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INTERNATIONAL EDITIONS: HIGHLIGHTS AND EXCLUSIVES, NOVEMBER 10, 2008 ISSUE
COVER: The Global Election (All overseas editions). London Bureau Chief Stryker McGuire reports on why the world is fascinated by the U.S. presidential election. In country after country, polls show record-high fascination with the outcome of the U.S. elections this Tuesday. To the rest of the world America's election is about change but not just at home. Jonathan Freedland, a columnist for The Guardian in London, says the past seven years have been a long, painful public education for the world in the importance of decisions made by the United States. "Two wars and a global financial crisis-those events, at least to some extent, had their origins in decisions taken in Washington." What's more, the connection between the world and the occupant of the Oval Office has become deeply personal," says Constanze Stelzenmüller, director of the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund. "In a globalized world," she says, "America's president can shape lives worldwide. He is our president, too."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/166910
The Change Agent. In an adaptation of Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham's book, "American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House," Meacham writes "As Americans go to the polls this week, they will be adding a new chapter to the long story of the modern presidency-a story that in many ways began with a man who is at once familiar and remote: Andrew Jackson." Meacham argues that, to an extent that is little understood or acknowledged, the modern presidency that will be inherited by either Barack Obama or John McCain has its roots in the Jackson years. Jackson, believing himself to be the only "direct representative" of the people, rewrote the script of American politics to give them a larger role in public life and in doing so, changed the vision of the presidency. "Before Jackson it was possible to think of America without taking the role of the people into account; after him such a thing was inconceivable," he writes.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/166828
But Words Will Never Hurt Me. Senior White House Correspondent Richard Wolffe and White House Correspondent Holly Bailey report that President George W. Bush is taking personal attacks in stride. Bush, whose poll numbers now hover in the 20s, will leave office in January with perhaps the lowest approval ratings of any modern president. Bush bashing is nearly as popular among Republicans as it is among Democrats. Close friends and aides say he's not deaf to the fact that he has become an object of ridicule. But they say he also remains unshakably convinced history will see his decisions, on Iraq especially, as the right ones. The same air of self-confident resolve-reassuring to some, maddening to others-that allowed Bush to claim, during the 2004 campaign, that he could not name a single mistake he had made as president, now girds him in his final, difficult and somewhat lonely months in the White House.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/166834
Taliban Two-Step: Can't Sit Down Yet. Special Correspondent Sami Yousafzai and South Asia Correspondent Ron Moreau examine the future of the war in Afghanistan and where talking to the Taliban fits in. "Everyone seems eager to talk peace in Afghanistan-except the only people who can turn the wish into a fact."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/166825
We Stand Divided. European Economics Editor Stefan Theil reports that Europeans finally got together in mid-October to support their banking systems with a coordinated ¤1.5 trillion bailout, in a move that may have marked the turnaround in the crisis. Although there are positive signs that it is working it, however, has also exposed how the European Union works-or doesn't-and the fissures between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/166912
A Darker Future for Us. Contributing Editor Robert J. Samuelson writes in an adaptation from his book, "The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath: The Past and Future of American Affluence," that the current economic crisis is one of a series of challenges, including global warming and an aging society, that signal a future of slower economic growth. Our new economic era may lapse into a state of "affluent deprivation," which he describes not as actual poverty but rather a state of mind in which people feel poorer, even as the United States remains a wealthy society. "Whatever happens, the future of American affluence will be a state of mind as much as a state of production. So much of our national identity is wrapped up in economic progress that the failure to achieve it in palpable quantities would sap Americans' self-confidence," Samuelson writes.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/166821
Out of Pocket. Moscow Bureau Chief Owen Matthews reports that despite Russia's plunging stock markets, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, has been comforted by the thought that the financial crisis is a denial of the West's brand of free-market capitalism, and a golden opportunity for his country to shine. Reality, though, is turning out a little differently. True, Putin did prudently stash the bulk of Russia's oil-fueled budget surplus into a $150 billion rainy-day fund, and the Central Bank's foreign-currency reserves still stand at $485 billion. But that may not be enough to weather the fiscal storm Russia now faces. Russia's corporations owe a total of $857 billion, and its banks $637 billion-with more than half that debt dollar- and euro-denominated.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/166913
WORLD VIEW: Stop the Bail Outs Now. Jeffrey E. Garten, the Juan Trippe professor of international trade and finance at the Yale School of Management writes that on both sides of the Atlantic, governments are considering ways to buffer their automobile industries against the economic downturn. "But bailing out the auto companies themselves is precisely the wrong medicine," he writes. "In the U.S., the auto industry is a particularly awful candidate for a bailout. For generations it has represented the epitome of arrogance toward customers and inattentiveness to major societal changes. For decades, Detroit ignored the challenge from Japan, even as Toyota and Honda made cars that were of much higher quality, more stylish and more economical... The demise of the Big Three would not be the end of the U.S. auto industry."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/166924
THE LAST WORD: Stanley Fischer, Governor of the Bank of Israel. In a recent interview with Newsweek, Fischer shares his thoughts on why Israel's privatized banks seem to be weathering the global financial crisis fairly well. "Only one bank had any sizable holdings in [mortgage-backed securities] and sub-prime and so forth. Some weren't sufficiently integrated into the global market. They weren't very exposed abroad; they had pretty good diversification of their holdings in foreign banks," Fischer says. "But the real reason was that our mortgages are very conservative instruments. Most of the time Israelis complain like heck that they have to put down large down payments. Now that we're in this crisis, that turned out to be a very good thing."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/166922
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