Weekend Hits
Things you might find interesting, but I haven’t had the time or inclination to blog about:
- A friend tells me about a novel use he has for Forbes‘ recent list of “The World’s Most Powerful People”. He teaches English in China (I have been encouraging him to blog about it) and is using the Forbes list as a starting point for English conversations with his students. He asks questions like whether or not Indonesia’s Yudhoyono or Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew should have been included. Should Italy’s Berlusconi be ranked so high? He notes that out of the 67 names on the list, five are Chinese and one is a Hong Konger. Thought provoking stuff and bound to get a conversation started. Try it out at a dinner party.
- Some lines of business seem like piracy, and the South China Morning Post (subscription necessary) found another one Monday. The rampant piracy off Somalia has spawned a sub-industry of insurance companies, lawyers and negotiators worth perhaps $320 million a year. Most practitioners are based in London, but it is a global business. Despite pleas by the United States that ransoms should never be paid, ransoms are paid in almost every case. Of course, U.S. policy was formulated to cope with individual kidnappings, not theft of multi-million dollar vessels and their crews. Might make a difference.
- Looking for a new line of business? Here’s one that is challenging, takes you to an exotic place and is perhaps remunerative. How about running a hospital or a utility in Iraq? The U.S. Government is apparently getting worried that Iraq will be unable to maintain or even operate many of the development projects that the American taxpayer has funded as part of Iraq’s reconstruction. Take a look at “U.S. Fears Iraqis Will Not Keep Up Rebuilt Projects” in the November 20 New York Times. With $53 billion spent in Iraq since 2003, there have to be some opportunities here for entrepreneurs. Of course, one has to be a risk taker.
- Are you tired of hearing pundits on financial issues telling you that “This time it’s different”? I have discovered the antidote. Refer them to an April 2008 study done by Carmen Reinhart of the University of Maryland and Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University. Both also work with the National Bureau of Economic Research. Their paper, titled “This Time is Different: A Panoramic View of Eight Centuries of Financial Crises” makes a convincing argument that nothing we are seeing in this recession is anything out of the ordinary. You can skim the 59 pages, but the paper covers crises going back eight centuries in 66 countries – not the usual short-term analysis. Reinhart and Rogoff have gathered data from England’s defaults in the Middle Ages to Spain’s 13 defaults after 1500, to the latest headline crises. The prose gets a big thick, but great fun if you are into economic and financial history on a global scale.
- Adam Smith never thought that his theory of comparative advantage would lead to this. According to Hong Kong multimillionaire Leung Moon-Lam, who has plans to build a biblical theme park in China, China is now the world’s biggest printer of Bibles. One expects that most are exported.
