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Monday, July 13, 2015

The Grass Is Always Greener... Or Deader ... Depends




Remember when Japan, Inc. was all the rage? When kids just had to learn Japanese and learn all about the Tokugawa Shogunate?

Then there was a real estate bubble and financial problems in the 1990s, and when was the last time you dug those Japanese flash cards out of the drawer in the old desk?

Then China took center stage, and Tiger Mothers threatened us with super-mom child rearing techniques, and we absolutely had to learn Chinese, and indeed the future was redder all the time.

Then the China stockmarket correction...

In David Stockman's Blog:
Bubble Finance Update——Cracks In The Façade Are Growing
by Joseph Y. Calhoun • July 12, 2015
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/bubble-finance-update-cracks-in-the-facade-are-growing/
... It was a mere five years ago that Thomas Friedman of the New York Times was extolling the virtues of the enlightened ones running China and pining for the kind of control they had over policy. Friedman opined that the Chinese would eat our lunch by “overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power.” ...

I do not necessarily agree with anything but the fact that there is a lot of nonsense in the Media, and the necessity of talking 24/7 about "weighty topics" breeds a lot of monsters.
A stockmarket is a casino, and a correction is not the end of the world... although it could grease the skids, as it were.

Japan is a fine place. China is a great country. I am learning Chinese at a snail's pace. I spent some time last week with a young family whose mother is from Chengdu...
And Chengdu is the home of Chuandong prison where Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, a Tibetan monk political prisoner, died yesterday.

What do we make of all this?
Less talk, more living.
China will take care of China. We have our own problems and our own burdens of guilt, real or imagined, to be reconciled. Let us do that first.

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