Tut tut. Ref yours.."back in the 18th Century while Japan has enjoyed the fruit of Meiji reformation...."
The Meiji restoration happened in 1868. It brought to an end the period known as the bakamatsu...literally the period from 1854 to 18698, which were the last days of the Tokugawas (the Shoguns).
At that I might point out that there wer 3,200 peasant rebellions against the power of the Tokugawa (between 1630-1868). So the lesson here. The Japanese were not always only a herd of right following consensulists. The Japanese were a group of vindictive individualists with a absolutely wild west mentality!! Seems impossible today doesn't it??
Have you read the latest from P. Erdman?
Hope you are well and thriving Bosco. I am working busily at other things so don't post much.
My best to you all.
Fondest,
Clark
For Private Use Only
(C)
By Paul E. Erdman, CBS MarketWatch
Last Update: 1:45 PM ET Oct 27, 1998 StockWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Three items caught my attention this week.
First: One of George Soros' top lieutenants quit for "health" reasons.
Second: the Hong Kong Government, which bought shares on the local stock market this summer as part of a strategy to defend its financial markets from further speculative attacks, has made out like a bandit. The currency market has settled down, and its stocks have gone straight up. Malaysia went the route of imposing strict controls on capital movement, both in and out. It also worked there - so far.
More Erdman:
Coulter's exit
Bears already gone
More good times
Bye, bye Boris!
Yen breakout
Headlines
Greentalk
Panic!
The Russian bullet
The Clinton factor
Greenspan: so?
We need a hero
Derivative monsters
Russia, with love
Ruble musings
Moscow's halt
Yuan weakens
So who's right?
Third: at a meeting of the European Union in Austria it became apparent that Germany, France and Italy, the three core, founding members of the Common Market, currently with Socialist political leadership, are committed to find a way to reduce the "destructive" effects of short-term capital movements into and, then abruptly, out of national economies.
What conclusions can one draw from all this?
An increasing number of nations are saying: enough is enough. That jobs in Bangkok, Seoul, and Moscow should not be subject to the machinations of a small group of billionaire speculators like hedge fund king George Soros.
For the first time that I know of, Soros is on the run. He got clobbered in Russia, got smashed on the yen, and lost big on his bet that sterling would sink like a rock vs. the German mark. Yet his key manager, the one who just became "sick," earned $136 million last year. Hopefully, Soros is destined to go the way of Bernie Cornfeld. Both have given capitalism a bad name.
In any case, the brief era of an American-sponsored unfettered global free-flow of capital is coming to a sudden end. This does not augur well for anybody. It was just such freedom of capital movements that made possible the rise of the Asian Tigers and China, the brief economic renaissance of Russia, not to speak of the prosperity of Latin America in the 1990's
If George Soros has been instrumental in damaging the international financial system, he deserves everything he is getting - and more.
|
