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Strategies & Market Trends : Asia Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas Haegin who wrote (539)	1/7/1998 5:15:00 PM
From: Worswick	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9980

Thomas welcome back! I've read your posts on OXHP and you still continue to hang in there as I do. We OXHP seems to be holding there for the moment having test the lowside again today and come back. To answer your question of where I am at the moment I live in New York and I am a historian of Asia (4 books published). My involvement with Asia goes back to taking the old Messagerie Maritime boat from Yokohama to Bombay (via Hong Kong, Saigon, Singapore and Colombo). I think I went 4th class,that is deck passage, for $80. for the 21 day trip. In those days youth hostels in Japan were then US .25 cents and most of the foreigneers in Japan were playing bit parts in Japanese gangster movies to survive. It appears on this thread from what is happening is that foreigneers are still playing the bit parts in Japan. In India brefore it became the place to go I travelled 70,00 miles in Third Class trains and went everywhere three times. On the topic that consumes us all at the moment this - the Asian crisis is totally consuming me at this moment - and it is the most exciting thing that has happened in Asia in my 40 years of Asian acquaintenance. To quote our Zurich Insurance Chief Economist, "What is going on in Asia is nothing short of a contagion of awesome, profound effect". David Hale, (P. 22, Barron's, Dec. 22,1997) Hale occassionally consults for the Pentagon, he then goes on to predict a few scenarios of Asia. Sankar are you listening here, this is much better than the absolutely loony China information service Peking post of this am re: America creaming Asia so it can "steal" the Asian markets through the back door while Tahiland devalues. One of Hale's scenarios runs like this: picture Indonesia steaming in the heat of the IMF bailout. The time: soon. The Army overthrows Suharto and then begins, in a similar manner to Suharto's putsch in 1965, to pogrom the ethnic Chinese domiciled in Indonesia. This is very popular with the other Indonesians as the Chinese own 80% of Indonesia's business and are much resented. (NB. The last such conflagration cost between 300,000-800,000 Chinese lives depending upon who is giving the statistics) As the Indonesian Army begins to slaughter Chinese China comes in to protect the Chinese population. The Chinese government is simply not willing to stand by and see this slaughter happen all over again. The point of all this is -without going into it with people on the thread - that there are huge divisions in many if not most Asian countries. To us in the west Asia seems to be a place of homogenous populations. In fact there are divisions of caste and religion and ethnicity. In some sense the British in India were merely another caste...the British caste... which were added to the four extant Indian castes. In Asia there are divisons of even color. Typically, when things don't go well emergent leaders look around to gather support and gain power. It is always the weak and the minorities who suffer. Well, things are now going wrong. As I have said before on some thread we have the example of the Credit Anstalt to look at. A similar thing seems to be hapening in Asia, and Sankar can address this better than I. Hopefully, the Japanese will be the final line of resistance between the US and Europe in a massive credit deflation. All my experience in Japan leads me to think that the team players of MITI and the Ministry of Finance just simply don't know what has hit them. This require thinking not drinking! It seems to me official Japan is a world where the sixty year olds rotted by a lifetime of toadying and drink have absolute power. Everyone else (including Lawrece Summers) is in the position of waiting for the pronouncements of drink-crased bores. My god. The world is now in pawn to these witless drones. It's exciting you've come back Thomas. Oddly, these are the very best of times and the worst of times. At any rate you won't be bored. It is now 50 degrees here in upstate New York. I'm wzaiting for the Pacific tidal wave to sweep across the Rockies, wash across Iowa and Kansas and then break on mid-town Manhattan from the wrong ocean. No one is looking uptown Thomas. My best to you all.