The EU faces its biggest challenge to date: Containing Spain’s economic woes
By Paul Ames, GlobalPost
A worker cleans a shop stormed by demostrators following clashes between police and protesters after a general strike in Barcelona, Spain, Friday, March 30, 2012. The Spanish government prepared to approve on Friday a new austerity budget that hundreds of thousands protested against this week in sometimes violent demonstrations. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) (Credit: AP)
BRUSSELS, Belgium — The words “Spain” and “contagion” have already made history together.
Spanish flu spread around the world in the early 1900s. The pandemic didn’t begin in Spain, but it was there that the world realized how serious — and unstoppable — the outbreak had become.
Now, as Spain takes up a central position in Europe’s economic crisis, the analogy is clear.
Sickly economies in Greece, Portugal and Ireland may yet respond to the European Union’s limited array of economic remedies.
But if Spain’s attempt to heal itself with a shock-treatment of austerity fails, the EU may not be strong enough to prevent the infection from spreading to Italy, France and beyond.
“The big question is, can Europe ring-fence Spain, can they draw a line to stop this contagion happening? This is their biggest challenge,” says Carsten Brzeski, senior Brussels economist at the Dutch bank ING.
In the eye of the euro-debt storm late last year, Spain enjoyed a reprieve from the markets after Conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy took office in December with a promise to knock the economy into shape and, more important, the European Central Bank’s (ECB) decision to give banks and governments a lifeline by pumping 1 trillion euros of cheap loans into the eurozone economy.
Things started to go sour in March when the effect of the ECB’s liquidity injection began to fade and Rajoy announced he wouldn’t be able meet an EU-agreed budget deficit target of 4.4 percent this year, despite 27 billion euros ($35.5 billion) worth of budget cuts and tax hikes.
“Spain is suffering from a serious loss of confidence again,” blogged economist Luis Garicano. “The perspective of a new reformist government had made our creditors think Spain was on the way up, now after the budget and some strange events, confidence has gone again.”
The rates Spain has to pay on borrowed money have been creeping up steadily.
On Tuesday, there was some relief as the country managed to raise 3.2 billion euros ($4.2 billion) in short-term loans, but at much higher rates. A bigger test will come on Thursday when the Madrid government tries to sell longer-term securities.
The yield on its benchmark 10-year bond has been edging over 6 percent — which is considered unsustainable for more than a short period. That is prompting concern Spain could be forced to seek a bailout from the EU and International Monetary Fund or worse: the risk of a Spanish default has risen to 37 percent, according to the consultancy CMA.
A bad bond auction on Thursday could cap a tough week for Rajoy, who has already seen Argentina’s President Cristana Fernandez feel confident enough of Spain’s weakness to announce she’s seizing a 51-percent share in the YPF oil company from its Spanish owner Repsol.
By eurozone standards, Spain’s public debt does not look so bad. At 66 percent of gross domestic product, it’s less than that of virtuous Germany and way lower than Greece at 150 percent or Italy at 119 percent.
Spain’s problems lie elsewhere. The collapse of a 2000s housing boom plunged families and banks into deep trouble. Household gross debt, which averaged 80 percent of income in the decade up to 2007, is now up at 126 percent.
Spanish unemployment is the highest in the eurozone, at almost a quarter of the workforce, and double that in Spaniards under 25 years of age. The economy is set to shrink this year and the country’s powerful regional governments are resisting Rajoy’s belt-tightening demands.
“We should be worried,” says Brzeski. “That does not mean that they are falling off the cliff or requiring an imminent bailout, but if you look at the combination of weak macro fundamentals, the still falling real estate market, high deficits, it looks increasingly likely that they will at some point in time need European support.”
Based on the bailouts of Ireland and Portugal, a rescue plan for Spain could cost the EU around 300 billion euros ($394 billion) over three years. That just about could be covered by the 800-billion-euro ($1-trillion) firewall that the EU hopes to have in place by the summer, but without leaving enough leftover if Italy gets into trouble.
A cheaper option, and one that would save Madrid the ignominy of handing over the running of its economy to the EU and IMF, could be a loan from the firewall fund to help Spain recapitalize its banks.
Neither solution tackles what many believe to be Spain’s fundamental problem: how to revive growth so that unemployment lines start to come down and home prices rise. Until that happens the risk of Spain’s economic malaise spreading will remain.
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Unions say new labor laws won’t fix the high jobless rate, and hurt the most vulnerable. Cue protests
Guy HedgecoeMarch 28, 2012
Spain says Argentina could become ‘an international pariah’ if it nationalizes YPFContinue Reading
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Photos released by the LA Times show American troops posing with the corpses of Afghan suicide bombers
In a cropped version of a photo released by the LA Times, a soldier from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division with the body of an Afghan insurgent killed while trying to plant a roadside bomb (Credit: Los Angeles Times)
The Los Angeles Times released photos on Wednesday showing American troops posing with the mangled corpses of Afghan suicide bombers, leading the Pentagon to issue a strongly worded statement condemning the actions in the pictures, which were taken in 2010.
The photos were provided to the newspaper by a soldier distressed about the actions of his division. He sent 18 photos saying they pointed “to a breakdown in leadership and discipline that he believed compromised the safety of the troops,” the newspaper wrote. The Army requested the newspaper withhold the images.
In a statement, the Pentagon said, “The secretary is also disappointed that despite our request not to publish these photographs, the Los Angeles Times went ahead. The danger is that this material could be used by the enemy to incite violence against U.S. and Afghan service members in Afghanistan.” The Pentagon promised to take all measures necessary to protect troops from a public backlash.
“These images by no means represent the values or professionalism of the vast majority of U.S. troops serving in Afghanistan today,” Pentagon spokesman George Little said.
The LA Times quoted its editor, Davan Maharaj, as saying, “After careful consideration, we decided that publishing a small but representative selection of the photos would fulfill our obligation to readers to report vigorously and impartially on all aspects of the American mission in Afghanistan, including the allegation that the images reflect a breakdown in unit discipline that was endangering U.S. troops.”
The U.S. military is still reeling from the January release of a video showing Marines urinating on Afghan corpses, and riots in February following the news that troops burned copies of the Quran, Islam’s holy book. Those riots killed 30 Afghans and six Americans. In March, Army sergeant Robert Bales went on a shooting rampage and killed 17 Afghan civilians, including 9 children. Bales has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder, according to the Associated Press.
CNN reported that the paper told the Pentagon about the pictures in March, which resulted in a criminal investigation.
George Wright, an Army spokesman, said, “such actions fall short of what we expect of our uniformed service members in deployed areas,” according to the LA Times.Continue Reading
Tim Fitzsimons is a freelance print, photo and radio journalist based in Washington, D.C. More Tim Fitzsimons
Bitter exes? Former supermodels? Prostitution rings? The French race has all the trappings of bad daytime TV
By Paul Ames, GlobalPost
French president and re-election candidate Nicolas Sarkozy (Credit: AP Photo/Michel Euler)
PARIS, France — First Segolene edged out Francois, then Nicolas beat Segolene, before breaking up with Cecilia and marrying Carla.
Meanwhile Segolene split with Francois and he hooked up with Valerie. After Dominique’s troubles, Francois humiliated Segolene, but they made up so she can help him beat Nicolas.
The cast of husbands, wives, girlfriends and exes starring in the soap opera sub-plot to France’s presidential elections can seem confusing, but Parisian gossip columnists and glossy magazines can’t get enough.
With her husband lagging in opinion polls, the incumbent first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is playing an increasingly visible role in the election campaign ahead of the April 22 first-round vote.
The former supermodel-turned-singer-and-actress gave birth to President Nicolas Sarkozy’s daughter Giulia in October. Her frequent campaign appearances and interviews have sought to present a kinder, gentler side to the notoriously tetchy president.
“Thanks to Nicolas I’m living an extraordinary adventure,” Bruni-Sarkozy told Elle magazine recently in an interview in which she described how the president toils all-hours for the nation’s good, respects women and loves listening to her play guitar.
“This position has given my life a new dimension,” she went on. “In the middle of these serious crises, it allows me to understand the decisive issues of our country, so I can open people’s eyes to the lives of others, the French, and to listen more to their problems.”
Meanwhile, journalist Valerie Trierweiler has added a splash of glamor to the campaign as the partner of Sarkozy’s main challenger Francois Hollande. A self-declared “ordinary guy,” the Socialist candidate is leading in the polls, but is often derided as being rather dull. Trierweiler is credited with getting her man to lose some weight and dress a tad more snappily.
“That’s not true. He lost weight on his own and I loved him just as he was, even if he was carrying a few too many kilos,” Trierweiler said in her own interview with Elle. “I felt no need to change him, what I love in him goes well beyond all that.”
Trierweiler has been matching Bruni-Sarkozy for the media’s attention. The website aufeminin.com ranked the “fashion potential” of the “confidently elegant journalist” against Bruni-Sarkozy, an “artiste with top-class allure.” Taking into account such factors as “cool attitude” and “potential to seduce the French,” the “world’s leading online publisher for women” declared Bruni-Sarkozy the winner, but only by two points.
Trierweiler also has to face competition for the spotlight from Hollande’s ex.
Segolene Royal was Hollande’s partner for more than 20 years. They had four children together and followed parallel careers through the Socialist Party hierarchy until she edged him out of the running to become the party’s candidate in the last presidential election. On the eve of Royal’s defeat to Sarkozy in 2007, the couple announced they were no longer together.
Hollande had his revenge in last year’s Socialist Party primaries, scoring more than five times as many votes as Royal. Her decision to join him on stage at a campaign rally last week was a major media event.
“The cause we’re defending is bigger than us,” Royal told reporters. “That’s what allows us to put the past behind us and look to the future.”
Over in the Sarkozy camp, the president’s supporters have been accused of using the president’s ex-wife Cecilia Attias as a scapegoat for the bling-bling lifestyle that marked the start of Sarkozy’s term and have been a persistent source of criticism ever since.
She was the one behind the president’s Ray-Ban-and-Rolex style, says a new biography of Sarkozy. The cruises on a billionaire’s yacht and dinners in a swish Champs-Elysees restaurant “were all to please Cecilia,” said a pro-Sarkozy lawmaker quoted in VSD magazine last week. “He was really in love and wanted to reconquer her,” the anonymous politician added.
Beyond all the electoral tittle-tattle, Bruni-Sarkozy and Trierweiler have both tried to make serious points about the role of women in France. Trierweiler tweeted in disgust that she was being reduced to political arm candy when Paris Match, the magazine she writes for, ran a photo of her under the headline: “Francois Hollande’s charming asset.”
Trierweiler has praised Bruni-Sarkozy as a role model for managing to combine raising a child with her duties as first lady, charity work and a career. Bruni-Sarkozy also came to Trierweiler’s defense after suggestions she should curtail her career due to her relationship with Hollande. Trierweiler has shifted her journalistic focus from politics to culture during the campaign.
Meanwhile another famous journalist and politician’s wife is poised to make her comeback on French TV screens on election night. Anne Sinclair, editor of the French edition of the Huffington Post, will comment on the results for BFM TV.
She’s married to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who had been the Socialist Party candidate frontrunner until he was accused of assaulting a maid in a New York hotel room last May.
Although those charges were dropped, the scandal ruined DSK’s political career. He is now under investigation in France over allegations of involvement in a prostitution ring.Continue Reading
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After a failed missile launch, Kim Jong Un makes it clear he will continue his father’s destructive militarism
North Korea leader Kim Jong Un salutes during a military parade to celebrate the centenary of the birth of North Korea founder Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang in this photo taken by Kyodo on April 15, 2012. (Credit: Reuters/Kyodo)
SEOUL, South Korea — After the debacle of last Friday’s failed missile launch, North Korea proved it can still put on a decent parade… and keep the world guessing about its next move.
If the Unha-3′s short-lived flight, after which it exploded and landed in pieces in the Yellow Sea, was a humiliating preamble to celebrations to mark the centenary of Kim Il Sung’s birth, the festivities in Pyongyang two days later were a sign that normal business had resumed.
Jong Un’s portly figure and haircut have invited inevitable comparisons with his grandfather. But his first public speech since becoming leader four months ago could have been written for his father, Kim Jong Il, who died of a heart attack last December.
“Yesterday, we were a weak and small country trampled upon by big powers,” he told tens of thousands of soldiers and citizens who had gathered in Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang.
“Today, our geopolitical location remains the same, but we are transformed into a proud political and military power and an independent people that no one can dare provoke,” he said.
The parade that followed was an opportunity for the regime to display an impressive inventory of military hardware. It included what appeared to be a new long-range missile, although it did not appear to be big enough to reach the U.S. mainland 9,000 miles away, according to analysts cited by the Yonhap news agency. Some suggested it could even have been a mock-up, designed to raise anxiety levels among its neighbors.
There were small, but symbolic departures from the past, not least of which was Kim’s relaxed demeanor once he had completed his monotone address.
But the message resonating around the square was as unambiguous as it was predictable: The military-first policy pioneered by his father, at huge cost to the well-being of the country’s 23 million people, would continue.
“Superiority in military technology is no longer monopolized by imperialists, and the era of enemies using atomic bombs to threaten and blackmail us is forever over,” he said.
The U.S. and its allies, meanwhile, are struggling to come up with an appropriate response. Japanese officials are under fire for failing to quickly announce the rocket’s launch — a delay the Nikkei newspaper called a “40-minute vacuum.” All the defense minister, Naoki Tanaka, could tell reporters later was that “some kind of flying object” had been launched from North Korea, and that Japan’s territory had not been threatened.
Japan, like the U.S., is now talking in vague terms about additional sanctions against the regime, although it is difficult to identify any meaningful measure that hasn’t been tried already. Tokyo imposed bilateral sanctions, including a ban on all imports and exports, after the North tested a long-range missile in July 2006. New measures could include tighter restrictions on remittences to the North from ethnic Koreans living in Japan.
The U.S., where President Obama faces mounting criticism of his policy of engagement with Pyongyang, has pushed for a united response to the launch from the UN Security Council. That may include a fresh attempt to deprive the regime’s nuclear and missile programs of cash by expanding the UN blacklist of North Korean accompanies and individuals. But no new sanctions have been proposed amid opposition from China and Russia.
“We will continue to keep the pressure on them and they’ll continue to isolate themselves until they take a different path,” Obama said in an interview with a U.S. television network.
The South Korean president, Lee Myung Bak, implored the North to step back from the brink. “The leadership of North Korea might think they could help further consolidate their regime by threatening the world with nuclear weapons and missiles. However, such acts will only put North Korea in greater danger,” Lee said in a regular radio address on Monday.
He noted that last week’s rocket launch cost $850 million — enough money, he added, to solve food shortages in North Korea for six years. “The way for the North to survive is to voluntarily dismantle its nuclear weapons and to cooperate with the international community through reform and open-door policies.”
His North Korean counterpart gave little indication of that in his address on Sunday. Instead, there is growing acceptance that Kim will attempt to re-establish his credibility with a third nuclear test or a provocative action directed at the South.
As the Korea Herald said in an editorial on Monday, a nuclear test would not only raise anxiety levels in Washington. It would, the paper said, “pose a serious threat to South Korea as well. “Just as Washington promises to marshal international sanctions against a nuclear test, so does Seoul need to renew its commitment to retaliating against Pyongyang for any military provocation.”
Others called for another attempt at luring North Korea to the negotiating table. Tong Kim, a visiting research professor at Korea University in Seoul, believes a revival of the Feb. 29 deal granting North Korea access to U.S. food aid in return for abandoning its uranium enrichment and missile development, could dissuade Pyongyang from another bout of saber-rattling.
“Another nuclear test by the North would certainly create more political and security problems in this year of presidential elections in the United States and South Korea,” he wrote in the Korea Times. “It would also delay the resumption of the six-party talks, which are still the best possible forum for denuclearizing North Korea.”Continue Reading
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A policy advisor explains why leaders from Mexico to Argentina are pushing decriminalization and legal regulation
By Alex Leff, GlobalPost
Packages of ammunition, allegedly seized from drug gang suspect Erick Valencia Salazar, alias «El 85,» in Mexico City, Monday March 12, 2012 (Credit: AP Photo/Alexandre Meneghini)
BOSTON — When the world looks back at 2012 in the Americas, one burning debate will stand out amid the year’s usual chatter: Should Latin America legalize drugs?
What was once taboo has now got presidents talking in public and writing charged commentaries. They’re trying to frame the new drugs debate in terms that Washington — which firmly stands by the drug war solution — will understand: supply and demand.
The U.S. government says it will listen, but will not bend.
Some Latin leaders are discussing the need to experiment further with decriminalizing possession of drugs. Lawmakers are also proposing to scrap jail terms for growing coca and cannabis.
The bottom line: Softening anti-drug laws would ultimately drive down narcotics prices, advocates say, and that would crimp revenues for the deadly cartels that wreak havoc from the Andes to Mexico — and across its U.S. border.
Though far from concrete, the push comes as Latin leaders flex their might and independent voices as Washington’s influence wanes in the Americas. What’s more, some of the United States’ closest allies — moderates and conservatives alike — are leading the charge toward change.
Ethan Nadelmann is the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a New York-based independent research and advocacy group, and has advised Latin American leaders on this bold policy rethink. GlobalPost caught up with him during his recent visit to a conference at Brown University.
GlobalPost: Why that racket on legalizing drugs in Latin America?
Ethan Nadelmann: What’s emerged is a critical mass of support for opening up the debate and putting all options on the table. And all options include decriminalization, legal regulation and other alternatives to the drug war.
Why now?
One [factor] is the ongoing and mounting frustration that not just governments but many people in Latin America feel with the negative consequences of the U.S. war on drugs in Latin America. Many have concluded that there’s no way to defeat what is essentially a dynamic global commodities market. … Marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin — they are global commodities markets much in the same way that alcohol, tobacco, sugar or coffee are. So long as there is a demand, especially a significant demand in a country like the United States, there will be a supply. The demand is growing worldwide in many respects.
What stands out among the consequences of the drug war?
The escalating violence in Mexico. [President Felipe] Calderon’s attempt to take on the criminal organizations. The 50,000 dead. The spread of this traffic and violence to Central America. The widespread realization that it’s only a matter of time before it floods into the Caribbean, once again, as it did back in the ‘80s.
How has the debate been shaping up?
You now have [Colombian] President Juan Manuel Santos who has, in a very cautious way, been very strategic in speaking out a bit more, looking for other allies. You have President Calderon who’s been frustrated in his relationship with the United States on this area. He came to the U.S. last year and began to say that the U.S. should look at “market alternatives” if they were unable to reduce the demand.
You’ve had some growing movement of decriminalization of [drug] possession in countries from Mexico to Colombia to Ecuador to Brazil to Argentina.
You also have, in the last few years, the rapid growth of the drug-policy movement, activist groups like we have in the US, also spreading around Latin America.
And then you have the thing that finally clinched it, when President Otto Perez Molina [of Guatemala] decided shortly after he entered office to make this a priority. That really was a transformative moment. He emerged as the ally that President Santos in Colombia had been looking for.
So that wasn’t just political posturing?
Initially people were suspect about [Perez’s] motives, but it became apparent that he was serious about this, engaging it for substantive reasons and he began to clearly show a commitment on this issue and to educate himself more deeply. And then he began to make a more active effort to interact with other Central American leaders, and to interact with Santos, Calderon and the others. That is what enabled this critical mass to emerge.
These are bold proposals. Has it helped that Washington’s dominance seems to have waned in the region?
The sense of fear and intimidation that many of these governments feel regarding the United States has diminished. There’s a growing sense of independence and willingness to speak their mind and not be so under the thumb of the U.S. government as they were in the past. Mexico, Brazil, Colombia … many of these countries have booming economies, there’s a greater sense of independence.
Are these leaders just talking about decriminalizing marijuana possession, or something else?
They’re putting forward different ideas about how you deal with bigger problems of the large-scale production and trafficking of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine. If you look at the spectrum you’ll have somebody like former President of Mexico Vicente Fox saying clearly the time has come to legalize all of it. You’ll have somebody like [Colombia’s] Santos giving an interview to the Guardian saying legalize cannabis, and maybe cocaine too — but he’s just kind of floating an idea.
Is this the first time we’re hearing “legalize it” from Latin America?
This debate has been bungling around for many years. And over the years, more and more people have been exposed to the arguments regarding the failures of a prohibitionist drug-control policy and the potential benefits of an alternative.
The Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy — chaired by former presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso [of Brazil], Cesar Gaviria [of Colombia] and Ernesto Zedillo [of Mexico] — released its report in early 2009 and that was really a breakthrough. These were three distinguished presidents all from the center, center-right of the political spectrum, joined by many other prominent ministers and intellectuals and publishers, saying we need to move in a new direction, we need to break the taboo, to understand the European harm-reduction approach better, to move in a direction of decriminalization of cannabis. That planted a lot of seeds in Latin America.
That was followed up by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which issued its report in June of last year. It was not just presidents. They also had former Secretary of State George Shultz, [ex-chair of the Federal Reserve] Paul Volcker, Kofi Annan, [Virgin entrepreneur] Richard Branson and a whole range of distinguished people. That report went a step further. They talked about experiments in legal regulation of cannabis, a whole range of other innovative strategies. You had … distinguished folks legitimizing this thing.
Did you work on those reports?
I was an adviser to both.
How far has this debate come today?
For most of [the leaders involved], including Santos and Perez Molina, right now it’s more about sparking a discussion. It’s about saying ‘we spent the last 20, 30, 40 years experimenting with different drug war options — interdiction efforts, law enforcement strategies — and look at the mess we have today. We need to systematically look at the alternatives. We need to have government officials interacting with experts in public health, criminal justice and economics.’
There’s a growing consensus that the movement toward legal regulation of cannabis is perhaps inevitable and certainly the right thing to do. There’s also an emerging consensus that the personal possession of smaller amounts of any drug should be decriminalized. That’s important because [criminalizing possession] basically results in the arrest and incarceration of large numbers of people who are mostly poor and of darker skin.
It’s not that they’re saying legalize drugs tomorrow, it’s the provocative sort of statement that gets people paying attention, and realizing that we better start talking about this in earnest.Continue Reading
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Even at $4 a gallon, Americans are paying far, far less at the pump than the rest of the world
Gasoline prices of more than $4 are seen at a gas station on the south end of The Strip, Tuesday, March 20, 2012, in Las Vegas (Credit: AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)
ORONO, Maine — If you follow the news in the United States, you’re in for a long spring and summer. The rising price of gasoline at the pump will be the focus of extensive coverage, analyzing causes, parsing political arguments over blame and solutions, and telling stories of how Americans are dealing with it.
It is hard to avoid gas price lamentations in Time magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and my local daily paper. American complaints about gas prices are as natural as the return of the robin’s song. The truth is that even as gas approaches $4 a gallon, Americans have little to whine about. To be sure, $4 a gallon is more painful than $3, but in a global sense, what Americans’ pay at the pump is a bargain.
In middle-income Turkey, for example, a gallon of gas costs upwards of $10. Impoverished Eritreans pay about the same. A friend of mine in Tel Aviv tells me a gallon there fetches about $8. A gallon of petrol in the United Kingdom was up around $8.40 a gallon in March, an all-time high.
High gas prices have persisted for years in other countries. Americans have been accustomed to much lower prices, which makes the current spike a rarity and the cause for coverage and complaints.
Several years ago, my wife and I paid about $4 a gallon to fill our rental car in Cyprus. The high price at the pump, the prevalence of narrow roads and a modest national income level have persuaded Cypriot drivers to shun SUVs; our rental car was barely large enough for both of us and the stick shift.
Americans can look longingly to Qatar, a country awash in energy wealth where a gallon of gas costs about a buck. Or consider Venezuela, where oil is produced by a government-owned company and President Hugo Chavez keeps local gasoline prices around 12 cents a gallon as a benefit to the nation’s citizens.
Another way to think about gas prices is as a comparison to income. On that scale, Americans are getting a real bargain. In Cairo, where gas is $1.20, millions of Egyptians live on a few dollars a day.
Another factor in understanding gasoline costs is the choices Americans make about their personal transportation. SUVs, multi-family cars, the long commute from suburb to city, the lack of greater investment in public transportation are all factors that make getting around expensive, whether gas is $3 or $4 a gallon. The choices our public officials make to invest more in highways than subways reinforce the American sense of entitlement that the open road belongs to them. Budapest and Cairo, but not Miami or Houston, have functioning subway networks.
The American car culture limits my own choices. In rural Maine, where my wife and I live, public transportation is not widely available. We share a car. She drives a few miles to her job and I walk to mine. Like other Americans, many of our neighbors carpool, bike, walk or, if there is a bus route nearby, they go that way.
The rising price of gas is a seductive subject for journalists. It’s an economic story, a political story, a global story, a war story, a foreign policy story, a point-the-finger story, a human story.
Some perspective is in order. Journalists should reinforce the reality that our driving habits influence high prices, that our global neighbors pay a lot more than we do and that as a country we have to stop perpetuating the myth that we are entitled to low gas prices.Continue Reading
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