lifestyle leader

Determined to avoid yet another G20 yawn-fest, the French are now threatening a walkout. Their finance minister has indicated that she will not sign the final communiqué should their demands for "deliverables" not be met (re: a global financial regulator, conceived and implemented by the end of the week).

Spicy stuff. I'm not familiar enough with international diplomacy to answer this with confidence, but is France operating on such a different plane that it can threaten not to sign the G20 document, sign the document four days later, and suffer no significant reprecussions? Because if not, it's not clear to me what this publicity stunt will achieve. If the leaders summit was going to agree to set up a global regulator, the G20 finance deputies and their sherpas would have already have laid the groundwork for one. The leaked draft communiqué shows no signs of any truly "global" regulator, only a more integrated collection of national ones.

So if the French aren't likely to get what they want by Friday, what do they stand to gain?

The Financial Times, also known as the pink lady, is one of the premier English language newspapers. But I am sad to report that the FT's sterling reputation was sullied last week. Not, mind you, by shoddy reporting, poor editing, or some journalistic scandal; rather, its name has been tarnished by the arrival of an impostor!

In a hilariously Onion-esque move, a collection of savvy G20 protesters were handing out fake copies of the Financial Times at Waterloo Station in London. The website for the fake newspaper, FT2020, looks pretty well identical to its mainstream target. There's a lot of content, some of it very sharp, so check it out.

Or not. Anyone want to guess which leader of a G20 nation blamed the crisis on "white people with blue eyes?"

Oh, all right! Here's the answer.

Worth reading:

Continental Drift - James Suroweiki helps explain why Europe and the US have a different take on how to tackle the financial crisis. Tyler Cowen chips in with a reminder about the impact of fiscal stimulus during German re-unification. (UPDATE: DeLong qualifies)

A one-page FAQ on the new plan to rescue the banking system.

Getting regulation right, with an interesting discussion about risk.

This is what happens when financial markets do not read my blog. Animal spirits indeed.

Schott's Vocab - a NYT blog on modern words & phrases. I enjoyed the "recession beard" - a beard with a story.

THE DETAILS
Price: $106,520
Powertrain: 6.2L/638-hp*/604-lb-ft*/supercharged V-8/6-sp manual
Vital Stats: 0-60: 3.3 sec/quarter: 11.2 sec/EPA: 14/20 mpg. *SAE certified.

Stop by CorvetteGuys.com and check out their large selection of ZR1 Wheels.

WHY IT'S ON OUR HIT PARADE: We'd love it for design bravura alone, but the R8 runs like a Wall Street profiteer, carves turns with the finesse of Michelangelo working marble, and treats its two occupants to the velvet touch of a Golden Door Spa.

COOL FACT: Actor Alex Rocco, who awoke to find a bloody luxocar grille sharing his bed in 2008's famous R8 Super Bowl commercial, played Moe Greene in the ad's inspiration, 1972's "The Godfather."

SUM UP: The Area 51 supercar.

THE DETAILS
Price: $126,600
Powertrain: 4.2L/420-hp/317-lb-ft/V-8/6-sp auto-clutch manual
Vital Stats: 0-60: 4.1sec/ Quarter: 12.6 sec/EPA: 13/18 mpg

A fascinating read from the New York Magazine. It's a long piece, but well written. It also has some great quotables from high-level officials and Wall St. execs.

I'll bet some members of Obama's team would kill for the level of control offered by a Westminster system of government right about now.

THE CAR THAT LIVES AT THE INTERSECTION OF DOING SOMETHING GOOD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND DOING SOMETHING NICE FOR YOURSELF.

The RX is the best-selling Lexus, and one in five sold is the hybrid version. It’s no surprise, then, that with the new third generation RX—the second to have a hybrid powertrain—Lexus is treading very carefully.The design is a careful evolution, both inside and out. The car is slightly longer and wider but manages to look sleeker than before. The interior retains the traditional Lexus virtues
of comfort (on even bigger, cushier seats) and refinement (with available semi-aniline leather for a still more luxurious feel). Lexus has joined the Germans by adopting an iDrivestyle
controller instead of a touch screen for its optional navigation system. But rather than a knob you twist and push, the Lexus control (called Remote Touch) works more like a joystick that you move from side to side or forward and back, and then make a selection by pressing buttons on the side of the unit. It takes some getting used to.



Other new options don’t require a learning curve, such as the head-up display and the curbview
camera; the latter is located in the right-side mirror, and at low speeds it shows an image of
what’s alongside the car. The hybrid model supplements its previous ECO indicator, which lights up when you’re driving efficiently, with a selectable ECO mode, which changes the responsiveness of the throttle and instructs the climate control to use the A/C compressor more judiciously. There’s also an EV mode, which extends the threshold before the engine starts, up to a still modest 8 to 10 mph.

The changes aren’t dramatic, but Lexus has given its cushy suburban hybrid a slightly greener tinge. Lexus engineers identify four elements that underpin the brand’s hybrids: performance, quiet refinement, low emissions, and fuel economy. In this redesign, the latter received the most emphasis.Whereas the standard RX350’s 3.5-liter V-6 is little changed (adding 5 hp for a total of 275 hp),the RX450h got a whole new gasoline engine. Replacing the old 3.3-liter is a new 3.5-liter V-6 that runs on the more efficient Atkinson cycle. EPA numbers for the front-wheel-drive RX hybrid are up by 1 mpg city and 3 mpg highway, to 28/27 mpg. The all-wheel-drive version adds 2 mpg all around and is now rated at 28/26 mpg.



Despite the increased fuel economy, the RX pecking order has been preserved, with the hybrid
again out muscling the standard RX350. The hybrid’s total power output is up by 27 hp, to 295 hp, and both the gasoline engine and the electric motors make more torque. Against that, however, is the car’s weight gain of more than 400 pounds. Still, the RX hybrid accelerates quickly and smoothly. Once again, the all-wheel-drive model adds a third motor/generator, which is the sole source of propulsion for the rear wheels. In either version, the start-up and shutdown of the gasoline V-6 is seamless, but in steady-state cruising on level ground, there is
the faintest surging as the batteries switch between charging and assisting. In the chassis
department, the new RX is treated to a wider track and a new rear suspension—control
arms replace struts and intrude less into the cargo hold. There’s also an optional sport suspension, but it’s not likely to keep BMW X5 engineers up nights. The electric power steering, now on both RX models, is better than most, linear and not over boosted.

A frequent criticism leveled against the liberal/progressive camp is that they approach policy in an arrogantly paternalistic way: the liberal elites have decided what new government programs will be good for you and if only you were smart enough to vote the elites into office the world would be a better place. This is the nanny state that has introduced annoying speed limits, forced you to pay taxes for things like "education," and banished smokers to Siberia.

Well here's an interesting review of an alternative idea: libertarian paternalism. What's the difference?

To make us choose what is good for us, they avoid fines, compulsion, and prohibition in favor of “nudges” – institutional arrangements that we could, in principle, easily override, but that, given our tendency to rely on [our gut], we end up going along with.

This approach builds on the idea that we often don't spend the time to think important decisions through and instead go with our basic emotional reaction. This can often lead to unfortunate results. But to make a suggestive nudge is not the same thing as making the decision for you:

As long as choice engineering tricks us into making choices that our own more deliberate self would make, they say, manipulation is justifiable. Well-chosen nudges have been shown to be extremely effective in altering choices that make a substantive difference to the lives of many (say, enrollment in pension plans).

This is certainly true. But by now the alarm bells are ringing. My brief exposure to behavioural economics and psychology tells me that by aiming to create more rational decisions, rather than emotional ones, you've created a false dichotomy. In fact, our emotions - our gut - play a fundamental role in decision-making; studies have found that people who have suffered accidents which leave them without functioning "emotion-rich" parts of their brain have difficulty making simple, seemingly-rational decisions like whether or not to go grocery shopping.

Moreover, as the author points out, such nudging still suffers from the same problem as liberal paternalism: the "right" decision has been pre-determined by the nudgers. What if there is a range of right decisions to choose from, depending on individual preferences? And since ultimately people's rational preferences are plastic, and change over time, this does not strike me as being a particularly libertarian approach at all.

In fact, this concept of "nudging" is used all the time in marketing - making the decision to buy one product easier by placing it next to a crappy one. Is this how we want our politicians shaping policy? I'm not convinced. Read the rest of the article as it raises some other excellent points.