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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: freechina who wrote (1366)	10/22/2005 2:14:09 AM
From: energyplay	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 218256

There has been systemic risk in the financial system since....the time of the Medicis, or earlier. REFCO is normal event, like a Category 2 Hurricane. You expect it, plan for it, build for it, and survive it without too much dislocation. It is not the Asian Currency Crisis, or LTCM, or Herstat Bank, or Penn Square Bank. You want to believe the sky is falling, go ahead. What are doing for longs and shorts for this situation ?

To: freechina who wrote (1366)	10/22/2005 3:03:02 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 218256

THE DO GOODERS Apart from the officials of the United Nations institutions, interest in LDCs (low developing countries) is shown by: several private bodies channel aid to LDCs and institutions which send scholars to LDCs universities. In most cases they contribute to the myopic view about LDCs. The uniform of contemporary Western youth represents a weak attempt to express outwardly the resemblance to the simple peasant, who is found only in the poor countries. LDCs are the alternative societies. Their unchallenging, not self reliant life styles and their neighborhood where nothing happens did not bring them happiness. The social security, welfare state and egalitarian societies instead of bringing them security brought them boredom. MDCs’ (more developed countries)people began to value secu¬rity over self reliance. They sought security in large organizations. Lifetime employment, social security, welfare, billions of dollars of insurance; instead of finding security they discovered boredom, mediocrity and lack of opportunity. Those disenchanted with the achievement of their developed societies see the LDCs as the lost paradise through their rosy glasses. “.. Ranger mentions well-meaning Europeans who fabricated cultural traits which were subsequently championed by the local elite and so created the myth of an idyllic, egali¬tarian society in the pre-colonial past, of ‘negritude’, harking back to a past that never was. “The urban youth of today tends, as did Blake, to see factories as satanic inventions. In the comfort of his central heated home, the Western intellectual writes about (greater) human dignity in a (poorer) preindustrial past and about the desirability of bringing industrial development to an immediate halt, shielding mother earth from the technocrats, promoting zero-growth. Naipaul saw them in India, where growing numbers of sitar-playing devotees followed their gurus, occasionally cashing their travellers checks from home. For the relaxation and idleness of those who reject industrialism can be pursued on only by the grace of those who accept it. They are most concerned with the westernization of the LDCs lives. Which if achieved will mean the paradise lost forever. There won’t be an alternative for Western style life anymore. While LDC’s populations are not concerned either Western is good or bad. Their concern is the improvement of their lives. The myopic view that LDCs can develop in an alternative way brought about the concept of appropriate technology. We can just imagine which appropriate technology could have been devised for the steam engine and spinning machine which thrown people out of jobs in the beginning of the industrial revolution. The long deferred confrontation with the harsh demands of a cold society becomes more and more difficult, and the escape into soft alternativism is finally the outcome. Not that ‘doing your own thing’ indi¬cates individualism; attitudes and dress reveal a strong uniformity -youngsters travelling through through the third world can be detected from afar by their hairstyles and the obligatory faded blue. In the past times, as infant mortality decimated offspring, the sense of possible, even probable, loss was ever present: The expression of love was inhibited by the realization that the loved child was unlikely to survive, now that death no longer does us part so early and in fact the anxiety for bare bare survival has practically disappeared in the industrial countries, the parents cherish their smaller ‘planned ‘ families so fondly that as Berger is moved to speak of ‘soft socialization’. The period of infancy and puberty, of carefree youth, is extended, there emerges a ‘voluntary association of ex-youths heroically refusing to admit their ages The do gooder dreams of seeing the underdeveloped not suffering the rigors of poverty. They don’t realise that the rigors of poverty were wiped out of western societies because the components of these societies accepted a radical change in order to achieve this wealth. Moreover the do gooder see western influence as a bad thing because they don’t need the ‘benefits’ of additional wealth. The second VCR, the bigger car or the most modern stereo. But for the people from LDCs, increasing wealth is the step away from death, which Rosenberg and Birdzell recognized. “The move from poverty to wealth is, in a social sense, an advance in material well being. It is not adequately captured in statistics of GNP national income, or real wages. Death has been the ultimate threat, and the move from poverty to wealth is first of all a move far away from death. Its first indica¬tors are statistics in life expectancy, death rates, and infant mortality.” Rosenberg, N., Birdzell Jr., L.E., How the West Grew Rich, New York, Basic Books, Inc., 1986. I should have published my "book to end all the other books" I wrote in Nigeria between 1989 and 1991.