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

To: Zeev Hed who wrote (4943)	6/30/1998 12:52:00 AM
From: Michael Sphar	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9980

A lot of the US brain power are foreign born, US schooled "working permit" and "green card" holders. In addition to setting up a venture infrastructure, foreign countries need to set up attractive programs to keep or repatriate their best and brightest foreign educated kids. "But how are you gonna keep 'em down on the farm..." to borrow a phrase from an old song. This brain drain is a global phenomenon and will always bias towards the more established centers of commerce. The process of decentralizing the lower profitability components of the manufacturing flow, such as "assembly" and "test" steps in the integrated circuit manufacturing flow has been in effect for a long time. Centers of commerce such as Singapore and Penang have built upon this and flourished. Even now the more complex and value added steps such as "fab" and "design" are also decentralizing. But is it enough ? Will lesser developed countries be able to achieve the critical mass required ? And can they sustain ?

To: Zeev Hed who wrote (4943)	6/30/1998 1:18:00 AM
From: Michael Sphar	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9980

Speaking of Japan still, I was marvelling at the plan outlined in an article from TheStreet.com, in it describing some of the process of bailing out and cleaning up ala the S&L event in the US. The comparisons were stunning and I kind of got stuck on this. The S&L bailout was a miserly $160 million affair when compared to the MOF number of 77 trillion yen. At 142/$1 that's about $550 billion or $4500 for every man woman and child that lives in Japan. Thats an awful lot of money. This is more than 3400 times the size of the S&L debacle! Isn't that like totally paying off the US debt (on a per capita basis)? This is hard to conceive! How did things get this far out of whack ? Didn't somebody say something along the way ? Guess I'm in denial too, though in a different perspective.