Gingerly, Medvedev Seeks a Little Distance From Putin

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — With the country’s next presidential election scheduled for March, the incumbent, Dmitri A. Medvedev, complicated the riddle at the center of Russian politics by delivering a speech on Friday that implied criticism of his predecessor and presumed rival for the job, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin.

In the speech, an address to foreign investors and heads of state at an economic forum here, Mr. Medvedev warned of a new era of stagnation if the state continued to control the Russian economy. And he spoke, as he has before, of the inherent risks in a political system built around one man’s personality.

“We should say goodbye to bad habits,” Mr. Medvedev said after describing government meddling in the economy when Mr. Putin was president from 2000 until 2008. He did not, however, mention Mr. Putin by name.

Throughout the speech, Mr. Medvedev veered repeatedly toward staking out an independent position, but would pull back before making explicit any substantive disagreement with Mr. Putin.

Investors like those in attendance on Friday carefully parse Mr. Medvedev’s public comments for just this type of delicate positioning, because he is seen as occupying a politically precarious spot this summer.

To emerge from Mr. Putin’s shadow and become a credible candidate in the eyes of urban middle-class voters, his core constituency, Mr. Medvedev needs to demonstrate his independence. But he must take care not to appear openly disloyal to the man who is considered the most powerful in Russia.

Mr. Putin and Mr. Medvedev have said that they will reach an agreement privately on which of them will run for president next year, and Kremlin officials say the announcement will come in September or October.

Mr. Medvedev used the occasion of the economic forum to highlight his credentials as a liberal reformer.

“If everything starts to work on a signal from the Kremlin — we have all been there, and I know from personal experience — it means the system is unsustainable and must be organized around an individual,” he said. “This is bad. It means the system should be changed.”

Remarking on the practice of state companies bulking up on assets, which was common during Mr. Putin’s presidency, Mr. Medvedev said, “There could be another stagnation hiding behind the so-called stability.”

“Private entrepreneurs should rule the Russian economy,” he said, adding, “Economies are like parachutes: they only work when they are open.”

Internal Kremlin politics have seeped into the public sphere several times this year, often in the form of Mr. Medvedev responding to comments by Mr. Putin with a retort so mild that it might go unnoticed in other countries, but is seized on here as important.

Daniel Treisman, a political science professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, described Mr. Medvedev’s maneuverings as “a passive-aggressive verbal strategy” for expressing his political views.

The divergence in their public positions also suggests that they are trying to appeal to different audiences, Mr. Treisman said. Mr. Medvedev is more popular with Western leaders and foreign investors of the type attending the economic forum, where the president traditionally delivers an economic policy speech.

This year, the message seemed mostly that Mr. Medvedev disagreed with Mr. Putin on economic policy. “Medvedev hints he is very upset about something, but nothing ever comes of it,” Mr. Treisman said.

There are occasional hints of a more substantive breach. This week, the newspaper Vedemosti reported that Mr. Medvedev had fired Aleksei Anichin, a deputy interior minister and one of Russia’s most senior police officials. Mr. Anichin was a classmate of Mr. Putin’s.

The Russian government is trying to sell $30 billion worth of shares in state companies that it intends to privatize. The chief executives of Citigroup and Bank of America, Vikram S. Pandit and Brian T. Moynihan, were among those in St. Petersburg this week to discuss the opportunities. Speaking of his economic agenda, Mr. Medvedev said, “This project should be realized regardless of who occupies which job in our country for the next few years.”

He then offered this riddle: “I will guarantee this personally, as the president of the state, together with my colleagues.” It was hard to see how he could do that without winning another term in office.

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For the Jobless, Little U.S. Help on Foreclosure

 

The Obama administration’s main program to keep distressed homeowners from falling into foreclosure has been aimed at those who took out subprime loans or other risky mortgages during the heady days of the housing boom. But these days, the primary cause of foreclosures is unemployment.

As a result, there is a mismatch between the homeowner program’s design and the country’s economic realities — and a new round of finger-pointing about how best to fix it.

The administration’s housing effort does include programs to help unemployed homeowners, but they have been plagued by delays, dubious benefits and abysmal participation. For example, a Treasury Department effort started in early 2010 allows the jobless to postpone mortgage payments for three months, but the average length of unemployment is now nine months. As of March 31, there were only 7,397 participants.

“So far, I think the public record will show that programs to help unemployed homeowners have not been very successful,” said Jeffrey C. Fuhrer, an executive vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

Data released last week suggests that the administration’s task is only growing more difficult as the problems created by unemployment and housing persist. New job growth in May was anemic, and unemployment inched up to 9.1 percent, the Labor Department reported Friday.

Earlier in the week, a widely watched index found that housing prices had dropped to their lowest level in nearly a decade. And while the rate of homes falling into foreclosure has slowed, the reason is delays in processing foreclosures, not a housing recovery, according to RealtyTrac, a company that tracks foreclosures. There were 219,258 foreclosure filings in April, the latest month available.

Critics of the Obama administration’s approach to preventing foreclosures have pressed for two years to get officials to focus more of their attention on unemployed homeowners, with meager results. As part of the bank bailout, the Treasury Department was given $46 billion to spend on keeping homeowners in their houses; to date, the agency has spent about $1.85 billion.

Morris A. Davis, a former Federal Reserve economist, estimates that as many as a million homeowners slipped into foreclosure because of insufficient help for the unemployed.

“The money was there and they didn’t spend it,” said Mr. Davis, an associate real estate professor at the University of Wisconsin. “I don’t mean to sound outraged, but I am pretty outraged.”

Administration officials said their programs have had a positive impact, albeit not as large as they had hoped. But they say that the problems of unemployment and negative equity on homes are not easily solved. They also say programs to curb foreclosure are voluntary, so they are limited in how far they can push mortgage servicers and investors, who often make more from foreclosures than from offering aid.

“We are trying to be careful in designing programs that at the end of the day aren’t just about spending money but getting people back on their feet,” said James Parrott, a senior adviser at the White House’s National Economic Council.

President Obama has been scrambling to curb the number of foreclosures ever since he arrived at the White House.

At the start of 2009, the administration announced its primary foreclosure prevention initiative, the Home Affordable Modification Program. It provides incentives to banks to modify mortgages, reducing monthly payments for eligible homeowners.

The administration said the program would help three million to four million homeowners, but so far, only 670,000 homeowners have received permanent modifications. In addition, the program was primarily meant for homeowners with risky mortgages; jobless owners are often ineligible because some payment, albeit reduced, is required.

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Politicus: For Obama, a Victory but Little Clarity

PARIS — In proclaiming the elimination of Osama bin Laden a victory for “the greatness” of America (and by obvious extension that of his own leadership), Barack Obama hopes to create an image of forcefulness for his foreign policy — and at the same time assure his re-election next year.

Consider this language: Killing Bin Laden “is a testament to the greatness of our country and the determination of the American people.” And, “As a nation, there is nothing we can’t do.”

Add to that, “We will never tolerate our security being threatened.” Plus, “We will be true to the values that make us who we are” and “relentless in the defense of our citizens and our friends and allies.”

Call it a presidential volley of star-spangled rhetoric, including 10 I’s, a me and a my in Sunday night’s 11-minute got-him announcement, followed up by a trip Thursday to New York and the ground zero of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America.

While that sounds a lot like flag-wrapped, and probably effective, pre-campaign politicking, the raid leading to Bin Laden’s death takes a stone off the country’s heart. Mr. Obama, with seemingly justified pride and moral legitimacy, could well say (and did) — although the International Federation for Human Rights in Paris finds the operation’s legality open to question — “Justice has been done.”

But this is also a long way from the diction of a candidate who ran for the White House in 2008 with the phrase “we’re no longer about bluster and unilateralism and ideology,” and the suggestion that the United States’ potential for worldwide reach and military commitment has ever-increasing limits.

Now, Mr. Obama is pitching We’re No. 1 to a country that, as Bill Clinton said, “hires you to win” — its Iraq intervention being regarded mostly as a fiasco, but one where the 2007-8 U.S. military surge avoided a dishonorable departure.

Yet this America has no other victories in sight that would rid North Africa of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, or Afghanistan of the Taliban, and everyone else of the departed terrorist-in-chief’s globally dispersed followers.

That’s a contradiction likely to become more evident without changes in American caveats on the extent of U.S. intervention in Libya — a rebel military spokesman said on Monday, “We want America to do the same to Qaddafi” that it did to Bin Laden — or a modification of the Obama administration plan for a troop drawdown this year in Afghanistan.

Just how does the administration and the president’s America of Victory handle the realities of an “Arab Spring” including a Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, likely to share power in a new government, agreeing with Iran this week that Bin Laden’s death means the United States of America has no more excuses for the presence of its troops in the Middle East?

Or the implications of a future Palestinian state, based on the recent reconciliation between the Palestine Liberation Organization government and Hamas, whose prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, reacting to the American raid on Bin Laden’s hide-out, said: “We condemn the assassination of an Arab holy warrior. We regard this as a continuation of the American policy based on oppression and the shedding of Muslim and Arab blood.”

Could the administration argue, while trumpeting an American triumph under Mr. Obama’s command, that it expects, through patience and great understanding, to win sudden moderation from interlocutors whose identity (and appeal) continues to be based on contempt for America’s goals and its support of Israel?

In terms of political tactics, Mr. Obama seems to be trying to replicate a successful element of his 2008 election campaign. Back then, after basing his message early in the year on calls for withdrawal from Iraq, he moved increasingly from left to center on foreign policy as Hillary Rodham Clinton’s candidacy gained strength. After his nomination, the tougher line was maintained through November.

In a final television debate, looking at a flabbergasted John McCain, Mr. Obama described the military surge in Iraq of 20,000 additional troops — which he had opposed — as “succeeding beyond our wildest dreams.” During the same period, he called the specter of Iran achieving nuclear weapons capability “unacceptable,” and said he would do “everything, everything” (get it, get it?) to stop it as president.

Once in the Oval Office, Mr. Obama instead extended America’s open hand to Iran without any palpable success. He made a major speech in Cairo, read by some as an apology by the United States to Muslims for Bush administration policy rather than a call for the Arab world’s democratization. It was followed by a second major address in Moscow, seen by critics as portraying the Cold War as a neutral event and ignoring America and its European friends’ victory over the Soviet Union.

Late last year, readers of Bob Woodward’s “Obama’s Wars” were struck by a response from the president to the author’s question, concerning Afghanistan, if he could tolerate losing a war. Mr. Obama’s answer was, “I think about it not so much in the classic [manner], do you lose a war on my watch?”

Getting the president’s slant on how America can or should come out a winner in relation to the Arab world’s turmoil has not been easy.

According to the Woodward book, after the president’s Muslim outreach speech in Cairo, Gen. James L. Jones, who has since resigned as Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, set the writer straight — while totally contradicting his boss — on the reality of the fight against international terrorism. General Jones said: “It’s certainly a clash of civilizations. It’s a clash of religions. It’s a clash of almost how to live.”

Now, although not in relation to the price of gas in the United States, or to the country’s wobbling economic recovery, Mr. Obama has found an event he wants to make his presidency’s hallmark of American resolve.

But that’s hard. Considering the possibility of new terrorist atrocities, Mr. Obama’s choice to make a tough-minded American success his own key to re-election might not have more than a few weeks or months of shelf life.

If a victory’s proclamation brings vast satisfaction, America’s feat in taking down Osama bin Laden comes with little clarity about how the Obama administration plans to achieve new strategic triumphs.

 

How Little Sleep Can You Get Away With?

Enter David Dinges, the head of the Sleep and Chronobiology Laboratory at the Hospital at University of Pennsylvania, who has the distinction of depriving more people of sleep than perhaps anyone in the world.

In what was the longest sleep-restriction study of its kind, Dinges and his lead author, Hans Van Dongen, assigned dozens of subjects to three different groups for their 2003 study: some slept four hours, others six hours and others, for the lucky control group, eight hours — for two weeks in the lab.

Every two hours during the day, the researchers tested the subjects’ ability to sustain attention with what’s known as the psychomotor vigilance task, or P.V.T., considered a gold standard of sleepiness measures. During the P.V.T., the men and women sat in front of computer screens for 10-minute periods, pressing the space bar as soon as they saw a flash of numbers at random intervals. Even a half-second response delay suggests a lapse into sleepiness, known as a microsleep.

The P.V.T. is tedious but simple if you’ve been sleeping well. It measures the sustained attention that is vital for pilots, truck drivers, astronauts. Attention is also key for focusing during long meetings; for reading a paragraph just once, instead of five times; for driving a car. It takes the equivalent of only a two-second lapse for a driver to veer into oncoming traffic.

Not surprisingly, those who had eight hours of sleep hardly had any attention lapses and no cognitive declines over the 14 days of the study. What was interesting was that those in the four- and six-hour groups had P.V.T. results that declined steadily with almost each passing day. Though the four-hour subjects performed far worse, the six-hour group also consistently fell off-task. By the sixth day, 25 percent of the six-hour group was falling asleep at the computer. And at the end of the study, they were lapsing fives times as much as they did the first day.

The six-hour subjects fared no better — steadily declining over the two weeks — on a test of working memory in which they had to remember numbers and symbols and substitute one for the other. The same was true for an addition-subtraction task that measures speed and accuracy. All told, by the end of two weeks, the six-hour sleepers were as impaired as those who, in another Dinges study, had been sleep-deprived for 24 hours straight — the cognitive equivalent of being legally drunk.

So, for most of us, eight hours of sleep is excellent and six hours is no good, but what about if we split the difference? What is the threshold below which cognitive function begins to flag? While Dinges’s study was under way, his colleague Gregory Belenky, then director of the division of neuroscience at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Md., was running a similar study. He purposely restricted his subjects to odd numbers of sleep hours — three, five, seven and nine hours — so that together the studies would offer a fuller picture of sleep-restriction. Belenky’s nine-hour subjects performed much like Dinges’s eight-hour ones. But in the seven-hour group, their response time on the P.V.T. slowed and continued to do so for three days, before stabilizing at lower levels than when they started. Americans average 6.9 hours on weeknights, according to the National Sleep Foundation. Which means that, whether we like it or not, we are not thinking as clearly as we could be.

Of course our lives are more stimulating than a sleep lab: we have coffee, bright lights, the social buzz of the office, all of which work as “countermeasures” to sleepiness. They can do the job for only so long, however. As Belenky, who now heads up the Sleep and Performance Research Center at Washington State University, Spokane, where Van Dongen is also a professor, told me about cognitive deficits: “You don’t see it the first day. But you do in five to seven days. Unless you’re doing work that doesn’t require much thought, you are trading time awake at the expense of performance.”

And it’s not clear that we can rely on weekends to make up for sleep deprivation. Dinges is now running a long-term sleep restriction and recovery study to see how many nights we need to erase our sleep debt. But past studies suggest that, at least in many cases, one night alone won’t do it.

Not every sleeper is the same, of course: Dinges has found that some people who need eight hours will immediately feel the wallop of one four-hour night, while other eight-hour sleepers can handle several four-hour nights before their performance deteriorates. (But deteriorate it will.) There is a small portion of the population — he estimates it at around 5 percent or even less — who, for what researchers think may be genetic reasons, can maintain their performance with five or fewer hours of sleep. (There is also a small percentage who require 9 or 10 hours.)

Still, while it’s tempting to believe we can train ourselves to be among the five-hour group — we can’t, Dinges says — or that we are naturally those five-hour sleepers, consider a key finding from Van Dongen and Dinges’s study: after just a few days, the four- and six-hour group reported that, yes, they were slightly sleepy. But they insisted they had adjusted to their new state. Even 14 days into the study, they said sleepiness was not affecting them. In fact, their performance had tanked. In other words, the sleep-deprived among us are lousy judges of our own sleep needs. We are not nearly as sharp as we think we are.

Maggie Jones (margueritepjones@gmail.com) is a contributing writer for the magazine. Editor: Tony Gervino (t.gervino-MagGroup@nytimes.com).

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 15, 2011

An earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to a sleep study done in 2003. While the results were published that year, the subjects were assigned to the study earlier.

 

Can Too Little Sleep Leave You Laughing?

It's easy to spot someone who has missed an entire night of sleep. Grumpy. Irritable. Focusing on the negative. Now, add a new word to that list. Euphoric.

That's right, according to scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Harvard Medical School. They've come up with startling evidence that the human brain, deprived of sleep, swings both ways, focusing on positive as well as negative experiences.

And, they add, that's not necessarily a good thing. According to their study, published in the current issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, sleep deprivation sensitizes the networks in the brain that have long been associated with rewards. And that, they suggest, could contribute to rash decisions and risky behavior.

"Our previous research showed that when you are sleep deprived your brain is excessively reactive to negative or unpleasant emotional experiences," psychologist Matthew Walker of UC Berkeley said in a telephone interview. "But what we didn't know at the end of that study is what happens on the other side of the coin. What happens when you are sleep deprived and you see rewarding stimuli or experiences?

"Does your brain just slide down toward the negative domain in the emotional spectrum, or does the pendulum swing to both extremes?"

The research adds to "a long-standing finding in clinical psychiatry, which is very perplexing," Walker said.

Some patients who are suffering from severe depression will get better if they are deprived of sleep, although the benefit is short lived. As soon as they get enough sleep it goes away, so it's a curious fact but not all that helpful in a clinical setting.

Walker, who has been studying sleep deprivation for many years, wondered if healthy adults would also look on the bright side of life if they missed an entire night of sleep. That may sound absurd, but he noted that people who have partied, or worked, through the night are sometimes giddy and prone to giggling. Is it real, or are they just punch drunk?

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