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Strategies & Market Trends : Currencies and the Global Capital Markets -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (2703)	12/26/2000 10:41:12 AM
From: Henry Volquardsen	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3536

And maybe the Europeans and Asians, out of some sense of jealousy or incredulence, externalize the problems they are experiencing, believing we should slow down. Except the reality is that they should be speeding up, deregulating their economies in order to reward capital investment, reorganizing their capital markets and extensive govt social entitlement structure, leaning to privatization over centralized control. interesting subject. Some of it is of course different choices. Europe in particular has made some explicit choices regarding the social contract. But by and large I agree with the notion that they just don't fully appreciate what it is that makes th US work. Nor are they willing to accept some of the messy consequences of our system which we are willing to accept. Hence my reference to choices about choices regarding the social contract. One of my favorite examples is the adoption of the common currency. One of the biggest arguments was that a common currency would recreate the type of open, barrier free, quarter-billion consumer market we see in the US thus endowing Europe with the same job creation capability as the US. While that is important, they pointedly ignore the free wheeling creative/destructive nature of the US environment. That is way to messy for their taste and would be a repudiation of the controlling role of the educated elites so prevalent in the Continental model. Since the elites are the ones who would have to recognize it in order to effect change it is perhaps understandable why that is a blind spot :) My favorite analogy for this is the Cargo Cult. In case you are not familiar with the concept, Cargo Cults appeared in the post WWII south Pacific. During the war the US established bases on a number of islands populated by pre-industrial societies. A flood of supplies then appeared via cargo ships and planes. American servicemen being generous, and horny, by nature shared this largess with the locals. When the war ended these bases were closed. The endless supply of Spam ceased and the locals were left wondering if it was something they'd said. In a number of locations and an attempt was made to make amends and encourage the Gods to return with the goodies. Replica ships and planes were built of straw and leaves and worshipped in hopes of bringing back the Spam. Cargo Cults. The European Union has built a currency out of a patchwork held together by straw. They are worshipping it in hopes it will bring jobs. The Spam never showed up either ;)