This weekend I browsed once again through the few latest issues of Finnish Talouselämä, a kind of lousy Forbes for the locals.
I have a problem with the mainstream magazines about the economic life (including business and finance to be sure). They are all like soap operas: most talk about local success stories, persons and firms. In every number they run the names and pictures of “top” CEOs and companies as if they would present “the economy”.
The problem is that we don’t get even real-TV quality. They have have little if no analysis. A journalist calls a big company, asks around, takes a phographer with and they shoot some smiling suitefellows. Or maybe it is the hottest startup, which just got millions of venture capital. Or the new prime minister talking “business”. The guru speaks. The economy demystified. One liners. There you go.
I am so lucky to subscribe to The Economist. It’s been the last three years the only magazine I subscribe to. They have independent analysis. People and firms don’t jump out of the economy just because they sell. The name of the journalist does not matter. Just because the bigger picture rules. On the top of all that, The Economist has an own “invisible hand” argument and a courage to write quality analysis about the stuff lamers won’t even mention. The normative economics of drug policy, religion, you name it. And the magazine is still mainstream in its own category.
I recently read from somewhere that most of the readers of The Economist are from the United States. After all, there are people there who think themselves. Highly recommended (*****)