Editorial : Who Should Run the I.M.F.?

The arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn has turned the International Monetary Fund into front-page news and cast a harsh light on its dysfunctional workplace culture. Whoever is chosen to succeed Mr. Strauss-Kahn must be prepared to address both the European debt crisis and the institution’s own problems.

For 65 years, all of the fund’s managing directors have been chosen from the wealthy industrialized countries of Europe. That tradition, along with the United States choosing the president of the World Bank, may have fairly reflected the economic geography of 1946. But it does not reflect today’s world, and powerful new players like China, India and Brazil rightly resent it.

Both jobs ought to be filled on merit alone, with a strong emphasis on technical and diplomatic competence and managerial skills. That should not exclude qualified Europeans, but neither should it guarantee them the job.

European governments are already lobbying for Christine Lagarde, who is now the French finance minister, a job Mr. Strauss-Kahn also held. The I.M.F. has been led by French managing directors for 36 of its 65 years. That is too clubby for an institution whose main business has been to persuade foundering governments to undertake unpopular economic reforms in exchange for loans.

Even before the Strauss-Kahn scandal, the fund had a reputation among many of its female staff members as a workplace that failed to police unwanted amorous advances and other forms of harassment. The next managing director will have to make zero tolerance the rule.

Ms. Lagarde, who would be the first woman to hold the job, has the experience and many other strong qualities. But there are other talented candidates to consider, including Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Singapore’s finance minister and chairman of the I.M.F.’s financial committee, and Arminio Fraga Neto, a former head of Brazil’s central bank and an architect of that nation’s successful economic reforms. Voting on the governing board is weighted by historic economic heft. So if the European Union lines up behind Ms. Lagarde, no single developing-world alternative emerges and Washington backs Europe’s choice, there may be no real contest. It would be better for the I.M.F., and for the winner, if there was.

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Editorial : They Should Be Condemning Syria

Syrians have shown extraordinary courage, defying a bloody government crackdown to demand greater political rights and freedom. Their courage, and their blood, should shame the many governments that are cynically supporting Syria’s election later this month to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

It is outrageous that Syria is even being discussed for membership. Since the uprising began more than seven weeks ago, President Bashar al-Assad’s security apparatus has repeatedly responded with deadly force, including firing live ammunition at a funeral and seizing critically wounded demonstrators from a hospital. Hundreds are believed to have been killed, including 14 on Sunday. Thousands have been arrested or are missing. On Monday, the government boasted that it had gained the upper hand over the protesters.

Along with India, Indonesia and the Philippines, Syria is on a consensus slate to take one of four seats set aside for nations in the so-called Asian bloc. Despite pressure from the United States and Europe, Syria is refusing to abandon its candidacy.

Mr. Assad knows no shame. But shame on the Asian bloc for not insisting that Syria withdraw. India, Indonesia and the Philippines would be a lot more credible candidates if they refused to run with Syria. Shame, too, on the Arab members of the United Nations that reaffirmed support for Syria’s election even after Mr. Assad turned his guns on his people.

The Council nearly destroyed its credibility from the start when some of the worst abusers were immediately elected members. Its record had been improving. It ousted Libya from its ranks. Two weeks ago, it adopted a resolution urging Syria to “put an end to all human rights violations” and calling for an investigation of abuses.

Electing Syria would make a mockery of the Council — one from which it might never be able to recover. And it would make a mockery of all the countries that voted for Syria. Syria must be dropped from the slate.

 

Editorial: The Torture Apologists

Jose Rodriguez Jr. was the leader of counterterrorism for the C.I.A. from 2002-2005 when Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other Al Qaeda leaders were captured. He told Time magazine that the recent events show that President Obama should not have banned so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. (Mr. Rodriguez, you may remember, ordered the destruction of interrogation videos.)

John Yoo, the former Bush Justice Department lawyer who twisted the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions into an unrecognizable mess to excuse torture, wrote in The Wall Street Journal that the killing of Bin Laden proved that waterboarding and other abuses were proper. Donald Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, said at first that no coerced evidence played a role in tracking down Bin Laden, but by Tuesday he was reciting the talking points about the virtues of prisoner abuse.

There is no final answer to whether any of the prisoners tortured in President George W. Bush’s illegal camps gave up information that eventually proved useful in finding Bin Laden. A detailed account in The Times on Wednesday by Scott Shane and Charlie Savage concluded that torture “played a small role at most” in the years and years of painstaking intelligence and detective work that led a Navy Seals team to Bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan.

That squares with the frequent testimony over the past decade from many other interrogators and officials. They have said repeatedly, and said again this week, that the best information came from prisoners who were not tortured. The Times article said Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times, fed false information to his captors during torture.

Even if it were true that some tidbit was blurted out by a prisoner while being tormented by C.I.A. interrogators, that does not remotely justify Mr. Bush’s decision to violate the law and any acceptable moral standard.

This was not the “ticking time bomb” scenario that Bush-era officials often invoked to rationalize abusive interrogations. If, as Representative Peter King, the Long Island Republican, said, information from abused prisoners “directly led” to the redoubt, why didn’t the Bush administration follow that trail years ago?

There are many arguments against torture. It is immoral and illegal and counterproductive. The Bush administration’s abuses — and ends justify the means arguments — did huge damage to this country’s standing and gave its enemies succor and comfort. If that isn’t enough, there is also the pragmatic argument that most experienced interrogators think that the same information, or better, can be obtained through legal and humane means.

No matter what Mr. Yoo and friends may claim, the real lesson of the Bin Laden operation is that it demonstrated what can be done with focused intelligence work and persistence.

The battered intelligence community should now be basking in the glory of a successful operation. It should not be dragged back into the muck and murk by political figures whose sole agenda seems to be to rationalize actions that cost this country dearly — in our inability to hold credible trials for very bad men and in the continued damage to our reputation.

 

Editorial: The Ryan Plan for Medicaid

The desire for fiscal relief is understandable. Medicaid insures low-income people and in these tough economic times, enrollment and costs — for the federal government and state governments — have swelled.

Representative Paul Ryan, and the House Republicans, are now proposing to ease Washington’s strain by capping federal contributions. Like his proposal for Medicare, that would only shift the burden — this time onto both state governments and beneficiaries.

Still, some governors may be tempted. His plan promises them greater flexibility to manage their programs — and achieve greater efficiency and save money. That may sound good, but the truth is, no foreseeable efficiencies will compensate for the big loss of federal contribution.

Mr. Ryan also wants to repeal the health care reform law and its requirement that states expand their Medicaid rolls starting in 2014. Once again Washington would pay the vast bulk of the added cost, so states would be turning down a very good deal to save a lesser amount of money.

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Here’s how Medicaid currently works: Washington sets minimum requirements for who can enroll and what services must be covered, and pays half of the bill in the richest states and three-quarters of the bill in the poorest state. If people are poor enough to qualify and a medical service recommended by their doctors is covered, the state and federal governments will pick up the tab, with minimal co-payments by the beneficiaries. That is a big plus for enrollees’ health, and a healthy population is good for everyone. But the costs are undeniably high.

Enter the House Republicans’ budget proposal. Instead of a commitment to insure as many people as meet the criteria, it would substitute a set amount per state. Starting in 2013, the grant would probably equal what the state would have received anyway through federal matching funds, although that is not spelled out. After that, the block grant would rise each year only at the national rate of inflation, with adjustments for population growth.

There are several problems with that, starting with that inflation-pegged rate of growth, which could not possibly keep pace with the rising cost of medical care. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that federal payments would be 35 percent lower in 2022 than currently projected and 49 percent lower in 2030.

To make up the difference, states would probably have to cut payments to doctors, hospitals or nursing homes; curtail eligibility; reduce benefits; or increase their own payments for Medicaid. The problems do not end there. If a bad economy led to a sharp jump in unemployment, a state’s grant would remain the same. Nor would the block grant grow fast enough to accommodate expensive advances in medicine, rising demand for long-term care, or unexpected health care needs in the wake of epidemics or natural disasters. This would put an ever-tightening squeeze on states, forcing them to drop enrollees, cut services or pump up their own contributions.

This is not the way to go. The real problem is not Medicaid. Contrary to most perceptions, it is a relatively efficient program — with low administrative costs, a high reliance on managed care and much lower payments to providers than other public and private insurance.

The real problem is soaring medical costs. The Ryan plan does little to address that. The health care law, which Republicans have vowed to repeal, seeks to reform the entire system to deliver quality care at lower cost.

To encourage that process, President Obama recently proposed a simplified matching rate for Medicaid, which would reward states for efficiencies and automatically increase federal payments if a recession drives up enrollments and state costs. The president’s approach is better for low-income Americans and for state budgets as well.

 

Editorial: RIM, we've been here before

 By Donald Melanson posted Apr 14th 2011 11:12AM
By now you've no doubt read or at least heard about the New York Times interview where RIM's co-CEOs wound up asking most of the questions and challenged conventional wisdom about the company, or seen the BBC interview that Mike Lazaridis put an abrupt end to (see below, if you haven't). Those both offer plenty of juicy morsels for folks like us to chew on, but they're also indicative of a broader sense of frustration from the company that's getting difficult to ignore. One that is strikingly similar to what we've recently seen from another company that grew to dominate on the world stage, became a figure of national pride in its home country, and is now struggling to reinvent itself in the face of stiff competition: Nokia.

To get an idea of how similar the two situations are, we only need to look back to 2009 -- admittedly an eternity in the smartphone business, but not really that long ago. While Nokia still dominated the worldwide smartphone market with Symbian by year's end, there were clear signs that was about to change, with Nokia's share slipping a full ten percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 alone -- largely due to rapid gains from Apple and, yes, RIM. After that, it wasn't long before the company's CEO found himself in the hot seat, while Gartner and countless others began tossing around phrases like "re-arranging the deck chairs." We all know what happened next.

Now the numbers are painting a similarly difficult position for RIM. According to a recent Gartner report, RIM's market share is expected to continue a slow decline to just eleven percent by 2015 (long after its switch to QNX), while Android, iOS, and Windows Phone 7 (boosted in part by Nokia's acceptance) are all projected to continue to grow or hold their own, and leave RIM in a relatively distant fourth place by 2015.

Of course, those projections are just that... projections, and RIM could well still swing things in its favor if it makes the right moves -- even if the PlayBook isn't quite the magic bullet it was hoping for. It won't, however, if it continues with a headstrong approach and ignores any criticism -- or worse, continues to vent its frustrations in public. I'm not pretending to know what all those right moves might be, but RIM could learn a few things from the hard questions Nokia posed to itself when it finally came to the realization that it was a fading giant.

In his now famous "burning platform" memo, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said the company had to choose whether to "build, catalyze or join an ecosystem." With its slow shift to QNX as its primary operating system, continued promises about the current BlackBerry OS, and half-hearted embrace of Android apps, it's increasingly starting to look like RIM is trying to do all three, but only succeeding in tying itself to a sinking ship.

 

Editorial: Dear RIM, I'm your customer and I don't wear a suit

TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因 Like Joanna shamelessly admitted in her editorial a few months back, I was a BlackBerry addict. I'm also a 20-year old college student / tech-head whose phone serves every purpose from communications device to music player to TV remote. I tried to switch cold turkey and bought an iPhone 4 in August, but somewhere around Thanksgiving I gave in and picked up a Verizon Bold. I've been double fisting ever since -- using the BB almost exclusively for BBM, and my iPhone for everything else.

Fast forward to late last week when I attended a meeting in New York with Tim Stevens and RIM CEO Mike Lazaridis to get the latest dish on the PlayBook. As Lazaridis demoed myriad features from HDMI presentation mode to the built-in music player on the company's hotly debated tablet, it hit me: the one question I've been pondering since getting a real look at the device. Who is it for? At that moment, I realized the problem that's been plaguing RIM as of late -- and not just in its tablet strategy, but its phone strategy as a whole: it doesn't know who its products are for and subsequently can't deliver. Am I crazy? Read on after the break and hear me out.

From where I stand, RIM's demographic is broken into two distinct consumer groups. On one end of the spectrum are the all-important business users. These are the folks who have aged with the company itself, shelling out for its BES services -- and who RIM expects to stay faithful through thick and thin. But, there's a whole other demographic the company seems to be ignoring at the other end: the younger crowd for whom the BlackBerry's messaging prowess has significantly altered the messaging -- and subsequently the social -- landscape. I have many friends who have proclaimed that they prefer the apps and features of other mobile platforms, but simply won't switch because they "can't live without BBM." The company's BBM-centric ad campaigns of late reveal that it isn't completely aloof to this, but RIM simply can't compete with the "cool" factor of other platforms like webOS, iOS, or Android... and it won't be able to evade this reality forever.

The PlayBook was RIM's last real chance to prove that it has a clue -- that it could still make something decidedly cool. I was skeptical of early previews and teasers, but was completely blown away when I got my hands on a demo unit at CES. Yet, three months later in that room with Mike and Tim, I couldn't help but wonder how that time was spent. As I heard about marginally useful features such as HDMI output and a complicated wireless file-sharing implementation, my worries that the company was headed down the wrong path were confirmed. Yes, the PlayBook has a special "Presentation Mode" useful for businessmen frequently giving PowerPoint presentations, but will the enterprise really allow extra software to be installed just for simple file transfers? Each PlayBook will ship with a couple of games from EA to appeal to consumers, but other options in App World seem to be lacking, especially compared to competitors. My point is this: half-pleasing everyone is not the same as fully pleasing some. In fact, it's probably worse.

Why does the company refuse to cater to people like me? The folks who simply must have the BlackBerry's messaging prowess, but also want the option to do more than just that. QNX is supposed to be the answer to all of these questions, but the platform is barely ripe enough for a tablet, and who knows what that means for phones. RIM has been completely silent on the matter save for Lazaridis' outbreak at D, and every leaked device simply points to more of the same. To make things even more confusing, the PlayBook's Android pseudo-support has us asking why the company didn't just take the Google-paved road from the start. There are a lot of people out there -- a couple of past and present Engadget editors included -- who would love a souped-up BlackBerry Torch running Android 2.3 with a BBM icon emblazoned on its high-resolution homescreen. Heck, if the PlayBook ran Honeycomb, you probably wouldn't be reading this here editorial. Let's face it: hardware has always been a strongsuit for the 'Berry maker, but aside from its messaging products, the company has stagnated on its core OS. (Perhaps this is why it's seen fit to acquire companies like Dataviz, QNX, and TAT.)

More and more companies are offering employees their choice of devices, and despite RIM's better-than-estimated latest financials, it'll eventually need to see the writing on the wall. The audience it has had since the beginning is in the very early stages of an exodus, and the one it happened to stumble upon will not stick around forever if it can't deliver products that can do more stuff. The company thought it would attract more development (and thus more apps) by offering so many different development options for QNX, but early indicators tell us that it's serving more to confuse devs and users alike. Not to mention the fact that Gartner doesn't have such high expectations for QNX's tablet market share, nor RIM's long-term smartphone position -- and IDC indicates much of the same.

The saddest part of the whole situation is that RIM seems to take it personally. Lazaridis' press demeanor of late does not project an image of a company fully in control of its vision -- something Don explored earlier. In interviews he's indicated that he feels singled out because of the company's success and that he must prove the RIM's virtue again and again. Sorry Mike, but you haven't been singled out because you're so successful and it isn't the media that's short-sighted. On the outside it looks like your company is sitting dormant while competitors have made strides to steal customers from right underneath you. It's time for an intervention, and for someone to formulate a plan to capitalize on current strengths -- BlackBerrys don't have thumbwheels any more.

Unlike some other less fortunate companies, RIM has a built-in group of core users for whom the BlackBerry is not only a phone, but a part of their lives. This is nearly unheard of in this industry -- and probably only rivaled by Apple -- so it's not something to be taken for granted. I'm still in college for a few more years, and I haven't found anything worthy of replacing my BBM list, so for now I'll keep double fisting. But look, I can only carry two phones for so long...