Dec

2

Thoughts, from Douglas Dimick

December 2, 2009 |

For the past several months, I have been reading these propaganda-like articles to include in the Times. They seem to be generated by some Times(?) writer(s) in Beijing with a contributor in Hong Kong.

No facts. No statistics. No reports.

Just headlines and dogma as to how the recovery is proceeding and it is “happy thoughts” every day — after 60 years of glory from “a fool’s errand” (Sum of All Fears).

Here at Shanghai University, Agricultural Bank’s branch office just closed. Wires hang from the inoperable ATM. This development is odd… seeing how the school required me to open the account just 3 months ago. Still, perhaps not strange given the central government’s recent cap-call on the big four state-owned, technically bankrupt pillars of capitalism with Chinese characteristics… ah-hem.

More to the point, the university is getting screwed, as it requires staff and faculty and students to use this bank. I have yet to find another branch nearby. Guess the university isn’t the one getting screwed… just the students, faculty, staff – as long as school leaders are not inconvenienced, Confucian thinking dictates no speaking.

So much for top-down-to-tickle-down-to-keep-95%-down-so-long-as-20%-not-demonstrating-to-incite-80%-that-costs-5%-money economic policies (i.e., this would be the Chinese characteristics).

You follow the Chinese math and logic here?

Took me three years… Had I learned Mandarin, I would never have got it.

Anyway, the Bank of China branch office at the Yanchang (Line 1) shopping mall, across the street from our lovely city campus, has one ATM and three teller stations for a locale that traffics tens of thousands of people per day.

Right, you guessed it: the ATM does not have money a fair amount of the time.

How about the line(s) for a teller?

Forget about it. The mothers and grandparents line up in the morning before the doors open. Note, there is a VIP window upstairs for the Communists, as they are about the only ones with enough money to qualify.

So yesterday, I took my dentist and his colleague to lunch at Sal’s (or Salzinaria’s, I think), an Italian food franchise (so quantified as [OliveGarden – PizzaHut = Sals]). Though, true to holism, albeit the parts sum total, the food and pricing and quality are the best that I have seen here in China as far as restaurant ecology may be observed.

Anyway, I needed cash – this restaurant does not take cards, any kind of cards accept a pre-paid Sal’s Card. Smart – Sal’s does not seem to trust Chinese bankers either.

Right, you guessed correct again. Being within sight of the restaurant, the Bank of China ATM has no money at a key time of the day (lunchtime).

Being a barbarian, the foreigner, I do the unthinkable and complain.

The nice lady, whom I presume to be the manager (or maybe the only one who speaks English), says that the ATM is waiting for cash to be “put in” but I can go to the ATM at the shopping store two buildings down. In summary, I cannot get cash from my own bank.

Mr. Zussman, your USSR theory on “our” tech-bubb is interesting. My study then of that phenomenon was less ecometrics and more social-economic with regard to civilian-commercialization of the Internet.

Mr. Jovanovich , concur albeit causation. Clinton’s repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999, whereby rules-based doctrines and paradigms — that had been developed since the last Great Depression — became (to varying degrees of obfuscated to obliterated) then fundamentally altered within a brief time-period.

Mr. Grossman, you hit the nail on the head of that which Dan hammered… ditto (in a Non-Rush context) here in Red China. They still don’t get it at the central government level, because they are afraid – which means, translated to Chinese Thinking, is that they do get it but do not want to do it because it will cost “them” too much money. This accounting scares the Communists, who ironically are afraid, because that is how they rule – with fear.

When does the servant become the master?

Thus, until US-EU policy mongers and corporate opportunists are replaced with some frontline veterans of trade and finance, who can draw lines instead of circles, whereby social-economic systematics absent of fundamental (First Amendment) human rights are opposed with economic-trade defenses, thereby replacing current free but for unfair trade concoctions of diplomatic, currency-swapped, palm pressing (albeit politically correct) ballyhoo… Communist states will be allowed to linger within if not fester among corruptive, party-centric domains of dysfunction.

Ronald Reagan had it right… trust with verification.

In terms of legal and accounting compliance, I have seen little of that here, as US-EU state leadership cow-tow to their election-campaign-cuffed, well-lobbied finance streamed (MNC) corporate interests, who prefer non-bargaining labor pools and focused (noncompetitive) consumer segments.

As Reagan knew, if you force a communist state to perform based on verification, the system itself will deteriorate from within – until there is internal/external political demand for reform – due to the nontransparent nature of the political ethic.

The system is reliant on lying. Stop the lying, stop the system.

I do not mean Republican and Democratic lies. They do not have an army standing behind them – just a bunch of lawyers and spinsters… The Chinese government simply hangs or shoots them.

As appealing as this approach to conflict-resolution may appear to those of us who hail from the most litigious society in the history of mankind, the point is not quite so absolute in terms of outcome-oriented disposition. The point is that rule of law prevails and is so required for even social-capitalistic constructs as practiced by most neo-communists these days, albeit Cuba and North Korea… stellar examples of how economic justice is reliant upon social justice – NOT.

In conclusion, as we may garner from V, focus on your game, practice the shot to a point of mastery, and be patient. Eventually, the Chinese Communists will either do an economic-trade-like Peal Harbor and we will snap out of it or they will be eaten by their own kind. 5,000 years of history tells us so…

Enough said.


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