From the papers:

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Brewers' Brawl Breaks out in Brazil
Brazilian Beer marketing, once dominated by bikini-clad women frolicking on the beach, is turning ugly. Last month, the country's biggest brewer, AmBev, launched a televsion commercial featuring one of Brazil's most poupular musck stars, Zeca Pagodinho, savoring the company's flagship Brahma lager. He crooned that he had returned to his true and only love.

The twist: Just six months earlier, Mr. Pagodinho was the star of a $40 million ad campaign by AmBev's archrival, Schincariol. Mr. Pagodinho was still under contract to the upstart brand when his commercial for AmBev was aired.

Swiping a competitor's endorser is the latest salvo in the trench war for customer loyalty in Brazil's $3.4 billion beer market, where the stakes are high. The country ranks fourth in overall beer consumption, behind China, the U.S. and Germany.

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But you've got to love the victim's response.

In a rebuttal, Schincariol aired a commercial showing three friends -- one of them a double of the pop star -- talking at a bar about what would make them change their beer preferences. One man asks one of the others if he would switch for "$100,000?" The hypothetical offer is rejected. But when the figure is finally raised to $3 million, the man says he would do anything for that kind of money.

In the background, a board reads, "Today's special: traíra." Traíra, a Brazilian fish, is also slang for "traitor."

The Cheap Revolution. This in the newspaper, penned by Rich Karlgaard, publisher of Forbes Magazine, is food for thought:

Google performs its Web search miracle with a backroom technology plant consisting of about 100,000 cheap servers – basically, mail-order PCs without monitors – that cost about $2,000 apiece. When one of these cheap crunchers goes on the blink, Google junks it like an old razor blade, and slips in a replacement.

Pay attention to the money Google does not spend. No fat service contracts. No bloated in-house "fix-it" departments. Google's cheap ways save 90 cents on a typical information technology dollar. …

This amazing 90% saving is the key to understanding Google and much, much more about today's economy. I call it the Cheap Revolution, and it's in full swing. All around us it's pushing costs down – not down a slope, but over a cliff.

Last month, newspapers reported that Mass General Hospital was e-mailing MRIs to India. The scans were initially read by radiologists making about $20,000 a year. By contrast, American radiologists make an average of $350,000 a year. Do you have a speech tomorrow but forgot your Power Point slides? Fear not. Go to Elance.com and let designers around the planet bid for your job. A Ukrainian or Sri Lankan will be happy to charge you $50 for a first-class job. And those are just two examples out of hundreds.

There's been quite a lot of fuss made here recently about the closure by a number of companies of their UK call centres, and the "out-sourcing" to India of a lot of these jobs. Apparently the people working at the Indian call centres are mostly college-educated, and earn good money for India. However, it is a pittance compared with the going rate for the job in the UK.

As spoiled as we are, Americans are undoubtedly squalling the loudest of all and yet the fact of the matter is that there is a strong sense of justice to it all.

While the U.S. didn't invent capitalism, I certainly think we've taken that particular ball and run with it like no other country that readily comes to mind. And now, for us to take any "America First" stand is just mildly hypocritical.

The best way to deal with this problem involves education, intelligent management of resources, and a willingness to invest in the future, three things the U.S. seems reluctant to embrace. We're on top of the world now, in several senses, but that position is all too temporary.


Just can't wait to see what the next couple of decades bring...