I heard about this one from the lovely-sounding Noëlle McCarthy on National Radio first (more Irish lasses on our airwaves, please), crediting its origins to Slate columnist Daniel Gross. Most of you will probably have read the original by now: that there is an ever-so present correlation between how many Starbucks a country has and how deep it has found itself in the financial crisis.
   There are outliers, of course: Iceland has no Starbucks, and it has become one of the biggest indicators of financial failure. Gross himself points out that Russia has only six. But the premise that he advances, slightly tongue-in-cheek, is tied more into the idea of the technocracy failing:

Having a significant Starbucks presence is a pretty significant indicator of the degree of connectedness to the form of highly caffeinated, free-spending capitalism that got us into this mess. It’s also a sign of a culture’s willingness to abandon traditional norms and ways of doing business (virtually all the countries in which Starbucks has established beachheads have their own venerable coffee-house traditions) in favor of fast-moving American ones. The fact that the company or its local licensee felt there was room for dozens of outlets where consumers would pony up lots of euros, liras, and rials for expensive drinks is also a pretty good indicator that excessive financial optimism had entered the bloodstream.

   Or, countries who put the quest for false growth ahead of their people and their culture, dismissing transparency in favour of short-term foreign capital, will find themselves in more trouble when a financial crisis hits. Posted by Jack Yan, 22:54  permalink

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