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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (26014)	12/11/2002 6:32:40 PM
From: TobagoJack	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Hello Carranza2, You are right. I can tell you many more such commonly occurring stories, and I appreciate each unique and every singular one. I tell some doom&gloom folks in my Foreign Correspondent's Club that they do not need to wait for China's collapse because it had collapsed already, and is now first clawing, then walking, soon to be jogging, and eventually dashing to the mean. Two notes on the story, and one observation: (a) I think the reason American visitors are often more surprised than European, Japanese and rest of Asia visitors to China may be because Americans know less about where the origin of the story was, and thus are less able to discern where events are leading us. This possible lack of historical perspective (as opposed to a 200 year short story), together with CNBC/CNN chants about democracy (vs freedom), money (vs wealth), facts (vs truth), statistics (vs logic), revenue (vs cost), et cetera is as detrimental to analytical faculty as Greensputin and Bernanke are to current store of wealth. You know, musty old archives and dusty ancient books, and even "Devil Takes the Hindmost" can be useless for Greensputin, mostly because he has so many PR functions to attend to, taking time away from central banking. Bernanke is even more dangerous than Greensputin. Greenspud at least knows or is systemically able to obscure his thoughts with language many J6P and most officialdom do not understand, whereas Bernanke can make himself perfectly clear, as 'I am going to steal from you, and here are my ways'. (b) <<Eager to please the Americans, he arranged a feast that included, amazingly, two turkeys. Later it turned out that he'd confiscated them from the local zoo>> I think I know what happened because equivalent events happen so often. The Chinese host wanted to please the visitors from far away, mobilized the town to come up with a meal. Lacking turkey (not considered a common food in China), some guy or gal said, 'there are two of them at the zoo'. Telling the reason of their request to the zoo keeper and the administrative committee of the zoo via higher municipal authority, the lot of them decided to sacrifice two turkeys to please important visitors. Most Chinese, like most Americans, are exceedingly friends conscious, meaning they will do their max for friends. Where the average Chinese differ from the average American is that they have a longer perspective, higher tolerance for hardship, hungrier, more willing to make the sacrifices to improve their lot, and even try their hands at raising alien crawfish and such, letting the market decide whether the crawlies can be sold, as opposed to listening to the nay-sayers about what the crawlies tastes like. (c) My observation is that I believe the US media is generally doing a bad thing to the American population now on the subject of world relationships, causes and effects, just as they did in the case of investments and path to a happy life. I believe the truth in China is that there is: (a) freedom of choice (but not of association) (b) freedom of speech (but not of press) (c) economic freedom (but not democracy by ballot) (d) checks and balances (but not rule of law) But the general trend line and overall travel trajectory is more correct than not, and for a country of so many, so good, so far. Thanks Carranza2, I had fun writing this post:0) Chugs, Jay