Finance

Q&A with Stefan Keitel

by Emma Cosgrove
written by Emma Cosgrove

Stefan Keitel is managing director and global chief investment officer at Credit Suisse. He recently sat down with Executive to discuss how to best cash in on today’s investment trends, as well as a Credit Suisse fund that is raising some eyebrows.

E  What is the best way to take advantage of the upswing in emerging markets?

There are many ways to invest in emerging markets, which are definitely a long-term trend. It completely makes sense to go for emerging market equities. It completely makes sense to go for emerging market bonds. In both asset classes, we strongly recommend investment in local currencies.

Another way to invest in emerging markets that is quite interesting for some conservative United States or European investors is buying European or US firms which have a major stake of their business model dedicated to the emerging markets, let’s take Nestle for example. Nestle is a very conservative Swiss corporate and has one third of their business model dedicated to the emerging markets and that is also where one can invest indirectly into the emerging markets, so that’s the way we would like to go; catching the trend by buying a visible stake of the overall equity portfolio into the emerging markets.

E  Is there a reason you have not included [emerging markets index] trackers in this recommendation?

That’s more on the selection side. When we talk about portfolios, on one side we have the asset allocation decision. When we then talk about how to implement the emerging markets, to fill this allocation with life, then of course we have to find the right way to go for that. And here, you can also do it in different ways. I think the mixture is key.

You can go for active managed funds to go for ‘selection alpha’ [when managers’ performance is above market performance]. From my personal point of view, from our point of view, this is a good strategy because the emerging markets are not efficient markets. They are not comparable to the big US markets or the big European markets. The active fund manager can definitely manage ‘alpha,’ nevertheless you can also go for trackers to minimize risk and to go for broad diversification. That means we strongly recommend both.

But, when you compare the emerging markets with traditional markets, then it’s crystal clear that the best strategy to go into the emerging markets is an actively managed fund.

E  Do you feel that investors have lost trust in products coming from big names like Credit Suisse?

I would not say that it has something to do with the products from the big names. I think it is a mistrust of all types of structured products because the financial crisis clearly showed the disadvantages of structured products with regard to transparency and liquidity and sometimes understandability. I think these elements are now more or less a drag for the success of structured products.

E  Have you dropped any products since 2008?

No. Of course there is a kind of shift in thinking; I think now there is a bigger challenge to be able to explain the rationale behind [the product] because a client now puts more requests on the table. This has influenced [the industry’s] strategy in selling structured products. For the advisory space, structured products definitely make sense and can add value.

It is [with non-standardized discretionary clients] where you have to differentiate an individual customized concept, [to make sure] that it makes sense, but [structured products are] not for the standardized discretionary management.

E  Can you confirm that the “Emerging Markets Credit Opportunity” fund launched in August by Credit Suisse contains Israel’s Koor Industries, the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and Saudi Arabia’s Olayan Group?

This I cannot. I am responsible for the scenarios of the asset allocation and the concept and the philosophy as a CIO. And I think the fund managers and portfolio managers on the equity and fixed income sides have to deal with the different selection opportunities. This cannot be my job.

E  If you are involved in strategy then this has to affect you, no?

Not really, no.

E  Do you deal with individual clients?

In special cases, because we are explaining how to build up a strategy and how to run discretionary mandates and we do that for them. But in special cases, especially for the premium clients on the private client side or for the institutional clients, I as a CIO of course have to go to the table to be involved in the conversation. And that’s also a request of the clients. I think the big endowments and insurance companies, but also the ultra high net-worth clients, want to see the CIO. They want to hear from the CIO how they see the world and what is going on with the macroeconomics and the GDP and inflation/deflation story.

E  Have you had personal contact with your largest shareholders in the last month?

Every month on a frequent basis.

E  It seems logical then to say that you would have contact with QIA, Koor and the Olayan Group in the last month since the launch of this fund, which would be part of their portfolio…

No not in my specific case, no. We have also some other important people at the bank and I assume that they perhaps have been in contact.

E  Are you advising to buy gold right now?

I would not advise to buy right now but gold is my personal favorite topic since 2003. I think it is an ongoing story. I would buy gold but I would not give that misleading statement to buy it right now. I think my main call was to have bought it 10 years ago and use every consolidation phase and correction phase to add a portion to the gold market. And also on the global basis, I used the first opportunity to go to a 3 to 5 percent gold investment for all of our portfolios — for the discretionary space and also it was a recommendation for the advisory space. And I am still of the opinion that the gold trend is anything but over because I think there is mistrust in the world’s leading currencies right now, not only [regarding] the euro but [also] the British pound and others. And this is a main driving force for the gold price.

Investors definitely mistrust the stability of paper money and that is the reason that all of these big clients have now started to invest step by step into the gold market; to them, gold is a kind of diversification and a kind of insurance against all negative eventualities and that is the driving force for gold.

We are pretty convinced that it is extremely difficult to come back to a scenario where these big investors have trust in paper money because the imbalances are not getting smaller, they are rather getting bigger because [Western governments] are going to stimulate [their economies] further.

When I look at the portfolios of the big clients, many of them are talking about gold, but in their portfolios, they have allocations of 0.5 percent, 1 percent or 2 percent. There’s much room for further gold interest. Gold is not a safe haven — gold is a very volatile asset class. But I think it is extremely necessary for the overall portfolio. And when gold shows volatility, that’s another buying opportunity for the long-term because it is a long-term strategic story and not an asset class you should invest in tactically.

 

 

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Economics & Policy

Food prices in check

by Executive Staff
written by Executive Staff

Food prices in check - LebanonLast month the cabinet endorsed a measure to allow for price controls on food products that would assign levels of “acceptable profits,” according the Agriculture Minister Hussein Hajj Hassan. The ministry reported that prices of tomatoes have risen by almost 100 percent in the past four months alone, with one variety up as much as 400 percent. Hassan also attacked the policy of former Minister of Economics and Trade Sami Haddad for issuing a ministerial decree that annulled a previous legislative decree that had set a profit margin of 27 percent for middlemen dealing in various foodstuffs and household items. The minister also stated that he expected meat prices to remain high until after Eid el-Adha. Hassan said that his aim was to lower the import-export ratio for food in the country from 80:20 to 60:40.

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Finance

Banking Special – Asking for the moon

by Emma Cosgrove
written by Emma Cosgrove

 

When Beirut’s wealth managers talk about the financial crisis, their language is decidedly emotional. They speak of the “support” they gave their clients as they watched their portfolios crumble. They say that their clients “suffered,” that they were “hurt” and “scarred.” Clients felt betrayed and blindsided, as “a major part of these losses were derived from risks that they were unaware of,” said Dory Hage, head of advisory and asset allocation at Banque Libano Francaise. 

Now that the bloodletting is mostly over, the worldwide economic recovery has created a unique financial climate in which wealth managers and their clients are feeding off the slowly healing global economy to mend their own fortunes even quicker.

But while they may both be in a far happier place than they were a year ago, the travails they went through together have changed the nature of the game.

According to consultancy firm Capgemini’s annual World Wealth Report for 2010, the number of high net-worth individuals (HNWIs) — those with over $1 million in investable capital — worldwide grew by 17.1 percent in 2009 after decreasing by 14.9 percent in 2008. The total fortune of these individuals also grew last year, increasing 18.9 percent from 2008 to reach $39 trillion.

But in the Middle East, the number of  HNWIs only grew by 7.1 percent and the collective fortune of the region increased by just 5.1 percent. The region’s HNWIs are regaining their wealth slower than much of the rest of the world, and they’re not happy about it. Lebanese investors in particular are proving to be an especially intractable bunch.

The Where

George Tabet, head of private banking at BLOMInvest said he’s seen a reflexive abandoning of foreign banking hubs in favor of returning home to Lebanon’s alluring interest rates.

“Big clients used to put a big part of their money in big banks in Switzerland, Luxembourg or Singapore. Now, after the crisis hit the big banks of the world, they [decided] to move a big part of this money to Beirut,” he said.

Investors we drawn by the high returns offered on deposits in local currency (averaging 5.72 percent in August according to Banque du Liban, Lebanon’s central bank.) Even dollar rates at Lebanese banks remain attractive on a global scale, with the weighted average rate on offer at 2.78 percent as of August.  And though these rates attracted record capital inflows into Lebanese banks, they also raised expectations and demands from clients who have grown more risk averse but still want to make higher returns than their bank account can provide. 

The Who

After a client decides which institution will guard what is left of his piggy bank, he has to decide how much control he wants over how his cash is invested. And opinions differ as to which way clients are tending.

Some say that discretionary clients, those who turn all their investment decisions over to a wealth manager, have become more prevalent as clients have realized that they have neither the knowledge nor the time to manage their own money in what have proven to be complicated and volatile times.

Nael Raad, deputy general manager of Ahli Investment Group Lebanon is of this belief. “In these kind of markets you can really get hurt. I think people tend more to give their money to asset managers. They are less trusting in their own capabilities.”

Naji Mouaness, head of consumer banking at Standard Chartered Bank Lebanon agreed that some form of discretionary relationship leads to better results.

“There is a science behind investing, and a traditional do-it-yourself approach driving conventional decisions may often not lead to the best result,” he said. “Deciding where to invest and investing is just half the job done, since our needs will evolve over time… regularly monitoring and re-balancing your portfolio is very important so that it is always in line with your changing requirements.”

Others claim that after incurring the losses of the past two years, clients have never been more insistent that every decision regarding their portfolio be their own.

Roula Habis, general manager of Middle East Capital Group, like most of the managers Executive consulted for this report, prefers that clients be involved in deciding the course of their portfolio. “Even if the market goes down, they will understand why their portfolio went down. If you just manage their money discretionarily, you’ll be totally responsible.”

Just as clients’ preferences as to who controls their portfolio have shown conflicting trends, mangers say that their financial behavior has been similarly erratic.

“People either liquidated their portfolios and went into real assets like real estate here in Lebanon because there was a boom, or they took more risk and started trading their portfolios,” said Mohammed al-Hamidi, managing director of AM Financials.

The risk-taking clients looking to take advantage of market volatility forced wealth managers to change the nature of their jobs.  “The period where there is a boom and bust is becoming shorter and shorter. And the reaction of the markets, because of technology, is becoming much faster and much more severe… we have to be more agile,” said Hamidi.

With this volatility, many of the traditional safe stores for capital have lost their utility, making way for other asset classes whose relative volatility seems less in such unstable markets.

“For the last two years or so, more conservative investments proposals were requested by clients; fixed income products, bonds, inflation-hedged products and the like,” said Reto Bartels of UBS’s Beirut representative office.

“Bond prices went up and more risky asset classes like equities became cheaper. In fact, equities look rather inexpensive today, and the next trend might be that the risk appetite of the investor is coming back again and investments in equities and commodities might increase, with rising prices as a consequence.”

Beirut’s financial minds all have their opinions on where these trends are going and how to seize the market as it morphs with fits and starts into whatever the brave new world of the financial recovery will look like. Until we reach that high ground again, the traumas of the crisis will remain fresh in client’s minds, and fully understanding current operating conditions is as important as ever.

To address this need, Executive has pooled the expertise of the best minds in Beirut to help investors be the masters of their own fortunes.

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Society

Bags of style

by Emma Cosgrove
written by Emma Cosgrove

Black ballistic cloth, the tough synthetic nylon beloved of luggage designers and flak jacket makers, doesn’t immediately bring to mind images of exotic destinations and the glamour of travel. More likely it recalls long layovers in airline lounges and sleepless nights on long haul flights — not the rich or playful image a luxury brand might prefer.

But for Tumi Chief Executive Officer Jerome Griffith, black ripstop nylon is better than all the calfskin leather and fine silk in the world.

“I said to the design group, ‘love black ballistic, it is what people know you for so be happy with it’,” said Griffith, sitting among a sea of dark shiny cloth in his new downtown boutique on Fakhry Bey Street in Beirut souks, which opened last month.

But while Tumi’s loyal aficionados may recognize the brand’s signature material, not everyone is familiar with this luxury luggage maker.

“Our biggest challenge is becoming more widely known. Even in our home market, the United States, we only have a 39 percent recognition rate which is relatively low. Now, if you’re a business class customer and a world class traveler, you know what Tumi is, but that’s not the average person,” said Griffith.

The brand attempts to make up for this by keeping the right company, with the new downtown boutique sitting alongside Louboutin and Lanvin stores, and guaranteeing that no one else can offer exactly the same product.

Outside of the latest anti-aging potions and a few luxury watch gizmos, the glamorous inhabitants of the downtown retail machine probably don’t spend much of their profits on research and development. But in the world of luxury travel goods, the lightest, most durable, most innovative products are the ones that often determine a brand’s prowess and success.

“We have over 100 patents on different inventions,” said Griffith. He pointed out zippers that fix themselves, and swivel handles for rolling suitcases. He also said that his research and development “guy” had finished new ergonomic backpack straps, which will surely be patent pending soon.

But this is not enough, which is why Griffith has managed to forgo the ubiquitous exclusivity contract with his boutique partners at the Chalhoub group in favor of exposing as many eyes to the brand as possible. Even before opening their store in downtown, Tumi already had a boutique in the airport, which Griffith described as “high volume” and a shop-in-shop at Aishti.
 

So, if Tumi gets their way, black ballistic nylon will be the fashion accessory for the well heeled and well wheeled at Beirut airport next summer. Between product innovations, strategically placed stores and eye-catching opening party celebrations involving guest spray-painting suitcases, they may just get their wish.

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Society

Q&A with Angelo Gaja

by Caroline Anning
written by Caroline Anning

Angelo Gaja’s family has been producing quality wines made from the unique Piedmontese Nebbiolo grape in the Barbaresco and Barolo areas of Piedmont, Italy, for four generations. More recently they have acquired two vineyards in Tuscany, expanding the family business to include more of Italy’s regional varieties as well as non-indigenous varieties such as Chardonnay. Executive met the master winemaker in Beirut as he visited Vintage Wine Cellar to talk old worlds and new markets.

E  Firstly, what’s your opinion on the current state of the international wine market?

We consider Europe to be the cradle of wine, but in the last 30 years there was an expansion of interest in many different countries — what we call the new world. Many producers in new countries — Chile and Argentina and Australia and so on — now compete with France in producing… wines made through international grape varieties… basically Cabernet, Merlot, Pinot noir and Chardonnay.

These countries initially started producing wines for [domestic consumption], but now they are producing wines for export. So today, even France is facing competition, Bordeaux is facing competition — but not the top Bordeaux, top Bordeaux is fantastic quality and is very strong…

And what about the [financial] crisis? In the last two years, we have seen, especially in the United States and England — which were mostly affected by the crisis — and partly in Europe, consumers wanting to drink less expensive wines.

On the other hand, in Asia, in Brazil, in Russia, where consumers are relatively new and they have new money, there is an interest in consuming high price wines and quality wines. So this year, Bordeaux is selling future Bordeaux and the main market is China.

E How does Italy stay competitive in comparison to the new world wine producers?

Italy is the largest producer of wine in the world in terms of volume, and has the second highest price per liter after France. France has a higher average price per liter, but Italy in terms of volume sells 40 percent more than France, so it’s a big difference.

Italy improved enormously in the last 30 years. I believe that this is due to different factors. First of all, in Italy there are 35,000 wineries, which is an enormous number, and the large majority are small wineries. This is a very important human factor — these people are able to take their suitcases and fly over the world to talk about their wines. This is very important in growing the culture of Italian wines [abroad].

The second factor is that Italy has the largest number of grape varieties in the world. This means we make wines with a different taste, with a different provenance, made in a different way, and this diversity is very important to match with different kinds of cuisine.

E You mentioned smaller wine producers taking their suitcases around the world to discover new markets – is that what you’re doing here in Lebanon? Do you see the Lebanese market as receptive to Italian wine?

My goal is to build a brand. It’s important that the wine is in many different markets, and it’s important to find good people that have the culture of selling such a wine, that are not pushing me to provide a huge quantity, because we can’t, but is proud of having a bottle of Gaja and is able to introduce it in a few restaurants, a few wine shops and to some special private customers.

E How do you think Lebanon could go about better promoting and selling its wines internationally?

I believe it’s the same for every area. First of all, it’s important to have producers with personality, with character, dedicated to wine. Then after, for these people to survive, they must understand that they cannot only sell their wines in the domestic market, they have to travel. This is what we Europeans did. So it is important to start travelling and to find in the free market, maybe in Asia or Europe or the US, customers who are interested. Because they exist absolutely.

 

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Bibi’s iron wall

by Peter Speetjens
written by Peter Speetjens

 

The dream of Eretz Yisrael (Greater Israel) is as alive as ever in the Jewish state. And to make that dream a reality, Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu has been using a time-honored Israeli negotiating strategy: appear reasonable, while making impossible demands to gain time in which to change facts on the ground.

Bibi’s latest demand — that the Palestinian Authority (PA) must recognize Israel as a Jewish homeland in exchange for reinstating a temporary freeze on Israeli settlement construction on land that is supposed to form the future Palestinian state — should be seen in that light.

The PA recognized Israel as a sovereign state as long ago as the 1993 Oslo Accords. To further define it now as a “Jewish state” would have compromised the status of the nearly two million Israeli Arabs, as well as the millions of Palestinian refugees around the region who demand their right of return be recognized. It was impossible for the PA to concede this, and the Israeli prime minister knew it.

Thus Bibi effectively halted the talks before they had even started. No doubt Zeév Jabotinsky, the godfather of rightwing Zionism and the Likud party would have been proud.  Born in 1880 in Odessa, Jabotinsky believed that the new Israel ought to cover both banks of the River Jordan. To achieve that goal, he introduced the concept of the “iron wall.”

Having analyzed relations between the Arabs and early Zionists, Jabotinsky wrote in 1923: “Every indigenous people will resist alien settlers as long as they see any hope of ridding themselves of the danger of foreign settlement. This is how Arabs will behave and go on behaving as long as they possess a gleam of hope that they can prevent ‘Palestine’ from becoming the Land of Israel.”

 According to him, the colonization process would only succeed if it continued regardless of the “the mood of the natives,” whereby settlement should take place under the protection of a force “that is not dependent on the local population, but behind an iron wall which they will be powerless to break down.”

Jabotinsky’s metaphorical wall of military and political might would crush Palestinian hopes to turn the tide and the “no, never” slogan of the Arab hardliners would make way for voices willing to compromise.

In 2000, Avi Shlaim, one of Israel’s leading new historians, borrowed Jabotinsky’s concept as a title for his book in which he analyzed the relations between Israel and the Arab world throughout the 20th century. According to him, both Israel’s Labor and Likud parties have adopted the iron wall approach in their dealings with the Arabs.

Shlaim slams the prevailing view in the West that Israel wants peace while the Arabs function as deal breakers. He offers one example after the other, in which the Syrians, Jordanians, Egyptians and Palestinians were in fact willing to compromise, yet Israel refused to talk business. This was as true for Ben Gurion in the early days of the Israeli state as for Menachem Begin in his dealings with the Palestinian Liberation Organization in the 1980s and Netanyahu today.

It is telling that the guru of the Israeli left, Ben Gurion, once wrote: “It’s not in order to establish peace that we need an agreement. Peace for us is a means. The goal is the complete and full realization of Zionism. Only after total despair on the part of the Arabs… may the Arabs possibly acquiesce in a Jewish Eretz Israel.”

By paying lip service to American demands to make concessions, while at the same time demanding the impossible from the Palestinians, Bibi keeps both the iron wall and the Israeli dream alive.

Almost as soon as the talks were halted, he approved the construction of more than 200 new housing units in East Jerusalem.

Ironically, the iron wall doctrine fits perfectly with the “Road Map for Peace” proposed by the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations in 2002, which states that the final Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement will take into account ‘facts on the ground’ — even if that means there is de facto nothing left on which to build a Palestinian state.

PETER SPEETJENS

is a Beirut-based journalist

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ElBaradei’s boycott gamble

by Josh Wood
written by Josh Wood

In Cairo’s Garbage City — as with many other places in Egypt — there is little optimism about the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections. “We don’t know anybody. We only know Mubarak,” says Hani Shanouda, a 26 year-old member of Cairo’s 60,000-strong Coptic Christian garbage collecting community, the Zabbaleen. Like many others in this slum, Shanouda will most likely not be voting on either ballot.

In Egypt’s current situation it is increasingly difficult to discern between those who did not vote as a political statement and those who stayed away from the polls for other reasons. In 2005’s parliamentary elections, less than nine million Egyptians voted — representing almost a third of registered voters but only about 11 percent of Egypt’s population of 77.5 million at the time. The presidential elections that year saw only seven million go to the polls.

There are a number of reasons why Egyptians don’t vote. A lifetime of rigged elections and quasi-dictatorship makes voting seem inconsequential — Egypt’s young population means that, like Shanouda, the majority of Egyptians have never experienced a regime other than Mubarak’s and his National Democratic Party, which have ruled since 1981. Also, with 40 percent of the country living on less than $2 per day, simply putting food on the table often trumps political concerns.

A boycott of November 28th’s parliamentary polls  has been urged by Nobel Prize winner and former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei. He returned to Egypt with political ambitions earlier this year and says a poor show at the polls will expose the fraudulent nature of the country’s elections and spur democratic reform.

However, ElBaradei has been accused of being out of touch with Egypt’s masses. Calls for a boycott could give these accusations credence, showing that ElBaradei’s brand of opposition is more akin to the flash-in-the-pan, internet-based, intellectual-driven opposition groups composed of the upper and middle classes, such as the ‘April 6 Movement’ that caused a small stir in 2008.  While Western observers may applaud ElBaradei’s calls for a boycott as a brave step toward democracy, it could prove entirely detrimental to his movement and leave him on the outskirts of Egypt’s political arena.

Attempts by ElBaradei’s National Coalition for Change to get the country’s numerous opposition groups onto the same page have been hindered by the Muslim Brotherhood, who will field their own candidates in November’s elections. With the group still officially banned by the Egyptian government, Brotherhood candidates have run as independents in the past and currently hold 88 out of 454 seats in parliament, making the Islamist party the strongest officially-represented opposition movement in the country.

Unlike ElBaradei, the Brotherhood is more in touch with ordinary Egyptians and has built much of its support base through providing community services to those ignored by the state. While remaining cautious in the political realm the Brotherhood has still managed to make significant political gains, as evidenced by the number of seats it occupies in parliament.

For any opposition groups though, the election cycle — which starts this month — will be an uphill battle. The Egyptian government has already begun cracking down on dissenters, arresting many Brotherhood members in recent weeks. In October, the government announced that companies that send out mass text messages would require a license — a blow to the opposition, which relied heavily on SMS to mobilize supporters in a country where 60 million people have mobile phones. Despite calls for election monitors from Egyptian civil society actors, the United States and other international entities, it looks unlikely that any such measures will be taken.

Whatever the media hype, anti-Mubarak protests this year have been small and tame compared to the tens of thousands of demonstrators that ground Cairo to a standstill in years past. In this atmosphere, prospects for opposition gains remain slim, and thus it is unlikely that any real change will happen in Egypt soon.

Still, with next year’s presidential elections likely to be a wash (in 2005, Mubarak won a whopping 88.6 percent of a vote widely regarded as rigged), this month’s parliamentary elections are the best shot opposition groups have at making any real gains in the near future.

JOSH WOOD is a freelance journalist based in Beirut

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Tea Party topography

by Michael Young
written by Michael Young

This month’s mid-term elections in the United States will show us the direction the country will head in the coming two years and indicate the future shape of American foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East.

One factor determining electoral outcomes will be the fate of the disparate Tea Party movement, which has disturbed the Republican Party hierarchy and liberal-left America alike. And yet shorn of its more troublesome qualities, including its embrace of the opportunistic, demagogical former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the shift toward the religious right and its increasingly nativist reflexes, the Tea Party is somehow a healthy initiative. Many American voters are understandably worried about the potential tax burden imposed by the rescue package for the financial crisis of 2008, as well as the high cost of Obama’s healthcare policy.  

The Tea Party — a loose gathering of groups sharing a dissatisfaction with government as it is being run today — was named for the Boston Tea Party of 1773, when American colonists protested being taxed by a British parliament in which they were not represented. The mantra “no taxation without representation” has entered the American political lexicon and is at the heart of the democratic capitalist social contract. Congressional elections will show whether President Barack Obama passes that test.  

But where the Tea Party will be tested, and where it must pass its own test, is in the particulars of a capitalist culture. Will the movement be able to avoid the pull of its extremes and defend free minds and free markets? And what will this mean for the United States in the world?  

Populist and progressive movements have a venerable legacy in the US. The notion of reform, like the implicit mistrust of state power, is a recurring theme in American history, particularly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the US was transformed from an agrarian society into an industrial-capitalist one. As Richard Hofstadter observed in ‘The Age of Reform,’ many of the demands of the American reform movement ended up being implemented even if the political parties that gave rise to such demands disappeared without a trace.

But there was always a nativist quality to these movements standing against what Americans have regarded as part of their national character: domestic inclusiveness and an urge to spread liberal values and freedom abroad. Likewise, the Tea Party movements have tended to look inwards. They have supported limiting immigration into the US; their fear of government over-expenditure has made them increasingly wary of costly foreign adventures, not least the wars in the broader Middle East; some polls suggest they are mistrustful of Obama’s engagement of Muslim countries; and on social issues Tea Party groups lean toward the conservative.  

The significant role played among Tea Party groups by Palin and other right-wing spokespersons, like the organizational power of the religious groups, means the movement is not likely to veer greatly from this path. However, to reduce everything to right-wing, left-wing terms is to over simplify. The Republican establishment has also been a target of the Tea Party. In that sense, the movement doubles as an anti-elite phenomenon.

America is unlikely to be overcome by the Tea Party, and the movement’s haphazard structure may ultimately prove to be its downfall, unless it can be reorganized behind a presidential campaign. This seems to be Palin’s aim. However, even if the movement were to concentrate on advancing legitimate demands for greater fiscal discipline, the outcome would be a more modest America abroad, both militarily and in the spread of liberal values.

 Oddly enough Hofstadter’s observations about American reform movements of the past may apply once again. Though the Tea Party is hostile to Barack Obama, the president appears to have largely accepted the fiscal restraint argument to justify cutting American foreign expenses, especially in Iraq and even Afghanistan, where he has sought mightily to avoid an open-ended conflict that would dramatically drain American resources. The US is changing, and not surprisingly, the Middle East is changing as a consequence.  

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Last Word

Empire in austerity

by Executive Contributor
written by Executive Contributor

In an article earlier this year for Foreign Affairs magazine, the British historian Niall Ferguson discussed how quickly empires collapse. He noted that while many observers have tended to assume long cycles of imperial decline, a breakdown could come suddenly, “like a thief in the night.”

Ferguson has argued that the American empire is more likely to disintegrate for reasons related to the domestic economy than foreign policy. In his book ‘Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire,’ he argued that imperial America faced a ballooning fiscal crisis brought on by a propensity to consume much and save little, as well as an impending social security crisis caused by Americans living longer and overburdening the fiscal system.

In the Foreign Affairs article, Ferguson focused on the vital matter of perceptions of decline. Even if fiscal shortcomings were not enough to erode American strength, he pointed out, “they can work to weaken a long-assumed faith in the United States’ ability to weather any crisis.” Just look at the relatively minor sub-prime defaults that spread through the global financial system by “blowing huge holes in the business models of thousands of highly leveraged financial institutions.”

 Another scholar, Michael Mandelbaum, recently examined the implications of the financial crisis on American foreign policy in his ‘The Frugal Superpower: America’s Global Leadership in a Cash-Strapped Era.’ He argued that America’s debt obligations following the 2008 financial crisis, as well as its fiscal structure and entitlement programs such as social security and Medicare, prevented the country from continuing to play the leading international role it has for decades. 

 “[T]he public will no longer feel able to afford, and so will not support, operations to rescue people oppressed by their own governments and to build the structures of governance where none exist,” Mandelbaum wrote. “Interventions of this kind, which the United States has undertaken in the last two decades in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, will not be repeated. The American defense budget will come under pressure, and so, too, therefore, will the missions that the defense budget supports.”

 All this raises an interesting question. If, as Mandelbaum affirms, the United States becomes more frugal abroad, will that not undermine America’s long-assumed faith in its ability to weather any crisis, as Ferguson pointed out? In other words: too much realism about American limitations may actually accelerate America’s waning.

Certainly that is true in the Middle East, where, under President Barack Obama, the US has visibly downgraded its commitments. Obama has withdrawn American combat forces from Iraq. He has overseen a significant tightening of sanctions on Iran, in part to better avoid being sucked into an expensive, hazardous war with the country over its nuclear program. Obama’s support for Palestinian-Israeli peace, while it fulfills a campaign promise, may be viewed as an effort to stabilize a region that might cost the US dearly in the event of new conflicts.  Even in Afghanistan, where Obama has deployed 30,000 additional soldiers, information recently published by the journalist Bob Woodward indicates that at the heart of Obama’s thinking were a clear-cut exit strategy and financial worries. “I’m not doing 10 years. I’m not doing long-term nation-building. I am not spending a trillion dollars,” the president told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in October 2009.

That is sensible. However, America’s view of itself has always pushed in a contrary direction. It was John F. Kennedy who stated in his inaugural address that America would “pay any price, bear any burden, [and] meet any hardship… to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” For Obama to challenge that premise on financial grounds effectively denies Americans the self-assurance — some would say the egotism — a higher sense of purpose invariably brings with it. This in turn could hasten the demise of the American empire that Ferguson discusses.  Balancing national values with national accounts will remain a major difficulty for American leaders. But the process of change may be quicker than some imagine, as Ferguson believes. America may not be able to afford high ambition, nor might it long outlast excessive modesty. 

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Companies & Strategies

Buying back the Love

by Executive Editors
written by Executive Editors

A journalist from Executive magazine and 200 others from around the globe were flown to San Francisco last month on a junket that included airfare, two nights at the Hilton Hotel, gourmet cuisine and a perpetually open bar.

Clearly, hosts Microsoft had something they wanted to say, or more accurately, wanted the assembled hacks to say. While some events make news, others are made news, and the later was certainly the case with the launch of Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) beta.

But why such expense for the trial version of a ninth edition web browser? As Sebastian Anthony, an editor at the AOL-owned technology blog Download Squad said, it’s been a good few years since Microsoft has been able to generate decent media coverage, while at the same time “Apple sneezes and people write a story about it.” Thus, perhaps, the reason for the public relations bonanza.   

Internet Explorer (IE), at one point the default browser of nearly 95 percent of web surfers, has seen its market share slip through the noughties to just over 60 percent today, as competitors such as Mozilla’s Firefox, Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari have gnawed away at IE’s slice of the pie. Still, that’s 60 percent of the almost 2 billion Internet users worldwide.

“It’s a fun story to tell sometimes how IE has declined, but it is still very strong,” said Brian Hall, general manager of Windows Live and Internet Explorer. Microsoft officials promised, and in many ways demonstrated, at the September 15 launch in San Francisco that IE9 heralds the next generation of web browsing.

While developers and enthusiasts might ogle over its “hardware acceleration” and the evolution of HTML5 coding, the layman attraction is that web browsing with IE9’s minimalist interface feels cleaner, and is a whole lot faster than competitors when it comes to loading large websites. (IE9 requires Windows Vista or Windows 7, however, so those using Windows XP or older operating systems will have to fork out for something newer).

Weeks before the beta launch, Microsoft gave many of the world’s most popular websites advance access to the new code and offered support to help optimize the sites for EI9, thus securing customer usage and adoption even before the release.

Then it was time for the charm offensive in San Francisco for the beta launch, which Microsoft will use to gather feedback from users and developers before launching IE9’s final version, at an as yet undisclosed date.

Regional strategy

Asked whether Microsoft had a specific strategy to promote IE9 in the Arab world, Hall noted that the company operates in most countries around the globe and while there are some unique local Internet intricacies regarding bandwidth and latency in developing markets, generally, “the market dynamics are quite consistent, which is: enthusiasts set the tone, sites drive the real adoption, distribution helps with adoption.”

He said Microsoft will now work at “encouraging” PC manufacturers to ship IE9 with their products, and Microsoft has more than 1,000 staff who will seek out local partners to work with. “Even in Lebanon, we will have people who are meeting with companies that build the top sites in Lebanon, and we’ll want them to do work for Internet Explorer 9.”

What profit?

This all sounds very expensive, leaving one glaring omission: how will Microsoft make money off IE9?

“We don’t,” said Dominic Carr, director of Windows Communication. “Our business model is ‘happy Windows customers.’”

As Hall explained: “We have a little tiny business called Windows,” an operating system with more than one billion customers. “Especially for home users, the number one thing people do on their PC is browse the Internet… our job is to give the best web experience to Windows customers that we can, and that is the purpose of the browser.”

So will this strategy work? Will IE9 help Microsoft regain browser market share and put smiles on the faces of Windows users?

“No one thought they would succeed with the X-Box, but they threw enough money at it until it succeeded, and now it’s huge,” said Download Squad’s Anthony. “I think [IE9] will succeed — they will throw money at it until it is a very big success.”

“It comes down to how much they value their free browser app, and whether they just want to beat Google — that might be the pure intention: they want to smash Google to pieces.”

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