Word: analyst
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...into Afghanistan to train Afghan militants or carry out attacks themselves are now heading east into the cities of Pakistan, where they have new motives and better targets to attack. "Normally the Pakistanis come to Afghanistan, but now they are busier in Pakistan," says Waheed Muzhda, an Afghan political analyst who worked for the foreign ministry during the Taliban regime. "The media is also focusing on Pakistan's violence. That is why everyone thinks the violence has been reduced here." Cold comfort for Musharraf. Reported by Aryn Baker/Islamabad, Ghulam Hasnain/Karachi and Ali Safi/Kabul
Dodge & Cox also exhibits a level of commitment to employee development unheard of in layoff-crazy corporate America. When freshly minted M.B.A.s are hired to become analysts, the expectation is that they'll remain for their entire careers and eventually become shareholders in the firm. Seven out of nine people on the domestic-stocks team started as analysts straight from B school. Dodge & Cox rarely hires people who have worked elsewhere in finance: disagreements are fine (and considered a strength), but operating with a different investment philosophy isn't. "When we visit, it's almost eerie how on the same...
Dodge & Cox has also found there to be an important structural element to team decision making. "Committees react best to a specific proposition," says Bryan Cameron, director of research and a member of the committees that pick domestic and foreign stocks. So when analysts make a presentation, they propose a particular course of action--increasing the percentage of Wal-Mart from 2% of the portfolio to 2.2%, say. The analyst advocates, and the committee meditates--somewhat like a jury...
Advocacy, though, doesn't mean an analyst gets all the credit when a stock rises or the blame when it falls. Analysts circulate research reports to the entire firm. Anyone can weigh in. And when the analyst thinks it's time to change the firm's exposure to a stock, the first stop is a sector committee, made up of people who know an industry well and can drill down to test the idea in depth. "The nature of this business is that you're going to be wrong a lot of the time," says Diana Strandberg, who sits...
...Anthony Cordesman, a security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says the U.S. military estimates that al-Qaeda in Iraq - a group thought to number several thousand - accounts for only about 15% of the attacks in Iraq. (Other Sunni groups account for 70%, with Shi'ite militias responsible for the remaining 15%.) But, Cordesman says, those attacks are the most deadly and "probably do the most damage in pushing Iraq toward civil war." At the moment, al-Qaeda in Iraq is valuable to Osama bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, even though the links...