I cancelled my subscription to the Economist for reasons along those lines. Their complete misunderstanding of America, in spite of being a huge market for them, ought to indicate that their "insights" on numerous countries they cover must be even more suspect. They are not wrong just guessing that Americans will think and act like urban Europeans. Their sophisticated criticism often suggests idealistic naivete and lack of perspective (trade, macroeconomic policy) or a basic misunderstanding of the issue (gay marriage as a civil right issue, gun control, death penalty, e.g).

How about Finance and Markets? Well, had you bet on their "house view" over the last five years you would have positioned for inflation in the late 90's, deflation a year ago, and now inflation again. You would have also sold your house to "lock profits" and avoid the crash in real estate about five to ten years ago and rented. And after having lost almost all your fortune shorting the US stock market through the 90's, you may not have had enough money to make it back when it did fall. And even if you did make some money back, you would have lost it in the last six months having -- yes, again -- concluded that the US recovery was spurious and on steroids.

Even if you don't like their analytical stance, they do some valuable reporting on foreign countries.

Might I suggest the Financial Times as a possible replacement? They do good foreign reporting too, although it's a daily, not a weekly.

MG, you forgot their call on oil several years back.

Actually, it was when they made Michael Kinsley the guest editor for their American pages for six months in the early 1990s that I started to wonder about how they actually viewed the United States.

And after having lost almost all your fortune shorting the US stock market through the 90's, you may not have had enough money to make it back when it did fall.

I think they were arguing from 1997 onwards that the stock market was beginning to fall out of step with actual valuations and consistently argued long and hard through the internet bubble that the emperor had no clothes while others derided them for not believing that a dotcm travel agency could have a greater market cap than all US airlines combined.

I can't say I agree with their stances on drug legalisation or prostitution but articles like this don't particularly convince me they know nothing about America.

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2313020

Regarding the criticisms in the picture, does anyone here seriously believe they won't get substantial attention in Blue America, which was a fairly hefty chunk of the electorate the last time I checked?

As for their sophisticated criticism that's just typical British smarminess.

You would think that leftist, with their sophisticated analysis, would now bring up that huge winning issue of.....

"the homeless"

Ali -

If the Economist wants to position themselves between the "Stick-it-to-Bush" and the "Nit-pick-Bush" portion of the media spectrum, they will have to compete with about 95% of the Blue State media market. Good luck. I think they will only get attention from those Libertarians (a few on this board) who are having a field day wishing Bush were someone else (who?) but who should know better what the alternative is all about.

The fascinating thing about the Economist is that in Europe they are considered pretty far out on the right. In the states, they're slightly to the left of the Dem mainstream.

The Economist was founded to promote free trade. They his bottom about five years ago when they not only left free trade behind, but started to mock it.

David: Huh? That'd be news to me, someone who's been reading it off and on since 1995. They've been having goes at Bush ever since he announced the steel tariffs.

MG: It's kind of funny how on another message board I've been having discussions with a number of liberal leftists who fervently believe the Economist is a tool of the political right and tried to use that to discredit the articles they ran on how Clarke's criticisms are overboard, the war on Iraq was justified and why Krugman's turned into a partisan hack.

Like I said before I don't agree with a number of their positions but their criticism of Bush doesn't mean they're a leftist rag. And frankly I think you'll find there's plenty of conservatives who are disgruntled with Bush's policies be it high spending or immigration. That doesn't mean they're all sleeper agents for the Democrats.

A taste of the leader:

The wider question-mark comes with Mr Bush's own moral claims. He says his battle is not just a military one but also an effort to promote democracy and human rights. Yet he has too often undermined that effort. For example, Mr Bush has courageously called for the establishment of a Palestinian state, but has done virtually nothing to bring one into being. Israel's assassination of Sheikh Yassin, murderous as the Hamas leader was, drew only grudging criticism.

Huh?

What M. Ali said.

Ali -

I agree with you that they are not (consciously) an agent of the Left in general or the Dems in particular, and that they espouse some views which some of the the hard, looney Left would deem extreme Right.

I put them in the category of ministers with a pulpit (but no portfolio). Chaterring classeurs. They believe that is best to sound good than to be electable; that is better to be a purist minority party than to lead. By the way, were where they when Newt Ginrich was beating the pants of the Left on the intellectual front (any one question his intellect and communications skills?) on a platform that the they ought to have loved (pure economic and political reform, with religion and culture on the back burner), only to be pilloried by demagogues and to lose political effectiveness.

At a time of war and other major challenges, we have to be realistic. We can not expect Bush to do all the things they like, and which take political courage -- confront terrorism, address immigration, fix medicare and ss -- while being constantly sniped at for style and for compromising on some issues. Bush is not going to lose. But if he does, Al Qaeda and Kim Il Sun win. The Economists and a few others who should know better would bear some of that blame.

They believe that is best to sound good than to be electable; that is better to be a purist minority party than to lead.

It's not like they're the official newsletter of the RNC. It would be dishonest for them not to air their grievances with Bush if they have them.

Besides which a certain degree of zealotry is to be expected from them. You can't go through over a century and a half of publication while holding views which have been deeply unpopular without it.

As for your criticism, you may as well accuse the National Review of doing the same when they endorsed Simon and McClintock and not Schwarzanegger for the Califonia governor's race.

Ali --

oj and others here had a field day with NR (making fun of their zealotry) on their "dislike" of Arnold and on criticism of Bush on immigration reform. Also, endorsing McClintock is hardly akin to flirting with somebody as anathema to everything the Economist should be about as John Kerry is. We will see if they go that route.

They'll moan and complain but they'll still end up endorsing Dubya.

I always feel guilty about not reading The Economist regularly because I suspect I am ignoring a rich vein of knowledge and informed analysis I should be tapping in order to justify holding any opinions. But when I do buy an issue I am bored silly very quickly. Like Time, at some basic level it has the stylized feel of astrology and gossip columns.

Ali --

I've been looking for but haven't found the issue (I think from the mid to late '80s) in which the Economist took the protectionist side of some issue (to its credit, explicitly discussing its free trade legacy). A few years later, in one of their year end double issues, they had a contest involving the fictional murder of an editor who argued in favor of an editorial stance that abandoned free trade entirely. Since then, their position has struck me as similar to the Democrats: wavering support for free trade in their rhetoric, much less in their actions. Opposing the steel tarriffs, which were trivial, is a good example. At the same time, they argue against good bilateral trade agreements because they are wedded to multilateral pie-in-the-sky WTO schemes.