August 7, 2013.

Consumers Find Investors Eager to Make 'Peer-to-Peer' Loans

Winston examined the four slips of paper which he had unrolled. Each contained a message of only one or two lines, in the abbreviated jargon----not actually Newspeak, but consisting largely of Newspeak words----which was used in the Ministry for internal purposes. They ran:

SAN FRANCISCO____At the new headquarters of Prosper Loans Marketplace Inc., the mission was spelled out on a whiteboard: "NEED $28,676,530.13."

times 17.3.84 bb speech malreported africa rectify
times 19.12.83 forecasts 3 yp 4th quarter 83 misprints verify current issue
times 14.2.84 miniplenty malquoted chocolate rectify
times 3.12.83 reporting bb dayorder doublplusungood refs unpersons rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling.

That is how much more Prosper wanted to lend to consumers by the end of June to hit a $30 million target. The twist: The money would come mainly from individual investors who trawl the company's website looking for borrowers willing to pay them attractive returns.

With a faint feeling of satisfaction Winston laid the fourth message aside. It was an intricate and responsible job and had better be dealt with last. The other three were routine matters, though the second one would probably mean some tedious wading through lists of figures.

Prosper and a bigger competitor based a few blocks away, Lending Club Corp., dominate an obscure corner of the financial-services sector called "peer-to-peer" lending, in which consumers bypass banks altogether to borrow money from other individuals. It is part of a shadow-lending system that has thrived since the 2008 financial crisis caused many banks to tighten their credit standards.

August 6, 2013.

State Department Urges U.S. Citizens to Leave Yemen

"There, comrades! that's how I want to see you doing it. Watch me again. I'm thirty-nine and I've had four children. Now look." She bent over again. "You see my knees aren't bent. You can all do it if you want to," she added as she straightened herself up. "Anyone under forty-five is perfectly capable of touching his toes. We don't all have the privilege of fighting in the front line, but at least we can all keep fit. Remember our boys on the Malabar front! And the sailors in the Floating Fortresses! Just think what they have to put up with. Now try again. That's better, comrade, that's much better," she added encouragingly as Winston, with a violent lunge, succeeded in touching his toes with knees unbent, for the first time in several years.

WASHINGTON----The State Department on Tuesday ordered the departure of American citizens from Yemen and pulled out all "nonemergency" staff from the embassy in San'a, citing the continuing terrorism threat posed by al Qaeda and its affiliates to U.S. interests.

IV

With the deep, unconscious sigh which not even the nearness of the telescreen could prevent him from uttering when his day's work started, Winston pulled the speakwrite toward him, blew the dust from its mouthpiece, and put on his spectacles. Then he unrolled and clipped together four small cylinders of paper which had already flopped out of the pneumatic tube on the right-hand side of his desk.

The State Department's announcement followed its decision on Sunday to close most U.S. embassies in the Middle East for the week ending August 10, citing the al Qaeda threat.

In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages; to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and in the side wall, within easy reach of Winston's arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.

The U.K. which has warned its citizens not to travel to Yemen since 2011, said Tuesday that its embassy staff had also been evacuated from the country. "Due to increased security concerns, all staff in our Yemen embassy have been temporarily withdrawn," a spokeswoman for Britain's foreign office said. "The embassy will remain closed until staff are able to return," she said.

August 5, 2013.

House Weighs More Guest-Worker Visas in Immigration Bill

Winston loathed this exercise, which sent shooting pains all the way from his heels to his buttocks and often ended by bringing on another coughing fit. The half-pleasant quality went out of his meditations. The past, he reflected, had not merely been altered, it had been actually destroyed. For how could you establish even the most obvious fact when there existed no record outside your own memory? He tried to remember in what year he had first heard mention of Big Brother. He thought it must have been at some time in the Sixties, but it was impossible to be certain. In the Party histories, of course, Big Brother figured as the leader and guardian of the Revolution since its very earliest days. His exploits had been gradually pushed backwards in time until already they extended into the fabulous world of the Forties and the Thirties, when the capitalists in their strange cylindrical hats still rode through the streets of London in great gleaming motor cars or horse carriages with glass sides. THere was no knowing how much of this legend was true and how much invented. Winston could not even remember at what date the Party itself had come into existence. He did not believe he had ever heard the word Ingsoc before 1960, but it was possible that in its Oldspeak form----"English Socialism," that is to say----it had been current earlier. Everything melted into mist. Sometimes, indeed, you could put your finger on a definite lie. It was not true, for example, as was claimed in the Party history books, that the Party had invented airplanes. He remembered airplanes since his earliest childhood. But you could prove nothing. There was never any evidence. Just once in his whole life he had held in his hands unmistakable documentary proof of the falsification of a historical fact. And on that occasion----

WASHINGTON----Two House Republicans are working on an immigration bill that could disrupt the delicate deal struck between labor and business groups over how many visas to award to low-skilled guest workers.

"Smith!" screamed the shrewish voice from the telescreen. "6079 Smith W! Yes, you! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that. You're not trying. Lower, please! That's better, comrade. Now stand at ease, the whole squad, and watch me."

GOP Reps. Ted Poe of Texas and Raul Labrador of Idaho may call for nearly twice the number of annual visas for low-skilled workers than the Senate included in its immigration bill, though they haven't yet settled on a number, two people familiar with drafts of the House bill say.

A sudden hot sweat had broken out all over Winston's body. His face remained completely inscrutable. Never show dismay! Never show resentment! A single flicker of the eyes could give you away. He stood watching while the instructress raised her arms above her head and----one could not say gracefully, but with remarkable neatness and efficiency----bent over and tucked the first joint of her fingers under her toes.

The proposal could provide somewhere near 400,000 annual visas for low-skilled immigrant workers, these people say. The sweeping immigration bill that passed the Senate in June created a new class of visas for low-skilled workers and increased the allotment of them annually, starting at 20,000 and maxing out at 220,000. Some businesses criticized that cap as too low.

August 4, 2013.

The Fight Over India's Future

"Stand easy!" barked the instructress, a little more genially.

Indian politics isn't generally known for its intellectual bent, so it was a curious sight last week when two Ivy League professors were thrust into the political limelight here. Harvard's Amartya Sen and Columbia's Jagdish Bhagwati are two of India's most eminent economists. Mr. Sen is a Nobel laureate and former master of Trinity College, Cambridge; Mr Bhagwati is a much-decorated scholar of international trade. Both are highly respected, both have recently published books on Indian development----and both have been engaged in a long-simmering feud.

Winston sank his arms to his sides and slowly refilled his lungs with air. His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself----that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become conscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word "doublethink" involved the use of doublethink.

The origins of the feud are unclear. Messrs. Sen and Bhagwati attended Cambridge together in the 1950s; they later taught at the same university in New Delhi. Rumors of bad blood have circulated for years, and their work has placed them in very different ideological camps. Mr. Bhagwati is known as an advocate for free trade and market liberalization as a means of achieving rapid growth. Mr. Sen has spoken out against what he calls "market fundamentalism"; his approach to development argues that economic growth must be accompanied by attention to social "capabilities" like health, education and gender rights.

The instructress had called them to attention again. "And now let's see which of us can touch our toes!" she said enthusiastically. "Right over from the hips, please, comrades. One-two! One-two!..."

Mr. Bhagwati's disdain for Mr. Sen's views is evident in his latest book, "Why Growth Matters," written with Arvind Panagariya. Last month, their differences spilled onto the letters page of the Economist, when Messrs. Bhagwati and Panagariya, responding to a review of Mr. Sen's new book, "India: An Uncertain Glory" (written with Jean Dreze), accused Mr. Sen of paying only "lip service" to economic growth and instead championing what they called "redistribution." Mr. Sen responded in the next issue, complaining about an "outrageous distortion" and arguing that he has always supported growth, while adding that investments in social indicators are essential to fostering growth.

August 3, 2013.

The $4 Million Teacher

Since about that time, war had been literally continuous, though strictly speaking it had not always been the same war. For several months during his childhood there had been confused street fighting in London itself, some of which he remembered vividly. But to trace out the history of the whole period, to say who was fighting whom at any given moment, would have been utterly impossible, since no written record, and no spoken word, ever made mention of any other alignment than the existing one. At this moment, for example, in 1984 (if it was 1984), Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia. In no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines. Actually, Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania ha been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.

Kim Ki-hoon earns $4 million a year in South Korea, where he is known as a rock-star teacher----a combination of words not typically heard in the rest of the world. Mr. Kim has been teaching for over 20 years, all of them in the country's private, after-school tutoring academies, known as hagwons. Unlike most teachers across the globe, he is paid according to the demand for his skills----and he is in high demand.

The frightening thing, he reflected for the ten thousandth time as forced his shoulders painfully backward (with hands on hips, they were gyrating their bodies from the waist, an exercise that was supposed to be good for the back muscles)----the frightening thing was that it might all be true. If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened----that, surely was more terrifying than mere torture and death.

Mr. Kim works about 60 hours a week teaching English, although he spends only three of those hours giving lectures. His classes are recorded on video, and the Internet has turned them into commodities, available for purchase online at the rate of $4 an hour. He spends most of his week responding to students' online requests for help, developing lesson plans and writing accompanying textbooks and workbooks (some 200 to date).

The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed ----if all records told the same tale----then the lie passed into history and became truth. "Who controls the past," ran the Party slogan, "controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. "Reality control," they called it; in Newspeak, "doublethink."

"The harder I work, the more I make," he says matter of factly. "I like that."

August 2, 2013.

U.S. Adds 162,000 Jobs, Continuing a Tepid Run

There were people sitting all over the stone-flagged floor, and other people, packed tightly together, were sitting on metal bunks, one above the other. Winston and his mother and father found themselves a place on the floor, and near them an old man and an old woman were sitting side by side on a bunk. The old man had on a decent dark suit and a black cloth cap pushed back from very white hair; his face was scarlet and his eyes were blue and full of tears. He reeked of gin. It seemed to breathe out of his skin in place of sweat, and one could have fancied that the others welling from his eyes were pure gin. But though slightly drunk he was also suffering under some grief that was genuine and unbearable. In his childish way Winston grasped that some terrible thing, something that was beyond forgiveness and could never be remedied, had just happened. It also seemed to him that he knew what it was. Someone whom the old man loved, a little granddaughter perhaps, had been killed. Every few minutes the old man kept repeating:

WASHINGTON----U.S. employers added jobs at a slower pace in July, suggesting more steady but unspectacular economic growth heading into the summer.

"We didn't ought to 'ave trusted 'em. I said so, Ma, didn't I? That's what come of trusting 'em. I said so all along. We didn't ought to 'ave trusted the buggers."

U.S. payrolls grew by 162,000 last month the Labor Department said Friday. The unemployment rate, taken from a separate survey of U.S. households, fell two- tenths of a percentage point to 7.4%, its lowest level since December 2008.

But which buggers they didn't ought to have trusted Winston could not now remember.

The latest snapshot of the job market suggests that slow economic growth may be weighing on employers. Higher taxes, federal spending cuts and slower growth abroad have held back the economy for months, though the pace of hiring has been solid so far this year.

August 1, 2013.

Branches of Military Battle Over Sinking War Chest

"Arms bending and stretching!" she rapped out. "Take your time, by me. One, two, three, four! One, two, three, four! Come on comrades, put a bit of life into it! One, two, three, four! One, two three, four!..."

Fights between branches of the U.S. military have erupted over responsibility for everything from drones to clocks as America's armed forces battle to keep their share of a shrinking defense budget.

The pain of the coughing fit had not quite driven out of Winston's mind the impression made by his dream, and the rhythmic movements of the exercise restored it somewhat. As he mechanically shot his arms back and forth, wearing on his face the look of grim enjoyment which was considered proper during the Physical Jerks, he was struggling to think his way backward into the dim period of his early childhood. It was extraordinarily difficult. Beyond the late Fifties everything had faded. When there were no external records that you could refer to, even the outline of your own life lost its sharpness. You remembered the details of incidents without being able to recapture their atmosphere, and there were long blank periods to which you could assign nothing. Everything had been different then. Even the names of countries, and their shapes on the map, had been different. Airstrip One, for instance, had not been so called in those days: it had been called England or Britain, though London, he felt fairly certain, had always been called London.

The emerging debate is expected to be the most intense in two decades as the branches of the military seek to retool their missions to match the needs of future conflicts.

Winston could not definitely remember a time when his country had not been at war, but it was evident that there had been a fairly long interval of peace during his childhood, because one of his early memories was of an air raid which appeared to take everyone by surprise. Perhaps it was the time when the atomic bomb had fallen on Colchester. He did not remember the raid itself, but he did remember his father's hand clutching his own as they hurried down, down, down, into some place deep in the earth, round and round a spiral staircase which rang under his feet and which finally so wearied his legs that he began whimpering and they had to stop and rest. His mother, in her slow dreamy way, was following a long way behind them. She was carrying his baby sister----or perhaps it was only a bundle of blankets that she was carrying: he was not certain whether his sister had been born then. Finally they had emerged into a noisy, crowded place which he had realized to be a Tube station.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Wednesday recommended cutting the Army to its smallest size since before World War II and making other force reductions that would prepare the military to live under a reduced budget. Final decisions are months away, fueling a bureaucratic battle over how the U.S. will project power around the world.