NYT Goodness

The New York Times was unusually compelling this morning and I wanted to highlight a few interesting articles:

- Roger Cohen has one of the best pieces written on Iran in a while. Cliff notes version: Iran is not some back water, kleptocratic autocracy; it is a sophisticated and complex society in transition. If we want them to keep going in the right direction and make progress on the both the democracy and regional security fronts we need to stop saying our goal is to overthrow the people in charge.

- The business section has a piece about the interesting phenomena that Wall Street "analysts" continue to recommend people buy 95% of stocks whether the market is up or down. Of course since Wall Street makes most of its money on transaction fees and growing the overall capital pool it makes sense that there sole purpose it to get people to buy more regardless of whether or not it is a good buy. On a larger point, this is why small investors actually shouldn't be buying individual stocks; they lack the time, expertise, and clout to actually exercise oversight of their companies and are forced to just follow the waves.

- Also in business, the death of the junket. Big companies are being forced to - perish the thought - only spend money on things that produce business results, rather than paying for executives to take vacations at club med. Ominous warnings from the trade groups that rep corporate spas that the bailout restrictions may put 2.4 million jobs at risk.

Fun with numbers note, they claim the retreat industry is $270m annually and employs 2.4m workers. That means per worker earnings (assuming the Ritz doesn't earn any profit) are $100 a year. Sounds like very credible math at work.