Showing posts with label crisis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crisis. Show all posts

Saturday, April 14, 2012

What the U.S. Can Learn from China, by Ann Lee - Book Review.

Media Photo
Ms. Lee, who is a gifted college professor, chose 2012 for the publication of this text that might have been more timely two or so years ago, despite a cogent assessment of current economic conditions in P.R.C. as greatly improved and characterised by multiple commercial successes, especially in view of the economic health of China as illustrated in 2008 going forward.  Ms. Lee first speaks in this book about her many contacts in P.R.C., and through her experiences in academia and other pursuits, including her career in securities trading, that America develop more trust, integrity, better emphasis on education, re - write some of its more outlandish laws, re - build its infrastructure, focus on competitiveness - all this in realizing her future potential.  Further, Ms. Lee indicates China now has more of everything than most any world power at this point - more college grads, more billionaires, automobiles, and companies, in addition to its expanding G.D.P. that currently is at 8.225 trillion U.S. dollars. 
China is nonetheless still an emerging market country, and a source of cheap labour where people are flocking to the cities and where agriculture, the heart of the Cultural Revolution some time ago, has given way to other business activities.  Ms. Lee notes the dictates of the grossly - indebted western powers to the emerging markets have mostly been destructive due to things like an Oriental high regard for education and its emphasis on Confucian thought.  The western powers themselves apparently have financial troubles at this point due to immoral business practices, wealth inequalities, and inappropriate emphasis away from things like proper education / pedagogy and fair pay for a day's work.  There are no guarantees in the world of democracy, but America has a long - standing waning of people participating in democracy itself through exercising their right to vote, and a waning itself of values on education and equalities.  The U.S., apparently to Ms. Lee with respect to China is more like a plutocracy and / or an Alice in Wonderland.
As a response to the lack of success of the Cultural Revolution, the leadership in China has classically re - interpreted its lessons to place its legacy today on uniting the party to serve the Chinese people.  This has the effect of making Chinese leaders more proactive and a view in the Orient of democracy as a tainted system at present.  "Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics" in this text is a form of that system as helped by the state in calling for labour's drive to succeed and watching over the state and the enterprise, where decisions are centrally controlled and the people have a comprehensive business strategy including central planning.  The closest thing to the Five - year Plan in China in the U.S. is apparently named as the federal budget process, and this process apparently suffers from, as do some other areas of the U.S. economy according to Ms. Lee, "short - termism," or myopia - the hedge funds that ballooned during the 2000's and then later had difficulties staying afloat are used to illustrate this. 
Operating a business in the P.R.C. is referred to in the text as "Swimming with the Sharks," given the overall enormous success of the innovative enterprise zones and state - owned enterprises, that she incidentally suggests might be a good recipe for the U.S.  Other difficulties are suggested concerning the American economy, including the manipulative villains who run some financial centers, lobbies and so forth.  The commercial approach of China to Africa and Latin America is discussed as a successful "win - win" model of business development.  In this narrative, only Israel, U.K. and Canada are supposed to be friends with the U.S., not too rosy a picture.  The U.S. on the other hand is supposed to have excellent societal traits such as its sales people, a strong dollar, evident public cynicism, and the glamour of the media.  Ms. Lee suggests goals currently being pursued in P.R.C. in the area of macroeconomics including eradicating hunger, increasing the wages of the working class, and avoiding tragedies such as that currently in the Sudan.  She calls upon the growth models as preached by Soros, Rogoff, Summers, and Zoellick; including the consideration of a single global currency, and more effective use of S.D.R.'s.  She also acknowledges China's sketchy human rights record and Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiao bo, ominous military developments in both the U.S. and China, and other politics of ascendancy.  The text goes on to caution the reader about stagnation in China despite a bright and just future. 

Saturday, October 22, 2011

another leading role for europe.

Please pardon the brevity of this entry if things like weapons proliferation and global warming, etc., and other salient issues of the day are cause for greater discusssion - you can always leave comments of any length upon reading through this short editorial... .  Anyone knows, that is anyone who listens to news or reads the paper, has access to information where the European Union is calling upon Germany to pivot on the resolution of the Greek and other economic crises there, inasmuch as the German people have more economic and financial clout today (in this world of crisis) than they have had in some time. 
There are some reasons for this, not to assert any inappropriate traits in the German people, but, for example, that German reunification for Europe was probably the greatest and most beneficial event for all of Europe in a long, long time.  This happening and its ramifications created considerable value for the European continent, and inasmuch as many people in Europe at this point believe they contributed to this, they now wish to harvest what they believe they have sown.  There are reasons to believe, other than the assertions of those with a present will to power, that Berlin stood desparately on her own against the communists for a long time, and the current fiscal and monetary well - being of the German economy is due in fact to this unique, separate, and enteprise - oriented resourcefulness as represented by Berlin (possibly one day in the future the new "capitol" of Europe, cultural and otherwise.)  That Berliners and those in other parts of Germany, and this is an oversimplification of course, have resolved the vicious political syndromes of the Cold War, and have for the long - term worked to assure the continuity of their own society, and this in a world of political and economic integration, illicits no rationale calling for Germans to bankroll the European crises at this point.  There are precedents for this, of political and administrative self - interest trumping overall European interests in the past, and same for officials at the time within their regions and territories, voicing attitudes against turning their national treasuries upside down to compensate the profligacy of the day.  Discuss.