Beltane Beltane Moon
JP Morgan lost 2 billion dollars. Meanwhile a bunch of Viking clad middle class morons jumped up and down excited about the stadium deal as the billionaire recipient of their tax dollar welfare looked on beaming. WTF!
Also, news from China beginning to look problematic on the economic front. China has a multitude of potential problems, big ones: environmental degradation, water shortages in its wheat growing north, a sudden aging of its population with few caregivers due to the one child policy and political tensions from unevenly distributed economic gains. None of us, however, need or should want China to have a weakening economy. It occupies a large and important part in world trade and finance, a part we all need it continue to play.
It’s an interesting time right now with authoritarian, command control systems getting a lot of press for being more mobile, more flexible and less encumbered by the clumsiness of democracy. Arguing for democratic government and laissez faire markets became a lot harder starting in 2008 as US and European economies did a header and their democratic governments floundered as they tried to respond.
If China heads into deep waters economically, then we might all have gotten the dose of humility necessary to start rethinking government and markets for the third millennium. World trade has become so interlocked that we cannot afford to have any large segment of it in trouble.
There is, of course, a bit of schadenfreude if China is in trouble. Each Asian nation that climbs the hill seems to run into trouble. First it was the Asian tigers, then Japan. If China were to slip, too, a certain part of the Chinese arrogance (matched only by our own, so I’m not casting stones in a glass house here) would fall with it. That would be welcome, just as the humbling of the US during the great recession was welcome.
I remain fascinated by the possible friendship between the oldest continuous culture and the youngest ever world hegemon. Think of the places we could go and the things we could do.
