Repubblica.it � economia � Antonveneta, arrestato Fiorani Nel mandato "soldi ai politici"

Repubblica.it � economia � Antonveneta, arrestato Fiorani Nel mandato "soldi ai politici": "'ex patron Bpi prelevato dalla Guardia di finanza nella sua casa
In manette anche alcuni dei suoi pi�stretti collaboratori
Antonveneta, arrestato Fiorani
Nel mandato 'soldi ai politici'
Le accuse: aggiotaggio, associazione per delinquere
insider trading, truffa aggravata e appropriazione indebita

Antonveneta, arrestato Fiorani
Nel mandato 'soldi ai politici'
Gianpiero Fiorani

MILANO - Arrestato Gianpiero Fiorani. Il provvedimento del gip di Milano Clementina Forleo per l'ex numero uno della Bpi ed altre 5 persone �stato firmato in seguito all'indagine della Procura sugli affari occulti della Banca Popolare Italiana per la scalata ad Antonveneta. E dal mandato emergono movimenti di soldi destinati ad esponenti politici. La Guardia di finanza ha eseguito l'arresto di Fiorani nell'abitazione del banchiere a Lodi, per molto tempo considerato un protetto del governatore di Bankitalia Antonio Fazio.

L'operazione �partita ieri sera alle 19. Duecento uomini della Guardia di Finanza sono andati a Lodi, Codogno e Lugano. Hanno perquisito societ�, uffici di commercialisti e abitazioni. Le accuse per Fiorani sono pesantissime: aggiotaggio (aver diffuso notizie false per alterare il corso dei titoli in Borsa), insider trading (aver utilizzato notizie riservate), truffa, truffa aggravata, appropriazione indebita e associazione per delinquere finalizzata al compimento di questi reati.

Non solo. Dai mandati di cattura emerge che gran parte dei soldi frutto delle appropriazioni indebite effettuate da Fiorani e dal suo entourage andavano a politici nazionali. Per questa ragione si doveva preservare 'l'italianit�' di Antonveneta e la banca di Lodi. E' uno dei passaggi cruciali del provvedimento firmato dal gip Clementina Forleo. I nomi dei politici sono coperti da omissis. A rivelare la destinazioni dei profitti illeciti ottenuti da Fi"

WSJ.com - In Trade Talks, Western Farmers Hold Their Ground

WSJ.com - In Trade Talks, Western Farmers Hold Their Ground: "In Trade Talks,
Western Farmers
Hold Their Ground"
HONG KONG -- Here's a simplified scorecard for the current impasse in global trade talks: United Parcel Service Inc. is losing; Swiss parsley farmers are ahead.

UPS and an alliance of express-mail carriers have high hopes for the current talks, known as the Doha Round. They want to streamline customs procedures and other delivery regulations around the world, and block countries like China from imposing new restrictions. The delivery companies are part of a broader coalition of multinationals -- from banks to auto makers -- hoping to further open markets, especially those in developing countries, when trade ministers from the 149-member World Trade Organization meet here starting today.
[nowides] WTO TRADE TALKS

[icon]
Read the latest news from this week's trade negotiations in Hong Kong. Plus, take a look at what's on tap1 for the trade talks.
• Stakes Rise for Chinese Farmers Who Quit Grains for Produce2

• Korean Farmers Protest Threat to Their Livelihood3

• The Bar Gets Higher for Vietnam's Entry Into WTO4

• Activists Seek to Shape, Not Disrupt, Meeting5


But that won't happen unless the U.S. and European Union agree, in exchange, to open their markets more dramatically to agriculture imports.

That bargain is running into resistance from the likes of Swiss parsley growers, who enjoy a 700% tariff designed to ensure not a foreign sprig gets sold there. Cut a deal, Swiss activists contend, and cheaper agriculture products -- not just parsley, but poultry, milk and cheese -- would flood in, wiping out the picturesque patchwork of farms dotting the foothills of the Alps. "We could never compete," says Heidi Bravo of the Swiss Farmers Union. U.S. agricultural interests, from cotton growers to sugar-beet farmers, make similar arguments.

So far, Western farmers are prevailing over the corporate behemoths, even though agriculture accounts for a tiny fraction of economic output in developed economies. The pain for agriculture from any deal would be far more concentrated than the gain for service and manufacturing companies. Farmers, with their very livelihoods at stake, have been far more aggressive and effective in moving to thwart the trade round than the multinationals have been lobbying to advance it.
[Unequal Parts]

That's a big reason why expectations are so low for this week's talks, scheduled to end Sunday. Trade ministers had originally hoped the Hong Kong meeting would produce the basic framework of an agreement, leaving negotiators a bit more than a year to hammer out precise language before the round's mid-2007 deadline. Instead, diplomats are likely to push into next year the tough decisions on the main contours of the round, raising serious doubts about whether the negotiations can ever be completed.

Doha is the ninth set of multilateral free-trade talks since American and European leaders began the process shortly after World War II. It's the first, however, to explicitly focus on the interests of developing countries.

The notion dates back to the riot-torn talks in Seattle in 1999, when poor nations complained that the WTO was a club for rich countries. The developing nations succeeded in blocking the launch of a new round until their economic concerns -- particularly on opening of farm markets -- were given greater weight. Supporters argue that lowering barriers to agricultural imports from developing nations would be one of the best ways to pull them out of poverty. The Doha Round began in Doha, Qatar, in December 2001, shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, with Western leaders vowing to show how a divided world could become more unified through freer markets.

Complex Relationship

Developing nations now find themselves in a complex relationship with the big multinationals. Both groups, for different reasons, want to open up Western farm markets. But local companies in developing nations could also be hurt by the multinationals' push to knock down trade barriers.

The new focus on helping the poorer nations is more than charity. Over a half-century of trade liberalization, the U.S. and Europe have gone a long way toward knocking down barriers and harmonizing business rules between their own markets. For big Western corporations, the most significant opportunities in future trade rounds lie in the rest of the world. The U.S. and Europe impose tariffs averaging about 4% of the price of imported industrial goods, compared with an average of 27.5% imposed by developing countries, according to EU estimates.

So joining the trade ministers in Hong Kong this week will be Joseph Allen, a top executive with Caterpillar Inc., the Peoria, Ill., maker of heavy-duty work vehicles. Mr. Allen's group salvages old engine components, such as water pumps and transmissions. It cleans and retools them, gives them a new warranty and sells them for as little as 30% of the price of newly made parts. This "remanufactured goods" business grew 15% for Caterpillar in 2004, and it expects similar gains this year.

The products are aimed at countries that can't afford Caterpillar's newest equipment. But many countries block such goods, to protect local industry or to ensure their markets don't become dumping grounds for American junk. Brazil requires special import licenses for remanufactured goods, which adds costs and extends delivery time. Columbia, Peru and Ecuador ban the products outright.

After talks between the U.S. and Chile eliminated Santiago's 50% tariff on recycled goods in 2003, Caterpillar's sales to the country jumped 75% the next year.

Mr. Allen's efforts to get the WTO to set new rules for remanufactured goods have been joined by makers of medical devices, cellphones and auto parts.

BMW AG, which has loaned WTO organizers 250 of its top-of-the line 7-series cars for the Hong Kong event, hopes to make some headway cutting tariff and nontariff barriers in developing markets. Last year, the German car maker sold only 122 cars in India, a market of more than one billion people. That's partly because of fees and tariffs that more than double the price of imported cars. And India won't allow imports of smaller cars, keeping most versions of BMW's top-selling 3-series off the market.
[Entrance Fee]

Without a Doha breakthrough, BMW's unwieldy solution is to open in 2007 what it calls a "complete knock down" factory in India. Taking advantage of Indian tariffs of only 15% on car parts, BMW plans to ship unassembled versions of its 3 and 5 series sedans to the country. There, workers will put them together so they can be sold as whole cars without paying the 100% duty.

Ford Motor Co. wants Doha to force South Korea to curb auto taxes based on engine size, which, the U.S. government says, are structured to hit 93% of American-made passenger vehicles. The levies can add as much as $5,000 to the cost of an American car. That's one reason imports now make up just 2% of the South Korean car market. "There's a lot of pent-up ambition," says Stephen E. Biegun, vice president for international governmental affairs for Ford.

For the service multinationals, the goals in Doha are more subtle than knocking down tariffs and duties. They're worried about conflicting regulations that add red tape to their cross-border transactions, and shadowy local rules that also inhibit trade.

Global Express, the delivery industry's trade association, opened its annual meeting in Hong Kong over the weekend. The group is pushing for the Doha Round to approve an agreement that would standardize "customs codes," the numerical identifications assigned to imported goods. Some of the 200-plus countries where UPS operates use different codes for the same product, sometimes hanging a package up in port for days at a time as officials determine what it is and what tariffs might apply.

UPS also wants new WTO guidelines to prevent countries from imposing fresh curbs on competition before the U.S. firm can cement a large presence. China is currently UPS's fastest growing market. Shipments in the third quarter were up 35% from a year ago. But new postal legislation, expected to be finalized next year in Beijing, threatens to saddle international express delivery companies with new limits and taxes.

David Abney, president of UPS's international operations, says he fears the national postal service will be put in charge of regulating the entire industry. "We don't see how they can compete with us and be in charge of regulating the industry," he says.

Many big service providers see Doha as a chance to stitch together a consistent global market allowing for more aggressive expansion. The National Retail Federation, joined by representatives of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and J.C. Penny Co., will be in town this week. High on the retailers' agenda is the possible admission of Russia into the WTO. They hope to ensure Moscow moves to ease local restrictions on the size and location of foreign-owned stores, among other things.

The price the U.S. and EU need to pay to get those concessions is a big cut in protections and subsidies for their farmers.

In principle, that would seem an achievable deal. In the U.S., agriculture accounts for less than 1% of economic activity, according to published estimates from the Central Intelligence Agency. In the EU, the figure is just 2.2%. Manufacturing and services make up most of the rest.

A big European business association recently issued a statement saying that it "cannot accept that agricultural protectionism holds the round hostage."

Yet that's just what's happening. American cotton growers worry the Doha Round could leave them more vulnerable to imports from African countries like Burkina Faso and Benin. Steve Williams, a sugar-beet farmer from Fisher, Minn., is traveling to Hong Kong to try to fend off concessions that could leave his 700 acres in the Red River Valley vulnerable to Thai and Colombian rivals.

Shifting Politics

Farmers' lobbies have been particularly skilled at taking advantage of shifting politics in Europe. Popular support for strengthening ties across Europe has been weakening. But the desire to protect local farmers has remained strong. It dates back to the immediate postwar period when agricultural self-reliance emerged as a matter of national pride and security. More recently, European farmers have made convincing arguments that they help maintain rural infrastructure and preserve the environment and recreational opportunities.

Norwegian dairy farmer Kari Redse Haaskjold cares for 20 milk cows on a farm in the middle of the country, where rain and snow force her to keep the livestock indoors for at least half the year. The cows are kept in stalls for now, but Oslo's new animal-welfare law will force her to provide her cattle with more covered space to roam. That is only economical, she says, because Norway imposes 400% tariffs on dairy products. Government support makes up about a third of her total income. A Doha agreement limiting those benefits and protections would mean "I wouldn't be able to continue my farm and neither would my children," she says.

Even in the best of times, such stories are bound to win more sympathy than the pleadings of multinationals. And these aren't the best of times for free-trade advocates. Public anxiety about globalization has grown sharply, spurred by labor-market dislocations, especially in manufacturing centers, where trade liberalization may seem as likely to spur outsourcing as export-creating jobs.

The corporate backers of new trade agreements have had to fight ever harder in recent years just to win the small deals. In the U.S., it wasn't until October that a core group of multinational concerns, including Caterpillar, Pfizer Inc., Goldman Sachs & Co. and Time Warner Inc. organized the American Business Coalition for Doha. One reason: the U.S. business lobby was focused through much of the year on salvaging a modest U.S. trade deal with six Central American nations, which passed Congress over the summer with just two votes to spare.

Lexington - The end of ideology

Lexington

The end of ideology
Dec 1st 2005
From The Economist print edition



On the exhaustion of political ideas in the Bush era

FORTY-FIVE years ago one of America's great public intellectuals, Daniel Bell, published a big, fat book with a big, bold title: “The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties” argued that the great ideologies that had dominated intellectual life since the Victorian era—Marxism, liberalism and conservatism—had all lost their power to grip people's minds and stir their emotions. Few liberals any longer believed in huge social engineering projects; and few conservatives believed that the welfare state was the second-to-last stop on “the road to serfdom”. The future lay with technocrats rather than ideologies, with pragmatists who prefer itty-bitty ideas to bold blueprints.

Mr Bell could hardly have been more unlucky with his timing. If the 1950s was a graveyard of ideologies, the 1960s proved to be a breeding ground. Presidents Kennedy and, particularly, Johnson revived “big-government liberalism”. The New Left embraced Karl Marx's uncompromising critique of capitalism (albeit with more emphasis on dippy Hippie counter-culturalism than on the proletarian revolution) while the New Right hollered for cowboy capitalism and a return to moral values.

The past 45 years have been shaped by the interplay between these three ideologies. Big-government liberals introduced an American version of the welfare state and affirmative action. New-left activists took over the universities—first through sit-ins and then through tenure. And Hayek-reading conservatives marched to the polls behind Barry Goldwater (unsuccessfully) and Ronald Reagan (triumphantly). But have Americans finally had enough of ideologies?

The clearest evidence for exhaustion lies with the most successful ideology of the past few decades—conservatism. George Bush has been a surprisingly ideological president. He introduced swingeing tax cuts, shifting his justification, as only a true ideologue can, from returning the surplus to stimulating the economy. He has tried to use government to reinforce traditional virtues such as marriage. And, in the wake of September 11th, he threw his support behind the neo-conservative project of using American power and principles to remake the Middle East.

But this ideological activism is producing a widespread weariness with conservative ideas. Mr Bush's enthusiasm for cutting taxes while using government to promote virtue has left the impression that conservatism is a recipe for both fiscal irresponsibility and government meddling. And neo-conservatism has been mugged by reality in the backstreets of Baghdad.

Moreover, the exhaustion with big conservative ideas does not look like being replaced by an enthusiasm for big liberal ideas. The American left is certainly in a frenzy at the moment. But this ideological frenzy is driven more by hatred of the status quo—a hatred that has the “Bush-Cheney junta” as its epicentre but extends outward to include Wal-Mart and “Big Pharma”—than by any coherent vision of the future. Granted, most leftists cling to the flotsam and jetsam of old ideologies, from support for oppressed minorities to enthusiasm for more government spending on health care. But big-government liberalism lacks the coherence it had in the 1960s. It is a measure of the American left's ideological exhaustion that, during the last election, it was reduced to rallying around Howard Dean, a man who supported gun rights and fiscal prudence.

What about the centre? Back in 1992, Bill Clinton came to power with a compelling vision for updating liberalism. Drop shop-worn ideas about protectionism and industrial policy. Accept the wealth-creating power of globalisation. But prepare people to deal with increased competition by investing in education and training. This remains intellectually plausible. But it has lost much of its grip on the imagination. September 11th has raised difficult questions about the underside of globalisation. The left has embraced protectionism with renewed fervour. And the Democratic Party as a whole has never reconciled its enthusiasm for investing in education with its alliance with the most reactionary force in the educational world, the teachers' unions.

The age of the pragmatic Hillary McCain

This exhaustion with big ideas is going hand in hand with a growing enthusiasm for pragmatism. The two most prominent candidates for the 2008 presidential election—Hillary Clinton and John McCain—are both willing to mix and match ideas from across the political spectrum. Mrs Clinton has broken with her party's ideological commissars on everything from Iraq (she has generally backed Mr Bush) to abortion (which she describes as “a sad, even tragic choice”). She has formed public partnerships with conservatives such as Rick Santorum (on protecting children from sex and violence in the media) and Newt Gingrich (on health-care reform).

Mr McCain is even more of a maverick: more hawkish on Iraq than Mr Bush but also more left-wing on everything from campaign finance to taxation. He shares Teddy Roosevelt's worries about the creation of a decadent American aristocracy (hence his support for retaining inheritance taxes); and he relishes doing battle with his party's self-appointed ideological guardians (his chief of staff recently told the Boston Globe that it is as pointless to respond to Grover Norquist, an anti-tax crusader, as it is to respond to “some street-corner schizophrenic”).

This is not to say that America is now free from ideological temptation. The Democrats are searching for what consultants call “a narrative” to stitch together their policies. Washington is full of think-tanks committed to producing the next big idea and ideological zealots determined to stamp out heresy. But the public seems to be losing patience with airy-fairy ideological crusades—and growing ever hungrier for down-to-earth pragmatism. The electoral rewards for the party that feeds that hunger could be considerable.

Climate change and the North Atlantic | The sound of distant howling | Economist.com

Climate change and the North Atlantic | The sound of distant howling | Economist.com: "AESOP'S most famous fable is about a shepherd boy who cried “wolf” so often when no wolf was around that when one did appear nobody took any notice of his warning. Some environmentalists risk falling into the same trap. They are so convinced of the righteousness of their cause that they will cry “wolf” at any event that might plausibly be thought to support their view of the world.

That attitude makes it hard for responsible scientists studying important environmental issues to know when to raise the alarm. The climate is complex and no single piece of research is likely to prove the existence of a dangerous trend. It is a matter of judgment when enough bits of data have accumulated for action to be justified. So Harry Bryden and his colleagues at Southampton's National Oceanography Centre have been careful not to overstep the mark when commenting on their work on ocean circulation and its possible effects on parts of Europe, which has been published this week. Nevertheless, it is now possible to discern a dim howling in the distance.
Changing places
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A lot of heat moves around in the oceans. The currents that do the moving change from time to time, and both computer models and evidence from sediments and ice cores suggest such change can happen in a matter of decades. Dr Bryden's data indicate that what history and the models describe may actually be happening at the moment to currents in the North Atlantic. If true, it would mean a cooler future for north-west Europe—possibly a lot cooler. And that future would be close; the change could happen over the course of two or three decades. Moreover, the most plausible explanation for the shift is, paradoxically, global warming (see article).

Sceptics could, and should, point out the uncertainties—in particular, that the conclusion relies on a mere two individual years' worth of data. Though these indicate a shift in the past decade after four decades of stability, it is just possible they could be blips. Given the murky and statistically uncertain nature of climatology, however, Dr Bryden's result is about as robust as can be expected.

More important, it is the first in what will be a series of results, since oceanography's rise in the scientific pecking order means its practitioners can now afford the instruments and infrastructure to monitor parts of the ocean continuously. The truth will soon out and it is not, therefore, necessary to cry wolf quite yet, though it may behove those paid to think about such things to put more effort into looking at how governments should respond if north-west Europe does get significantly colder in the next few decades.

Dr Bryden's finding, though, also provides a reason to think more clearly about the whole issue of climate change. The Kyoto protocol, which is the subject of a big international meeting in Montreal this week and next, is costly and unlikely to achieve its stated aims. But the meeting is also supposed to begin the process of sketching out what the post-Kyoto world might look like. This result may focus minds, whether that focus is directed towards trying to stop global warming or, if it is decided that climate change is unstoppable, working out the best ways to live with it. And if the next few years do confirm Dr Bryden's result, it will be a triumph for the modellers who predicted it, and a reason to take their cries about other climatic wolves far more seriously. "

'Europa dei cybercowboys. Ma non e' la nostra

Esiste una parte d'Europa che sta arrivando ai vertici della catena alimentare informatica. E no, non e' quella "sociale" . Rise Of A Powerhouse: "Rise Of A Powerhouse
How the young knowledge workers of Central Europe are pushing the region to a new level

They came from around the world, young men with handles like SnapDragon and Bladerunner attacking computing problems so complex that even experienced coders could only stare at the screen in bewilderment. Only one mastered the final algorithm problem: Eryk Kopczynski, a.k.a. Eryx, a reticent Warsaw University student who wears his long hair in a ponytail and says his life's ambition is to 'discover some interesting notion.'

Kopczynski's triumph in this year's TopCoder Open, sponsored by Sun Microsystems, was no fluke. He was following in the footsteps of a slew of computing geniuses to emerge from the monolithic Soviet style buildings of Warsaw U. 'Poles like to compete,' says Warsaw U computer science student Marek Cygan, winner of this year's Google Code Jam. No kidding. Warsaw University is ranked No. 1 in the world in top coder events, ahead of the likes of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Just like India's best tech schools, Warsaw U has confounded a scarcity of resources to identify and nurture bright students."

La Generazione @ - sempre meglio della Generazione X

Comprare online? No, vivere online. E' la MySpace Generation
"You have just entered the world of what you might call Generation @. Being online, being a Buzzer, is a way of life for Adams and 3,000-odd Dallas-area youth, just as it is for millions of young Americans across the country. And increasingly, social networks are their medium. As the first cohort to grow up fully wired and technologically fluent, today's teens and twentysomethings are flocking to Web sites like Buzz-Oven as a way to establish their social identities. Here you can get a fast pass to the hip music scene, which carries a hefty amount of social currency offline. It's where you go when you need a friend to nurse you through a breakup, a mentor to tutor you on your calculus homework, an address for the party everyone is going to. For a giant brand like Coke, these networks also offer a direct pipeline to the thirsty but fickle youth market.

Preeminent among these virtual hangouts is MySpace.com, whose membership has nearly quadrupled since January alone, to 40 million members. Youngsters log on so obsessively that MySpace ranked No. 15 on the entire U.S. Internet in terms of page hits in October, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Millions also hang out at other up-and-coming networks such as Facebook.com, which connects college students, and Xanga.com, an agglomeration of shared blogs. A second tier of some 300 smaller sites, such as Buzz-Oven, Classface.com, and Photobucket.com, operate under -- and often inside or next to -- the larger ones."

Jean-Bertrand Duvalier, o come il potere corrompa

SOprattutto gli ex-preti comunisti e sociali...
WSJ.com - Jean-Bertrand Duvalier: "For the past year and a half, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, former president of Haiti, has been living in exile in South Africa as an honored guest of President Thabo Mbeki. All expenses are paid by the South African government. When Aristide first made his appearance on the international scene more than 15 years ago, many embraced him as the new leader of a Haiti emerging from years of bloody dictatorship. He was, so many thought, the new Mandela who would open new vistas for the Haitian people, caught up in their bleak and unremitting fate.

Aristide talked of peace where there was violence, and violence was a constant during the 29-year murderous rule of the Duvaliers. He spoke of reconciliation where there had been but fragmentation, instigated by the dictators who sought to rule by dividing further the already weak Haitian social fabric. In the exhilaration of the moment, many thought that there was no problem in Haiti that could not be resolved. After all, he even advocated an end to corruption, a permanent cancer in the Haitian social fabric. Sadly, the priest who acceded to government power turned into a mob leader. The language of reconciliation gave way to the 'necklacing' of political opponents, the firebombing of radio stations, homes and offices of opponents, the murder of journalists like Jean Dominique and Brignol Lindor, and the unwillingness to bring the criminals to justice. Hired thugs raped and kidnapped even the poorest of the poor in the slums that Aristide always pretended he was defending.
[Jean-Bertrand Aristide]

Just this last summer, two independent investigations of his misdeeds showed that tens of millions of dollars were siphoned off to phony addresses for fictitious purchases, most of which ending up in offshore accounts. Apparently, all the messianic figure from Cité Soleil wanted was to line his pockets and those of his accomplices."

WSJ.com - Is Wal-Mart Good for America?

Ovviamente si' !
WSJ.com - Is Wal-Mart Good for America?: "Is Wal-Mart Good for America?
December 3, 2005; Page A10

It is a testament to the public-relations success of the anti-Wal-Mart campaign that the question above is even being asked.

By any normal measure, Wal-Mart's business ought to be noncontroversial. It sells at low cost, albeit in mind-boggling quantities, the quotidian products that huge numbers of Americans evidently want to buy -- from household goods to clothes to food.

Wal-Mart employs about 1.3 million people, about 1% of the American work force. Its sales, at around $300 billion a year, are equal to 2.5% of U.S. gross domestic product. It is not, however, an especially profitable company. Its net profit margins, at about 3.5% of revenue, are broadly in line with the rest of the retail industry. In fiscal 2004, Microsoft made more money than Wal-Mart on just one-eighth of the sales.

The company's success and size, then, do not rest on monopoly profits or price-gouging behavior. It simply sells things people will buy at small markups and, as in the old saw, makes it up on volume. We draw your attention to that total revenue number because, in a sense, it tells you most of what you need to know about Wal-Mart. You may believe, as do service-worker unions and a clutch of coastal elites -- many of whom, we'd wager, have never set foot in a Wal-Mart -- that Wal-Mart 'exploits' workers who can't say no to low wages and poor benefits. You might also accept the canard that Wal-Mart drives good local businesses into the ground, although both of these allegations are more myth than reality.
But even if you buy into the myths, there's no getting around the fact that somewhere out there, millions of people are spending billions of dollars on what Wal-Mart puts on its shelves. No one is making them do it. To the extent that mom-and-pop stores are threatened by Wal-Mart, it's because the same people who supposedly so value their Main Street hardware store find that Wal-Mart's selection, or prices, or parking lot -- something about it -- is preferable. Wal-Mart can't make mom and pop shut down the shop any more than it can make customers walk through the doors or pull out their wallets. You don't sell $300 billion a year worth of anything without doing something right.

What about the workers? In response to long-running criticisms about its pay and benefits, Wal-Mart's CEO, Lee Scott, recently called on the government to raise the minimum wage. But as this page noted at the time, Wal-Mart's average starting wage is already nearly double the national minimum of $5.15 an hour.

So raising it would have little effect on Wal-Mart, but calling for it to be raised anyway must have struck someone in the company as a good way to appease its political critics. (Bad call: Senator Ted Kennedy quickly pocketed the concession and kept denouncing the company.) The fact is that the company's starting hourly wages not only aren't as bad as portrayed, but for many workers those wages are only a start. Some 70% of Wal-Mart's executives have worked their way up from the company's front lines.

The company has also recently increased its health-care options for employees on the bottom rungs of the corporate ladder. Starting in January, one of those options will be a high-deductible health-savings account, which is a great way to insure yourself if you're relatively young, relatively healthy and yet want to protect against the onset of some catastrophic illness. Mr. Kennedy, who recently called Wal-Mart one of the most "anti-worker" companies around, has been a chief opponent of these pro-worker, pro-market health insurance vehicles.

But suppose Wal-Mart did look more like the company its detractors would like it to be, with overpaid workers, union work rules, and correspondingly higher prices on goods. It would not only be a less attractive place to shop, and hence a considerably smaller company. It would drive up the cost of living for the millions who shop there, thus hurting those in the bottom half of the income-distribution tables that Wal-Mart's critics claim to be speaking for. One might expect this fact to trouble the anti-Wal-Mart forces, except that their agenda is very different from what they profess it to be.

As our Holman W. Jenkins Jr. pointed out in a recent column, the vanguard of the Wal-Mart haters is composed of unions that have for decades kept retail wages and prices artificially high, especially in the supermarket business. Those unions have had next to no success organizing Wal-Mart employees and see Wal-Mart's push into groceries as a direct threat to their market position. And on that one score, they may be right.

But seen it that light, it becomes clear that much of the criticism is simply a form of special-interest lobbying in socially conscious drag. And why an outside observer should favor the interests of unionized supermarket employees over those of Wal-Mart shoppers and employees is far from clear (unless you're a politician who gets union contributions).

Any company as successful as Wal-Mart will invariably run afoul of such vested interests. It is in the nature of the rise of a new giant on the scene that it disrupts established ways of doing things and in the process upsets established players. So it was with Standard Oil at the beginning of the 20th century, IBM in the middle and Microsoft at the end of the century. Wal-Mart, perhaps because it restricted itself to towns of less than 15,000 people as a matter of policy into the 1990s, at first avoided and later seemed blindsided by the attacks that have come its way.

The company has never been shy about defending its interests. But some of its recent ripostes -- such as Mr. Scott's call for hiking the minimum wage or its gestures toward fighting global warming -- seem to be addressed to the wrong audience.

Its customers don't need to be told what they like about Wal-Mart. But the company's management would do well to bear in mind that it is those millions of shoppers, and not the elites with which the company has sometimes of late been seen to be currying favor, that have made the company what it is."

IL FOGLIO

IL FOGLIO: "La tessera n° 1
Com’e'elegante la discesa in campo (con conflitto) di De Benedetti

Il finanziere Carlo De Benedetti, che come industriale allo Stato ha preso molto e al sistema economico ha restituito quel che poteva, ha annunciato anche formalmente la sua discesa in campo. Mentre al convegno fiorentino di quegli onesti lavoratori della politica che sono i Ds si discuteva sotto lo slogan berlusconiano “l’Italia �il paese che amo” (e paghino almeno i diritti, a Silvio e a chi scrive), CDB ha organizzato un preconvegno lobbista per rivendicare la tessera n� 1 del futuro partito democratico. E’ un suo diritto segnalare che Prodi �vecchio, e che si dia da fare nell’amministrazione del condominio italiano mentre i veri leader scaldano i muscoli; �legittimo che indichi in Veltroni e Rutelli due campioni della politica da sponsorizzare con la maglietta della Cir; �fantastico che CDB offra al nuovo partito tre ricette berlusconiane (la Tav, la flessibilit�del lavoro, la riforma delle pensioni) da eseguire in fretta nella cucina di palazzo dei dati per vincenti alle prossime elezioni; ed �ovvio, sebbene stilisticamente anomalo, che l’editore del secondo giornale italiano dettasse ieri il suo manifesto politico al primo giornale italiano (come ha notato Sandro Bondi, il segretario del nostro partito): ma sarebbe curioso che fossimo i soli a notare quale sia il lieto fine dell’avventura del conflitto di interessi.
Siccome, per usare il linguaggio dei sepolcri imbiancati “de sinistra”, rovesciandolo, �per lo meno tollerabile che i ricchi facciano politica, che si comprino virtualmente i prossimi possibili presidenti del Consiglio e mettano sotto tutela quello incidentalmente in corsa, e che i loro interessi nei settori dell’editoria e dell’energia e molti altri siano adeguatamente rappresentati da una tessera n�1 del partitone di maggioranza nei possibili futuri governi; siccome sul piano giudiziario la vera differenza tra CDB e il Cav. �che il primo i suoi conti "

Grande Ronchey

http://www.corriere.it/Primo_Piano/Editoriali/2005/12_Dicembre/03/ronchey.html
03 dicembre 2005

ALberto Ronchey
Arretratezze e contestazioni: l’Italia della Tav
Sottosviluppo garantito
Gli ostacoli contro l'avvio a soluzione di problemi fondamentali per l'economia italiana, oramai, risultano sempre più clamorosi e visibili. Al di là delle mancate privatizzazioni competitive, due questioni primeggiano fra le altre. Si tratta di vincoli gravosi, come l'arretratezza delle infrastrutture civili e la precarietà delle forniture d'energia elettrica oltre tutto dipendenti dalle costose importazioni petrolifere.
Contro le opere pubbliche infrastrutturali, dopo decenni di ritardi, si moltiplicano contestazioni e complicazioni. L'alta velocità ferroviaria Torino-Lione in Val di Susa è materia di persistenti agitazioni, guidate dai sindaci no-Tav, anche se l'impresa fa parte d'un piano imponente come il «corridoio europeo» Lisbona- Kiev. Il Mose che deve proteggere Venezia dalle acque alte rimane oggetto di prolungate controversie non solo sui finanziamenti dell'opera, ma sulla sua efficacia se i livelli del mare tenderanno a innalzarsi ancora nei prossimi tempi. Dinanzi a simili casi, l'umore pubblico appare discorde considerando ragioni e torti opinabili.
Ma insorgono contestazioni su quasi tutto, centrali a metano come quella di Brindisi, nuove linee delle metropolitane a Roma e a Milano, tangenziali e gallerie vicine agli abitati o a qualche villa di persone influenti. Controversie anche su impianti destinati al riciclaggio che dovrebbero sostituire le discariche oggi alla mercé d'ogni ecomafia, mentre per assurdo treni pieni di rifiuti vanno in Germania. Fra le cause di numerose conflittualità prevalgono interessi particolari, pregiudizi municipali, estremismi ecologici, diffuse permissività verso proteste che bloccano strade o ferrovie, indulgenze clientelari e così avanti.
A volte, l'impostazione dei lavori pubblici è davvero discutibile. Ma è anche mancata, spesso, una tempestiva e persuasiva divulgazione delle maggiori necessità nazionali rispetto a quelle minori delle comunità locali. Inoltre le stesse amministrazioni pubbliche, in diverse occasioni, sembrano fomentare scetticismo e sfiducia. Come stupirsi dinanzi ai dubbi sul grandioso ponte progettato per lo Stretto di Messina, se ancora non è completato il raddoppio dei binari lungo la Palermo-Messina e neanche si conclude la penosa vicenda dell'autostrada Salerno-Reggio Calabria?
Di fronte al problema energetico, nello stesso tempo, tutti vogliono l'elettricità e nessuno vorrebbe abitare presso le centrali a petrolio, metano, carbone, o tanto meno vicino a quelle atomiche respinte a suo tempo da un fobico referendum. Davvero, sul nucleare, si potrà lasciar perdere ancora nei prossimi vent'anni? In Italia siamo troppi e il territorio nazionale non offre ampi spazi ai pannelli solari fotovoltaici, né alle distese di pale a vento montate su alti piloni per l'energia eolica. Non siamo in Danimarca.
Certo, anche se nessuno tollera niente nel cortile di casa, è sempre necessario ascoltare tutti. Ma su innumerevoli problemi, dopo aver tentato la persuasione o cercato la comprensione, si dovrà decidere. Finora, hanno vinto quasi sempre opportunismo e lassismo. Così stanno le cose. Ma senza prenderne atto, e senza pervenire alle razionali conseguenze sia nella mentalità collettiva sia nella condotta governativa, questa sarà presto una società in via di sottosviluppo.
Alberto Ronchey