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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Tokyo Joe's Cafe / Societe Anonyme/No Pennies -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TokyoMex who wrote (41150)	1/8/1999 7:07:00 PM
From: ThirdEye	Respond to of 119973

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming for a brief global reality check: 1999 Annual Forecast: A New and Dangerous World GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE UPDATE January 4, 1998 SUMMARY Russia will begin the process of recreating old Soviet empire in 1999. The most important question of 1999: will Ukraine follow Belarus into federation with Russia? Russia and China will be moving into a closer, primarily anti- American alliance in 1999. Asian economies will not recover in 1999. Japan will see further deterioration. So will China. Singapore and South Korea will show the strongest tendency toward recovery. China will try to contain discontent over economic policies by increasing repression not only on dissidents, but the urban unemployed and unhappy small business people. Tensions will rise. Asia will attempt to protect itself from U.S. economic and political pressures. Asian economic institutions, like an Asian Monetary Fund, will emerge in 1999. The Serbs, supported by the Russians, will test the United States in Kosovo. There is increasing danger of a simultaneous challenge from Serbia and Iraq, straining U.S. military capabilities dramatically. The main question in Europe will be Germany's reaction to the new Russia. The Germans will try to avoid answering that question for most of the year. Latin America appears ready to resume its economic expansion, beginning late in 1999. FORECAST The Post-Cold War world quietly ended in 1998. A new era will emerge in 1999. It will appear, for a time, to be not too dissimilar to what came before it, but looks can be deceiving. In fact, we have entered an era with a fundamentally different global dynamic than the previous era. We should not think of the period 1989-1998 as an era. It was an interregnum, a pause between two eras. 1999 will see a more conventional, natural world, in which other great powers in the world will unite to try to block American power. In 1998 the United States worried about Serbia, Iraq and North Korea. In 1999, the United States will be much more concerned with Russia, China, France and Japan. The world will not yet be a truly dangerous place, but it will begin the long descent toward the inevitable struggle between great powers. Two forces are converging to create this world. The first is the recoil of Russia from its experiment in liberalism. The other is the descent of Asia into an ongoing and insoluble malaise that will last for a generation and reshape the internal and external politics of the region. In a broader sense, this means that the Eurasian heartland is undergoing terrific stress. This will increase tensions within the region. It will also draw Eurasian powers together into a coalition designed to resist the overwhelming power of the world's only superpower, the Untied States. Put differently, if the United States is currently the center of gravity of the international system, then other nations, seeking increased control over their own destinies, will join together to resist the United States. Russia will pose the first challenge. Asia will pose the most powerful one. Russia Begins its Quest to Recover Great Power Status The die has been cast in Russia. We wrote in our 1998 Forecast: "Whether or not Yeltsin survives politically or personally is immaterial. The promise of 1991 has become an untenable nightmare for the mass of Russians. The fall of Communism ushered in a massive depression in the Russian economy while simultaneously robbing it of its global influence." In 1998 we saw the consequences of this. The reformers in Russia were systematically forced out of power. Power seeped out of Yeltsin's hands. Finally, a new Prime Minister was selected -- the former head of the KGB's international espionage apparatus. A restoration of sorts is well under way in Russia. Personalities are unimportant. What is important is that in 1998, the massive failure of the reformers resulted in their being forced from power. The West, which had invested in Russia, realized that it would never recover those investments nor many of the loans they made. As a result, investment and credit ceased flowing into Russia and, therefore, Western influence plummeted. There was no reason to appease the West if no further money was forthcoming. The Russian love affair with the West came to an abrupt halt. As so many times before in Russian history, the pendulum is moving from adoration of the West to suspicion and contempt. As before, the Westernizers who dominated Russia for the past decade are being replaced by Slavophiles, who will seek to root out Western influence while they liquidate the Westernizers. Russian politics has searched for a center of gravity ever since the reformists began to lose credibility. In December 1998, that center of gravity emerged in the form of Russian chauvinism and anti-Americanism. When the United States bombed Iraq without even consulting the Russians, the lid suddenly came off of the pent up anger Russians felt at their loss of great power standing. The one thing that every significant faction in Russian politics agree on today (save for the dwindling band of liberals) is that the loss of great power status is intolerable. Primakov, Zhirinovsky, the Communists and even Yeltsin agree on little save this -- Russia must recover its great power status. It is the only unifying principle left in Russian life. The corollary to this is a growing Russian consensus that Russia has been victimized both by Western investors and by the United States. Investors are seen has having taken advantage of Russia's eagerness to please the West, exploiting it ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ