<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1" ?><rss version="2.0"><channel><title>washingtonpost.com - Sebastian Mallaby</title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/opinion/columns/mallabysebastian?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</link><description>Sebastian Mallaby</description><language>en-us</language><ttl>15</ttl><image><title>washingtonpost.com</title><width>140</width><height>20</height><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com</link><url>http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/hp/image/wp_web.gif</url></image><item><title><![CDATA[More Than Free Trade]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61710-2005Apr17.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61710-2005Apr17.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:26:35 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  Five years ago free-traders had a lazy time: Anti-globalization protesters were crude, their arguments easily deflated. Today a harder debate is underway. Troubling questions about trade are being raised by globalization's defenders. The risk is that politicians will seize hold of those questions and provide the wrong answers.]]></description><author>Sebastian Mallaby</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[What Makes Google Click]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42690-2005Apr10.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42690-2005Apr10.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:26:35 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.  --  The Google campus, an hour south of San Francisco off the unlovely U.S. 101 freeway, conforms to every stereotype of the techno wonder company. The offices are littered with lava lamps and beach balls and massage chairs and motorized scooters; the billionaire founders are 31 and 32; the workforce has doubled to around 3,500 over  the past year, and a constant flow of job applicants passes through the lobby. Yet the real essence of Google is not stereotypical at all. The company has defied the conventional wisdom surrounding an earlier generation of Internet stars, which is why it stands a fighting chance against the internal contradiction in its business model.]]></description><author>Sebastian Mallaby</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Zimbabwe's Enabler]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23877-2005Apr3.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23877-2005Apr3.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:26:35 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  Thursday's election in Zimbabwe was not merely stolen. It was stolen with the complicity  --  no, practically the encouragement  --  of Africa's most influential democrat. If you think too long about this democrat, moreover, you reach a bleak conclusion. For all the recent democratic strides in Africa, the continental leadership that was supposed to reinforce this progress is not up to the challenge.]]></description><author>Sebastian Mallaby</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[World Bank Pragmatism]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5757-2005Mar27.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5757-2005Mar27.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:26:35 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   The nomination of Paul Wolfowitz as World Bank president has created two opposing camps. One group stresses his gravitas, experience and listening skills, and it seems to include most people who know the man. The other group recoils from his role as architect of the Iraq war, and it declares that the World Bank will be tarnished by association with American foreign policy and ill-served by a president-ideologue.]]></description><author>Sebastian Mallaby</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Easy Ways to Aid Africa]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52534-2005Mar20.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52534-2005Mar20.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:26:35 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   People know that Africa is desperate  --  that half the population lives on less than one dollar daily; that life expectancy has fallen to 46 because of the AIDS crisis. But people are mostly resigned to this. They believe, wrongly, that progress is impossible. They suppose, wrongly, that helping Africa would cost impossible amounts.]]></description><author>Sebastian Mallaby</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Missing Proposal]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32587-2005Mar13.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32587-2005Mar13.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:26:35 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   Last year Democrats impaled themselves on the Iraq war. They were so anxious to denounce the invasion that they failed to acknowledge the most basic point of all: that, having waded into Iraq, the United States could not leave prematurely. By attacking the Bush policy relentlessly, Democrats sounded negative. By refusing to say clearly that they would finish the Iraq job, they sounded irresponsible.]]></description><author>Sebastian Mallaby</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Clueless On the World Bank]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12640-2005Mar6.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12640-2005Mar6.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:26:35 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  For sheer slapstick incompetence, 1986 marks a low point in American economic diplomacy. Now there's a small chance that 2005 will match it.]]></description><author>Sebastian Mallaby</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Making Globalization Work]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58851-2005Feb27.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58851-2005Feb27.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:26:35 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  If globalization were a stock, it would have been shooting off the charts recently.]]></description><author>Sebastian Mallaby</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Say Yes To Europe]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40694-2005Feb20.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40694-2005Feb20.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:26:35 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  The Bush charm offensive in Europe has limits, and so in fact it should. The Europeans are wrong to want to sell weapons to China, wrong not to come forward with more help for Iraq's transition and wrong (this goes especially for France) to resist tougher action on Sudan's genocide in Darfur. We don't want a president who makes nice with Europe on these issues. We want a president who can sway European attitudes.]]></description><author>Sebastian Mallaby</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Flaw in Bush's Plan]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21978-2005Feb13.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21978-2005Feb13.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:26:35 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  The Bush budget policy continues to be awful. But the recent proposal for personal accounts in Social Security is at least half-excellent. If the administration can show the flexibility to recant one key error, it may deserve to win the coming battle in Congress.]]></description><author>Sebastian Mallaby</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Marketing Darfur]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50121-2005Jan30.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50121-2005Jan30.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:26:35 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  I once wrote a column about the epic struggle between Eric Reeves and Madeleine Albright. Albright was the secretary of state at the time; Reeves was practically unheard of. He was a lover of Milton and Shakespeare who taught at Smith College in Massachusetts. He was also a private citizen so incensed about the long war in Sudan that he had taken a leave from his job to do something about it.]]></description><author>Sebastian Mallaby</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Budget Health Shock]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31595-2005Jan23.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31595-2005Jan23.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:26:35 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   The biggest economic news last week had a mouthful of a name: implantable cardioverter-defibrillator. After the New England Journal of Medicine published fresh research on heart disease, the Bush administration said it would meet the costs of inserting this credit-card-size electric-shock device into Medicare patients. Depending on how many heart patients come forward, the cost to taxpayers could be $3 billion or $15 billion annually: An unassuming administrative decision has ripped another hole in the budget. But the really interesting thing is what this says about the future size of government.]]></description><author>Sebastian Mallaby</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Better Than Lawsuits]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14730-2005Jan16.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14730-2005Jan16.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:26:35 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  The tort system is hideously inefficient. According to the Tillinghast-Towers Perrin numbers I cited last week, less than half of the $246 billion that it consumed in 2003 went to compensate victims of misfortune, because more than half was eaten up in administrative and legal costs. Why do I bring this up again? Because a representative of the trial bar called to protest that "there are no real numbers on this stuff," and because there's a big and interesting question that my last piece didn't get to.]]></description><author>Sebastian Mallaby</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Trouble With Torts]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61927-2005Jan9.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61927-2005Jan9.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:26:35 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   President Bush has waded into two big domestic policy arguments: Social Security reform and the overhaul of the tort system. On the first issue, he should tread gently. Social Security needs to be shored up, but it's fundamentally a good program. On the second issue, an elephantine trampling would be kind. The tort system is an abomination.]]></description><author>Sebastian Mallaby</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trouble With Choices]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12533-2004Dec19.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12533-2004Dec19.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:26:35 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  The economics of Social Security privatization get plenty of attention: how to think about transition costs, the effect on national savings, the risk of equity investment. But the political philosophy of privatization is often taken for granted: It's  just assumed that, if the economics were neutral, people would be happier with private accounts than with a public program. Do we really know this to be true? Is an "ownership society" preferable to a "big government" one?]]></description><author>Sebastian Mallaby</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Flaws of  Private Accounts]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60179-2004Dec12.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60179-2004Dec12.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:26:35 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   The debate about Social Security has started off on the wrong foot. To privatize or not to privatize should not be the main question. The problem with this administration is not that it wants private accounts, which have pluses as well as minuses. The problem is that it wants private accounts as an end in themselves, and so may lose sight of the Social Security issues that actually  matter.]]></description><author>Sebastian Mallaby</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Zoellick's Lonely Path]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38381-2004Dec5.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38381-2004Dec5.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:26:35 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  Bob Zoellick is an outlier in the Bush economic team. He is not an ideologue. He is not a former private-sector chieftain. He has not been dismissed yet. Whereas the style of the Bush people is measured, plain-spoken and determinedly unflustered, Zoellick is intense, wonkish and furiously competitive. Rather like his short mustache, he bristles with a fiery energy.]]></description><author>Sebastian Mallaby</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[How Africa Subsidizes U.S. Health Care]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18883-2004Nov28.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18883-2004Nov28.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:26:35 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  This Wednesday is World  AIDS Day: It will be marked by concerts and candlelit vigils from Armenia to Zambia. The speeches and statistics will have a horrific familiarity: Two decades after the first diagnoses, AIDS shows no signs of letting up. And yet the debate about AIDS is changing subtly. In Africa, the epicenter of the crisis, the shortage of cash and affordable medicines is no longer the prime issue. Attention is turning to the shortage of health workers, and hence to a dark aspect of globalization.]]></description><author>Sebastian Mallaby</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Ownership Society Still Needs Rules]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3160-2004Nov21.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3160-2004Nov21.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:26:35 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   The Bush team's "ownership society" is mainly about Social Security: It wants to convert part of this government program into private retirement accounts. But the administration is skeptical of corporate collectivism as well as the governmental variety. It's not sure that your employer should provide your health care or your retirement plan. And it may well be right.]]></description><author>Sebastian Mallaby</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Jumbo Shrimp Follies]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50173-2004Nov14.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50173-2004Nov14.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/mallabysebastian</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:26:35 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  Bureaucrats are known for arrogance, thick webs of red tape and a robust commitment to boredom. This characterization is brutally unfair; the truth is often quite the opposite. Bureaucrats can be humble. Bureaucrats can be giddily  carefree. Bureaucrats can be subtly  hilarious.]]></description><author>Sebastian Mallaby</author></item></channel></rss>
