NPR: Critic of Iraq War Remembers Son Lost in that War
via the Western Confucian
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
The future of Latin in the Church (of Rome)
From Radio Vatican:
23/05/2007 8.32.16Les clés de st Pierre
(RV-22 mai 2007) Voyage cette semaine pour les Clés de Saint Pierre, dans l’univers du latin au Vatican… le latin, qui fut la langue liturgique de l’Eglise jusqu’au Concile Vatican II et la constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium, qui autorisa la célébration dans les langues vernaculaires…Le latin, qui est encore souvent utilisé pour les documents officiels du Saint- Siège…. Le latin, encore, porteur d’une longue tradition humanist. Où en est aujourd’hui la pratique du latin au Vatican ? Qui maitrise le latin ? Quels enjeux avec le motu proprio libéralisant la messe selon le missel de Pie V ? Laure Stephan a rencontré Mgr Waldemar Turek, de la Secrétairerie d’Etat, et Don Cleto Pavanetto, président de la Fondation Latinitas.
audio file
via Rorate Caeli
23/05/2007 8.32.16Les clés de st Pierre
(RV-22 mai 2007) Voyage cette semaine pour les Clés de Saint Pierre, dans l’univers du latin au Vatican… le latin, qui fut la langue liturgique de l’Eglise jusqu’au Concile Vatican II et la constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium, qui autorisa la célébration dans les langues vernaculaires…Le latin, qui est encore souvent utilisé pour les documents officiels du Saint- Siège…. Le latin, encore, porteur d’une longue tradition humanist. Où en est aujourd’hui la pratique du latin au Vatican ? Qui maitrise le latin ? Quels enjeux avec le motu proprio libéralisant la messe selon le missel de Pie V ? Laure Stephan a rencontré Mgr Waldemar Turek, de la Secrétairerie d’Etat, et Don Cleto Pavanetto, président de la Fondation Latinitas.
audio file
via Rorate Caeli
ATimes articles to be read
Resistance, not terror
The Grand Ayatollah Ahmed Alhasani al-Baghdadi
Baghdadi is one of Iraq's more outspoken Shi'ite clerics, against the occupation, against the United States' "puppet" government in Baghdad, and, surprisingly, against a "dumb devil" fellow grand ayatollah with whom he disagrees. Baghdadi differentiates between armed resistance and terrorism, and has softened his views to accommodate a timetable for US withdrawal, he tells Munthir Alkewther.
the ayatollah's website
A new face for the TalibanUzbek militants are the first casualties of Islamabad's drive to delink the Taliban from al-Qaeda and bring them back into the Pakistani sphere of influence. The point man for this is Maulvi Nazir, who leads tribal forces in South Waziristan. He's a hardened operator, but his ride will not be an easy one.
The Xinjiang factor in the new Silk Road
The conflict-oriented "Great Game" concept is no longer relevant for Central Asia. Today, the ancient Silk Road is the route to cultural, natural-resource and economic riches that could, if used wisely, benefit the world far beyond the region itself. The nexus of this dynamic 21st-century reality is Xinjiang, where Central Asia and China meet. - David Gosset
The Grand Ayatollah Ahmed Alhasani al-Baghdadi
Baghdadi is one of Iraq's more outspoken Shi'ite clerics, against the occupation, against the United States' "puppet" government in Baghdad, and, surprisingly, against a "dumb devil" fellow grand ayatollah with whom he disagrees. Baghdadi differentiates between armed resistance and terrorism, and has softened his views to accommodate a timetable for US withdrawal, he tells Munthir Alkewther.
the ayatollah's website
A new face for the TalibanUzbek militants are the first casualties of Islamabad's drive to delink the Taliban from al-Qaeda and bring them back into the Pakistani sphere of influence. The point man for this is Maulvi Nazir, who leads tribal forces in South Waziristan. He's a hardened operator, but his ride will not be an easy one.
The Xinjiang factor in the new Silk Road
The conflict-oriented "Great Game" concept is no longer relevant for Central Asia. Today, the ancient Silk Road is the route to cultural, natural-resource and economic riches that could, if used wisely, benefit the world far beyond the region itself. The nexus of this dynamic 21st-century reality is Xinjiang, where Central Asia and China meet. - David Gosset
Apolo and Julianne are the winners
of this season's Dancing with the Stars...
Paso Doble
On Kimmel later
Paso Doble
On Kimmel later
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Bryon King, A Man in the Street
05/22/2007 - A Man in the Street
Energy, Culture, and Transport
That comment launched us into a discussion of the choices people make about lifestyle, living arrangements, and occupational choices. “People can live where they want to live,” said the reporter. “But high gas prices penalize them for living one place and working somewhere else.”
My reply was that “People ought to pay for what they use, and if they are using scarce energy resources like gasoline simply to commute from home to work, they ought to have to pay for it and pay the world price to boot. If you live in the suburbs where a house may be less expensive, you might just have to pay for it at the gas pump.”
I further noted that “Quite a bit of what passes for the culture of the nation is really a reflection of the price and availability of energy. Cheap energy has given rise to a culture of physical dispersion, if not sprawl, coupled with a sense of personal entitlement to private and energy-intensive forms of transportation, housing, and many other things.”
It was rapidly becoming clear that the reporter was having trouble processing what I was telling him. “Why shouldn’t people be able to go where they want to go, when they want to go there, and in their own private car?” he asked.
“It depends on how you look at the issue of personal transportation,” I said. “For the past 100 years, while oil was cheap and available, there has been a trend toward more and more personalized transportation for relatively short hauls. With the rise of the automobile (the roots of the word mean ‘self-moving’), people have become accustomed to driving in their own cars close to home, to work, and for short and medium distances. But during World War II, when there was hardly any gasoline available for anything but the war effort, people adjusted to living with little or no gas.”
I continued, “But think about moving long distances, especially if you want to move rapidly. Few people really have any expectation of privacy or private conveyance when, for example, they get on a commercial airplane to fly across the country. Then, you are shoulder to shoulder with the next passenger, and before they let you board the plane you have to deal with getting X-rayed at the airport screening station. So for short hauls, people are conditioned to hop into their personal cars and drive. For long hauls, they are willing to be herded into an airplane and treated like cargo.”
I followed up on that last point. “In terms of passenger-seat miles per gallon, a transcontinental airplane flight is actually more fuel-efficient than a single passenger commuting to work in a standard-sized automobile. You would need four people commuting and carpooling in an automobile to achieve the same fuel-efficiency as a Boeing 747 carrying a 75% passenger load.”
The reporter asked for the source of that statistic, and I told him that it came from Boeing, although I did do some math at one point to confirm the number. Getting back to the discussion about the price of gasoline, I noted that “People used to live in or near the urban cores and take streetcars everywhere they needed to go. Just beyond the end of the streetcar lines, it was farmland. But in the past 50 or 60 years, we have built roads everywhere and filled them with automobiles. So the current demographic of Pittsburgh, for example, now sprawls all over Allegheny County and into five adjacent counties. It is not that most of the commuting culture is what you call ‘essential’ transportation. It is just that this is the energy-intensive existence we have created for ourselves. It was great when oil was cheap, although not sustainable. And now that oil is expensive, we have to ask if we have to change our cultural expectations. If not, we are about to have some very big problems.”
What About the Oil Companies?
My questioner was not finished with his “Man in the Street” interview. He asked, “Well, don’t you think that the price of gas is going up just because the oil companies are hoarding supplies?”
“There is no evidence of that,” I replied. “In fact, U.S. refinery output is at its highest level in history. There has never been a time, since John D. Rockefeller first started buying up refineries in Cleveland back in the 1860s, when the U.S. refining industry made more product than in the past couple of months. Plus, the U.S. is importing unprecedented levels of refined product into the country, something over 10% of total demand. So the refiners are running flat out, we are importing tanker loads of fuel, and the demand trends are still rising. So there is where you get your rising price.”
“But,” said the reporter, “everybody talks about how the U.S. oil industry has not built a new refinery in 30 years. Aren’t the oil companies just letting the old refineries run down, so there are shortages and they can raise the prices?”
This is one of those “when did you stop beating your wife?” kind of questions. The oil industry cannot get any credit in the public mind for anything, no matter how far it goes or how deep it drills. First, the political process makes it all but impossible to build new refineries, and then the entire industry gets beat up for not building them. Still, the question deserved an answer. And I gave it to the reporter, with both barrels.
“Not at all,” replied one of the few Peak Oil correspondents on the face of this or any other planet. “In fact, the overall trend in the U.S. refinery business in the past 30 years has been to expand existing refineries, as opposed to building new ones. For many reasons, it is just too hard to build a new plant in this country, so the refiners have been overhauling and expanding the existing production base. There are fewer environmental hurdles, the local communities tend to be more in favor of expansion, and the refiners are dealing with fewer political unknowns. So the net effect is that in the past decade, refinery upgrades and expansions in the U.S. have added the equivalent of 10 ‘new’ refineries to the total base, and there is something like the equivalent of eight more refineries being ‘built’ via upgrades to existing facilities. This is why U.S. refinery output is at a record high.”
So Why Is the Price Rising?
The reporter knew by now that he was talking about oil and refined product with someone who knows something about the business. He paused and thought for a moment. Then he asked, “So why is the price of gas rising?”
“The price of gas is rising,” said the Peak Oil correspondent, “because there are more people buying it than there are selling it. And there will be, for the rest of your life.”
4GW in Latin America?
The lawless narco-state next door
May 22nd, 2007
From Global Guerillas: MEXICO MILITARIZES ITS DRUG WAR
(Also from GG: JOURNAL: The cost of disorder in Brazil)
So how bad are things in Central and South America? Some countries are better than others no doubt... but there is something to be said for the rule of law and the prosecution of corruption in the U.S.
From VDare:
22 May 2007
Politicians Shocked At Immigration Opposition
May 22nd, 2007
From Global Guerillas: MEXICO MILITARIZES ITS DRUG WAR
(Also from GG: JOURNAL: The cost of disorder in Brazil)
So how bad are things in Central and South America? Some countries are better than others no doubt... but there is something to be said for the rule of law and the prosecution of corruption in the U.S.
From VDare:
22 May 2007
Politicians Shocked At Immigration Opposition
Two trailers shown at Cannes
Arn - The Temple Knight trailer (via AICN) [Will it be anti-Christian like Kingdom of Heaven?]
We Own the Night trailer (via AICN)
We Own the Night trailer (via AICN)
The Dangerous Book for Boys
The book's website
via Godspy:
Book teaches boys how to be 'Dangerous' - CNN.com
Danger: boys having fun Books Arts Telegraph
Neatorama » Blog Archive » The Dangerous Book for Boys.
FOXNews.com - New Book Revives Lost Notions of Boyhood - Blog ...
A 'dangerous' book for boys? - Today Books: Miscellaneous - MSNBC.com
Dr. Helen: The Dangerous Book for Boys
Dr. Helen: Interview with Conn Iggulden
Comedy Central: Colbert Report: Conn Iggulden
Conn Iggulden - Ancient Roman Empire Forums
Carla Nayland Historical Fiction: Emperor series, by Conn Iggulden ...
via Godspy:
'Dangerous Book for Boys'Book of the Year 2006: The Dangerous Book for Boys: Conn Iggulden ...
Soars to Dizzying Heights
By JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG
First, there was the question of the title: "The Dangerous Book for Boys." HarperCollins Publishers' Chief Executive Jane Friedman just didn't understand what it meant. Sure, the book had been a hit in England and Australia, but that didn't mean it would work in the U.S.
But the sales staff urged her to stick with it, and in just two weeks, "Dangerous" has become the breakout hit of the season. The News Corp. unit initially ordered up 91,000 copies. There are now 405,000 copies in print. One senior HarperCollins executive, extrapolating from overseas sales and population data, projects that "Dangerous," which lists for $24.95, could sell as many as four million in the U.S.
The book, by English brothers Conn and Hal Iggulden, purports to aim itself at a particularly inscrutable and un-book-friendly audience: boys around the age of 10. It tries to answer the question: What do boys need to know?
So here are instructions on how to skip stones, fold a paper hat, make a battery, and hunt and cook a rabbit. It includes a description of the Battle of Thermopylae, but also how to play Texas Hold 'Em poker, and use the phrases "Carpe diem" and "Curriculum vitae."
The unapologetic message is that boys need a certain amount of danger and risk in their lives, and that there are certain lessons that need to be passed down from father to son, man to man. The implication is that in contemporary society basic rules of maleness aren't being handed off as they used to be.
The book aims to correct that. It does so with a pretelevision, prevideogame sensibility, and also by embracing a view of gender that has been unfashionable in recent decades: that frogs and snails and puppy dogs' tails are more than lines in a nursery rhyme, and that boys are by nature hard-wired differently than girls.
But "The Dangerous Book for Boys" is also aimed at boomer dads, who nostalgically yearn for a lost boyhood of fixing lawn mowers and catching snakes with their fathers -- even if that didn't really happen as often as they think it did.
Insects, juggling are among topics in 'The Dangerous Book for Boys.'
The gender-exclusive nature of "Dangerous" bothers some women. In a posting on the livejournal.com Web site, one woman, addressing the book and boys in general, wrote: "Here's a tip, kiddies: maybe the girls want to have the same kind of fun you do, instead of sitting around the house and learning how to be a servant." (Matthew Benjamin, a senior editor at the Collins imprint, which published the book, says, "There hasn't been any organized protest.")
On the back of the book's cover -- retro red cloth with oversized gold lettering -- the come-on is "Recapture Sunday afternoons and long summer days." Inside are odd-sized color illustrations of fish, trilobites, and an example of marbled paper. Some have compared it to Daniel Carter Beard's "The American Boy's Handy Book," originally published in 1882.
So is this a book that Dad brings home and that then gathers dust in Junior's room, forgotten behind the iPods and laptops?
Paul Bogaards, an executive for rival publisher Bertelsmann AG's Alfred A. Knopf, says he took a copy home to his eight-year-old son, Michael, whom he describes as "junked up on Nick, Disney and Club Penguin," a Web site. Mr. Bogaards says Michael took to it immediately, demanding that his dad test paper airplanes into the night, even missing "American Idol." He adds: "That's the good news. The bad news is that he now expects me to build him a treehouse." He concludes: "Million-copy-plus seller easy, with the shelf life of Hormel Spam."
"We initially thought that men nostalgic for their boyhoods would be the buyers, but people are also buying it for 12-year-old boys," says Mr. Benjamin. "This book teaches them its OK to play and explore."
Concerned that the book would seem too British, Collins asked the authors to adapt parts of it for U.S. readers. A section about royalty was replaced by the 50 states, American mountains and the Declaration of Independence. Baseball's most valuable players and "How to Play Stickball" supplants the chapter on cricket. But rugby made the cut: it was tough, dangerous and better-known in the U.S. A "Navajo Code Talkers' Dictionary" superseded Britain's patron saints.
The book's cover emphasizes the text's retro feel.
Unchanged for the U.S. market were the two pages on the subject of girls. The first bit of advice: "It is important to listen."
"Dangerous" ranks No. 5 in sales on Amazon.com Inc.'s Web site, which provides an adjacent diagram explaining how to tie some knots. A video, provided by the publisher, shows how a father and son can use the book outdoors, including a scene where Dad gives his son's gravity-powered go-cart a push downhill.
Barnes & Noble Inc., the country's largest book retailer, likes the title so much that it has already stacked it on its Father's Day table and says it will give the book its own additional table later this month. Mike Ferrari, a director of merchandising, says the retailer has classified "Dangerous" as a reference book, and is stocking it in the front of the store.
Mr. Ferrari notes that some reference titles from the United Kingdom have done particularly well in the U.S., including Lynne Truss's "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation," published by Pearson PLC's Gotham imprint in 2004. Today there are nearly 1.6 million hardcover and paperback copies in print.
HarperCollins says it doesn't have any immediate plans to publish a girl's version. HarperCollins's Ms. Friedman, who has two sons and two stepsons, explains: "Boys are very different."
Book teaches boys how to be 'Dangerous' - CNN.com
Danger: boys having fun Books Arts Telegraph
Neatorama » Blog Archive » The Dangerous Book for Boys.
FOXNews.com - New Book Revives Lost Notions of Boyhood - Blog ...
A 'dangerous' book for boys? - Today Books: Miscellaneous - MSNBC.com
Dr. Helen: The Dangerous Book for Boys
Dr. Helen: Interview with Conn Iggulden
Comedy Central: Colbert Report: Conn Iggulden
Conn Iggulden - Ancient Roman Empire Forums
Carla Nayland Historical Fiction: Emperor series, by Conn Iggulden ...
Chinese stocks and the risk of economic crisis
Chinese stocks and the risk of economic crisis
by Maurizio d'Orlando
Economists worldwide are concerned about the highs and lows of Shanghai's stock market and the frenzy over empty real estate. The financial bubble risks exploding; effects would be far-reaching.
Milan (AsiaNews) – According to some economists, a bubble is about to burst in the Chinese financial market. The risk facing the government, if it does not intervene to slow down economic growth, is the destabilization of society.
In the last year and a half, the value of the Shanghai stock exchange increased by 235%; the Shenzhen market went up by 289% in the same period. The stock market frenzy has spread all along China's coast, the country's most industrialized areas. It is not unusual for university students to gamble on stocks the money they have to cover room and board expenses as well as school fees. Office workers buy and sell shares all day on the stock exchange, and start their salaried work once markets close. Even pensioners are investing in stocks. Some even mortgage their apartment to buy shares. Speculators come from all ages groups and professions, from doctors to doorkeepers; everyone is buying and selling shares. The passion of the Chinese for gambling and their veneration of luck are certainly nothing new, but the novelty today is that companies which quickly grew thanks to the economic development of recent years are neglecting their core business to dedicate themselves to financial speculation.
Economic growth and the undervalued yuan
There is certainly good reason for all the frenzy. In 2006, the economy grew in China by 10.7%; during the first quarter of 2007, GDP (gross domestic product) increased, in annual terms, by 11.1% and this is the fourth consecutive year of growth at a rate close to or exceeding 10%. It is also true, however, that a kernel of truth is the basis for many forms of exaggeration. Stock market growth is by now overly inflated with respect to the real economy, even though the latter has also expanded greatly: this can be deduced by a parameter of evaluation which is quite significant: the ratio between the average stock prices and the average earnings of listed companies. This ratio at the Shenzhen exchange is 60; Shanghai's is slightly lower. To make a comparison, the Dow Jones ratio is about 17. In other terms, for companies listed on the Shenzhen index, supposing that current earning remain unchanged, today's stock prices are equal to what would be the sum of earnings for the next 60 years, and, frankly, this hardly appears to be reasonable. A higher than normal ratio is not always a symptom of overvaluation: economists speak in these cases of expected growth. For example a multiple of 60 could correspond to a prediction that earnings will be 10 times the current levels for the next six years. This too, however, doesn't seem very reasonable. In theory, if stock market trends are sufficiently representative, they should reflect the country's general economic trends. It would hardly be intuitive to think that China's economy can increase ten-fold every year for the next six. Alternatively, we can suppose that the Chinese economy will maintain its current growth rates. If we wanted to consider as realistic the stock market's current capitalization, that is the overall value of all the companies listed according to their listing price, we would have to presuppose that China's national wealth will continue to intensively concentrate around just a few companies and into just a few hands. However, this hypothesis too is rather improbable because, even with growth rates the rest of the world can only dream of, the level of serious social conflict, which amounts to some 300 cases per year, would increase exponentially and quite uncontrollably, even if increased measures of repression, for example, were implemented.
Can China keep up the race?
Even supposing a continuing and overwhelming concentration of financial wealth, it would not be easily to fulfil the aforementioned presupposition, i.e. the continuation of current rates of economic growth. In China's case, its population accounts for 22% of the world's, while its GDP is still a relatively small part of the worldwide total, about half of this portion, when calculated at current exchange rates. Maintaining economic growth at a rate similar to current levels, let's say 10%, would mean doubling, in about 7/8 years, the overall value of China's economy. This could seem reasonable or at least possible. All in all, such a level of growth would mean that pro-capite income in China would, in 7/8 years, be close to the current worldwide average.
On the other hand, from year 1 of the Christian era until about 1820, Chinese GDP varied between about 26 and 36% of the world's total. From the first half of the 1800s -- from the introduction of opium by the English -- this proportion decreased until it reached minimum levels during the Mao years (in the early years of the 1970s it accounted for 7% of the worldwide total). According to the World Bank, Chinese GDP was 14.37% of the world total in 2005. This was, without a doubt, a spectacular increase, which, furthermore, occurred over a time frame that can be considered negligible in historical terms, but it could seem at first glace that there still exists room for the doubling of the current value of the Chinese economy over a 7/8 year period. If in 1820, pro capite income in China was 36% of the world's, why could it not situate itself at a level of 20 or 30% of the world's in 2015? The point is that the aforementioned 14.37% is calculated in terms of equalized purchasing power, the only method that allows for more or less reasonable comparisons between countries of the world and very different situations (1). If instead, a comparison is made on the basis of market exchange rates (2), World Bank data shows that Chinese GDP in 2005 was roughly just 5.5% of the world total. The disproportion between these two figures, 14.37% and 5.5% of worldwide GDP, both referring to the same year, is more than evident and is entirely due to the disproportionate undervaluation of China's currency, the yuan, and Chinese authorities themselves are well aware of this. It is evident in fact that a good part of real economic growth over recent years is the result of a deliberate financial device, the undervaluation of the yuan (RMB).
The Chinese economic growth over some 30 years, from 7% to 14.37% in real terms, was powered by below-cost exports and therefore came, in a certain sense, at a cost to the rest of the world. A development model such as this will not likely resist much longer. It is, in fact, perhaps not well known that Chinese GDP is already worth, in real terms, i.e. taking into consideration purchasing power, 8,814 billion dollars and is second in the world only to the United States', which is worth 12,416 billion dollars (2005 World Bank figures). If the current differential of economic growth were to last, it is easy to predict that China's GDP would end up overtaking the US' in a few years. If up until now, for a series of political calculations and specific economic interests, Chinese administrators have had a free hand in their multiannual manipulation of the exchange rate and exports, it would not seem reasonable to suppose that they will continue to find open doors to maintain a development model that comes at a cost to the rest of the world and that is unbalanced from within.
Curbing growth and revaluing the yuan: China's risk
Ever since the People's Bank of China allowed for a bit fluctuation in exchange rates in July 2005 , the value of China's currency increased by just more than 5% and, in the first quarter of this year, it increased by 0.96%. However, to avoid expectations of an excessive revaluation of the exchange rate, the Ministry of Labour and Social Security quickly went into action. According to a note published last May 10 (3), a further increase of 5 - 10% in the exchange rate would translate into the loss of some 3.5 million jobs, while the income, already very low, of about 10 million farmers would be compromised. According to official statistics, there are about 70 million workers in export-producing industrial and manufacturing sectors, while 100 million people are employed in export-oriented agriculture. To be noted, furthermore, is the fact that while unemployment in urban and coastal areas is around 4%, China's overall unemployment rate is actually 10 - 14%, taking into account rural under-employment. If monetary authorities allowed for a revaluation of the exchange rate to align it with domestic purchasing power, the already high level of social conflict would explode; for the moment, tensions are still at a low intensity level and are controllable. And even if Chinese administrators wanted to collaborate with Western authorities, they cannot afford a decrease in exports as that would jeopardize internal political balances, and, in the final analysis, their own power.
This is the root of the financial tangle. With the yuan artificially low in value, China continues to accumulate a record surplus of foreign exchange reserves generated by exports. In 2006, China's commercial surplus reached the record level of 177.5 billion dollars, with an increase of 74% over the previous year. This is why the People's Bank of China holds more than 1,200 billion dollars in exchange reserves, more than any other central bank in the world except for the United States which has no need to maintain such levels. The American Federal Reserve, in fact, can print money at will, generating, ipso facto, currency which, from the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944 and then from the abandonment of the gold standard (August 15, 1971), can be counted as reserves.
The financial bubble
China's financial bubble originates in fact from this mass of dollar liquidity generated by the export surplus. The dollars generated by exports, converted into yuan in view of a revaluation of the currency, do not belong to the internal rural areas of China and therefore do not reach those areas that most need them, whether it be in terms of investments in important infrastructure, or in the form of greater consumption, to improve on what is a purely subsistence level of living. This money supply instead goes to nourish on-demand cash accounts, which earn little interest in Chinese banks: overall, such deposits add up to about 4,000 billion dollars. The small savings account owners in China's industrialized areas know from experience that local banks are not exactly paragons of reliability. In fact the Chinese banking system has been, yes, recapitalized various times over past years but has not been thoroughly restructured because the power to discretionally dispense bank credit is one of the main instruments of internal political control in the hands of Chinese Communist management. And so it is that, lacking an adequate pension system or private pension funds and not having any alternative except low-return cash accounts at the bank -- which just a few years ago revealed themselves to be quite fragile -- stock market investment could initially have appeared to be not an entirely bad idea. Even if the Chinese stock market system was in its initial stages and was not guaranteeing a certain flawless level of transparency, the reliability of the accounts of listed companies was, after all, certainly not worse than that of local banks. The alternative to the stock market and cash accounts was real estate investment and in fact prices in the coastal areas, and in particular Shanghai, reached speculative levels which were hardly justifiable in terms of domestic or commercial use. Many building thus remain empty. The truly peculiar characteristic of China today is that, alongside the stock market frenzy, a parallel race developed in real estate, which is usually considered an alternative shelter to the risk of financial markets. Last but not least, it is important to keep in mind that many of the dollars generated by exports are used by banks and the People's Bank of China itself to finance the American debt. It is doubtful however that all this can last much longer. Does AsiaNews thus recommend disinvesting from the Chinese stock market? Frankly, it is not our mission to provide consulting and opinions on estate management. On the other hand, many consultants have for months already been whispering to their most trusted clients to "lighten" their investments in Chinese stocks.
China's crisis and the world's crisis
In any case, it is not entirely certain that the Chinese stock market is on the verge of a crash. The reason is that the governing Communist Party will celebrate its 17th congress next fall to approve important changes to its leadership and to elect a new government in March. On occasions such as these, if any indications can be drawn from recent historical precedents, it can be expected that, in order to spread optimism and enthusiasm in the economy and in society, China's administrators will be more inclined to indulge in public spending and in investment than to be rigorous.
But not everything can be adjusted to the needs of agendas and the political cycle. Some analysts say that if the Shanghai stock market index reaches 4,000 points -- it is currently around 3,500 -- the price/earning ration of China's main stock market will also be 60. This is a very significant threshold: it was the level reached by the Japanese stock market in 1987, before the crash that opened the long season of more than a decade of stagnation throughout the economy, which Japan was barely able to get out of only recently. Similar considerations can be developed in relation to the fall of Wall Street and then the speculative bubble of the "New Economy" and also in relation to the monetary and economic financial crisis that, originating in July 1997 in Thailand, eventually spread to the rest of Asia and in 1998 to Russia.
Thus it seems that a10-year cycle will end in 2007 or 2008, but with a significant difference: central banks and monetary institutions could have a minor role this time around. The crash of 1987 was the result of the monetary restrictions imposed by the United States on Japan with the Plaza Accord of 1985. The then governor of the Federal Reserve, Volker, wanted to limit Japanese exports that, at the time, were flooding the American market, as is now the case with Chinese exports. In 1997, the crash was attributed to restrictions imposed by the International Monetary Fund on the economies of the region. Today central banks and monetary institutions seem to have much less control. "Innovative" finances, such as financial derivatives, high return speculative funds, securitization and other similar alchemies, as well as the liberalization of markets and globalization have produced what is likely an unprecedented monetary bubble, of which China's is just a corollary. According to data from the Bank for International Settlements of Basel, the "central bank" of the Central Banks, the global volume of "quasi money" is equal to about 50 times the volume of worldwide GDP. It is a fiery, shapeless mass of paper, or rather electronic, money that can take shape at incontrollable speed and can, at this point, easily overwhelm any authority or monetary and economic institution. It takes just a small spark to ignite such a bubble and such a spark could be set off in China. The effects would be felt throughout the world, and would not be different from those which followed the explosion of similar bubbles in history: impoverishment for many and the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of few. Globalization has not cancelled out the economic cycle: it has perhaps only lengthened it a bit and has generalized and probably also deepened its effects.
[1] This method is conceptually similar to the Geary-Khmis method used for historical comparisons.
[2] It must be kept in mind however that in China the exchange rate is still established by the Central Bank, i.e. officials of the Communist Party
[3] Entitled "Evaluation of the Re-evaluation of the RMB on Occupation"
Comstock, Tilling our own soil
Published on 21 May 2007 by Energy Bulletin / Jefferson Public Radio. Archived on 21 May 2007.
Tilling our own soil: Preparing a surge capacity for food
by Craig K. Comstock
Sustainable System?The system of getting nearly all our food from industrial agriculture located elsewhere works as long as petrochemicals are cheap, as they have been (with brief interruptions) for many decades. Natural gas fuels some of the electricity used for refrigeration and it does serve an integral role in the manufacture of nitrogen fertilizer, the process invented in 1908 by German chemist and Nobel Laureate Fritz Haber. Just a century ago, farmers depended mainly on nitrogen-fixing cover crops, manure, and bird guano for fertilizer. Crude oil serves as the feedstock for pesticides and herbicides, as well as for packaging, and as fuel for farm equipment and long-distance trucks. Without cheap petrochemicals, the system of industrial agriculture would falter.But why worry? Perhaps because U.S. oil production has been declining since around 1970, the main foreign sources are in politically volatile areas, and some suppliers claim dubious reserves. Matt Simmons, a veteran oil industry analyst, recently published a book on OPEC’s biggest single supplier under the title Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy (Wiley & Sons, 2005). After examining 200 technical papers, Simmons argues that the Saudis, like others, have exaggerated the size of their reserves.If the world soon reaches the “peak” of petroleum (and later of natural gas) production, the price of food would most certainly increase. We wouldn’t be out of petrochemicals, but we would be dependent on oil that is much harder to find and bring to the surface and thus more costly. With regard to food, the economic advantage would tip back toward harvesting from fields closer to consumers, and toward growing produce by organic methods, with as little dependence as possible on gas and oil.
Jon Rynn, The Economy is an Ecosystem
Published on 5 Mar 2007 by Sanders Research Associates. Archived on 20 May 2007.
The Economy is an Ecosystem
by Jon Rynn
The Economy is an Ecosystem
by Jon Rynn
Kurt Cobb, Peak oil forecasts and asymmetrical risk
Published on 20 May 2007 by Resource Insights. Archived on 21 May 2007.
Peak oil forecasts and asymmetrical risk
by Kurt Cobb
Plus:
Published on 18 May 2007 by Dagens Nyheter. Archived on 21 May 2007.
Global warming exaggerated, insufficient oil, natural gas and coal
by Kjell Aleklett
Peak oil forecasts and asymmetrical risk
by Kurt Cobb
Plus:
Published on 18 May 2007 by Dagens Nyheter. Archived on 21 May 2007.
Global warming exaggerated, insufficient oil, natural gas and coal
by Kjell Aleklett
Heinberg, Peak coal: sooner than you think
Published on 21 May 2007 by Energy Bulletin / Online Opinion. Archived on 21 May 2007.
Peak coal: sooner than you think
by Richard Heinberg
Peak coal: sooner than you think
by Richard Heinberg
Clips: Andy and Tessa
He ended up proposing her to the finale of The Bachelor last night. They're supposed to show up on The View this morning, and tonight there is a The Bachelor special with both.
Andy and Tessa (Falling In Love Conversation)
I put up the clip for Tessa--don't listen to what they actually say, or else you may need a vomit bag.
Andy and Tessa (Conversations Before Rose Ceremonies)
Andy and Tessa (Falling In Love Conversation)
I put up the clip for Tessa--don't listen to what they actually say, or else you may need a vomit bag.
Andy and Tessa (Conversations Before Rose Ceremonies)
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