Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with economist

Which news magazine should I subscribe to?

Quidam — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 14:03:09 -0800

Let's say that I'm a college student that would like to expand my general knowledge about what's going on in the world, and let's say that I'd like to start subscribing to a weekly news magazine, and let's say that I generally have no knowledge of the differences between news magazines. Which one should I subscribe to, and why? Through this company, whose flier was stuck in my bag when I bought my books for the quarter today, it would appear that I can get a year's subscription to TIME for $30 (and a free duffle bag!), Newsweek for $20, or US News and World Report for $15. Which would you suggest and why?

(And if there's anything scammy-looking about that company, feel free to shout out to me that I'm about to get scammed.)

Thanks all!

What is the best way to download online magazine/newspaper articles?

vegetableagony — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 17:17:17 -0800

What is the best way to download online magazine/newspaper articles? In particular the Economist, which you can only access free for a certain length of time. Any plugins or software that can do this for free? What I'd like is some way to given an article have an easy way to save the article text as a text document on my computer without any of the ads on the page. (currently I open word, copy and paste the text, delete ads, and then save the file as the article title)

I'd settle for something that would allow me to save the website as it is and allow me to view the page even after the article is no longer accessible.

Bonus points if it will also work for the New York Times and the Washington post and/or is easy to search the articles I have downloaded.

Tony Blair's Economist Essay

disillusioned — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 04:05:26 -0800

EconomistFilter: How much of this fantastic essay did Tony Blair actually write? I know politicians have speechwriters who primarily compose their speeches and who write a great deal of their correspondence, (along with assistants) but I wonder if the same still applies in a situation as seemingly... unique? as this. (I've not seen the still-active-if-just-barely leader of an industrialized nation actually "write in" to a newspaper at all. Or have an essay featured therein, by invitation or otherwise. Other examples of this get bonus points, too!)

I really liked this essay and truly appreciated reading something in the same paper that was asking "how will history remember him" just a few weeks ago.

I guess my question is: Is it as unlikely as I think that Blair actually penned much of this at all? How does one impart an essay of this specific nature ("what I learned") through a speechwriter? This seems to really be written firsthand, but a good speechwriter would do that well, right?

Who writes for The Economist?

airguitar — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 18:39:46 -0800

Who writes for The Economist?

Why do letters to the editor all sound the same?

BuddhaInABucket — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 08:40:06 -0800

How does the Economist get all the letters to the editor sound the same? I read the Economist, and no matter where in the world a person is writing from, or what about, the letter sounds like it's coming from the same author. Is there a process to this, or do they only print letters that have the Economist "tone"? And why does every letter have to start with "SIR-"?

How much should Google's stock be worth?

rkent — Fri, 06 Aug 2004 09:18:43 -0800

Amateur economists, VCs, MBA students: what's a fair price for a google share? Based on what assumptions? Some background info to assist your calculations. Centrally from this NYTimes article:

24.6 million shares will be sold
The distribution structure will be Dutch Auction, where (basically) the top 24.6 million bids will get a share, but only pay the amount of the 24.6 millionth-place bid.
They hope to make around $3 billion, so that puts the expected share price at over $100.

I'll start the estimating with an extremely simple calculation, assuming that a stock "should" have a P/E ratio of no more than 20. Based on earnings of $105.6M last year, this puts the (backwards-looking) "correct" market cap at $2.1B, for a share price of around $85. So maybe the $100+ isn't so unreasonable if you expect the earnings to increase this year?