You mean that non-convertible RMB? In a country that is very export dependent?

January 22, 2008 @ 11:50 pm | Comment

RMB is very readily convertible in practice, whether via the (incredibly inconvenient) official means or through the much friendlier Uyghur money-changers out on Yabao Lu. If you go with the latter, you even get the warm feeling that comes from funding the East Turkestan independence movement.

Regarding the continued toilet bowl-circling of the US: yes. Nice while it lasted; glad I have my escape hatch.

January 23, 2008 @ 12:26 am | Comment

Richard is absolutely right!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n3g5lUgkWk&feature=related

Us dollars’ been falling —Jan 22, 2008 US Market crash begins — Yen, Euro, RMB rising!

January 23, 2008 @ 12:28 am | Comment

It’s a good thing Richard is hiding out in Asia then, with his RMB salary, self acclaimed China expert status that he can sell off to unsuspecting rubes from the States, shagging much-too-easy Chinese girls and laughing it up, slapping his buddies’ backs in the expat bar in Beijing.

Party on and stay forever!

January 23, 2008 @ 3:21 am | Comment

The CCP should stop aggressive foreign speculators from buying up too many assets. Let them sink into the world of shit they created.

January 23, 2008 @ 3:58 am | Comment

shagging much-too-easy Chinese girls and laughing it up

richard isn’t one of those people. he’s one of the few western expats in China that are decent people.

not the fat, disgusting, boorish assholes who bloviate loudly about “easy chinese girls” and “easy chinese money”; spreading STDs and genetic pollution while destabilizing the economy and empowering corrupt officials.

those types make me consider “axe-murderer” as a career path.

January 23, 2008 @ 4:09 am | Comment

those types make me consider “axe-murderer” as a career path.

How about DEXTER of China? Instead of killing criminals that cannot be punished by law, you begin killing bad expats in China. Man, that could be a good TV show for China…

January 23, 2008 @ 4:50 am | Comment

I for one haven’t seen any willed ignorance. I honestly find economic news somewhat boring, and have been struggling to find anything on the news besides this market dive. Optimism has not been the word of the day.
In that sense, I feel even prouder to live in a country that can honestly admit and discuss problems when they appear. The Shanghai stock market is a farce.
I personally would not recommend depending on RMB over the next decade. But then again, I’m just a flaky social science dude, so don’t necessarily take my word on that- but then again, any economy is affected greatly by its social base…

January 23, 2008 @ 5:46 am | Comment

I doubt China would/will emerge from any American meltdown unscathed. The US and the Middle Kingdom are entangled in a real “folie a deux”, the unsustainable contradictions in the one having previously propped up the contradictions in the other (as alluded to in your post prior to this one).

But with one end starting to unravel, I don’t think it will be pretty for either side. And besides, weren’t excessive liquidity, cheap credit and dubious lending practices invented in post-Mao China?

As for the American situation, it’s unfortunate to see Wall Stree…uhh, I mean the Fed scurrying about and the Bush administration waking up after 8 years (!) like everything had been fine up to this point. The usual talk about stimulating consumer spending and priming the great credit machine once again smacks of tired ideology, destroyed credibility and an exhausted economic model: it’s sort of like scrambling to save an overdosing drug addict with another hit. Yeah, that’s exactly what everyone needs.

In the longer term, I hope this meltdown brings the focus of economic activity back down to earth, one less dependent on wild asset bubbles, deficit spending and ethereal financial dealings that add little to no value to the society at large (but of course line the pockets of the already tremendously wealthy).

It would be nice if this meltdown put to bed the idea that the whims of Wall Street are somehow synonymous with the needs of the American economy or Americans at large. Imagine if financial activity returned to servicing a real economy, as opposed to being the economy.

One can always dream.

January 23, 2008 @ 5:53 am | Comment

PB, excellent comment. China would get scathed, no doubt about it – but not nearly as totally and as deeply as America. That’s a key point of the article: if we could go back knowing what we know now, China would almost certainly do exactly what it did, but America would not. China gained too much, even with the scathing, while America will be set back for years if not generations.

SinaSchmuck, I’ll leave that comment up only as a testament to your complete and total ignorance as to who I am. It proves you’ve never even read this site. Now excuse me while I head to the expat bar, where all my friends know I hang out nonstop.

Kevin, I say willful ignorance based on my watching of CNBC (just listen to what crackhed Larry Kudlow is saying) and talking with people I know in the US who see this as a temporary blip the Federal Reserve can fix by flushing th system with credit. Too late.

January 23, 2008 @ 8:14 am | Comment

Right, at some point throwing newly printed money at the symptoms doesn’t work any more. As the printing of the money is the problem itself. Might be we reached that point. Seems it will be a rather bumpy ride the next years. Good luck everybody!

January 23, 2008 @ 8:51 am | Comment

Except from the tiny voice from people like Paul Krugman, there were hardly any real admission or discussion of the problems causing the current crisis. Some people probably knew about what was ahead, but chose not to talk about it, for example, for selfish reason, as there are lots of money to be made.

Never feel sorry about the wall street people. Even when fired, big firm CEOs get hundreds of million dollars in severance package.

January 23, 2008 @ 9:12 am | Comment

Also, relate this financial crisis with the current war. With about one trillion spent there and more to come, it is meaningless to talk about the success or failure of the surge.

January 23, 2008 @ 9:17 am | Comment

Hey, Kevin; economics IS a social science! (but with math).

The market is well overdue for a thumping, especially when you know how much is connected to or invested in all that shoddy real-estate financing. The world economies and markets are “recoupling” (they were never as decoupled as advertised anyway). Notice the $ isn’t dropping along with stocks. I think it means essentially that most currencies are losing value at the same speed.

I had a wild guess that the $ would settle its long-term slide agains the euro at around $1.50, near where it is now, but if the new fed chief REALLY decides to sol ve the bad loan problem by making more reckless lending possible (looks like they’re headed that way), then cancel that bet.

I am not an economist, nor do I play one on TV, but I’ve been in the markets 30 years

By the way, did you know that Paul Krugman has accurately predicted 11 of the last 3 recessions?

January 23, 2008 @ 9:54 am | Comment

Krugman has been spot-on about the housing bubble and its unraveling effect on the economy (as have I, of course). No one’s perfect, but his track record seems pretty solid.

Rest assured, Sam et. al., this is no ordinary correction; we are witnessing a slowdown that will affect each of our lives in some way for years to come, as did the recessions of the late 60’s and 70’s. We are also seeing serious inflation so expect the misery to be compounded. The misery won’t be the stock market, which I expect will recover and do okay in the long term. It will be the daily lives of tens of millions of Americans who will have to downsize their dreams and ambitions, and maybe sell their homes for a faction of what they ever imagined. This is largely thanks to our moron president’s idea of the “ownership society,” where government gets off the backs of banks and businesses and lets them ruin the lives of ordinary citizens through what amounts to nothing short of a scam, an outright fraud with the devil in the tiny fine print that most normal people could never understand. Alan Greenspan shares the blame. To hell with the lot of them. You only wonder how they ever thought it would go on forever. They’ve totally fucked themselves, the sole source of satisfaction of this entire grim story. The banks fucked themselves, and now the banks – via the Big Daddy of banks, the Fed – will bail them out. With your taxpayer dollars. Welcome to America.

January 23, 2008 @ 10:43 am | Comment

“The CCP should stop aggressive foreign speculators from buying up too many assets. Let them sink into the world of shit they created.”

Why? More to the point, what assets have your paymasters allowed foreign speculators to ‘buy up’?

January 23, 2008 @ 11:33 am | Comment

@Richard,

How do you figure that China would fare better than the US when China’s social situation is much more dire than the US’s? The US had something like 33% unemployment during the Great Depression and Roosevelt halted civil unrest by freezing evictions and foreclosures and with food/fuel/water handouts.

Beijing has long lost the ability to control its far flung local officials and PLA officers who control their little fiefdoms with guns and gangs.
The US may go down, but we’ll still be able to eat, drink clean water and have roofs over our heads. We did this before.

China couldn’t even keep itself together during its highlight years under Sun Zhong Shan.

January 23, 2008 @ 2:36 pm | Comment

@nanheyangrouchuan

America went through a depression in the 1930s, when the people weren’t spoiled to death by mass consumerism, fifty years of economic growth, and easy money. The Chinese have suffered untold misery for the past sixty years, and only recently have they begun to recover and rise again. They know what suffering is, and they know what to do in case of suffering. I’d place my bets on China in case of a depression. China knows what to do. They are capable of cutting spending, they are capable of created ingenious ways to live with less, and they have much more grass root power than Americans. In the 1970s, China practically went without oil in a mostly-agricultural society and still managed to sustain a billion people. I’m sure they will manage fine with the infrastructure they have developed in the past thirty years.

But watch out for America. When Americans find that Walmart has closed, they won’t know what to do. Most Americans don’t know how to grow food. They have no experience doing so. America will suffer much more than China if is suffers a depression the likes it suffered in the 1930s. To think otherwise is to be ridiculously deluded into thinking in terms black and white, in terms of racial or national superiority, when these things matter none. It is experience that matters. And China has it… America does not.

January 23, 2008 @ 2:51 pm | Comment

Oy vey.

The Asian stock markets rise and fall according to their perceptions of the American economy. We are all in an interconnected, increasingly complicated dance here. A recession/depression in the US is going to create a lot of pain in China as well.

We’d better hope for new leadership in the States with some economic chops and innovative ideas, for everyone’s sake.

January 23, 2008 @ 4:00 pm | Comment

don’t be so glum: your quaint and cute accented cousins over the atlantic finished 2% up yesterday! germany was static….it is not all doom and gloom so chin up, old bean!

i can’t see this as asia’s century as yet: i think the us will rebound strongly – they have a greater level of education and talent overall and a positive can do attitude. i don’t think the us people are too spoiled – putting your shoulder to the grindstone when the going gets tough appears to be a very strong and admirable part of us culture

china’s fate seems very much linked to the us – note the freefall of the shanghai and hang seng markets….a lot of people have placed their savings in there. talking about china’s reserves – they are in us$, which is in freefall. there is a good article here (i think i found it on eswn)

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/foreign/richardspencer/jan08/economicriseofchina.htm

china, i fear, cannot due to the strong likelihood of the country fracturing in the face of a severe economic downturn. they already have enough problems with pollution, water and so on which they have been unable to effectively deal with during the good times. i hope i am wrong because as much as i dislike (or rather hate and often rant about) the ccp and a lot of chinese chauvinism this will cripple ordinary people who are just trying to get along. the ccp people will end up scot free or swinging from a lamp post in event of a collapse. the nearest this comes to reality the sadder i feel. it all reminds me of the floods in the uk last year – lots of people moaning they hadn’t replaced the carpet yet and were still living in a mobile home. ok, this is terrible, but then we saw images of flooding in bangladesh – puts it all in perspective.

January 23, 2008 @ 4:34 pm | Comment

Si, check my comments carefully – I say clearly that this is not about the stock market. The markets will do okay (though I’d steer clear of most stocks right now because of insane volatility). The damage is to our entire financial system, battered by a perfect storm of multiple sources: a double-front war that is bleeding us, the sub-prime crisis which is unprecedented in scope, the crash of the dollar and a new threat of inflation. When banks won’t lend, and when consumers won’t buy, and when the economy bleeds we are in deep, deep trouble .There is no way out except for a steady downward path for America. Does anyone want to place bets?

January 23, 2008 @ 5:27 pm | Comment

“With your taxpayer dollars. Welcome to America.”Richard

That’d be US$11,500 per person or US$46,000 per American household of four. And that’s only for sharing the war cost of 3.5 Trillion dollars.

“The damage is to our entire financial system, battered by a perfect storm of multiple sources: a double-front war.”

The US middle class is fucked while the Millionaires go on to be billionaires and billionaires to trillionaires.

January 23, 2008 @ 7:12 pm | Comment

We are all in an interconnected, increasingly complicated dance here.

I’m thinking people are getting wary of relying too much on any one market now. Japan, Taiwan and South Korea didn’t have much of a choice in the past, anyway.

The US may go down, but we’ll still be able to eat, drink clean water and have roofs over our heads. We did this before.

Worse comes to worse, they can “afford” to have 5-10% of the population die. You’d like that, but China should have no problems feeding itself if it wants to spend the money on it; rather than service corrupt officials and their foreign buddies.

Instead, if they choose to pull the plug the U.S will start waning slightly faster. It will still be a superpower, and a great power in the long term, just not as much of one in a relative sense.

they have a greater level of education and talent overall

Sorry, this is a definite no. Have you seen the new generation here? They have the can do attitude but very little talent or intelligence. For reasons I’m not going to bother to explain, the U.S is getting stupider and stupider every year. This is somewhat countered by an improving society, but in the end it won’t be enough.

Why? More to the point, what assets have your paymasters allowed foreign speculators to ‘buy up’?

Blacks and other non-whites weren’t allowed to buy property in America for hundreds of years last I checked. I don’t see why the CCP can’t learn from the enlightened West on this issue.

January 23, 2008 @ 7:16 pm | Comment

I’d probably take a substantial bet, assuming we can agree on very specific metrics. “affecting our lives for years to come” isn’t exactly measurable. I’d accept actual GDP numbers, some accepted index of house values, or something like that.

I think your view is overly apocalyptic, as usual, but I’ve been wrong before (usually in the other direction—I’m usually the one expecting more doom than really comes to pass).

But house prices have been rising around 10% for many years, while inflation was 3%, so we’re probably still 20-25% above equilibrium pricing with *rational* lending. I can’t even remember who talked about “wilful ignorance”, but that’s pretty silly considering that folks’ homes AND retirement plans are shrinking in value. THAT gets Americans’ attention. Hard to pin it on Bush, when virtually the same situation exists in England.

Likewise, there are more heads yet to roll in the financial industries. But no, I don’t see this as particularly unique. Heads rolled at Enron after that crisis, Michael Milken went to prison after the junk-bond crisis. And I really doubt this is a long-term crisis, though real-estate slumps do take longer to unwind than stock-market jitters. That inventory is really slow to move.

But hey, for a while, people on McDonald’s salaries thought they were able to afford McMansions, and the people packaging the loans made bucks on fees, and banks and funds thought they were getting high yield. So normally, the market eventually forces the participants to pay for such dumb decisions; the loan officers have to wait tables, the people who could only afford a chicken coop give up the mansion, and the stock speculators in certain financial stocks take a bath. Bailing them all out only defers the penalty for bad decisions, at best.

I guess part of what I’m saying is that we SHOULD have a recession in the US. It’s overdue. It’s normal to have a shakeout to correct excesses: what’s NOT normal is these decades-long periods without a setback.

I would place a bet on two quarters, max, of negative GDP growth. How’s that sound?

Ferin; my kids’ generation is around 30, and they seem pretty brilliant to me, do you mean a younger set?

January 23, 2008 @ 7:26 pm | Comment

and they seem pretty brilliant to me

If you want to see brilliant you should see South Korea. But yes, I definitely do mean the younger set. My set; the 18-20s.

January 23, 2008 @ 7:37 pm | Comment

i have discussed before what i perceived as the shortcomings of the chinese education and typical students when i worked there, which ended with ferin charmingly supplying a link to a wikipedia article on bestiality. suffice to say i believe there is no comparison to be had between the chinese education system and one in any developed country in terms of the end result.

having said that i’d be interested in ferin expounding on “For reasons I’m not going to bother to explain, the U.S is getting stupider and stupider every year. This is somewhat countered by an improving society, but in the end it won’t be enough.” and also why he considers korean students to be brilliant. (i am not being disingeneous, i know nothing of korea so would be interested)

@richard

i defer to your greater knowledge and missed the point about the stock market. nevertheless, the whole banks won’t lent and consumers won’t buy is not necessarily the end of the world. things can be done about that. remember dubya is out of office in a year and there will be an opportunity to do something about it. thank god this is happening now and not one or two years ago.

i agree with sam_s certainly people will get stung and there should be a recession. personally i am happy to see a downturn in the markets, because without a housing market collapse here in the uk of between 30 (minimum) and 50% (preferable and preferably more) i will never be able to get on the housing ladder.

i am also of the around 30 set and am not overly concerned with the ability of the people to turn this around.

January 23, 2008 @ 9:23 pm | Comment

“Blacks and other non-whites weren’t allowed to buy property in America for hundreds of years last I checked. I don’t see why the CCP can’t learn from the enlightened West on this issue.”

Wow!! Way to lose direction and respect at the same time, ferin. While we’re free-associating, let’s try this:

Sixty years ago, while China was still binding the feet of women, India gained independence from British rule. China invaded India in 1963, the same year Kennedy was assassinated. Democratic candidate Obama has drawn comparisons with Kennedy and hopes to become America’s first black president. Obama lives in a house. It’s his house; he owns it. He’s seriously thinking about trading it in for a new white one. Perhaps he’ll invite the Dalai Lama round for tea and take a message from His Holiness to Beijing. While in Beijing Obama might try to buy an apartment. Of course Beijing will refuse to allow this. Obama will then reflect that his great grandfather was not allowed to own property, and that China has a long, long way to go. He then asks himself: “I wonder if they still bind the feet of women?”

January 23, 2008 @ 10:48 pm | Comment

I’m still on the fence about which country emerges less mangled by the current China/US embrace. While the United States is currently fathoming the nastiness of a financial meltdown, if we move away from the money/debt perspective it becomes apparent that China has received a pretty short end of the stick as well.

Think about it: the country has basically poisoned itself, ravaged its own environment for years to come, to satisfy the consumers of a pseudo-enemy. Why? I think it comes down to the simple matter of the CCP being fundamentally afraid of its own people. They fear that any genuine economic liberation will mean the end to their own power (and they are probably right). And so they rumble on with this strange state capitalism machine which is at once rigid and out of control, generating great wealth but leaving much of China (and many Chinese) in a sad, dirty heap.

Sometimes I feel China’s development is built on top of the Chinese, not with them or for them. And I find that very sad. The Chinese state has tons of money, more than it knows what to do with, and that makes it all the more shocking to realize how decrepit health/education/life still are in such large swaths of China. That’s the trade-off you get when every two-bit official is building a replica of Las Vegas in his backyard.

The biggest threat to the prospering of China is not a lack of wealth but its tremendous misallocation, straight into the pockets of party cronies and ill-considered political mega-projects.

As for the argument as to who would be better of in some back-to-agriculture recession, here are my two cents. Sure, many Americans (like many other people) have become lazy and complacent, ignorant of anything beyond how to turn a TV on or start the car. But people are nothing if not extremely adaptable, and all it would take in the US would be real leadership to encourage people through hard times, and put the strong American sense of patriotism to good use. Americans, despite popular belief, as a nation are not afraid to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty. Look at the fine young men who go off to die for their country in a pointless war.

Obviously, that sort of genuine leadership will not be coming until 2009 at the earliest. Thank god for democracy, even in its corporate media-filtered form!

As for China, well sure the vast majority of Chinese have been much closer to harsh conditions and economic misery in their own lifetime than your average American. Chinese people came across to me as extremely industrious, clever and willing to make do with what’s available. I’m sure many of them remember how to farm. There is just one problem: what land are they going to go back to? The development frenzy has paved over half the country, replacing prime arable land with 5-star hotels and Barbie manufacturing plants. The most prevalent rural crops in China these days seems to be hastily built high-rises. Oops. Not a very long-term agricultural policy.

Above all, a deep recession or economic turmoil in China would probably mean the demise of the CCP- look at the social unrest that’s already bubbling up during the “good times”. They’ve very questionably banked their legitimacy on the possibility of a perpetual, frothy economic boom, so with that goes what little faith is left in them. But for China’s long-term prospects (and long-term I mean 50-100 years), that is perhaps not such a bad thing.
Of course, in the short term, that means things could get nasty.

January 23, 2008 @ 11:45 pm | Comment

“Blacks and other non-whites weren’t allowed to buy property in America for hundreds of years last I checked”

That’s a load of bull. In my city there is a black guy living on an entire city block of untended land that his grandfather homesteaded after the civil war. Even before the indepdence from England non-whites were allowed to own land.

January 23, 2008 @ 11:57 pm | Comment

PB,

you really have no idea what you are talking about. I would say economics is not really a comparative advantage of this blog.

January 24, 2008 @ 3:18 am | Comment

In my city there is a black guy living on an entire city block of untended land

Wow he must be rich. Was he a freedman?

a deep recession or economic turmoil in China would probably mean the demise of the CCP-

As far as I can tell, the CCP as it was is dying off. If you mean the monumentally corrupt, genocidal and incompetent government they were in the past to the moderately genocidal and incompetent bunch they are now.

January 24, 2008 @ 3:30 am | Comment

@PB

Great comment! I wish I could put things into perspective the way you just did.

@fatbrick

No offense meant, but I think you are the one who really has no idea what he is talking about.

“I would say economics is not really a comparative advantage of this blog.”

What’s that supposed to mean?

January 24, 2008 @ 5:22 am | Comment

fatbrick,

Thanks for the constructive criticism. You are right, “economics” in its narrow academic sense is neither my specialty nor strength- but then again, my posts weren’t really about that sort of economics in the first place. You don’t have to be a PhD in quant analysis to know things these days are pretty f-cked, to put it lightly.

Sorry for having an opinion you don’t agree with. Around here, that happens sometimes.

January 24, 2008 @ 7:04 am | Comment

Supporting the notion that we are all, for better or worse, in this together, read Andrew Leonard’s excellent post at Salon, “The Rate Cut Heard Around the World.

January 24, 2008 @ 7:58 am | Comment

@ferins:

This guy’s grandfather picked up the land right around the time my state was admitted to the union, and at that time the KKK controlled it.

Here’s a link about black American homesteading, which occurred well before the civil war:

loc.gov/exhibits/african/afam009.html

And depending on the state during slavery in the South, blacks could own land down there. This was especially common in more liberal slave states like Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia.

January 24, 2008 @ 9:04 am | Comment

Why are you guys talking about African Americans owning land? I would say you have been led onto a nifty little tangent.

January 24, 2008 @ 9:46 am | Comment

“Why are you guys talking about African Americans owning land? I would say you have been led onto a nifty little tangent.”

Yes, you’re right. It’s an established tactic used by CCP cronies on blogs like this to deflect attention away from the real issue. They’re very good at it. Ferin graduated top of his class in topic-swerving.

January 24, 2008 @ 11:38 am | Comment

Hardly. The CCP salivates all over itself when it thinks about selling Chinese land to scheming lowlives like yourself.

Deflecting from the topic at hand? When America gets squeezed some of its human garbage will no doubt float abroad. And there’s no better place to corrupt and pollute than modern China.

January 24, 2008 @ 12:17 pm | Comment

Hardly. The CCP salivates all over itself when it thinks about selling Chinese land to scheming lowlives like yourself.

Deflecting from the topic at hand? When America gets squeezed some of its human garbage will no doubt float abroad. And there’s no better place to corrupt and pollute than modern China.

January 24, 2008 @ 12:18 pm | Comment

Market please crash…I just spent 20% of my portfolio on SDS reverse index! Go down 30% by next year please…

January 24, 2008 @ 12:19 pm | Comment

I’m also infinitely amused by the pathetic cop-out argument offered by certain posters. Anyone who disagrees with new imperialism is a communist goon, paid to police blogs that probably can’t be read in China. Convenient for your agenda.

Sorry for the double post.

January 24, 2008 @ 12:21 pm | Comment

Well, economics isn’t exactly my forte, so I won’t comment on that. I do want to single out a statement in Stuart’s second post. Amidst its incoherence is the statement about China invading India in 1963.

Perhaps people will be interested in a different perspective on the matter and read the book “India’s China War” by Neville Maxwell. For those who find books repulsive, here’s a link

http://www.gregoryclark.net/bookrev.html

January 24, 2008 @ 3:23 pm | Comment

Lisa, great article. Love the conclusion:

The decoupling thesis suggested that if the U.S. stumbled, China could keep on running. It would be lovely if this were true. It is not a happy thought to think that the welfare of hundreds of millions of poor people around the world depends on the buying power of American consumers with maxed-out credit cards teetering on the brink of foreclosure. But the jitters visible in global markets this week tell us that when the king stubs his toe, everyone starts limping.

I am in the middle of what PR people refer to as “a crisis,” so I can’t spend more than a few seconds a day on my own blog. Sam, I’ll formalize our bet later. Just remember how gung-ho you were about the war in Iraq.

January 24, 2008 @ 8:55 pm | Comment

“When America gets squeezed some of its human garbage will no doubt float abroad. And there’s no better place to corrupt and pollute than modern China.”

Another CCP mantra – if something goes badly wrong in China, foreigners are to blame. Stop foaming at the mouth, ferin, and say something sensible.

January 24, 2008 @ 9:24 pm | Comment

@stuart

i think the problem with ferin is that he is in the 18-20 bracket. you are dealing with an angry young nerd. it is sad, as he is clearly intelligent and occasionally says something and perceptive

January 24, 2008 @ 11:06 pm | Comment

This just in:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080124/ap_on_go_co/economy_stimulus

When in doubt, throw money at the problem and hope it goes away. If I believed the current administration was competent enough to have a grand conspiracy, it would involve purposefully tanking the American economy in grand style.

I would laugh, except that my country exports something like 80% of its merchandise goods to the American market (and no, I’m not talking about China).

January 25, 2008 @ 12:21 am | Comment

if something goes badly wrong in China, foreigners are to blame

Hi, you are to blame for a lot of things. Read up on some history if you ever feel like it. Obviously it’s not just the fault of foreign parasites, but pro-Western traitors as well.

Hint: Communism is not a Chinese idea

you are dealing with an angry young nerd

No, plenty of young people are more than dissatisfied with the state of the world. I don’t think I need to go in depth about how the developed countries have performed under potential at the expense of everyone else.

China really can’t afford to make the same mistakes; and the rest of the world can’t survive that. So while I dislike Mao, the CCP, and Communism I don’t think getting too close to America economically or ideologically is a good idea, either.

January 25, 2008 @ 12:34 am | Comment

@Sib;

When the US went through the GD, it experienced unparalleled growth in the 20s and before. Most Americans in the cities didn’t know how to grow food back then either and weren’t very well educated. Many boomers and Gen Xers did indeed grow up with backyard gardens and remember well the pain of the double recessions in the early 80s as well as the first waves of outsourcing in manufacturing.

And in the US, gardening has started to become popular again as a way not to specifically save money but as a way to get purely organic food and not hand money over to Big Ag.

China does have alot of experience with uprisings and unrest, it just kills people.
And China simply can’t feed its people, there is not enough water, not enough arable land and what water and land still exists is heavily polluted.

I’ll put my money on the US, we’ve already turned away from Wal mart.

January 25, 2008 @ 12:41 am | Comment

And China simply can’t feed its people, there is not enough water, not enough arable land and what water and land still exists is heavily polluted.

If it comes down to China dying of thirst and starvation, what do you think their options would be? They’ll ask for help of course, and if none comes they’ll select 30-60 million people to herd into death camps; probably Austroasiatic, Scythian-Tibetan, and Caucasoid minorities first. The Christians, mentally deficient and physically disabled as well as the elderly would be next.

Then after the political fallout they would be forced to align themselves with far right Islamists, Southeast Asian communists and murderous African regimes.

Americans dream of forcing, enabling, or enticing the CCP to regress or further its evil.

January 25, 2008 @ 12:53 am | Comment

Ferin, I’m not sure why you think “Americans dream of forcing, enabling, or enticing the CCP to regress,” etc. There’s a certain faction in America that engages in China-bashing; there is currently a lot of public uneasiness about the quality of Chinese goods due to recent product safety scandals; there is the status quo that depends on and profits from the intertwining of the American and Chinese economies.

A Chinese collapse is something that very few people wish for; it would be a disaster that would have impacts far beyond China’s borders.

January 25, 2008 @ 1:41 am | Comment

“It’s Asia’s century.”

No more banal words have ever been said.

January 25, 2008 @ 2:41 am | Comment

The statement “It’s Asia’s century.” at a time when this century we are talking about is only eight years old, is very bold to say the least.

January 25, 2008 @ 3:00 am | Comment

If it was 30 or 50 years into this century, then a prediction would not be needed any more.

January 25, 2008 @ 5:48 am | Comment

Maybe a recession is exactly what the US needs now. People have gone wild for way too long; it is time for a reality check and it is good for the country.

This recession should have happened long time ago, at the end of the dot-com bubble. Greenspan suppressed it. And it is now becoming a bigger one.

It feels good to see the value of your house going up; but for the sake of your children and future generations, isn’t it nice for the price to drop; or they will be like a slave working hard for a house all their life.

January 25, 2008 @ 6:14 am | Comment

@Si

“i think the problem with ferin is that he is in the 18-20 bracket. you are dealing with an angry young nerd. it is sad, as he is clearly intelligent and occasionally says something and perceptive”

Yes. You’re right. We must forgive his teenage angst. In time he may develop sufficiently to be trusted with live ammo.

January 25, 2008 @ 6:22 am | Comment

“It’s Asia’s century.”

‘No more banal words have ever been said.’

I think any statement ending “…with Chinese characteristics” can top that.

January 25, 2008 @ 6:29 am | Comment

This is from a friend full of faith and hope ….”the harsh reality is that what happens to and in America has a ripple affect across the world. that’s the load of a super power. if americans stopped shopping as much as we do, stopped driving as much as we do, stopped eating and drinking as much as we do, it would probably cause an economic crisis of unprecedented proportion.

But here’s the thing: there is a quiet revolution happening in this nation. For real. The mindset that bigger is better and more is good is dying out with the baby boomers. It’ll be a while, I think, before this quiet revolution manifests to the surface. The boomers are coming into their hour of glory. There are more people over 50 in the US now than ever before. These are people who by and large are modernistic and nationalistic in their thinking. They did not grow up with the internet. They did not go through their highly impressionable teenaged years having newscasts and podcasts about global warming and world trade injustice. The boomers did not have emails like this one showing up when they were in their idealistic twenties or more disillusioned thirties and forties. Nope. They are in their fifties and beyond and they have a helluva lot money and clout. But in a couple of decades they’ll lose strength and power and the so-called millennium generation will take the baton of power. These are the folks who are computer junkies, techno-literate, experiencing on a daily basis how much the world has shrunk when they can myspace their friend a continent away.

We live in truly interesting times.” P.H. Washington State.

January 25, 2008 @ 9:00 am | Comment

Good objective writing at PB’s blog.

Check it out:

“Pretending the world is an orderly place of neatly divided nation-states might make for some colorful maps, but it doesn’t help us realize the transnational consequences of our own actions. It allows for countries like the US and Canada to claim that China “needs to do more” while conveniently papering over our own fundamental complicity in its mess. It is quite sobering to realize that a major portion of China’s devastating ecological footprint in fact belongs to us North Americans, swelling our already immense impact on the planet. We fight tooth and nail to get our corporate fingers into every global nook and cranny, to hellishly industrialize other places for our own benefit- and then get to blame other governments for everything because there are supposedly in complete control. That’s a pretty good deal.” PB

Well said, PB.

January 25, 2008 @ 9:26 am | Comment

It is “Asia’s century” – Asia’s, not just China. This is a pretty well accepted fact and it’s all right there in front of our faces. There are few stories in history as startling as the rapid rise of India and China (Russia under Putin is up there, too), coupled with a steady decline of influence for America. We still have enormous influence and always will, but in relative terms our’s is diminishing, theirs is growing. That will not change much in our lifetimes.

January 25, 2008 @ 10:12 am | Comment

@Richard,

Problem is, China likes to assume it is Asia and that the rest of Asia should fall in line behind it. It is in the interest of the world at large to make sure that the rest of Asia is on a level playing ground lest the monsters of zhongnanhai turn the sphere of co- prosperity into reality.

January 25, 2008 @ 11:20 am | Comment

I wouldn’t sell the Boomers short. It’s an awfully big generation. Keep in mind that Boomers pioneered “small is beautiful,” organic food, alternative lifestyles, protested the first televised war, etc.

January 25, 2008 @ 12:40 pm | Comment

“This is a pretty well accepted fact”

That’s what makes your statement of that “fact” so banal. That’s what banality is.

January 25, 2008 @ 12:48 pm | Comment

a lot of public uneasiness about the quality of Chinese goods

That would be expected, since you have the non-stop media smears. Mainstream American news sources remind me of CCTV, only more glitzy. I guess Bobbob Bo’Bob Bobcleetus Bobjohnson Junior thinks two dollars at Walmart should buy flawless products. Of course, if Mattel wanted to design decent toys every now and then and factory slave drivers wanted to pay their slaves more than 1-2 yuan an hour they’d get somewhere.

it would probably cause an economic crisis of unprecedented proportion.

It could, if the vacuum that ensued were replaced by people doing nothing at all. The main problem with American consumerism is that they don’t exactly select the best stuff to consume.

India and China (Russia

Might as well not call it “Asia” then, as India and China are essentially separate “worlds” in a sense. If you had 600-800 million Chinese and Indians each entering developed status, they’d contribute a global dynamic equal in scale to all the current first world countries combined.

turn the sphere of co- prosperity into reality.

Evoking Showa Japan to describe modern China. A++ yellow peril sensationalism.

January 25, 2008 @ 1:01 pm | Comment

“It is “Asia’s century” – Asia’s, not just China. This is a pretty well accepted fact and it’s all right there in front of our faces.”

Accepted by whom? How can it already be a fact, when the century you are talking about has just started? Your prediction might be right, but you sound like you can look into the future. Let’s wait and see, if India and China can sort out their social, demographical, environmental, etc. problems before they collapse.

January 25, 2008 @ 2:52 pm | Comment

You guys worry too much.

China and India still got more problems than US does.

Even with strong economy development, I don’t see Asia to surpass the US. Unless there is a great advancement in technology, and the US has been completely left out. It could happen but not likely…

January 25, 2008 @ 3:14 pm | Comment

“Just remember how gung-ho you were about the war in Iraq”

Note: being extremely critical of the more foaming-at-the mouth critics does not equal gung-ho in favor.

Question: What the hell would that have to do with betting on the shape of the next recession?

January 25, 2008 @ 4:12 pm | Comment

ferin, come on. I doubt if many non-Chinese people on this board are as positive about China as I am, but if you can’t admit that there are huge problems in quality control of Chinese goods, then you really aren’t seeing things clearly. I’m not letting American corporations or regulatory agencies off the hook, but this is a very real problem, and if you ask Zhou on the street, he/she will most likely agree.

China is trying to build a rule of law on the fly; there is a lack of transparency, of accountability and most importantly, of trust. None of this is surprising given recent Chinese history. It’s going to take a tremendous amount of work and dedication to build a society where people have some trust in the institutions that govern their lives, given the wrenching political changes that have taken place the last few hundred years.

January 25, 2008 @ 4:29 pm | Comment

@ferin

“you are to blame for a lot of things”

what, me personally? if i am to blame for imperialism, slavery etc. etc. then you must ask for my ageing and longevity tips.

you are assuming that i am a white anglo saxon protestant, aren’t you? chuckle chuckle

china and india have too many problems to deal with for it to be asia’s century. try the 22nd, not the 21st. of course relative us power will go down, not just because of rising asian stars but possibly also as mainland europe becomes closer together.

January 25, 2008 @ 4:34 pm | Comment

mor, I put up a link to show you who it was accepted by, including professors, writers and officials at:

Wharton Business School
Time magazine
UCLA
The US State Department
Robert D. Blackwill, Ambassador to India
International Herald Tribune
Japan Today…and countless others.

Of course, none of this proves it is Asia’s century. But based on what I have seen with my own eyes and my own experience, I know it is true. Others may disagree, but I’ve come to realize more and more each year that I am nearly always right. Amazing.

January 25, 2008 @ 7:35 pm | Comment

” I put up a link to show you who it was accepted by, including professors, writers and officials at:

Time magazine….”

Oh, well there you go. Time magazine is, well, Time magazine.

In 1942, LIFE magazine (an affiliate of Time magazine) published a full page spread of Lenin’s photo and called Lenin “perhaps the most important man of the century”, which was a bit premature considering that the century was less than half over, and Russian Communism would be dead by 1991.

That’s what I mean by “banal”, Richard. Breathess predictions about entire continents and centuries, made when a century has barely begun, are banal.

January 25, 2008 @ 9:08 pm | Comment

I know, I’m just a banal guy. What can I do? As I said, it doesn’t matter what Time says, I come to my own conclusions based on my experience. I posted those links to indicate this notion, Asia’s century, is not a new one, but simply a matter of fact.

January 25, 2008 @ 10:55 pm | Comment

china and india have too many problems to deal with for it to be asia’s century.

Do you really think India and China will still be developing in 2070 or even 2050? I think people really overestimate the chance for “collapse”. Indians and Chinese have been dealing with upheaval and misery for a long time; to them, their lives are getting slightly better each year even if there are new problems introduced by modernization.

January 25, 2008 @ 11:27 pm | Comment

Last time I said inflation but not politics was the deep reason for 89, somebody here just did not understand.

However, this time it won’t be that bad. They are in a good position to use government spending to keep employment up. For inflation, it is more complicated, since energy and food prices are somehow not solely subject to China to change.

January 26, 2008 @ 1:08 am | Comment

Ferin, I’ve never been to India. But China is certain to still be developing in 2050 or 2070. Anyone who says otherwise hasn’t left a major coastal city for a while.
Even the supreme nationalist blowhard Deng Xiaoping recognized how long it would take China to “continue developing.”
In my opinion, the assertion of an Asian Century, or of the benefits of being paid in RMB, are amazingly shortsighted… but all I can really say with certainty at the moment is “different strokes for different folks”

January 26, 2008 @ 1:16 pm | Comment

Furthermore, I would like to point to the drastic rise in the price of living in China in 2007, which was nearly three times the rise of 2006. Even the Party ball-lickers at CCTV have acknowledged the pressures created by the rising price of food.

While many expats are able to enjoy their pay in RMB for one reason in another, those doubly unfortunate enough to have been born citizens of the CCP party-state and to have been cast off by their “screw-you-and-your-commune-workin’- mama-too” economic reforms are certainly less than impressed with the often ridiculous rises in pork prices over the past year.

While millions worry about their ability to purchase pork, we worry about losses in capital gains… As a student (and thus not particularly upper class), I still don’t feel the current recession (stipends remain quite steady as always), but I can be sure that if I return to China, it will be more expensive than it was when I left nearly a year ago. And while it does not matter at all to me, or to you, this is a situation that does really matter to the millions who have been laid off or otherwise screwed over by the iron rice bowls to which they dedicated their entire lives.

This is not to say that all is fine and dandy in the US. But I really no longer feel any enthusiasm for earning a buck off of this distorted Chinese reform process presided over by the gun.

January 26, 2008 @ 4:11 pm | Comment

Dear Richard,

Which of the institutions you listed was able, in the year 1908, to predict the major developments that would happen during the 20th century? Cause that would sort of back up their claim that they are able to say whose century the 21st will be? How can a century belong to a continent, anyway?
Thinking about it, which of the institutions you listed was able to predict the economic crash in South-East Asia in the nineties?
How do we know that this amazing boom in India, China and other parts of Asia isn’t over it’s peak already?
I guess, back in 1808, there were also people who predicted that the 19th century was going to be France’s? And at the beginning of the 20th century there were people who seriously thought that great wars in Europe were a thing of the past.

“Others may disagree, but I’ve come to realize more and more each year that I am nearly always right. Amazing.”

I’m afraid I won’t live long enough to see if you are right about “Asia’s century”.

By the way, ferin(s), if India and China stop developing in 2050, it’s certainly not going to be their century.

P.S.: I hope that 2008 will be MY year, but I fear somebody else has already taken it.

January 26, 2008 @ 8:10 pm | Comment

The 20th century was America’s century. The 21st is Asia’s. I don’t care about what those institutions say; I was just trying to make the point that this was not some unique notion I have; Asia is rising, as hackneyed and trite as that slogan may sound. America is declining; I hope it’s a temporary decline, but think it will probably last at least a decade. The pendulum keeps swinging. Right now the deck appears (to me) stacked in Asia’s favor. I think we’ll all agree I was right in a surprisingly short time.

January 26, 2008 @ 10:45 pm | Comment

Lincoln Steffens visited Stalin’s Russia in the 1930s and said, “I have seen the future, and it works.”

That’s not just sloganeering. It’s magical thinking.

January 26, 2008 @ 11:44 pm | Comment

Time will tell, won’t it? We can find all sorts of predictions, some that were accurate, others that weren’t. I think I’m right, but that’s what makes horse races.

January 26, 2008 @ 11:59 pm | Comment

Hm, well Richard if you say “time will tell”, then that’s a welcome change from the categorical way in which you stated your prediction as a “fact.”

By the way, I notice that just in the last half hour or so a comment made after mine suddenly disappeared. That commenter mentioned that her
previous comment had disappeared too. But her comment didn’t seem to me to be personally hostile, certainly a lot less hostile than I ever am. So what’s going on, if I may ask?

January 27, 2008 @ 12:35 am | Comment

“Hm, well Richard if you say “time will tell”, then that’s a welcome change from the categorical way in which you stated your prediction as a “fact.””

That sort of was my point.

Using the horse race analogy, the Chinese horse seems to be on dope which means it might win because of an unfair advantage, but it’s also possible that it breaks down and dies of an overdose, before the race is finished.

January 27, 2008 @ 1:37 am | Comment

If someone feels they need to put up post after post on their blog attacking me, more power to them. Seriously. That’s the beauty of free speech – each of us can run our respective blogs exactly the way we choose. But I never have to give that person a platform on my own blog, ever. I expect that to generate yet another post on said blog, where site traffic is far higher than my own and the comments more voluminous, but I can deal with that.

Mor, no disagreements there. Anything can happen, as history tells us. I think I know where things will go, but I’ve been wrong before, albeit very rarely.

January 27, 2008 @ 1:49 am | Comment

China is certain to still be developing in 2050 or 2070. Anyone who says otherwise hasn’t left a major coastal city for a while.

South Korea was a third world country in the 50s, right now they’re close to Europe and Japan. China started developing later so they will catch up faster, and they actually have natural resources and land unlike Japan or Korea.

The rest is just wishful thinking.

How do we know that this amazing boom in India, China and other parts of Asia isn’t over it’s peak already

India’s economy might be overheating a bit, but China’s isn’t yet.

January 27, 2008 @ 5:24 am | Comment

America will remain strong not because it has always been strong, but because it is and will remain a country of innovation and freedom and one of the places top people from around the world want to be. Do not mistake a temporary economic downturn for a seismic shift. Remember Carter’s malaise? Asia will do fine this century but so will America.

January 27, 2008 @ 7:24 am | Comment

one of the places top people from around the world want to be

This is a plus. But you have to consider people now want to be in Australia, Canada, Europe, etc too. And many people that fled shitty countries will go back once conditions there improve.

January 27, 2008 @ 8:56 am | Comment

Dear Richard,

I hope that you are right and I mean it. China is my wife’s home country and the home country of many of my friends and, in a way, I consider it my second home, and if you are right about Asia’s, and China’s, rise this might mean good news for me, you, and a lot of people we like.

My guess is, and all we are talking about is guesswork, that China Law Blog is right: “Asia will do fine this century but so will America.” That whole division into “developed” countries and “developing” countries, first world, second world, third world, is a thing of the past. That’s what this century will most likely be about.

January 27, 2008 @ 9:09 am | Comment

CLB is a bit more optimistic about the US economy than I am. Otherwise, I don’t think our sentiments are that different. Even if American wealth and influence declines a whole lot, it’ll still be the wealthiest and most influential country in the world for a good time to come.

January 27, 2008 @ 11:04 am | Comment

With the trend of 10% growth rate in a country of a huge population year after year, it is not unreasonable to predict that this century will be a Chinese century.

Forget about the sources listed by Richard. There was a global survey conducted by an American polling company a few months ago. More people (outside the US) believed China will be more powerful and influential than the US in a few decades.

January 27, 2008 @ 1:44 pm | Comment

A few random points to add:

* From an economic standpoint, the ascendance of the US peaked at right after the WW2, when the US produced 50% of the global GDP. In a large part of the ascendant period, there was slavery/segregation, most of the people couldn’t vote and the immigration policy was outright racist. Comparing the US with other countries in the New Continent, such as Brazil and Argentina, one can’t help but agree that Max Weber’s Protestant Ethics had more to do with the success of the US, than democracy or freedom — they might’ve help Canada, but certainly not the US. Taking out the religious factors, I would put entrepreneurship, engaging in trading, saving/investment, plus emphasis on education (mine, not by Weber), are what made a country better.

* In 1960, the per capita GDP of South Korea was roughly the same as that of Philippines. Both were somewhat benign dictatorship and US allies. The major significance between the 2 was their education. From primary to high education, Korea’s stats were closing in those of developed nations, yet Philippines’ were unmistakably third-world.

* In 2008, the 18-year-olds in China will have close to 40% chance to enroll in some sort of 2- to 5-year college programs. The number isn’t that far away from the US.

* In the 60s, Japan’s growth was obscenely fast yet in the following years, the growth numbers had to be revised to even higher. If you look at China’s economic stats, a few anomalies jump out:

a. China’s GDP deflator year over year has been much larger than CPI.
b. China’s real retail growth has been faster than the real GDP growth, yet China’s consumption is supposed to be getting smaller in the overall GDP.
c. China’s CPI is getting higher than that of the US, yet China has a stronger currency & faster productivity growth. It doesn’t seem that the Chinese statisticians are taking the famous hedonic adjustments.

I will let you draw your own conclusions.

January 28, 2008 @ 2:16 am | Comment

@ferin

“South Korea was a third world country in the 50s, right now they’re close to Europe and Japan. China started developing later so they will catch up faster, and they actually have natural resources and land unlike Japan or Korea.

The rest is just wishful thinking.”

what natural resources? you mean the coal that doesn’t generate sufficient power to heat the houses in winter?

secondly, korea expanded quickly due to the largesse of the us (i know koreans like to forget this) who gave vast amounts of technology and uda to them (more than they gave to the entire african continent combined, if memory serves correctly) and guaranteed their security, meaning they didn’t have to spend huge money on their military. japan also contributed technology and money, but on a smaller scale. this, rather than education, would be the main difference between them and the philippines (assuming we also forget about the problems of running a large diverse nation of many islands, compared to that of a small homogenous perninsula state)

thirdly, korea close to europe and japan? er, have you been to europe or japan recently? certainly in terms of real gdp and ppp korea has a way to go.

“This is a plus. But you have to consider people now want to be in Australia, Canada, Europe, etc too. And many people that fled shitty countries will go back once conditions there improve.”

not if they have kids, as the kids will view the country they are born in as home. but this is a moot point, as i don’t think the brain drain is sufficiently large to be a decisive factor in economic growth.

@jxie

“In 2008, the 18-year-olds in China will have close to 40% chance to enroll in some sort of 2- to 5-year college programs. The number isn’t that far away from the US.”

yes, but the quality of education they will receive?

January 28, 2008 @ 8:26 pm | Comment

Si,

No, Egypt alone has taken in far more aids from the US than South Korea. According to my back-of-envelop calculation, from 1946 onward, South Korea was given economic and military aids from the US worth about $80 to $100 billion in 2007 dollar, spread across decades. They include the military aids during the Korean War, which in essence a hot proxy war for the US, BTW. Just for the reference, South Korea’s 2007 GDP was some $800 billion, in ONE YEAR.

It surely sounds like you are a welfare state believer. If one is successful, it must be because he took in some handouts. No no and hell no, what makes one successful is first and foremost what is inside.

yes, but the quality of education they will receive?

Don’t know how to quantify the quality of education, so it seems pretty subjective to me. But how about this:

As a businessman and an employer, I would take an average Chinese college grad over an average German college grad, any day and night.

January 30, 2008 @ 12:34 pm | Comment

@JXie

According to your “back-of-envelope calculation”? You might as well say, according to numbers you made up yourself.

“No no and hell no, what makes one successful is first and foremost what is inside.”

Inside what? Inside the wallet?

“As a businessman and an employer, I would take an average Chinese college grad over an average German college grad, any day and night.”

You are most likely neither a businessman nor an employer, but you deserve first prize for Joker of the Month at the Peking Duck.

January 30, 2008 @ 5:49 pm | Comment

Mor,

Google is a wonderful tool. In a quick search, I couldn’t find the annual breakdown numbers of US aids to South Korea. However I did find a paper that compared South Korea’s and Israel’s development and aids. The US aids to South Korea between 1946 and 1976 were total $12.6 billion (and tapering off after 1976). Have I given you enough information to search?

Now you will have to make some assumption especially on how the $12.6 billion was distributed in the early year, to come up the total inflation-adjusted number. But anyway, with back-to-the-envelope calculation, you can get a ballpark figure.

As to the rest of your post, I don’t have the desire nor the need to explain to you.

January 30, 2008 @ 8:47 pm | Comment

@JXie

“According to my back-of-envelop calculation, from 1946 onward, South Korea was given economic and military aids from the US worth about $80 to $100 billion in 2007 dollar, spread across decades.”

“The US aids to South Korea between 1946 and 1976 were total $12.6 billion (and tapering off after 1976). Have I given you enough information to search?”

“Now you will have to make some assumption especially on how the $12.6 billion was distributed in the early year, to come up the total inflation-adjusted number.”

Interesting calculation. First 12.6 billion were given “between 1946 and 1976”, then that exact amount “distributed in the early year”. And then I just “have to make some assumption” to “come up the total inflation-adjusted number” of “about $80 to $100 billion in 2007 dollar”. So that’s what’s called “back-of-envelope calculation”?

“As to the rest of your post, I don’t have the desire nor the need to explain to you.”

Running out of arguments? I still would like to know why you “would take an average Chinese college grad over an average German college grad, any day and night.” And what are you doing with a Chinese or a German college grad at night anyway?

January 31, 2008 @ 7:31 am | Comment