The war between Nestle and Starbucks over the instant coffee market

This is going to be short, because I am tired, but I keep noticing the hilariously aggressive ads that Nestle is putting up all over town targeted at Starbucks and their new line of instant coffee, Via.

So (for context) we first have the Via ads, which claimed that it's not just instant coffee, it's flowery-font instant.

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And therefore that Via (the flowery-font instant) is a whole new thing Starbucks has invented--an innovation.

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So then Nestle, which probably controls a good deal of the world wide instant coffee market with Nescafe (which was, by the way, first introduce in 1938. Ok, here's some info on their "soluble coffee" market control throughout the world.) releases this torrent of ads in response to Via, the resentful-ness of which, for some reason, strikes me as totally hilarious. See below.

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Or my personal favorite (can't find a pic) which I saw whilst biking home today which read (something like):

"Dear Starbucks:

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Raising our prices by 400% not so much."

It took me a little while to process this (wait, so you are saying that raising a price is not a form of flattery?...wait...?)

Anyway, I guess we'll see if Nestle's campaign pays off or not. Who drinks instant coffee anyway?

Iranian Elections--Rigged?

So incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was pronouced the winner of the Iranian presidential elections tonight and some claim that the elections were rigged (and reformist challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi actually won). For example, in this article (entitled "Iran's Stolen Election") from the New Yorker, Laura Secor writes:

"There can be no question that the June 12, 2009 Iranian presidential election was stolen. Dissident employees of the Interior Ministry, which is under the control of President Ahmadinejad and is responsible for the mechanics of the polling and counting of votes, have reportedly issued an open letter saying as much. Government polls (one conducted by the Revolutionary Guards, the other by the state broadcasting company) that were leaked to the campaigns allegedly showed ten- to twenty-point leads for Mousavi a week before the election; earlier polls had them neck and neck, with Mousavi leading by one per cent, and Karroubi just behind."

This picture, from Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic shows statistical evidence of the fraud.

Sigh.

Politicians make a lot of promises

Assorted news on the progress of "Change" promised by the current administration:

On government transparency:
CIA Stance On Torture Tape Docs Suggests Obama's New Open Government Era Won't Materialize
CIA Urges Judge To Keep Bush-Era Documents Sealed

On reducing excesses/inequality:
Is the Obama Administration Getting Serious About Executive Compensation? (No.)

On regulation of the financial markets: Financial Overhaul Raises Questions

Although the final article is from a week ago and mostly speculative (the White House is releasing their official plan for financial regulatory reform next week), I have heard from Ben Bernanke (who came to the Fed this morning to speak) that soon-to-be-released plans are a heavily pared down version of the administrations original ideas for such reform and do not amount to any substantive change. Bernanke said that the White House is apparently passing the buck to Congress to come up with such regulations, but he noted that Congress is "usually inertial" and probably won't be able to enact any serious reforms either. He sounded disappointed.

Revision: don't forget about this (on reproductive freedoms).

In which Incentive-Driven Behavior is displayed

Well, this is not a surprise.


Update: another perspective from the medical profession

In which my admiration for Brad DeLong increases significantly

I've been linked to Brad Delong's blog a couple of times (DeLong is a professor of economics at Berkeley who focuses on macro and political economy) but I never really took the time to explore the blog until today. My conclusion: Brad Delong is awesome.

I particularly enjoyed his participation in the lambasting of Ross Douthat's annoying column in the NYT today:

This, however, really made me fall in love.

Sigh..

Anti-Abortion Group to Buy Tiller's Clinic?

Well, that's depressing/could suggest to some that violence is a viable way to defeat the pro-choice movement, but I really doubt the family would sell it to a group that has clearly advocated violence against abortion providers in the past...

H/T: David

The Deficit

The NYT's "Economic Scene" has this article today by David Leonhardt on the ballooning government deficit. The article warns about the ramifications of the trillion dollar deficits projected by the Congressional Budget Office, saying "This debt will constrain the country’s choices for years and could end up doing serious economic damage if foreign lenders become unwilling to finance it." The article goes on to attribute most of the deficit to Bush policies (tax cuts, the war, etc.) and the business cycle (i.e. the recession) but adds that "Mr. Obama does not have a realistic plan for eliminating the deficit, despite what his advisers have suggested." It points out that Obama's continuation of some of Bush's policies and reliance on reducing the deficit through health care reform (the effects of which won't be seen for a while) rather than through significant tax increases will create a bigger deficit in coming years than the Obama team is promising.

Brad DeLong from UC Berkeley has some thoughts about the article: A Pretty Good but Not Excellent Story from David Leonhardt on the Deficit. His biggest concern is that "David doesn't say what part of the $1.2 trillion deficit is a problem," pointing out that the US can realistically expect to run about a $500 billion deficit with no major ramifications, plus an additional $400 billion due to recessionary strain, meaning that the remaining $300 billion is the problematic part of the deficit.