Although being appointed a foreign correspondent in Washington is regarded as a high-paying job by journalists, it is actually quite challenging. The work is hard because Washington produces most of its news, which can be true, false, or irrelevant, but must still be reported quickly.
This week, as they had to give definitive opinions about the outcome of the midterm elections while the most important races were still in the balance, I was thinking sympathetically about these pressures on my colleagues in Washington.
When I was a correspondent in Washington, I used to hear distinguished European colleagues extol the virtues of their editor back home, who had advised them to avoid getting caught up in the minutiae of day-to-day news coverage and focus on the bigger picture of what was going on in the United States. This always made me smile quietly. However, Washington does not practice the “long term,” and I was concerned that my friend would call me to cancel our lunch within a few weeks because his or her editors were requesting only 1,000 words on the most recent development in the Monica Lewinsky affair or some other Washington melodrama.
Another minor source of irritation for your foreign correspondent in Washington is the belief that politically active Europeans at home know significantly more about American politics than is the case. In that vast nation, it is always significantly more complicated and multifaceted than they imagine, with significant trends pointing in various confusing directions. However, the reporter’s habitual second-guessing and unconventional perspectives on the situation are viewed with some suspicion.
Because I was working for The Independent with my late friend Rupert Cornwell, I had a happier time in Washington than most people. We would alternate spending weeks in the capital, with one of us covering daily news and the other looking for stories all over the country. Finding them was not difficult. I would always look through the state newspapers in my area before going somewhere, and I would always find shocking news that had somehow not made it onto the national news agenda.
Why, for instance, was a senior Rhode Island judge a pallbearer at the New England mafia boss’s funeral?
Why did the New England mafia choose Rhode Island over Boston for their headquarters? And why was Rhode Island ranked as the most corrupt state in the United States at the time, ahead of Louisiana?
Because they are nearby, interested in and of themselves, and because the bloodiest battles took place in some of the prettiest countryside in America, I went to the Civil War battlefields in northern Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley.
In addition, I was reminded of the extent to which violent conflicts have shaped American politics, with the Civil War only being the most violent conflict. My visits were productive.
Europeans frequently view America with a healthy dose of schadenfreude and simultaneously overawed and ignorant. Last month, an American friend who was visiting Britain complained to me that she was tired of people telling her that “American politics are all about race and British politics are all about class.”
This is partially true, but both nations are significantly more exciting and complex than that. In addition, the European perspective on events on the other side of the Atlantic is frequently clouded by wishful thinking and naivety. For example, they see Bill Clinton as an affable, opportunistic rogue rather than as the American equivalent of a European social democrat. Even though his speeches were often taken at face value outside of the United States, his rhetoric was generally about as good as it ever got during his time in office.
After a flurry of the customer, withdrawals caused Sam Bankman-Fried’s $32 billion empire to collapse, Beneath the Radar FTX, which includes the US crypto exchange, filed for bankruptcy in Delaware. Since the South Sea Bubble, I’ve never been able to comprehend how the cryptocurrency phenomenon differed from any other scheme to make money quickly. As with any bubble, it self-feeds as long as investors believe that prices will rise and that the company will fail as soon as confidence dwindles, as it appears to have done right now.
There is typically a good reason why those in charge do not want anyone to examine the books too closely, as is the case with all businesses that resist regulation. A lot of technical jargon concealing the straightforward Ponzi-like nature of what is taking place is another sure sign that someone intends to take investors to the cleaners. Naturally, investors are not required to believe this hokum; Simply believing that they can sell to someone else at a higher price is all they need.
One of many accounts of the most recent crypto crisis can be found here. This IMF report on the Albanian pyramid scheme, which collapsed in 1997 and sparked a civil war that resulted in the deaths of 2,000 people, may also be of interest to pessimists.
