seasoned PR flacks might have done it differently. First, lunch the journalists concerned, ostensibly to discuss some other story. Then, over dessert, casually slip into the conversation the poison that their secret client wanted them to spread. With luck the reporters would follow up on the scuttlebutt without mentioning its source, assuring themselves that they had got the story through their «contacts».

Imagine, further, that every newspaper felt obliged to print such choice items as this: «The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, has sent a reply cable of thanks to Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, Deputy Premier, Minister of Defence and Aviation and Inspector-General, thanking the Crown Prince and all personnel of the armed forces for their congratulations to the King on the occasion of Eid al Fitr, marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, in the cable sent earlier to the King by the Crown Prince.»

It is too easy to pass the test that determines whether a film is sufficiently British to be worthy of state support. Because the criteria include where a film is set and the nationality of its main characters, actors and scriptwriters, film-makers can easily qualify by adding a few minor details, such as shoot-outs in Waterloo station and the assassination in the first few minutes of a British journalist (both features of «The Bourne Ultimatum»). Even these literary touches may be unnecessary: films such as «Dark Knight», a Batman movie set in mythical Gotham City, also qualify for subsidy because chunks are filmed in Britain and they employ local people in important positions.

He had that curious love of green, which in individuals is always the sign of a subtle artistic temperament, and in nations is said to denote a laxity, if not a decadence of morals.

Virtually every day of the year sees another art biennial opening somewhere in the world.

In most German states, after just four years of primary school children are steamed into one of several types of secondary school: clever kids attend Gymnasien, middling ones Realschulen and the slowest learners Hauptschulen, which are supposed top prepare them for trades. Children at the bottom often face low-wage drudgery or the dole.

3-D movies add one more layer of reality to the unreality.

Paul Hendrickson's bibliography lists 76 biographical works about Ernest Hemingway, nine of them by wives, siblings and children, followed by memoirists, respected biographers and hangers on, pretenders and doctoral students.

The «Lula, Son of Brazil» film is very watchable.

Our media act as if American manufacturing is going to grind to a halt at around two o'clock this afternoon.

«Garbology» is a word popularized (and possibly coined) by A. J. Weberman, a writer and activist whose credo was «you are what you throw away».

He began his job with little respect from the media and ended up with zero.

His book is all preface and no body.

During his years as an insider he has acquired the typical habits of mind of veteran Washingtonians: an obsession with spin and gossip, including an over-inflated sense of the importance of newspaper articles; a hyper-sensitive nose for threats; and, it would appear, a determination to destroy his enemies by whatever means necessary.

Eagle-eyed publishers will have noticed a discernible trend in contemporary Christmas stockings: that the pot pourri of little bits of coal, tangerines, chocolate coins and other semi-useless items should also include a small book that fits neatly into one's handbag or above the cistern. Not only is this trend infinitely self-improving, but it has resulted in dramatic sales figures for items such as «Schott's Miscellany» and «Eats, Shoots and Leaves», both of which spent many pre– and post-Christmas weeks on the bestseller list in recent years.

America has been fabulously successful at providing its projectors with Grand Academies in the form of lavishly-funded think-tanks, well over 100 of them in Washington alone. And American projectors have been superb at getting their message across. America boasts a vast array of magazines, such as the American Interest and the New Republic, which like nothing better than picking up «hot» new ideas. And America's policy intellectuals have a talent for packaging their ideas in provocative ways – for declaring not just that the cold war is winding down but that history is ending, not just that regional tensions are rising but that the world is entering a clash of civilizations.

A picture gallery is a dull place for a blind man.

Rembrandt says things for which there are no words in any language.

Nietzsche: «We have art in order not to die from the truth.»

“ Business, money, trade, economics, professions

America is a brand. Trash it, and the costs of every global transaction will rise. A dealmaker cannot want that.

Being born rich (or marrying well) becomes a surer route to success than working hard or starting a firm. It is a recipe for social stagnation, and perhaps crisis.

At an auction organised by Stack's Bowers on March 31st, 2017, an American cent from 1793 sold for $940,000, becoming the costliest penny ever.

Starbucks opens a new branch in China every 15 hours.

Those timorous chief executives serve longer than the average Roman emperor did: bosses departing in 2015 had an average of 11 years in office for S&P 500 firms, the highest figure for 13 years.

Making money yourself from investing other people's has been a good business for over a century.

Datang, China's «sock city» near Hangzhou in 2014 it made 26bn pairs of socks, some 70 % of China's production.

As Warren Buffett puts it, «What is smart at one price is dumb at another.»

Foreign workers may make goods but American cashiers still sell them.

In private equity nowadays, it seems, what counts is less the depth of your pockets than speed on your feet.

If liking motorcycles turns out to predict a lower IQ, he asks, should employers be allowed to reject job applicants who admit to liking motorcycles?

Oil's well that ends well.

But if the history of gold is any guide, what goes up will come down – and then go up again.

Economists and psychologists talk about the «curse of knowledge»: people who know something have a hard time imagining someone else who does not.

Migrants from the countryside in China numbered 282m at the end of last year, 4m more than in 2015 (an increase in just one year equivalent to the population of Los Angeles).

Bankers typically make money by charging a higher rate for loans than they pay to depositors: the so-called 3–6–3 model (borrow at 3 %, lend at 6 % and be on the golf course by 3pm).

Seeing more sedans than pickup trucks, for instance, strongly suggests that a neighbourhood tends to vote for the Democrats.

Build a better mousetrap, the saying goes, and the world will beat a path to your door. Find a way to beat the stockmarket and they will construct a high-speed railway.

Executives justify flying private on the grounds that they may need to get back to the office quickly in an emergency, and that confidential documents or company devices may be lost or stolen on a commercial flight. But when they enjoy that extra security, they are exposing themselves to another risk: private-plane crashes are a leading cause of death for CEOs, behind only heart attacks, cancer and strokes.

In cheap action films the bad guy is taken out by force. In the better sort, he falls victim to his own hubris. The great risk, though, is that Europe and Russia find themselves in a film noir, where the villain's plot fails but takes everyone down with it.

You make your money working in active management but invest the proceeds passively.

Being in the chemicals business is like swimming in a vat of sulphuric acid.

In trade as elsewhere, the new administration seems prone to using statistics as a drunk uses a lamppost – for support rather than illumination.

Like an errant husband, investors may proclaim their fidelity to democracy but are not averse to seeing someone else on the side.

There are many ways to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Malls were conceived in the 1950s by Victor Gruen, an Austrian immigrant, as a new enclosed version of a town square.

China has a history of hilariously inappropriate export brand-names, including Front Gate men's underwear, Long March luggage and, guaranteed to raise a laugh, Great Leap Forward floor polish.

It is impossible to know if a television viewer has gone to the bathroom during the commercials. Fraud is a peskier problem. Bad actors hide within advertising's supply chain, unleashing robots to «see» ads and suck money from advertisers.

In 2014 the International Energy Agency (IEA), a semi-official forecaster, predicted that decarbonising the global electricity grid will require almost $20trn in investment in the 20 years to 2035, at which point the process will still be far from finished.

Mr Xi is China's «COE», or chairman of everything.

The prices of good and bad tulips soared alike in 17th-century Holland, and in 2008 subprime debt was almost as valuable as Treasury bonds.

For investors the most dangerous words in the English language are «this time it's different».

Why don't fund managers look out of the window in the mornings? Because then they'd have nothing to do in the afternoons.

If all the nation's economists were laid end to end, they would point in all different directions.

The use of tractors in agriculture rose sharply from the 1910s to the 1950s, and horses were displaced in vast numbers. As demand for traditional horse-work fell, so did horse prices, by about 80 % between 1910 and 1950. As the numbers of working horses and mules in America fell from about 21m in 1918 to only 3m or so in 1960, the decline was mirrored in the overall horse population.

Acquirers only want the family silver, not the dross.

You can display your yacht in a way that you can't show off your house or hotel suite, because there is always the option of weighing anchor and taking it into the middle of the ocean where you don't have to socialise with anybody except the glitterati. Superyacht owners are always dropping in on each other as they criss-cross the seas, to compare not just their vessels but also their guest lists. When the Monaco Yacht Show started in 1991 there were just 1,147 superyachts (that is, yachts longer than 30 metres) in the global superyacht fleet. Today there are 4,473, with another 473 under construction.

To make or to buy is perhaps the most basic question in business.

It is hard to when bubbles will pop, in particular when they are nested within each other predict.

Politician + pump prices + poll = panic.

America's dynamic economy creates and destroys around 5m jobs each month.

Returns on rare coins over ten years to the end of 2016 were 195 %, easily beating art (139 %), stamps (133 %), furniture (–31 %) and the S&P 500 index (58 %). Coins are more portable than paintings or furniture, and boast a higher value-to-volume ratio. Stamps may be lighter, but, come doomsday, cannot be melted down. Today, global sales of rare coins are estimated at $5bn–8bn a year, with 85 % of the market in America.

An authoritarian government can provide certainty, at least in the short term. In 1922, when Mussolini took power in Italy, its equity market returned 29 % and its government bonds 18 %, according to Mike Staunton of the London Business School. Hitler's accession in 1933 saw German shares return 14 % and bonds 15 %.

If you want to get rich, goes a Chinese saying, first build a road.

The bond market looks about as intimidating as a chihuahua in a handbag.

One calls him the best possible pilot of the worst possible aircraft.

Notes such as one with a face value of 100 trillion Zimbabwe dollars are worth much more now as a novelty on eBay (where they sell for about $45) than they ever were in shops in Harare.

Like politicians, financial regulators know that late on a Friday is a good time to slip out bad news.

The National Resistance Movement in Uganda bribed voters with hoes, saucepans, seeds, sugar and salt.

Richard Nixon saw China's potential in 1971 («Put 800m Chinese to work under a decent system – and they will be the leaders of the world»). But, before he died in 1994, he came to fear that «we may have created a Frankenstein».

Everyone is a capitalist these days. That means keeping a much closer eye on those who manage that capital.

Pushing down prices on one side of the platform may cause charges on the other side to rise, a bit like a waterbed.

«Cocaine,» said Robin Williams, a comedian who was rueful about addiction, «is God's way of saying that you're making too much money.»

Children are sometimes reassured that new siblings arrive via friendly storks. The reality is messier. Money creation is much the same. The «stork» in this case is the central bank; many think it transfers money to private banks, which act as intermediaries, pushing the money around the economy. In reality, most money is created by private banks.

In a recent report McKinsey, a consulting firm, looked at five measures of Africa's economic connection with the world: trade, investment stock, investment growth, infrastructure financing and aid. It found that China is among the top four partners in each of these.

Two hundred metric tons of gold would occupy a cube of a little more than two meters on a side – it would fit into a small bedroom.

Forget left and right. These days, it is often said, the real dividing line in politics is between open-door liberals and pull-up-the-drawbridge nationalists.

Unless you are a hermit, you own and consume things that have passed through the port of Rotterdam.

The arrival of mass democracy after 1918 was followed by a boom in the 1920s but then by the Depression, stockmarket collapse and abandonment of the gold standard.

Trade deals are started by liberals but finished by protectionists.

Valeant describes itself as «bringing value to our shareholders». While there is no indication of fraudulent or illegal practice, the company could end up joining a pantheon of corporate fiascos that includes Enron (which pledged to «create significant value for our shareholders»), Lehman Brothers, («maximising shareholder value») and MCI WorldCom («a proven record of shareholder value creation»).

Teodoro Obiang, the president of Equatorial Guinea, and Teodorín, the most influential of his 42 recognised children, have expensive tastes. While most of his citizens live on less than $2 a day, the older Mr Obiang once shelled out $55 million for a Boeing 737 with gold-plated lavatory fittings. His son had at one point amassed $300m in assets, including 32 sports cars, a Malibu mansion and nearly $2m in Michael Jackson memorabilia. In 2014 the United States Department of Justice forced Teodorín Obiang to sell off a Ferrari, his Los Angeles abode and six life-size Michael Jackson statues in a money-laundering settlement. (He was allowed to keep one of the King of Pop's crystal-encrusted gloves.)

Slavery in America was not just wicked, it was lucrative: by 1860 the total capital that slave-holders had «invested» in captive human beings was three times larger than investment in manufacturing in the northern and southern states combined.

China produced more steel in two years than Britain since 1900.

The US is still the US, held together by credit cards and Indian names.

China's problems are so many, various and deep that it does indeed seem impossible that the Communist Party can survive. Yet it raises the opposite question too: what, then, has held such an improbable regime together for so long?

Creating pay structures that perfectly reflect performance is a mug's game. That hasn't stopped an entire industry of consultants and proxy advisers from trying. Setting detailed targets risks distorting behaviour.

The company that establishes itself early enjoys disproportionate rewards. First prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.

One Western company urged its employees to «act like an owner» without realising that, in some cultures, acting like an owner means playing golf all day.

Bad money chases out good.

Authenticity is the secret of success; once you can fake it, you've got it.

There are more people in America who believe that Elvis is still alive than thought Obama's stimulus would create jobs.

Class identifying markers: occupation, address, accent and income.

That openness is evident across British life. The country's car industry is almost totally foreign owned (Tata has made a great success of Jaguar Land Rover); many of its biggest airports are in Spanish hands; chunks of its energy industry belong to French and Chinese investors; its football clubs make the United Nations look monocultural. Its central bank is run by a Canadian and the London Olympics were organised by an Australian. London's glitziest property developers are from Qatar and Malaysia and its stock exchange may soon be in German hands. In 2013 the proportion of shares in Britain's firms owned by foreigners zoomed passed the 50 % mark, to almost total public indifference.

What gets measured gets managed.

A country where shareholders with opinions have hitherto been about as welcome as skunks at a garden party.

Cost of capital is now king. The king seems to live in China.

What is poverty and when is a person poor? Does a family home have a dirt or dung floor? Does it lack a decent toilet? Must members of the household travel more than 30 minutes on foot to get clean water to drink? Do they live without electricity?

Lehman Brothers disaster would never have happened if it had been Lehman Sisters.

Walmart's 2.2m worldwide workforce is about the same size as China's army, excluding reservists.

We are born in a Pullman house, fed from the Pullman shop, taught in the Pullman school, catechised in the Pullman church, and when we die we shall be buried in the Pullman cemetery and go to the Pullman hell.