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

To: Mark Adams who wrote (5847)	8/24/1998 7:25:00 PM
From: Frodo Baxter	Respond to of 9980

>In speaking with an associate over lunch, he reminded me that the flaw with pure free market based investment policies is the focus on extreme near term results. It's hard to interest investors in projects that don't payback for 20 years, much less 100. Jack Welch says, "You can't think long-term if you don't eat short-term." Having said that, there is indeed a role of government-sponsored basic research. In fact, basic science has survived the budget axe of the notoriously penny-pinching Republican Congress relatively unscathed. Of course, where basic research ends and applied research begins is an open question. >The Japanese have a reputation for being good savers, and willing to invest in projects that do take longer than a quarter to pay off. In general, the idea that the Japanese have a superior long-term perspective is long discredited. Most of their investment projects don't take longer than a quarter to pay off, they never do. That's the crux of the problem.