Since Europe uses 31% of its gas to make electricity (see chart 2), it is also possible to reduce reliance on Russia by changing generating technology. To some extent Europe"s push for renewables is already doing this. But at the moment renewables need fossil-fuel-fired capacity for backup, and gas is the fuel of choice. Better electricity interconnectors could reduce that need for gas by making it easier to export electricity from renewables-rich markets like Germany on sunny or windy days and to import it on dark or still ones. As with gas interconnectors, forging such links requires a pan-European push. And to make it work on a large scale will require new pricing strategies to recompense the owners of fossil-fuel plants pushed off the grid when renewable energy from other countries flows in.
Interconnectors can also help subst.i.tute one renewable for another. Hydro-power, like gas-fired power stations, can be turned on easily when the wind falters, but it is not evenly spread: Sweden and, particularly, Norway have a lot of it, Germany and Benelux not so much. There are currently plans for up to five new interconnectors from Norway to the EU to be built by 2020, with a capacity of up to 5GW (providing 5GW from gas plants would take around 10bcm a year). Norway could generate much more hydropower, given a market. And with better interconnectors, a lot more solar power could come up from the south-perhaps including north Africa.
Though making a real dent in Europe"s reliance on Russian gas will take political will, money and the best part of a decade, merely moving in that direction will shift the balance of power, because it will signal a fundamental truth: in the end, the Kremlin needs its European customers at least as much as they need Russian imports.
The avengers.
Oil-and-gas exports make up 70% of Russia"s $515 billion annual exports, and 52% of the federal budget, according to America"s Energy Information Administration. Europe"s role as Russia"s largest gas market already gives it a certain strength, as can be seen in the increasingly hard-nosed way EU compet.i.tion officials are taking on some of Gazprom"s practices.
Oil (unlike gas) is easy to store, ship and trade, which means a single customer has less scope for action. But to sell its oil easily, Russia needs access to the world financial system. Its companies need to borrow on the bond market, and want their shares traded on international exchanges. They also need to process payments in dollars (the currency in which almost all international energy transactions are priced).
This gives Europe and America considerable leverage, if they choose to exert it. Rosneft, Russia"s biggest oil company, would be badly damaged if it were to be delisted on the London and New York stock exchanges. Financial sanctions could also make it hard for Russia to sell its oil to third parties. Sanctions have hurt Iran not by stopping it getting oil to customers, but by stopping it from receiving payment (though Russia would be harder to isolate).
In theory, Russia"s gas exports to Europe are a weapon that points the other way. If Russia were to push farther into Ukraine, or to try its chances in Moldova, Georgia or the Baltic states, and Europe to take strong action in response, it could shut down exports completely, thus doing huge damage to the EU. But barring immediate, permanent and total victory, that would also doom Russia as a gas exporter. China already has worries about Russia"s dependability as a supplier. Even with $475 billion in foreign-exchange reserves, the Kremlin cannot continue to run Russia"s ramshackle and uncompet.i.tive economy without its most important export revenues.
The shock of the Crimean annexation should speed up sluggish European decision-making on storage, interconnection, diversification, liberalisation, shale gas and efficiency. And though the decision-makers may detest Mr Putin, in private they will admit that he may thus have done them a favour. They already knew what to do. They just didn"t want to do it.
United States.
Higher education: Is college worth it?
Political corruption: Gun-banner and gun-runner?
Money in politics: Sky"s the limit South Carolina politics: Conservatives of every hue Silicon Valley on TV: "Girls" for geeks.
Property in Miami: Erectile resumption.
Lexington: The home-school conundrum.
Higher education.
Is college worth it?
Too many degrees are a waste of money. The return on higher education would be much better if college were cheaper Apr 5th 2014 | CHICAGO | From the print edition WHEN LaTisha Styles graduated from Kennesaw State University in Georgia in 2006 she had $35,000 of student debt. This obligation would have been easy to discharge if her Spanish degree had helped her land a well-paid job. But there is no shortage of Spanish-speakers in a nation that borders Latin America. So Ms Styles found herself working in a clothes shop and a fast-food restaurant for no more than $11 an hour.
Frustrated, she took the gutsy decision to go back to the same college and study something more pragmatic. She majored in finance, and now has a good job at an investment consulting firm. Her debt has swollen to $65,000, but she will have little trouble paying it off.
As Ms Styles"s story shows, there is no simple answer to the question "Is college worth it?" Some degrees pay for themselves; others don"t. American schoolkids pondering whether to take on huge student loans are constantly told that college is the gateway to the middle cla.s.s. The truth is more nuanced, as Barack Obama hinted when he said in January that "folks can make a lot more" by learning a trade "than they might with an art history degree". An angry art history professor forced him to apologise, but he was right.
College graduates aged 25 to 32 who are working full time earn about $17,500 more annually than their peers who have only a high school diploma, according to the Pew Research Centre, a think-tank. But not all degrees are equally useful. And given how much they cost-a residential four-year degree can set you back as much as $60,000 a year-many students end up worse off than if they had started working at 18.
PayScale, a research firm, has gathered data on the graduates of more than 900 universities and colleges, asking them what they studied and how much they now earn. The company then factors in the cost of a degree, after financial aid (discounts for the clever or impecunious that greatly reduce the sticker price at many universities). From this, PayScale estimates the financial returns of many different types of degree (see chart).
Hard subjects pay off.
Unsurprisingly, engineering is a good bet wherever you study it. An engineering graduate from the University of California, Berkeley can expect to be nearly $1.1m better off after 20 years than someone who never went to college. Even the least lucrative engineering courses generated a 20-year return of almost $500,000.
Arts and humanities courses are much more varied. All doubtless nourish the soul, but not all fatten the wallet. An arts degree from a rigorous school such as Columbia or the University of California, San Diego pays off handsomely. But an arts graduate from Murray State University in Kentucky can expect to make $147,000 less over 20 years than a high school graduate, after paying for his education. Of the 153 arts degrees in the study, 46 generated a return on investment worse than plonking the money in 20-year treasury bills. Of those, 18 offered returns worse than zero.
Colleges that score badly will no doubt grumble that PayScale"s rankings are based on relatively small numbers of graduates from each inst.i.tution. Some schools are unfairly affected by the local job market-Murray State might look better if Kentucky"s economy were thriving. Universities that set out to serve everyone will struggle to compete with selective inst.i.tutions. And poor colleges will look worse than rich ones that offer lots of financial aid, since reducing the cost of a degree raises its return.
All these caveats are true. But overall, the PayScale study surely overstates the financial value of a college education. It does not compare graduates" earnings to what they would have earned, had they skipped college. (That number is unknowable.) It compares their earnings to those of people who did not go to college-many of whom did not go because they were not clever enough to get in. Thus, some of the premium that graduates earn simply reflects the fact that they are, on average, more intelligent than non-graduates.
What is not in doubt is that the cost of university per student has risen by almost five times the rate of inflation since 1983, and graduate salaries have been flat for much of the past decade. Student debt has grown so large that it stops many young people from buying houses, starting businesses or having children. Those who borrowed for a bachelor"s degree granted in 2012 owe an average of $29,400. The Project on Student Debt, a non-profit, says that 15% of borrowers default within three years of entering repayment. At for-profit colleges the rate is 22%. Glenn Reynolds, a law professor and author of "The Higher Education Bubble", writes of graduates who "may wind up living in their parents" bas.e.m.e.nts until they are old enough to collect Social Security."
That is an exaggeration: students enrolling this year who service their debts will see them forgiven after 20 years. But the burden is still heavy for many. It does not help that nearly a third of those who take out such loans eventually drop out of college; they must still repay their debts. A third transfer to different schools. Many four-year degrees drag on longer, and so cost more. Overall, the six-year graduation rate for four-year inst.i.tutions is only 59%.
The lousy national job market does not help, either. A report by McKinsey, a consultancy, found that 42% of recent graduates are in jobs that require less than a four-year college education. Some 41% of graduates from the nation"s top colleges could not find jobs in their chosen field; and half of all graduates said they would choose a different major or school.
Chegg, a company that provides online help to students, collaborated the study. Dan Rosensweig, its boss, says that only half of graduates feel prepared for a job in their field, and only 39% of managers feel that students are ready for the workforce. Students often cannot write clearly or organise their time sensibly. Four million jobs are unfilled because jobseekers lack the skills employers need.
Grading the graders.
For all their flaws, studies like PayScale"s help would-be students (and their parents) make more informed choices. As Americans start to realise how much a bad choice can hurt them, they will demand more transparency. Some colleges are providing it, prodded by the federal government. For example, the University of Texas recently launched a website showing how much its graduates earn and owe after five years.
"Opportunity", said Mr Obama on April 2nd, "means making college more affordable." In time, transparency and technology will force many colleges to cut costs and raise quality. Online education will accelerate the trend. In 2012, 6.7m students were taking at least one online course. Such courses allow students to listen to fine lecturers without having to pay for luxurious dormitories or armies of college bureaucrats. They will not replace traditional colleges-face-to-face cla.s.ses are still valuable-but they will force them to adapt. Those that offer poor value for money will have to shape up, or disappear.
Political corruption.
Gun-banner and gun-runner?
California"s Democrats are suddenly mired in scandal Apr 5th 2014 | SAN FRANCISCO | From the print edition Shrimp Boy and chum.
AFTER a ma.s.s shooting in Colorado, Leland Yee, a Californian state senator, proposed tougher gun curbs. Waxing indignant at the way mad people and bad people can use firearms to slaughter the innocent, the San Francisco Democrat declared that "gun-control laws are effective in preventing gun-related homicides".
Last week the FBI accused Mr Yee of trying to peddle illegal guns. Just as bootleggers once cheered Prohibition, it claims that this outspoken foe of powerful weapons tried to profit from dealing in them. In a 137-page affidavit the bureau alleged, among other things, that he offered to connect an FBI agent masquerading as a New Jersey mafioso with gun-running insurgents from the Philippines.
Many lurid details fill the report, which covers a five-year investigation into gangland activity in and around San Francisco"s Chinatown. Much of it involves Raymond Chow, a diminutive Chinese gangster known locally as "Shrimp Boy" (pictured, with Mr Yee). Mr Chow, whose claims to have gone clean now smell a bit fishy, was arrested last week along with Mr Yee and 24 others.
Mr Yee was bailed on a $500,000 bond. The corruption and weapons-trafficking charges he faces carry sentences of up to 20 years (his legal team has said he will plead not guilty and is apparently considering an entrapment defence). The National Rifle a.s.sociation, a pro-gun group, is delighted. Its press release piously offers Mr Yee the presumption of innocence that he denied in the past (the NRA says) to gun owners.
How did the mild-mannered lawmaker get into such trouble? Saddled with debt from a failed bid to be mayor of San Francisco, and raising funds to run for California secretary of state (a race he has now quit), Mr Yee, the FBI says, was tempted into mischief. He allegedly offered to link buyers with suppliers of automatic weapons and rocket-launchers, and to provide various political favours in return for campaign contributions of $70,000 or so. At one point the report has him boasting to an undercover agent: "Do I think we can make some money? I think we can make some money." He may, oddly, be able to use his campaign funds to help pay his legal bills.
This is the third abuse-of-office scandal to hit Californian Democratic senators in recent months. Ron Calderon, another victim of an FBI sting, stands accused of taking bribes to help expand tax breaks for film producers (he is pleading not guilty); Rod Wright, a senator from Los Angeles, was rumbled for not living in his electoral district (he is appealing against his perjury conviction). All three have been suspended on full pay; the Senate leadership, as well as California"s governor, Jerry Brown, have urged them to resign.
California used to be seen as a fairly clean, if dysfunctional, place. Unlike the east coast, with its party machines and opaque movements of money, California"s love of direct democracy, which weakens parties and allows individuals to be recalled from office, was supposed to keep politicians honest. In 2012 the Centre for Public Integrity, a watchdog, declared it the fourth-least-corrupt state. Now some Californians are wondering if the Democrats" unchecked power encourages bad behaviour. Republicans are dusting off their Lord Acton phrasebooks.
In this respect, at least, the problem is solving itself, for the suspensions deprive the Democrats of their two-thirds supermajority in the Senate. That could jeopardise plans for a much-needed water bond and a fiscal reserve. Still, the party should muddle through this year"s elections relatively unscathed. In the meantime, some Californians are quietly enjoying their dalliance with notoriety. "When I picked up the newspaper this morning I thought they"d delivered the Chicago Tribune by mistake," says a San Franciscan, failing to mask his glee.
Money in politics.
Sky"s the limit.
The justices open the door to more campaign contributions Apr 5th 2014 | NEW YORK | From the print edition SHAUN McCUTCHEON, a businessman from Alabama, wanted to give a symbolic $1,776 to 28 Republican candidates for Congress in 2012. Because of federal limits imposed after the Watergate scandal, Mr McCutcheon was allowed to donate this sum only to 16 campaigns. On April 2nd, however, the Supreme Court ruled that he can get his chequebook out again. In McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, the justices voted 5-4 to strike down two "aggregate caps" on campaign contributions, leaving "base limits" of $2,600 per candidate, per election intact. Where individuals had been limited to total contributions of $48,600 to candidates for federal office and $74,600 to political parties and political-action committees, they can now give as much as they like.
"There is no right more basic in our democracy," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court"s plurality opinion, "than the right to partic.i.p.ate in electing our political leaders." The First Amendment"s freedom-of-speech guarantee includes the right to "contribute to a candidate"s campaign." So although "money in politics may at times seem repugnant to some," it is ent.i.tled to "vigorous" protection. It is unconst.i.tutional, Mr Roberts wrote, to "restrict the political partic.i.p.ation of some in order to enhance the relative influence of others."
The only good reason to curb campaign donations, the Court ruled, is to prevent corruption. So caps on donations to individual candidates make sense: a "financial quid pro quo", or appearance thereof, taints a $1m cheque to someone running for Congress. But if it is lawful to give $1,776 to one candidate, or 16, it is odd to argue that the same sum would corrupt the 17th recipient, or the 400th. "The Government may no more restrict how many candidates or causes a donor may support," Chief Justice Roberts wrote, "than it may tell a newspaper how many candidates it may endorse."
In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer and three other liberal justices argued that the ruling undervalues the "integrity of our governmental inst.i.tutions". Together with the Citizens United decision of 2010, Mr Breyer charged, McCutcheon "eviscerates our Nation"s campaign-finance laws, leaving a remnant incapable of dealing with the grave problems of democratic legitimacy that those laws were intended to resolve." The majority fails to understand what donor dollars can buy, fumed Mr Breyer. "The threat...posed by the risk of special access and influence," he wrote, "remains real."
South Carolina politics.
Conservatives of every hue.
All the big jobs are up for grabs in the Palmetto state Apr 5th 2014 | ROCK HILL | From the print edition GENTEEL and friendly is the image of South Carolina-until the political season rolls round. Then no holds are barred. This year, all the highest statewide offices are up for grabs: the governorship, both US Senate seats and all seven seats in the House of Representatives. Such bounty is unusual, and South Carolinians are rubbing their hands.
The bonanza has happened because Jim DeMint resigned his Senate seat in 2013 to head the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank, in Washington, DC. The state"s Republican governor, Nikki Haley, appointed Tim Scott, then a congressman, to fill the seat pending a special election.
Mr Scott, South Carolina"s first black senator, is one of only two blacks in the Senate. Although the state"s Republican voters are mostly white, he is wildly popular with them. "He is the living, breathing embodiment of our conservative values," explained Wes Climer, a local Republican official, at an early-morning pow-wow last week at the Rock Hill-York County airport featuring doughnuts, coffee and Mr Scott, who is touring the state to kick off his election campaign.
Mr Scott has only token opposition in the Republican primary in June, and should win handily in November. Still, he does not please everyone. "A ventriloquist can always find a good dummy," said the Rev William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP, a black lobby group, in January. Mr Scott, he suggests patronisingly, is just a p.a.w.n for the extreme right.
South Carolina"s other senator, Lindsey Graham, hopes to be re-elected to his third term in November. First, however, he must fend off six Republicans to the right of him in the primary on June 10th. A seventh would-be challenger, an ex-police officer called Dave Feliciano, recently tried to draw blood by claiming that the senator is "ambiguously gay". Mr Graham, who is single, insists that he is not h.o.m.os.e.xual, but the charge has dogged him for years. Having made it again, Mr Feliciano decided not to enter the race.
A thoughtful conservative and a foreign-policy hawk, Mr Graham has more than $7.6m to spend and no strong Democratic opposition, so his seat is probably safe. His supporters point out that this is a good thing: he is one of the few Republicans left in the polarised Senate who will occasionally work with the Democrats.
In the governor"s race, there is likely to be a rematch this autumn between Mrs Haley, South Carolina"s first female and first Indian-American governor, and Vincent Sheheen, the well-regarded Democratic state senator who lost narrowly to her in 2010. Mrs Haley, a Tea Party favourite, endorsed Mitt Romney early and once hoped to serve in his administration. Instead she is facing Mr Sheheen again, who is running a cleverer campaign this time. Her approval ratings are in the mid-40s, and every taxpayer in South Carolina remembers that the biggest theft of taxpayer data in American history took place on her watch in 2012, when all South Carolinian taxpayers who had submitted their tax returns online for the previous 14 years had their Social Security numbers and other sensitive information stolen by unknown hackers in Europe.
An upset by Mr Sheheen is therefore possible, but difficult in such a reliably Republican state. Mrs Haley has refused, for example, to expand health-insurance cover for the poor under Obamacare, is staunchly anti-union and recently signed legislation allowing licensed gun-owners to carry concealed handguns into bars and restaurants that serve alcohol-as long as they do not drink booze and the bars and restaurants let them in. This delighted the state"s many gun-lovers, who had earlier been thrilled by the photo she posted on her Facebook page of the 9mm Beretta Px4 Storm pistol that her husband gave her for Christmas.
Silicon Valley on TV.
"Girls" for geeks.
What HBO"s "Silicon Valley" says about tech culture Apr 5th 2014 | NEW YORK | From the print edition Attack of the clones "FOR thousands of years, guys like us have gotten the s.h.i.t kicked out of us. But now...we can be in charge and build empires." So says Richard Hendricks, the protagonist of "Silicon Valley", a television comedy that starts on April 6th on HBO. In the pilot Mr Hendricks, the mousey-kid inventor of Pied Piper, a fictional compression algorithm, tries to decide whether to sell a small stake in his startup to a venture capitalist or the whole thing to Hooli, a tech giant that sounds suspiciously like Google. He is living every geek"s dream. If only he were cooler.
For years HBO has made programmes that gently mock-and reflect-contemporary culture. "s.e.x and the City", a show about single women in New York, has sparked a gazillion conversations about how much one should spend on shoes and how soon one should take a new boyfriend to bed. "Girls", which began in 2012, has inspired twentysomethings everywhere to have awkward s.e.x and not find jobs.
"Silicon Valley" lampoons not only gawky youngsters but also the seedbed of American innovation. Look beyond the free food and glittery parties, and Silicon Valley is a savage place. Friends are ejected from companies they helped launch (one character extols Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, who "was such a tough negotiator that now all his friends are suing him. I mean, how awesome is that?"). t.i.tans try to sabotage each other"s projects. There are so few female executives that hosts hire women to talk to socially inept engineers at parties.
Amusingly, none of the gizmos in the show seems to work. Virtual-meetings software crashes; voice-recognition technology cannot deal with basic English. Suit-scorning techies nonetheless wear uniforms, sporting grey hoodies like Mr Zuckerberg or black turtlenecks like the late Steve Jobs of Apple. Would-be technopreneurs are encouraged to drop out of college as quickly as possible; in real life Peter Thiel, an investor, offers some clever kids $100,000 to do just this.
"Silicon Valley" taps into Americans" unease about the technology industry. On the one hand, they love its products. On the other, they wince when it buries older businesses or turns arrogant 25-year-olds into instant billionaires. Will Pied Piper catch fire or flame out? Many Americans will root for the latter-as they watch the show on their smartphones.
Property in Miami.
Erectile resumption.
Could the Miami skyline one day resemble Manhattan"s?
Apr 5th 2014 | MIAMI | From the print edition A mirror of prosperity.
ICON BRICKELL, a three-tower complex in Miami"s financial district, was supposed to be a flagship project for the Related Group, the city"s top condominium developer. It would boast 1,646 luxury condos, a 91-metre-long pool, and a hundred 22-foot columns in its entryway. By 2010, however, it had become a symbol of the excesses of the city"s building boom, and Related was forced to hand two of the towers to its banks. Miami condo prices plunged to 60% below their peak. The vacancy rate jumped to 60%. Predictions flew that the market, the epicentre of America"s property crash, would take ten years to come back, or even longer.
The speed of the recovery has surprised everyone. Condo prices are already back near peak levels in Miami"s most desirable areas, and at 75-80% elsewhere. The available supply of units has fallen back to within the six-to-nine-months-of-sales range considered normal, from a stomach-churning 40 in 2008. Only 3% of condos are unoccupied. Sales of condos and single-family homes are above pre-crisis levels across Miami-Dade County. Commercial property, too, has rebounded, with demand outstripping supply. Developers are once again relaxed enough to crack jokes. "I call the current expansion the v.i.a.g.r.a cycle," jokes Carlos Rosso, Related"s president of condominium development. "We just want it to last a little longer."
The recovery has been partly driven by low interest rates and bottom-fishing by private equity, which helped to clear excess inventory. But the biggest factor is that the city nicknamed the "Capital of Latin America" has attracted a flood of capital from Latin America. Rich people in turbulent spots such as Venezuela and Argentina are seeking a safe haven for their savings.
Estate agents are also seeing capital flight from within the United States. Individuals pay no state or city income tax in Miami, unlike, say, New York, whose mayor wants to hike taxes on the rich further. "Somebody said to me, "Give me three reasons why this will continue." My answer was: Maduro, Kirchner and De Blasio," chuckles Marc Sarnoff, a Miami city commissioner, referring to the leaders of the capitalist-bashing regimes in Venezuela, Argentina and New York.
Another attraction is the 40% rise in Miami condo rents since 2009, buoying the income of owners who choose not to live in the tropical hurly-burly that Dave Barry, a local author, calls "Insane City". Brokers report increased business from Eastern Europe and the Middle East (Qatar Airways will fly direct to Miami from June), and an uptick in inquiries from Chinese buyers.
Explore and compare house prices in 20 US cities over time with our interactive house-price tool Is another bubble forming already? Developers say this time is different, and in some ways it is. In a few years Miami has gone from the most- to the least-leveraged property market in America. Buyers of new condos typically have to put 50% down, half of that before building starts. Banks are loth to extend construction loans unless 60-75% of the units are already sold. In both residential and commercial projects, they require developers to put in much more equity than before. Mr Rosso says Related now puts in three times as much, which limits its ambition. The firm now has 2,000 condos in the works, a tenth of what it was building in 2007.
Still, a supply glut is possible. With developers gung-ho again, around 50 towers are under construction or planned in downtown Miami (including the Porsche Design Tower, whose well-heeled inhabitants will be able to take their cars up to the level on which they live in a special lift-this is useful if you really love your car). More were added last month when Oleg Baybakov, a Russian mining-to-property oligarch, bought a trio of condo-development sites for $30m, more than triple their a.s.sessed market value in 2013.
Miami"s developers are adept at using "smoke and mirrors" to hide the true number of pre-sold units, says Peter Zalewski of Condo Vultures, a property-intelligence firm. Some see the first signs of trouble. The stock of unsold condos and houses has crept up slightly since last summer. A local broker says that Blackstone, a private-equity firm with a taste for bricks and mortar, bought $120m of properties with his firm"s help in 2013 but "won"t do anything like that this year". Mr Zalewski says banks are competing harder to finance certain projects, but this may not be a sign of unadulterated bullishness. They may simply be betting that many of the 134 towers proposed but not yet under construction in South Florida won"t get built-meaning the 57 that have already broken ground will do better than forecast.
Much will depend on whether Latin Americans remain addicted to Miami property and, should their ardour cool, whether Americans and others would take up the slack. Few domestic buyers are comfortable putting 50% down, especially when most of it is at risk if the project fails. One or two developers have begun to accept 30% down, a possible sign of increased reliance on home-grown buyers.
The market should get a fillip from the current and planned redevelopment of several chunks of downtown Miami. One of the most ambitious projects is Miami Worldcenter, a 30-acre retail, hotel and convention-centre complex that will feature Bloomingdale"s, Macy"s and a giant Marriott hotel. A science museum will soon join the art museum .
These projects build on progress made over the past decade towards becoming a world-cla.s.s city, from the opening of dozens of top-notch restaurants to Art Basel picking Miami as one of the three venues for its shows ("the Super Bowl of the Art World", as Tom Wolfe called it in his Miami novel, "Back to Blood"). Tourism is at record levels. Miami is the only American city besides New York in the top ten of Knight Frank"s 2014 global-cities index, which ranks cities by their attractiveness to the ultra-wealthy. (It comes seventh, ahead of Paris.) Property is still far cheaper than in most other cities on the list (see chart).
Miami"s Downtown Development Authority (DDA) is dangling the city"s low taxes and lovely weather in front of companies to persuade them to move there. This is starting to bear fruit, especially in finance: Universa, a $6 billion hedge fund in California, recently agreed to relocate, following part of Eddie Lampert"s ESL. SABMiller, a giant brewer, has moved its Latin American head office from Colombia. .
"I lived a long time in New York, but here [in Miami] it"s easier to make something from nothing," enthuses Nitin Motwani, a DDA board member, who talks of the city"s skyline one day resembling Manhattan"s. Mr Zalewski is more cautious. Miami"s property market is "a great game", he says, but "all it would take to send a chill through the entire market is one big project to go sideways." Developers who joke about v.i.a.g.r.a should keep some aspirin within reach, just in case.
Lexington The home-school conundrum Meeting the German Christians who claimed asylum in America Apr 5th 2014 | From the print edition IN THESE first days of spring a mood of relief fills Morristown, Tennessee, near the foot of the Great Smoky Mountains. After a harsh winter, clouds of white pear-blossom once more soften the hillsides around town. The air rings with children"s happy cries and the buzz of garden tools. Still more cheeringly, city burghers-led by the mayor, a local state lawmaker and the head of the largest church-no longer face ma.s.s arrest, a risk they incurred by vowing to hide a family of asylum-seeking Christian home-schoolers rather than see them deported back to Germany.
Civil disobedience does not come easily to Morristown, a conservative spot of almost 30,000 souls. Yet city fathers swore to endure jail time, if necessary, to shield Uwe Romeike, his wife Hannelore and their seven children, from federal agents with orders to expel them from Morristown, where they have lived since fleeing Baden-Wrttemberg in 2008. A stand-off seemed likely when, on March 3rd, the Supreme Court declined to hear a final appeal against the Romeikes" expulsion, handing victory to the American government, which had always rejected the family"s claims to be refugees from religious and social persecution. However, a day later federal officials put the family"s deportation on indefinite hold-thereby allowing them to stay without setting a legal precedent (and without insulting Germany, a close ally).
German laws forbid parents from educating their children at home in almost all cases, citing society"s interest in avoiding closed-off "parallel societies". Germany"s highest court calls schools the best place to bring together children of different beliefs and values, in the name of "lived tolerance". In plainer language, the Romeikes believe that, if they return to Germany, their children face being taken to school by force. This happened in 2006: the youngsters wept as they were driven away in a police van. (On the next school morning supporters showed up and officers backed off.) Worse, their children might be taken into care-this is the family"s greatest fear, prompting their flight from Germany. As the Romeikes scanned the globe for options, the Home School Legal Defence a.s.sociation, a Virginia-based group, urged them to apply for asylum in America. The hope was to cause a fuss in the press, says an HSLDA lawyer, Michael Donnelly, and to "fuel the flame of liberty in Germany".
In America, home-schooling has been legal in all 50 states for more than a generation. About 2m children are home-schooled. Many but not all are Christians whose parents want to shield them from the wickedness taught at G.o.dless public schools. Mr Romeike, a music teacher, works as the pianist at the First Baptist Church in Morristown, which attracts 1,300 worshippers on a Sunday and boasts its own TV station. The church hosts weekly gatherings for 60 home-schooled families, among them the Romeikes. The children meet friends, play sports and take cla.s.ses (taught by parents) in everything from science to quilting.
The Romeikes" case has fired up social conservatives across America. Their church belongs to the Southern Baptist Convention, whose spokesman suggested in March that the Romeikes were unwelcome in Barack Obama"s America because, as a heteros.e.xual married Christian couple with well-grounded children, they represented "the ant.i.thesis of this administration"s political agenda". Morristown"s mayor, Danny Thomas, does not go that far. But he says that locals were deeply upset that the Romeikes were initially granted asylum by a federal immigration judge, only for the government to challenge that ruling. A dapper retired businessman, Mr Thomas was ready to harbour the Romeikes in "some place where they couldn"t be taken". He is not surprised that home-schooling is on the rise. Christians feel increasingly persecuted, he avers, and it would be hard to find anyone in Morristown who does not believe that "G.o.d is being pushed out" of the public sphere. Others call the Romeikes model migrants. Some people come to Morristown "illegally", says Dean Haun, senior pastor at First Baptist, but the Romeikes did everything by the rules. "They are not on welfare, they"re not asking for handouts. They"re hard-working."
Tilman Goins, a Republican who represents Morristown in Tennessee"s House of Representatives, recently condemned Germany"s home-school laws as "promulgated under Adolf Hitler in 1938". Mr Goins was being obtuse. If there is a link between Germany"s home-schooling policy and n.a.z.ism, it is that history helps explain German angst about fringe groups with pa.s.sionate views that reject the liberal consensus.
Father Knows Best v Father State Many conservative Christians want to portray the Romeikes as religious martyrs. Yet relating his saga in his hilltop home, flanked by a child"s swing and wide, sloping lawns, Mr Romeike mostly describes a sad story of mutual incomprehension, made worse by official bossiness. His countrymen are suspicious because they do not know much about home-schooling, he suggests. It is "the German mentality: things have to be a certain way." Piety puzzles them too. "If you believe the Bible you are kind of from the Middle Ages." Mr Romeike has old-fashioned views, grumbling about German schoolbooks "ridiculing" parents and teachers, for instance. He takes a sternly Biblical line on Creation and h.o.m.os.e.xuality. But strikingly, he says his children might never have been home-schooled if the two eldest had not been bullied at primary school. Stones were thrown at them. His daughter saw a child"s trousers pulled down. Their headmaster retorted that his school was "peaceful". Years of legal battles ensued.
At root, theirs is a story about trust in the individual and the role of the state, revealing wide transatlantic differences. Americans a.s.sume that most parents try to do what is best for their children. That can be an uncomfortable principle (there are some daft parents, among them Lexington on a bad day). But the alternative-the presumption that the state knows best-is worse.
The Americas.