Oh, lot's of big brains in the East, I agree. Still lot's of brains in the West too, but increasingly those brains are focused on fleecing the last bit of wealth from once wealthy developed nations, instead of governing those nations to leave a better world behind for their children. It's what happens when your economy has been financialized. The best minds get focused on becoming parasites instead of inventing things to make the world better.
But don't get too cocky. The Chinese Miracle has been built on ponzi finance. That can only go on for so long. I'm not fooled at all by China's announcement of foreign ownership in the financial sector. They are doing that, not because they are liberalizing their economy, but because their financial system is rife with toxic assets that are close to default. So they need to unload those toxic assets to the Goldman Sach's of the world who will package it up as collateralized loans and sell it to the dupes who will be ecstatic over getting a higher yield, at least until they implode and they lose all their money. Eventually, we'll have another financial crisis, but next time it will be worse, because nothing has changed since the last one. We just transferred the debt from public banks to sovereign nations. However, in China, the debt is pervasive and in many non-bank, shadow lending organizations. Great minds? Sure, but China doesn't have nearly the experience in free market finance and economics that we do in the West. China will fail at this a few times, before they get the hang of it, but because China is so big, their failures will send shockwaves across the globe. |
