The Ieconomy
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C M Y K Nxxx,2012-12-27,A,001,Bs-4C,E1_++ Late Edition Today, cloudy, very windy, showers, high 44. Tonight, clearing, windy, low 30. Tomorrow, intervals of clouds and sunshine, breezy, high 41. Weather map is on Page A24. VOL. CLXII ....No. 55,998 ++ © 2012 The New York Times NEW YORK, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2012 $2.50 TENSION BUILDS STORM WEAKENED AS SENATE FACES A FRAGILE SYSTEM FISCAL DEADLINE FOR MENTAL CARE NEW THREAT OF DEFAULT NEW YORK SERVICES LOST House Leadership Urges Damaged Hospitals Are Senators to Act — Closed — Treatment Timing Is Unclear Is Harder to Get The iEconomy By JONATHAN WEISMAN By NINA BERNSTEIN and JENNIFER STEINHAUER When a young woman in the WASHINGTON — With just grip of paranoid delusions threat- five days left to make a deal, ened a neighbor with a meat BY THE NEW YORK TIMES STAFF President Obama and members cleaver one Saturday last month, of the Senate were set to return the police took her by ambulance to Washington on Thursday with to the nearest psychiatric emer- no clear path out of their fiscal gency room. Or rather, they took morass even as the Treasury De- her to Beth Israel Medical Center, partment warned that the gov- the only comprehensive psychi- NOMINATION FOR THE 2013 PULITZER PRIZE ernment will soon be unable to atric E.R. functioning in Lower pay its bills unless Congress acts. Manhattan since Hurricane Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Sandy shrank and strained New CATEGORY: EXPLANATORY REPORTING Geithner, adding to the building York’s mental health resources. tension over how to handle a The case was one of 9,548 year-end pileup of threatened tax GILLES SABRIE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES “emotionally disturbed person” increases and spending cuts, for- calls that the Police Department ON THE LINE Workers assembling Hewlett-Packard computers at a plant in Chongqing, China, operated by Foxconn of Taiwan. mally notified Congress on answered in November, and one Wednesday that the government of the 2,848 that resulted in trans- would hit its statutory borrowing portation to a hospital, a small in- limit on Monday, raising anew crease over a year earlier. pple Inc., with its enormous profits, messianic founderthe threat of anda federal default wildly as Signs popularof Changes Takingproducts, Hold in had Electronics become Factories in China But the woman was discharged the two parties remained in a within hours, to the shock of the standoff. Pu got her chair. This autumn, she even mental health professionals who Mr. Geithner wrote that he THE iECONOMY heard that some workers had received cush- had called the police. It took four By KEITH BRADSHER a company almost above reproach. It took the persistencewould take “extraordinary of meas- a dozen New YorkThe Road toTimes Reform businessioned seats. more days, and strong protests ures” to keep the government and CHARLES DUHIGG The changes also extend to California, from her psychiatrist and case- afloat but said that with so much CHENGDU, China — One day last sum- where Apple is based. Apple, the electronics workers, to get her admitted for uncertainty over the shape of the mer, Pu Xiaolan was halfway through a shift lieved that comfort encouraged sloth. industry’s behemoth, in the last year has tri- two weeks of inpatient treatment, reporters to penetrate the curtain of America’s wondertax code and futurecompany government inspecting andiPad cases when discover she received a But inthe March, unbeknown troubling to Ms. Pu, a crit- pled its corporate social responsibility staff, said Tony Lee, who works for spending he did not know how beige wooden chair with white stripes and a ical meeting had occurred between Fox- has re-evaluated how it works with manufac- Community Access, a nonprofit A long the Treasury could shuffle high, sturdy back. conn’s top executives and a high-ranking Ap- turers, has asked competitors to help curb agency that provides supportive accounts before the government At first, Ms. Pu wondered if someone had ple official. The companies had committed excessive overtime in China and has reached housing to people with mental ill- underside of Apple’s success. Their look at the decisions of couldthis no longer one pay its creditors. iconicmade a mistake. company But when her bosses helpsthemselves to a explainseries of wide-ranging re-howout to advocacy the groups it once rebuffed. ness, managing the Lower East For months, President Obama, walked by, they just nodded curtly. So Ms. Pu forms. Foxconn, China’s largest private em- Executives at companies like Hewlett- Side apartment building where members of Congress of both gently sat down and leaned back. Her body ployer, pledged to sharply curtail workers’ Packard and Intel say those shifts have con- she lives. parties and top economists have relaxed. hours and significantly increase wages — re- vinced many electronics companies that they Psychiatric hospital admission global economy is changing and how American jobs are beingwarned that transformed the nation’s fragile The rumors were in true. an increasinglyforms that, if fully carried out interconnected next year as must also overhaul how they interact with is always a judgment call. But in economy could be swept back When Ms. Pu was hired at this Foxconn planned, could create a ripple effect that foreign plants and workers — often at a cost the city, according to hospital into recession if the two parties plant a year earlier, she received a short, benefits tens of millions of workers across to their bottom lines, though, analysts say, records and interviews with psy- did not come to a post-election green plastic stool that left her unsupported the electronics industry, employment ex- probably not so much as to affect consumer chiatrists and veteran advocates world. compromise on January’s combi- back so sore that she could barely sleep at perts say. prices. As Apple and Foxconn became fodder of community care, the odds of nation of tax increases and night. Eventually, she was promoted to a Other reforms were more personal. Pro- for “Saturday Night Live” and questions dur- securing mental health treatment across-the-board spending cuts. wooden chair, but the backrest was much too tective foam sprouted on low stairwell ceil- ing presidential debates, device designers in a crisis have worsened signif- Yet with days left before the small to lean against. The managers of this ings inside factories. Automatic shut-off de- and manufacturers concluded the industry’s icantly since the hurricane. The As a direct result of the series, called “The iEconomy”: Continued on Page A18 164,000-employee factory, she surmised, be- vices appeared on whirring machines. Ms. Continued on Page A14 Continued on Page A20 Toyota Agrees Coca Licensing Is a Weapon in Bolivia Drug War Syrian General Whose Task l More than a million workers at the Chinese factoriesTo Deal that in Suit make Apple’s iPhones and Was Halting Defections Flees By WILLIAM NEUMAN Over Speedups TODOS SANTOS, Bolivia — There is nothing clandestine By KAREEM FAHIM and RICK GLADSTONE about Julián Rojas’s coca plot, iPads got 25 percent raises. Their working conditions significantly improved after BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syria’s cow this weekend. Russia, one of By BILL VLASIC which is tucked deep within acres of banana groves. It has been government suffered an embar- Mr. Assad’s most ardent foreign DETROIT — Toyota Motor mapped with satellite imagery, rassing new setback as the top defenders, has in recent weeks Apple’s supplier plants were opened to outside inspectionsagreed on Wednesday to pay catalogedfor in thea government first data- time. general responsible for prevent- suggested it was open to a negoti- more than $1 billion to settle a base, cross-referenced with his ing defections within the military ated transition that would ease class-action lawsuit related to is- personal information and became a defector himself, mak- him out of power. sues of unintended acceleration checked and rechecked by the lo- ing what insurgents described on Opposition figures said Gen- l in its vehicles. cal coca growers’ union. The Wednesday as a daring back- eral Shallal’s defection had taken Some 30,000 employees at Apple stores got raisesThe proposedof up settlement, to filed 20same goespercent. for the plots worked roads escape by motorcycle weeks to prepare and ended with in a Federal District Court in Cal- by Mr. Rojas’s neighbors and across the border into Turkey. a four-hour sprint by motorcycle ifornia, would be one of the larg- thousands of other farmers in The defector, Maj. Gen. Abdul to the Turkish border, driving est of its type in automotive histo- this torrid region east of the An- Aziz Jassem al-Shallal, the chief through woods and on muddy l ry. If the agreement is approved des who are licensed by the Bo- of the military police, was one of roads. In a video broadcast by Al Apple announced it would invest $100 million to bymanufacture Judge James V. Selna, Toyota livian government some to grow computerscoca, in the the highest-ranking military offi- Arabiya, the general said that he would make cash payments for the plant used to make cocaine. cers to abandon President Bash- had taken the step because the the loss of value on vehicles af- President Evo Morales, who MERIDITH KOHUT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES ar al-Assad in the nearly two- Syrian military had deviated fected by multiple recalls and in- first came to prominence as a Augustine Calicho, 45, separating the seeds from dried coca year-old uprising against him. from its mission to protect the United States. stall special safety features on up country, and had transformed leader of coca growers, kicked leaves in Villa Tunari in the Chapare region of Bolivia.