NIGERIA’S SICK PRESIDENT
Get well soon, Mr. Buhari
But have you noticed that the economy improved while you were away?
EVER since word trickled out that Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s 74-year-old president, was not just taking a holiday in Britain but seeking medical care, his country has been on edge. Nigerians have bad memories of this sort of thing. Mr. Buhari’s predecessor bar one, Umaru Yar’Adua, died after a long illness in 2010, halfway through his first term. During much of his presidency he was too ill to govern effectively, despite the insistence of his aides that he was fine. In his final months he was barely conscious and never seen in public—yet supposedly in charge. Since he had not formally handed over power to his deputy, Goodluck Jonathan, his incapacity provoked a constitutional crisis and left the country paralysed.
There is nothing to suggest that Mr. Buhari is as ill as Yar’Adua was. But that is because there is little information of any kind. His vice-president, Yemi Osinbajo, insists that his boss is “hale and hearty”.MrBuhari’s spokesman says his doctors have recommended a good rest. Yet even members of Mr. Buhari’s cabinet have not heard from him for weeks, and say that they do not know what ails him or when he will return.
(老人或病愈之后的人)健壮的，有精神的，老当益壮 hale and hearty
例：Does not everyone, including the hale and hearty, have the right to choose the timing and manner of their own death?
例：Sick animals often have higher white-cell counts as their bodies churn out more ammunition to fight the infection, but those in the Virginian study all came from zoos, and were believed to be hale and hearty.
例：Its facilities were meager, its staff limited (there were no doctors on duty), and its hygiene suspect, but it was the same place where Mbali had been delivered hale and hearty by a midwife three years before—and late that evening, with the same woman in attendance, Daphne gave birth to the boy.
Such disclosure would be expected in any democracy. In Nigeria the need is even more pressing. Uncertainty is unsettling the fractious coalition of northern and southern politicians that put Mr. Buhari into power. Nigeria is fragile: the split between northern Muslims and southern Christians is one of many that sometimes lead to violence. The country also faces a smouldering insurrection 硝烟漫漫的叛乱 in the oil-rich Delta and an insurgency in the north-east by jihadists under the banner of Boko Haram (“Western education is sinful”).
Mr. Buhari, an austere former general, won an election two years ago largely because he promised to restore security and fight corruption. Although his government moves at a glacial pace, earning him the nickname “Baba Go Slow”, he has wrested back control of the main towns in three states overrun by Boko Haram. Yet the jihadists still control much of the countryside, and the government has been slow to react to a looming famine that has left millions hungry.
On corruption,MrBuhari has made some progress. A former national security adviser is on trial受审 in Nigeria for graft, and a former oil minister was arrested in Britain for money laundering. So far, however, there have been no big convictions.
Mr. Buhari’s main failures have been economic. The damage caused by a fall in the price of oil, Nigeria’s main export, has been aggravated by mismanagement. For months Mr. Buhari tried to maintain a peg to the dollar by banning whole categories of imports, from soap to cement, prompting the first full-year contraction of output in 25 years.
First, do no harm
With Mr. Buhari in London, the country’s economic stewardship经济管理？ has, whisper it, improved a bit. Mr. Osinbajo has allowed a modest devaluation and started on reforms aimed at boosting growth. This is already paying off. In February the government sold $1bn-worth of dollar-denominated bonds, its first foreign issue in four years. Demand was so great that investors bid for almost $8bn-worth of the notes, raising hopes of a second bond sale later this month.
If his health recovers, Mr. Buhari still has two years left in office. He should focus on doing what he does best: providing the leadership his troops need to defeat Boko Haram and the moral authority to clamp down on corruption. And, noting how much better the economy is doing without him trying to command it like a squad of soldiers, he should make good on a long-forgotten electoral pledge to leave economic policy to the market-friendly Mr.Osinbajo.
RED TAPE IN AMERICA
Doing deregulation right
America needs regulatory reform, not a crude cull of environmental rules
1. V-TIf items or ideas are culled from a particular source or number of sources, they are taken and gathered together. 采集[usu passive]
例：All this, needless to say, had been culled second-hand from radio reports. 不必说，这一切都是从无线电广播报道中搜集来的第二手信息。
2. V-T To cull animals means to kill the weaker animals in a group in order to reduce their numbers. 宰杀 (病弱动物以减少其数目)
例：To save remaining herds and habitat, the national parks department is planning to cull 2000 elephants. 为挽救余下的兽群及其栖息地，国家公园管理部门正计划杀掉2000头大象。
3. N-COUNT Cullis also a noun. (对病弱动物的) 宰杀
例：In the reserves of Zimbabwe and South Africa, annual culls are already routine. 在津巴布韦和南非的自然保护区，对病弱动物每年所进行的宰杀剔除已成惯例。
The culling of seal cubs has led to an outcry from environmental groups. 宰杀海豹幼仔的行为已引起了环保团体的强烈抗议。
WHAT does the Republican Party, led by Donald Trump, agree on? In addition to an enthusiasm for power, two things unite the conservatism of Stephen Bannon, the president’s consigliere 顾问（尤指犯罪集团）[捂脸];, with the conservatism of Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, the Republican leaders in Congress. One is tax cuts, on which he has thus far been vague. The other is deregulation, which matters more to Republicans now than debt or deficits.
The president promised “a historic effort to massively reduce job-crushing regulations” when he spoke to a joint session of Congress on February 28th.Mr. Bannon has announced nothing less than “the deconstruction of the administrative state”. That project began with an executive order requiring federal agencies to get rid of two regulations for every new one they issue. It continued this week when the White House proposed slashing the budgets of many federal agencies. Under Barack Obama, CEOs grumbled constantly about burdensome new regulation and more zealous enforcement of existing rules. Stockmarkets have soared, possibly on a belief that undoing all this will bring much faster growth.
Something has indeed dampened America’s economic dynamism. Startups are rarer, labour is less mobile and fewer people switch jobs than they did three decades ago. Regulation has shot up (^) the list of small firms’ concerns since 2008. Yet there is a right way and a wrong way to deregulate. Markets need clear rules, enforced predictably. Less regulation is not always better: the freedom to dump toxic sludge工业废料 into rivers will not improve Americans’ living standards. Republicans must ensure that they do the right sort of deregulation. There is little to be gained from crudely hacking at MrObama’s handiwork, while ignoring systemic problems that have led to a proliferation of rules, whoever is in charge.
Don’t just blame the bureaucrats
By one estimate, the number of federal edicts 指令 has risen steadily for almost four decades, from about 400,000 in 1970 to 1.1m. One reason for this proliferation is that bureaucrats much prefer writing new rules to rubbing out old ones. They scrutinise policy rigorously, but usually only in advance, when little is known about its impact. Little effort is made to analyse whether a rule’s benefits still justify its costs once implemented. Instead, politicians rely on gut instinct to tell them whether firms’ complaints about over-regulation are reasonable.
Political gridlock is another reason for regulatory sprawl. When a president is blocked by a hostile Congress, as Mr. Obama was for most of his time in office, the temptation is to exercise power by issuing rules through the federal bureaucracy. But even when Washington is unified, as it is now, Congress and the executive branch find it much easier to issue new edicts than to undo old ones. The same is true at the state level.
The result is a proliferation of rules at all levels of government—rules that can slow innovation, but which also impede straightforward tasks, such as fixing bridges. When Mr. Obama tried to finance “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects after the recession, he found that many lacked the long list of permits and approvals necessary to start building. Any infrastructure push by Mr.Trump will run up against the same roadblocks.
Fixing this requires substantial change. Mr. Obama made a modest start by directing agencies to evaluate old regulations. Mr. Trump’s demand that agencies must abolish old rules before writing new ones sounds crude, but provides a welcome incentive for bureaucrats to look again at old rulings. The strategy has had some success in Britain and Canada.
The White House should bolster the office that scrutinises proposed rules. It has seen its staff fall by half over three decades, while regulations have proliferated. Congress should appoint experts to scrutinise regulation on its behalf, as it has done for budgetary matters. This new body could review old rules as a matter of course理所当然的事. If these edicts do not pass a cost-benefit analysis, they should expire automatically.
Unfortunately, the approach many Republicans favour is to make it harder for the executive branch to do anything at all. Some want to subject every new rule to a congressional vote. Yet few politicians are equipped to scrutinise, say, arcane financial rules. Such votes are more likely to create feeding opportunities for lobbyists—and, in turn, more of the exemptions that increase regulatory complexity and harm competition.
The Republicans are right that America’s regulatory sprawl needs tackling. A well-executed drive to cut red tape will doubtless bring economic gains. But it will be painstaking work, a far cry 差别悬殊的事物 from the slash-and-burn approach the Trump team has in mind. Crude rule-cutting and budget-slashing will simply leave America dirtier and less safe.
INDIAN BANKS
From worse to bad
A bad bank would be a start—but only that—towards cleaning up India’s ailing financial system.
IF YOU owe a bank a hundred dollars, it is your problem. If you owe a hundred million, it is the bank’s problem. If you are one of many tycoons borrowing billions to finance dud firms, it is the government’s problem.
That is roughly the situation India finds itself in today. Its state-owned banks extended credit to companies that are now unable to repay. Like the firms they have injudiciously lent to, many banks are barely solvent. Almost 17% of all loans are estimated to be non-performing; state-controlled banks are trading at a steep discount to book value. After years of denial, India’s government seems belatedly to have grasped the threat to the wider economy. Plans are being floated to create a “bad bank” that would house banks’ dud loans, leaving the original lenders in better shape. The idea is a good one, but it must be properly implemented and is only the starting-point for broader reforms.
The bad-loan mess has been years in the making. India skirted the financial bust of 2007-08, but then complacency ensued. Banks went on to finance large-scale projects—anything from mines and roads to power plants and steel mills—which often ended in disappointment. Over 40% of loans made to corporate India are stuck in firms unable to repay even the interest on them, according to Credit Suisse, a bank. The result is a “twin balance-sheet problem”, whereby both banks and firms are financially overstretched. Corporate credit is shrinking for the first time in two decades.
In an ideal world, the banks would write down the value of the loans. The resulting losses would require fresh funds from shareholders. India is far from that ideal. It takes over four years to foreclose on a loan (a newish bankruptcy law should help). The government is the main shareholder of the worst affected banks, and has been reluctant to inject more cash. Bankers themselves are afraid to deal with loans pragmatically, because that often gets mistaken for cronyism.
Clean energy needed
The solution so far has been to pretend nothing much is wrong. The banks have rolled bad loans over, hoping that growth would eventually make things right. This is a poor strategy, as anyone who followed Japan in the 1990s and Italy since the financial crisis well knows. It is only a matter of time before the banks’ difficulties derail India’s economic prospects. Hence talk of setting up a bad bank to sort out the mess.
Bad banks have been used with success in the past—in Sweden in the 1990s, for example, and in Spain in recent years. Butif they are to work, candour and cash are both needed. The candour is required to assign a realistic value to banks’ soured loans. Indian lenders must be compelled, and quickly, to sell loans to the bad bank even at a hefty discount to face value, no matter how much it may wound their pride or dent their profits. That is where the cash comes in. When those write-downs eat up capital, the state must be ready to make up the shortfall even if it means borrowing more to do so.
That is only a start, however. A bad bank could resolve this crisis. But to make future ones less likely, broader reforms are needed. Some are under way. Political interference (loans to a minister’s buddy, say) and dysfunctional governance (many bank bosses get only one-year stints at the helm, for example) are less of a problem than they once were. But lenders should not be instruments of the state. Private investors should be allowed to play a bigger role in cleaned-up banks, even if that means the government has to give up majority control.
India’s “promoters”, as the founders and owners of big businesses are known, also need to be reined in further. Tycoons have the upper hand in negotiations with their lenders because they know that red tape, patronage and antiquated legal systems make it all but impossible to seize the assets of defaulting firms. In effect, they cannot be replaced at the helm. Resolving this imbalance would make it more likely that dud loans are a headache for banks and borrowers, not for the finance minister. It is good that policymakers appear to be waking up to the magnitude of India’s banking problem. Whether they appreciate the scale of the solution is less clear.
DEPORTATION
Oiling the machine
Germany’s efforts to deport more unauthorised immigrants are sensible. Not so America’s
TO IMMIGRANTS who live in the shadows, or in the interminable half-light of the asylum system, the signals in two large countries are ominous. Germany’s government is seeking to make it easier and quicker to deport failed asylum-seekers. America promises to “take the shackles off” its immigration officers and boost their numbers. In a speech to Congress on February 28th, Donald Trump mentioned two illegal immigrants—both of them murderers.
In both countries, politics is lubricating the deportation machine. Mr Trump is delivering the crackdown he promised on the campaign trail; Germany is gearing up for elections in September, in which the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party threatens to do well. In both countries, civil-rights groups call deportation brutal and unfair. In both, the federal government has clashed with local officials. But the differences are instructive, too. Germany’s actions are proportionate and sensible. America’s are not.
Pick your targets carefully
In principle, deporting people who fall foul of immigration rules is wise, even liberal. It is the corollary of a generous immigration system—proof that rules can be upheld and that a country can open its doors without losing control. In practice, deportation is tricky and choices must be made. It can be done humanely and efficiently. Or it can be callous and sloppy, so that it tears social bonds and makes a country less safe.
Since January 2015 almost 1.2m people have sought asylum in Germany—more than in any other European country. Of the cases it has heard, Germany has accepted 39% as refugees and offered protection to others. That still leaves a lot of rejects, many of whom are clinging on. Soon there could be half a million foreigners in Germany who have been told to leave.
Although deporting them all would be impossible—many are not acknowledged by the countries they fled—Germany wants to push more out of the door. So it plans to ban failed asylum-seekers from moving around the country and to offer money to hopeless cases if they depart of their own accord 自愿. It will crack down on serious criminals. The federal government is also prodding states to be more vigorous. They are in charge of deportations, and at the moment they do not all agree that it is safe to return people to Afghanistan.
As Germany tries to deter recent arrivals from digging in, and focuses on the worst offenders, America is doing more or less the opposite. It has about 11m illegal immigrants, according to the Pew Research Centre. Two-thirds of the adults have been in the country for at least ten years and two-fifths have children, many of whom are citizens. Although almost all illegal immigrants could in theory be deported, in recent years most effort has gone on removing recent arrivals and those who have committed serious crimes.
Not any more. America’s Department of Homeland Security proposes to target all illicit immigrants who have “committed an act for which they could face charges”. Since Congress has criminalised many things that such people do (eg, using false Social Security numbers) that means open season on almost everyone. More children will be deported; parents who pay smugglers to bring their offspring to America will be prosecuted. Local police will be used as “force multipliers”.
N-UNCOUNT If you say that it is open season on someone or something, you mean that a lot of people are currently criticizing or attacking them. 自由抨击
例："It's open season on smokers," I say. “很多人正在对吸烟者自由抨击，”我说。
例："There is an open season on Chechens, they are hunting Chechens now, " he said.
例：Unfortunately for Mr Hashimoto, he is unlikely to be granted an open season for agency shooting.
By widening the net to catch longer-established immigrants, who tend to have children and better jobs, Mr Trump’s government will cause immense harm to families and to the country. Already-long queues at the immigration courts will lengthen. Federal officers will be pitted against local ones. Police in many cities refuse to act as proxy immigration officers, on the sensible ground that illegal immigrants should not be afraid of talking to them. Pushing them to co-operate with gung-ho federal officers invites a clash. Last week the mayor of Los Angeles told immigration officers to stop referring to themselves as police.
pity against 使竞争
例：Chinese geologists are pitting their knowledge, skill and modern technical equipment against nature in an effort to get more oil for their country. 为了替祖国获得更多的石油，中国地质学家以自己的知识、技能以及现代的技术设备与自然进行斗争。
例：Nadal will open proceedings against Germany's Daniel Brands, but a potential third round match would pit him against Lukas Rosol, who shocked him at last year's Wimbledon ahead of his lengthy injury layoff.
例：At least two other cases pit RIM against so-called non-practicing entities, or NPEs.
例：The show format will apparently pit celebrities against contestants before a studio audience.
ADJIf you say that someone is gung ho, you mean that they are very enthusiastic or eager to do something, for example to fight in a battle. 狂热的[非正式]
例：He has warned some of his more gung ho generals about the consequences of an invasion. 他已经警告过他那些更狂热的将军们关于入侵的后果。
例： Senate Republicans are less gung-ho about tax cuts. 共和党的参议员们对减税并不热心。
In America, many illegal immigrants have been around for decades and become part of society. Confusingly, when Mr. Trump is not tarring抹黑 unauthorised migrants as murderers, he says he is open to talking to Democrats about a comprehensive reform that would allow some of them to become legal (though not to earn full citizenship). That would be an excellent idea; but so far his actions speak louder than his words.
