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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lifeisgood who wrote (88321)	11/1/2007 10:55:13 PM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

We can get into the statistics, and what they show are trends. But what I am trying to communicate is that there are firms in China, India and elsewhere that are giving people a chance to be in on the groundfloor of explosive growth opportunities. I visited one high tech incubator in Beijing that has one hundred companies -- and each one of them is headed by a CEO with an advanced American university degree from a prestigious research university. I would never presume that all foreign brains will leave the USA, but they are being actively recruited and when you take into account the vast differences in cost of living plus the opportunity to be in on a big growth opportunity there are more and more who answer the call. I love the US and everything it has, but there is a complacency about our ability to be "world leaders" in a world that has grown far more competitive and complex. In the northeast quadrant of Beijing alone there are 20 universities and 2 million people working in tech firms. Are they better than us? No. But they are on the move and making things happen in a way that we ignore at our peril. Shanghai has 500,000 Taiwanese living there -- and most are in tech firms. Are they better than us? Hard to say -- but there are plenty of people staking their careers and making their fortunes there. Our view of the world and our place in it is on the verge of being obsolete -- it is time to realize that we cannot take anything for granted anymore.

To: lifeisgood who wrote (88321)	11/1/2007 11:06:00 PM
From: dipanjanc	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 110194

LIG, I do not have numbers, I will try and see if I can dig up something. But what GST is saying is very very real, and its impact should not be under-estimated. I came to US ten years ago from India as a Computer Science grad student. I have about 8 years of experience working for tech companies - giants such as Microsoft and also early-stage startups in the valley. I know a large number of immigrant tech professionals. In the last couple of years, I am seeing more and more of my friends returning to India. Everyone I know has at least started thinking about it and they talk about it all the time. Most of them are waiting for US citizenship which on average takes a ridiculously long 10 years -- five years for permanent residency and five more past that point. Ironically they will leave USA immediately after becoming US citizens which leaves the option of returning open and helps international travel. Even five years ago, no one I know even considered it as an option. Strengthening rupee, excellent career growth opportunities, liberalizing economy and culture, decreasing difference in standards of living, roaring stock and real estate markets -- plenty of motivations. Usually the first step is to join Indian subsidiaries of US tech giants as mid-level managers, but all of them eventually want to lauch their own businesses. So for a while, US tech companies will benefit at the cost of quality jobs leaving US, and consumer spending and investments shrinking. But in the long run, US will probably lose significant competitive advantages. A lot of the top engineering graduates from IITs etc. are skipping the immigration path altogether -- why go through the hassle of 10 years of uncertain indentured employment when you can get a job at Google India or Microsoft India straight out of school, or, even better, do an MBA from IIMs and shuffle money in the booming investment banking/private equity/vc sectors in India or East Asia? For theorerical scientists, US is still a big attraction as the academia/research in India has not been reformed/liberalized as much as the industrial/corporate sectors and they can not really compete with US institutions in luring the best scientists. But even that is changing slowly. One of my high school buddies who was working at NASA and recently pioneered a technique for determining the properties of neutrino stars and establishing Einstein's predictions nasa.gov is going back to TIFR (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research), Bombay this month because of immigration uncertainties and potential of significantly more responsibilities and respect. I am guessing this pattern holds true for other Asian countries as well.