WHAT THE WORLD IS READING

The collapse of Bear Stearns, the fifth biggest American investment bank, is cover story for Newsweek and The Economist.

The collapse of Bear Stearns, the fifth biggest American investment bank, is cover story for Newsweek and The Economist. Newsweek says, 8220;A lack of faith, as much as a lack of cash, killed Bear Stearns8230;Wall Street seems to be in near meltdown mode.8221; It laments that President Bush, 8220;is badly out of tune8221; while Federal Bank Reserve8217;s Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Paulson are still fine-tuning their responses. Meanwhile, 8220;The biggest and most sophisticated banks8212;Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch8212;after misjudging risk on an epic scale, have taken tens of billions of write-downs on mortgages and other loans8230;8221; Banks must shore up their balance sheets, Newsweek concludes. The Economist says 8220;8230;the world needs new ways of thinking about finance and the risks it entails8230;Financiers discovered that they had created a series of risks that the market could not cope with8230;8221; Change the system is the weekly8217;s parting advice.

8220;It was the economy, stupid,8221; claims Newsweek, that saw the Kuomintang Party8217;s Hong Kong-born Ma Ying-jeou win Taiwan8217;s fourth presidential election last Saturday: Voters believe Ma 8220;can revive the island8217;s stagnant economy8221;. They voted for an upright candidate in a corrupt political environment who was 8220;potentially ushering in a new era of moderation8221; towards China. However, Ma, keenly aware of Taiwanese pride rules out unification with China.

Time leads with A monk8217;s struggle by Pico Iyer. An admirer of the Dalai Lama since he first met him in 1974, Iyer tracks the Tibetan leader8217;s holistic philosophy: 8220;8230;he also holds staunchly to the view that violence can never solve a problem deep down8230;the Dalai Lama is the rare religious figure who tells people not to get needlessly confused or distracted by religion8230;he is as rigorous and detailed a realist as you could hope to meet8230;8221; The Economist sees Dalai Lama as China8217;s 8220;only plausible solution8221; to its Tibetan crisis. Serious talks with the Dalai Lama, the possibility of his returning home, 8220;might help assuage Tibetan anger8230;and 8220;vindicate8221; those who argued that Olympic games in Beijing 8220;would make China less repressive8230;8221;

Time8217;s Joshua Kurlantzick urges the world not to boycott the Olympics: that 8220;8230;will cost activists whatever ongoing leverage they have over China.8221; Gains made through dialogue with the Chinese over Sudan, for instance, would be squandered. 8220;Only a combination of tough public shaming, which clearly tarnishes China8217;s valued global image, and private dialogue8230;not ostracism, can produce results8221;

Vanity Fair8217;s April issue carries The Gaza Bombshell. David Rose uses confidential reports to reveal how after Hamas8217;s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, 8220;President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan8230; touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza that left Hamas stronger than ever.8221;

The New Yorker presents 8220;Abu Garhraib8212;Annals of War8221;. Sabrina Harmon wrote and took photographs of the time she served at the prison. Harman8217;s photographs of suspected insurgent, Manadel al-Jamadi, codenamed Gilligan, who died at Abu Ghraib, court-martialled her. They also became emblematic of US administrations8217;s degrading torture of prisoners. 8220;Such photographs are repellent8230;but they are no more than they show8230;they have no value as symbols8230;8221; However, 8220;the dominant symbol of Western civilization is the figure of a nearly naked man, tortured to death8230;had there been cameras at Calvary, would twenty centuries of believers have been moved to hang photographs of Christ?8221;