Inventions: An Easy-Access Peanut Butter Jar | Newsweek Periscope

THE ECONOMY
Who’s Watching the Money?
Michael Hirsh 11/22/2008 12:00:00 AM
Barack Obama thought he could have a fairly normal transition. Oh, he knew how serious the financial crisis was ("something that we have not seen since the Great Depression," he told "60 Minutes"). But after pledging to tackle the economy "head-on" at a Nov. 7 news conference in Chicago—with 16 of the nation's economic elites standing behind him like the board of America Inc.—Obama apparently felt he'd said enough. There is "only one government and one president at a time," he said, adding that he would apply "deliberate haste" to choosing a Treasury secretary and other cabinet members. Then the president-elect ensconced himself in his transition bunker in Chicago, attending to important matters like discussing the secretary-of-state slot with Hillary Clinton.
MEDIA
When Left is Right
Julia Baird 11/22/2008 12:00:00 AM
"Can you believe that sellout, Barack Obama?" says Rachel Maddow, looking around the room. "Let's hit him from the left!" It's 1:30 p.m. on Nov. 5, and the six-foot-tall Maddow, wearing her trademark baggy 501 jeans and thick-soled sneakers, has just burst into her staff meeting in a small office at 50 Rockefeller Plaza, home of MSNBC. Her team of political junkies, mostly in their 20s and 30s, perk up, laugh and start talking about how Obama is looking at hiring former Clinton staffers. "Yes!" Maddow responds, beaming. "He's already triangulating, the bastard." It's the day after the election, and Maddow has had two hours of "drunk sleep." Just a few minutes before, her intense executive producer, Bill Wolff, was giving the staff a pep talk, and a warning: don't get too cynical too soon. They may be feeling "tired and cranky" because they were up late working and drinking, but "the country is still aglow," he says. "Holy s–––, Barack Obama is president of the United States. People are almost universally feeling quite proud and quite moved by it and I don't think we want to be too fast to speed away from that." When Maddow arrives, she energizes the room. She flops to the floor, alternately lying on her back, throwing a small foam basketball in the air and kneeling to scribble in a notebook. Her ideas are all tough-minded: Who will be in the new cabinet? Who are the Republican bosses now? How will Bush handle his "lameduckitude"?
SOCIETY
Haute For Chocolate
Elisa Mala 11/15/2008 12:00:00 AM
Iron Man has been kidnapped and had shrapnel lodged in his heart, but he never had to worry about his power suit melting off. That fear plagued chef James Briscione as he stepped into the superhero's uniform. His concern was understandable: the suit was made almost entirely of chocolate. "Chocolate melts at body temperature," Briscione noted, as two colleagues from the Institute of Culinary Education enveloped him in sheets of the stuff. But at least this suit wouldn't attack its wearer, like the one in the Iron Man comic book once did.
JAPAN
The One Big Buyer
George Wehrfritz 11/15/2008 12:00:00 AM
On Nov. 11, Japan's Mitsubishi Rayon Co. announced that it would pay $1.6 billion for the unlisted British chemicals manufacturer Lucite International Group, in a deal that says quite a lot about where financial power is held in the world today. Set against the current financial downturn—with its emergency bailouts and stimulus packages tallying in the hundreds of billions—the transaction looks tiny to the point of insignificance, yet in fact it reflects an important trend: Japanese companies are now spending more than $1 billion a week in outbound mergers and acquisitions, making them a critical source of new investment in a global M&A industry battered by this year's financial crisis.
IDEAS
Maybe Geniuses Just Got Lucky
Jerry Adler 11/15/2008 12:00:00 AM
Life is unfair, as even the bible acknowledges ("Unto every one that hath shall be given … "). We can't all hit a baseball like DiMaggio or sing like the Beatles. But how much do we understand about those who can? Not enough, says Malcolm Gladwell, in his new book, "Outliers: The Story of Success." We attribute the Beatles' fabulous success to being, well, the Beatles, four cute boys who happened to possess amazing musical talents. Gladwell has a different explanation. The Beatles, he says, lucked into a gig at a strip club in Germany where they had to play as long as eight hours a night, in styles ranging from bubblegum pop to hard-driving blues—making them possibly the best-rehearsed band in the world when they answered the call of the Ed Sullivan show. We can't all be like the Beatles, but neither could John, Paul, George and Ringo, if their experiences had been different. As a determinant of success, talent is overrated, compared to, among other things, luck.
BUSINESS
A Risk Worth Taking
Daniel Gross 11/15/2008 12:00:00 AM
In recent months, conservative economists and editorialists have tried to pin the blame for the unholy international financial mess on subprime lending and subprime borrowers. If bureaucrats and social activists hadn't pressured firms to lend to the working poor, the narrative goes, we'd still be partying like it was 2005 and Bear Stearns would be a going concern. The Wall Street Journal's editorial page has repeatedly heaped blame on the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), the 1977 law aimed at preventing redlining in minority neighborhoods. Fox Business Network anchor Neil Cavuto in September proclaimed that "loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster."