Economic crisis - a reality check
I can’t remember voting for a mixed state / private economy. Can you? One where the state invests taxpayer’s funds in the wellbeing of the banking system…Should I take comfort in the USA’s and UK’s governments desire to protect my money and savings or might I suspect they are protecting someone else’s interests?
I don’t believe there’s any simple way out of this mess. I don't believe that the bank bail-outs that are taking place around the globe will resolve the economic problems of recession. Sadly, I don't believe that there will be any real lessons learned from the current financial meltdown until it's too late.
Our economic systems are wrecking the world we live in. We ignore the damage they inflict on our environment for the sake of expedient profits. Ultimately the damage we are causing to our natural world threatens human survival. In denial like ostriches, we bury our heads in the sand while working towards our own extinction for the sake of making a fast buck.
The American biologist E. O. Wilson estimates that if the entire world consumes at the same rate as the USA, then we would need FOUR PLANET EARTHS to sustain humankind NOW.
We invest our efforts for the profits of the few at the expense of well-being for the world as a whole. We prop up our flagging economies through investment in a massive military murdering machine.
The numbers that we talk about to bail out our banks are astronomical when compared to the sums needed to provide all of humanity with basic needs like water, sanitation, education and health care.
We can forgive the debts of greedy errant bankers, but we are unable to forgive the debts of developing countries. It's time to change!
Let's put these numbers into perspective. The current USA/UK combined bank bail-out exceeds $1.5 trillion. These are the additional costs to achieve universal access to basic social services in all developing countries:
| Global Priority | $U.S. Billions |
| Basic education for all | 6 |
Water and sanitation for all | 9 |
Reproductive health for all women | 12 |
Basic health and nutrition | 13 |
| Total | 40 |
That’s 40 billion dollars. How does that look against a $1.5 trillion bail out the bankers plan in the UK and USA?
I feel it’s time for a reality check as these amounts don’t make too much sense to me.
Here are some other numbers, a stark and daunting contrast (statistics mainly from UNICEF and the World Bank). They are shocking:
Almost half the world — over three billion people — lives on less than $2.50 a day.
At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day.
More than 80 percent of the world’s population lives in countries where income differentials are widening.
The poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for 5 percent of global income. The richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of world
According to UNICEF, 26,500-30,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.”
Around 27-28 percent of all children in developing countries are estimated to be underweight or stunted. The two regions that account for the bulk of the deficit are South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
If current trends continue, the Millennium Development Goals target of halving the proportion of underweight children will be missed by 30 million children, largely because of slow progress in Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
Based on enrolment data, about 72 million children of primary school age in the developing world were not in school in 2005; 57 per cent of them were girls.
Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.
Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen.
Infectious diseases continue to blight the lives of the poor across the world. An estimated 40 million people are living with HIV/AIDS, with 3 million deaths in 2004. Every year there are 350–500 million cases of malaria, with 1 million fatalities: Africa accounts for 90 percent of malarial deaths and African children account for over 80 percent of malaria victims worldwide.
Water problems affect half of humanity:
• Some 1.1 billion people in developing countries have inadequate access to water, and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation.
• Almost two in three people lacking access to clean water survive on less than $2 a day, with one in three living on less than $1 a day.
• More than 660 million people without sanitation live on less than $2 a day, and more than 385 million on less than $1 a day.
• Access to piped water into the household averages about 85% for the wealthiest 20% of the population, compared with 25% for the poorest 20%.
• 1.8 billion people who have access to a water source within 1 kilometre, but not in their house or yard, consume around 20 litres per day. In the United Kingdom the average person uses more than 50 litres of water a day flushing toilets (where average daily water usage is about 150 litres a day. The highest average water use in the world is in the US, at 600 litres day.)
• Some 1.8 million child deaths each year as a result of diarrhoea.
• The loss of 443 million school days each year from water-related illness.
• Close to half of all people in developing countries suffering at any given time from a health problem caused by water and sanitation deficits.
• To these human costs can be added the massive economic waste associated with the water and sanitation deficit. The costs associated with health spending, productivity losses and labour diversions are greatest in some of the poorest countries. Sub-Saharan Africa loses about 5% of GDP, or some $28.4 billion annually, a figure that exceeds total aid flows and debt relief to the region in 2003.
Number of children in the world - 2.2 billion
Number in poverty - 1 billion (every second child)
Shelter, safe water and health
For the 1.9 billion children from the developing world, there are:
• 640 million without adequate shelter (1 in 3)
• 400 million with no access to safe water (1 in 5)
• 270 million with no access to health services (1 in 7)
Children out of education worldwide - 121 million
Survival for children
Worldwide:
• 10.6 million died in 2003 before they reached the age of 5 (same as children population in France, Germany, Greece and Italy)
• 1.4 million die each year from lack of access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation
Health of children
Worldwide:
• 2.2 million children die each year because they are not immunized
• 15 million children orphaned due to HIV/AIDS (similar to the total children population in Germany or United Kingdom)
Rural areas account for three in every four people living on less than US$1 a day and a similar share of the world population suffering from malnutrition. However, urbanization is not synonymous with human progress. Urban slum growth is outpacing urban growth by a wide margin.
Approximately half the world’s population now live in cities and towns. In 2005, one out of three urban dwellers (approximately 1 billion people) was living in slum conditions.
In developing countries some 2.5 billion people are forced to rely on biomass—fuel wood, charcoal and animal dung—to meet their energy needs for cooking. In sub-Saharan Africa, over 80 percent of the population depends on traditional biomass for cooking, as do over half of the populations of India and China.
Indoor air pollution resulting from the use of solid fuels [by poorer segments of society] is a major killer. It claims the lives of 1.5 million people each year, more than half of them below the age of five: that is 4,000 deaths a day. To put this number in context, it exceeds total deaths from malaria and rivals the number of deaths from tuberculosis.
In 2005, the wealthiest 20% of the world accounted for 76.6% of total private consumption. The poorest fifth just 1.5%.
The poorest 10% accounted for just 0.5% and the wealthiest 10% accounted for 59% of all the consumption.
1.6 billion people — a quarter of humanity — live without electricity.
The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the 41 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (567 million people) is less than the wealth of the world’s 7 richest people combined.
World gross domestic product (world population approximately 6.5 billion) in 2006 was $48.2 trillion in 2006.
• The world’s wealthiest countries (approximately 1 billion people) accounted for $36.6 trillion dollars (76%).
• The world’s billionaires — just 497 people (approximately 0.000008% of the world’s population) — were worth $3.5 trillion (over 7% of world GDP).
• Low income countries (2.4 billion people) accounted for just $1.6 trillion of GDP (3.3%)
• Middle income countries (3 billion people) made up the rest of GDP at just over $10 trillion (20.7%).
The world’s low income countries (2.4 billion people) account for just 2.4% of world exports.
The total wealth of the top 8.3 million people around the world “rose 8.2 percent to $30.8 trillion in 2004, giving them control of nearly a quarter of the world’s financial assets.”
In other words, about 0.13% of the world’s population controlled 25% of the world’s financial assets in 2004.
For every $1 in aid a developing country receives, over $25 is spent on debt repayment.
51 percent of the world’s 100 hundred wealthiest bodies are corporations.
The wealthiest nation on Earth has the widest gap between rich and poor of any industrialized nation. The poorer the country, the more likely it is that debt repayments are being extracted directly from people who neither contracted the loans nor received any of the money. An analysis of long-term trends shows the distance between the richest and poorest countries was about:
* 3 to 1 in 1820
* 11 to 1 in 1913
* 35 to 1 in 1950
* 44 to 1 in 1973
* 72 to 1 in 1992
“Approximately 790 million people in the developing world are still chronically undernourished, almost two-thirds of whom reside in Asia and the Pacific.”
For economic growth and almost all of the other indicators, the last 20 years [of the current form of globalization, from 1980 - 2000] have shown a very clear decline in progress as compared with the previous two decades [1960 - 1980]. For each indicator, countries were divided into five roughly equal groups, according to what level the countries had achieved by the start of the period (1960 or 1980). Among the findings:
• Growth: The fall in economic growth rates was most pronounced and across the board for all groups or countries.
• Life Expectancy: Progress in life expectancy was also reduced for 4 out of the 5 groups of countries, with the exception of the highest group (life expectancy 69-76 years).
• Infant and Child Mortality: Progress in reducing infant mortality was also considerably slower during the period of globalization (1980-1998) than over the previous two decades.
• Education and literacy: Progress in education also slowed during the period of globalisation.
200 multi-national corporations now dominate one quarter of the world’s economic activity.
Here's a quote I found last night that I liked in this context. In 1941, the editor Edward Dowling wrote: "The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it."
À la prochaine...till next time...
Bail-out latest!
The FTSE 100 UK stock exchange index fell by 5% today. The French and German stock exchanges fell by approximately 6%.
Banks throughout the world have co-ordinated a reduction in interest rates to try to stave off the crisis.
Those are the facts. This time, I'm speechless. I predicted a crisis in the financial sector this time last year. This is far beyond anything I had envisaged.
Since writing this short post, that is based on news reports from the state-owned BBC, differing estimates on the size of the UK bail-out have been published. These vary between £400 billion and £500 billion or $692 billion and $880 billion. Whichever it is, it's a very sizeable amount from an economy that is significantly smaller than that of the USA.
UK GDP = $1.93 trillion
USA GDP = $13.13 trillion
(2006 estimates)
Update - Thursday 9th October 2008
There is still some confusion about how big the UK bail-out is. According to my reckoning, it is the higher figure of £500 billion or $880 billion. Here's how it stacks up:
- Up to £50bn of taxpayer money to buy preference shares - £25 billion will be released initially with a further £25 billion at a later date
- An extension of the Special Liquidity Scheme introduced after the collapse of Bear Stearns to allow £200 billion of funds to be made available to banks
- A guarantee of the debt issued by banks of up to £250 billion
As conventional economics goes, it looks like a more intelligent plan than the US bail-out that focused simply on buying "toxic" assets at undermined prices. It seems to address the three main issues of the banks that are capital, funding and liquidity that the US plan fails to do (in my opinion).
I like to get some perspective on these amounts as they are simply fairy tale numbers to me. Here's the bail-out deal compared with UK spending on health and education:
European stock markets in UK, France and Germany fell again today.
Teetering on the edge...
Today, the principal European stock markets have fallen by between 7% and 9%. The economy of Iceland looks to be teetering on the edge of collapse. Governments throughout Europe are seeking to bolster up the fortunes of failing financial institutions.
My heart wasn’t in that piece I wrote about the big bank bail out last week. I simply didn’t believe that the US sub-prime mortgage issue was at the root of the problem. I still don’t.
Governments can scramble to bring market turmoil back into some sort of balance. I believe they will fail. And you don’t need a crash course in economics and politics to work out why.
Markets arose from a basic acknowledgement that humans are an interdependent species. They fulfilled the need of intermediating in an exchange of human value. They had their roots in the requirements of humans to live in mutually supportive relations. Notionally, at least, we swapped value via markets that were simply a medium of exchange as was money.
Something else happened, and markets took on the guise, not of exchanging social needs, but accumulating wealth. Their principal function was to generate profit for the few by the many. Markets now create wealth but they fail to distribute that wealth effectively. Markets have become dislocated from our social world.
People are frightened. They fear for their livelihoods, their wellbeing, their jobs and their savings. That is no surprise at all. I share those fears too.
Free market capitalism takes no account of that which it cannot commodify. Basic human needs of respect, safety, love and affection, wellbeing, security and protection have no place in a market economy. Market economics must return to some very basic questions of use value and exchange value. We have to take into account the real value of human effort and work, and that is very different from its market value. Market economics does not value affective or social relationships, the family, the community, the environment or the world we live in, all of which are vital to human wellbeing and survival.
Free market economics has given birth to a monster, one that has no regard for human wellbeing. As hard as governments may try to bring it under control, they will fail. The free market has no social purpose or social conscience.
I will say something that is perhaps deeply unpopular. I believe that the post 9/11 paranoia has been based on something that Jungians call “shadow projection” - seeking an object of blame outside ourselves for that which we cannot deal or cope with in our own reality. Don’t get me wrong, 9/11 was an appalling act of terrorism. I oppose it wholeheartedly. But I believe that the notion of a “Muslim threat of terrorism that undermines our western civilization” (whatever that is) is an ideological distraction from those things going badly wrong closer to home…right under our noses in the free market economy. There may be more terrorism yet. Economic instability in the west is likely to be seen as a terrorist opportunity. Market economics is destabilizing the Middle East too. So is the cause sub-prime mortgages? I would doubt that too, wouldn’t you?
That’s it for now. This blog has no economic value and I must go off and work out how to earn a few pennies. Till the next time… À Bientôt.
The big banking bail-out
What’s the problem?
Apparently the main problem from a market and banker’s viewpoint is the accumulation of potential bad debt based largely on the USA mortgage market.
Major banks and other financial institutions around the world have reported losses of approximately US$435 billion as at 17 July 2008.
The U.S. mortgage market is estimated at $12 trillion with approximately 9.2% of loans either delinquent or in foreclosure in August 2008.
Exposure to the bad debt risk means that a bank’s available liquid funds are reduced. This in turn has a negative impact on business that relies on bank credit to support its trading activities. In short, prospective bad debt has a negative impact on the bank’s ability to trade and lend.
The initial response of banks to the liquidity crisis was to attempt to generate more funds by increased share and stock issues. These were not fully subscribed and given their exposure to bad debt risk, their share prices fell.
In the UK, the stock market value of Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) who were not known for reckless or sub-prime high risk lending, but who had heavy exposure to the UK mortgage market, looked as though it was heading for failure when its share price fell to 88 pence ($1.65) from a year high of approximately £7.78 ($15). The failure might be attributed to the bank’s lack of success in attempting to raise additional cash to support its liquidity via a rights share issue and a rumoured abortive attempt to gain funding from other sources (including the Bank of England). It was taken down more by negative market speculation rather than any actual deterioration in its trading position, although that is an unqualified personal opinion. Its lending policies were thought to constitute a higher risk than some other more conservative UK banking institutions. It made conventional home mortgage loans to what might be described as “average families.”
So what’s the real problem?
The boom and bust housing market
A very significant part of the problem has been the “boom and bust” housing markets both in the USA and the UK. In the USA, house prices rose by 124% between 1997 and 2006.
As a result of booming house prices, there was excessive speculation in the market. In 2006, 36% of all USA house purchases were for investment purposes or vacation homes. (Source: National association of realtors) People moved into the housing markets and treated homes like stocks and shares.
In 2006, the US housing bubble burst. There had been massive overbuilding of homes to satisfy speculation in the market that caused an excess of supply which led to a fall in house prices.
Suddenly there were people everywhere who had made a mint of money based on the value of their home. In the UK, there was a glut of property millionaires. Many decided to cash in on their speculative gains taking out second mortgages that funded increased consumer spending. This was economic growth based on fool’s gold as no real new economic value had been created. Most increased consumer demand was based on increased borrowing and more consumer debt.
In the UK, it was a housing shortage that drove up prices. But prices surpassed affordability. They grew at rates far in excess of inflation and salary and wage increases. The continuing boom was unsustainable. Prices are now falling and their rate of decline is accelerating.
House prices in early 2008 were considered to be overvalued by 40% in the USA and 25% in the UK.
The decline of house prices is hitting borrowers hard. In the US, an estimated 8.8 million homeowners — nearly 10.8% of total homeowners — have zero or negative equity as of March 2008, meaning their homes are worth less than their mortgage. This provides an incentive to "walk away" from the home, despite the negative credit rating impact.
The house price boom was a fool’s paradise.
Now for the bankers
Bankers cashed in on a growth market, but with little forethought or cautious consideration other than a regard for profit.
The sub-prime mortgage came into being for those who were unable to qualify for conventional home loans (for reasons of status, credit standing, low income etc.) and willing to pay the premium price by way of higher interest rates. Sub-prime mortgages are high-risk loans.
Bankers also sought to defray their exposure to risks via a process known as securitisation (credit default swaps – CDS) whereby they aimed to retain profit and sell parts of their security-backed debt to an insurer or another financial institution. Often this involved whole chains of transactions with companies passing on risk one to another, each believing that they had retained some element of profit.
The risk business is complex. Risk has several dimensions: in default (the credit risk), in the diminution of the asset value (the falling house price), and the counterparty risk (the risk of failure of the party under-writing the debt), and a risk in liquidity where companies have been able to gain access to short-term funding because of their perceived exposure to, or reducing market attractiveness within, the mortgage market.
So when the house boom went flat, banks found themselves holding securities that no one wanted to buy. This is a key fact. It’s not that homes became worthless or that massive numbers of people faced foreclosure. It’s about the way our financial and trading system works and no one is proposing to change that.
Here’s a big clue. I understand that Merrill Lynch was sitting on about $30 billion of sub-prime mortgage securities. No one wished to buy them. “Mark to market” accounting meant that they were required to value this asset at what the market was willing to pay for it. The value that the market gave to these securities was 78% below their face value. According to accounting conventions, Merrill Lynch had to mark their value down to 22% of their estimated original worth. Neither the quality of the homes nor the status of the debt determined whether that valuation was appropriate. It was what the market was willing to pay and suddenly Merrill Lynch was sitting on one enormous book loss. It did not reflect reality. I suspect any fool might have realised more than that market valuation of those securities in homes and mortgages in real terms. Consider HBOS. Markets are like casinos that value profit, mainly short-term profits. Reality has little to do with it.
No one knows if the bail-out fund of $700 billion is going to be big enough yet. Freddie, Fannie and AIG have already had the benefit of $300 billion of taxpayer funds taking the total bail-out cost to $1 trillion. This crisis and the sums of money involved get worse and larger by the day.
Here’s the big bail-out plan…
The bail-out plan appears to be simple. The US Government will buy distressed securities (mortgaged assets i.e. homes) in credit default from the mortgage provider or underwriter at a discounted value.
So home loan X is in default, government buys home that is the security at substantially less than its face value in the hope it may subsequently sell it back to market investors.
The bank’s take a loss on disposal of their security, but it’s a relatively small loss. Their balance sheet is cleared of the liability that represents a bigger exposure or loss to the bank. Their liquidity improves and as a result, trading confidence is restored.
I’ll just hold that thought one moment. In order for government’s intervention to be worth anything, it must pay a price for the troubled security above market valuation otherwise there would be no point in buying it. Hang on! Doesn’t that mean that the difference between the market price and the government price is profit? Correct. So might the bank’s share prices be increased for the benefit of its stock-holders as a result of this…what should I call it…liability alleviation or profit on market price? Yes. Will taxpayers get a chance to enjoy shareholder gains without participating in further risk therefore? No. Are there any legal instruments that would permit such participation in shareholder profits? Yes…but sssch…better keep quiet about those, else we’ll demoralise and disincentivise the shareholders.
The act says:
Its purpose is to:
“immediately provide authority and facilities that the Secretary of the Treasury can use to restore liquidity and stability to the financial system of the United States; and to ensure that such authority and such facilities are used in a manner that:
(A) protects home values, college funds, retirement accounts, and life savings;
(B) preserves homeownership and promotes jobs and economic growth;
(C) maximizes overall returns to the taxpayers of the United States; and
(D) provides public accountability for the exercise of such authority.”
It all sounds laudable enough. Remember Merrill Lynch? So is government going to pay above the market valuation to stem the turmoil? Probably. I’m not sure how good government is at playing banker either. I have no confidence in it fulfilling that role. What if the house market doesn’t recover in the short term? Will government defy corporate convention and take a longer-term view? I doubt that too. US governments are in office for 4 years and that’s not long-term. Sadly I suspect what might happen is that the government sells back its securities to the market at a loss in which case the banks may make a further profit on their intervention. That sounds more likely. The market has no social conscience, nor does it have any regard for the taxpayer or their welfare. Whatever government sets out in its objectives, it is entering a market-driven game now.
Here’s another idea. I’m not in favour of the bail-out bill at all. But if USA must do it, then why not have government guarantee “distressed securities” rather than buy them. It serves the same purpose but forces banks to work with their problems and solve them, like grown-ups, rather than relieving them of their difficulties, like an errant child.
I have one big nagging doubt about the bail-out bill. It isn't only banks that are suffering economic hardship at present. The bill does nothing for the underlying economy or the collapsing housing market. It may be a very expensive remedy that achieves very little. I suspect that lack of market confidence may return in a relatively short time.
This is my view today. The world may have changed by tomorrow.
Till the next time…au revoir.
Back to the future, part 3
I'm going to answer this but I will try and do it as factually as I can. This is straight off the top of my head without the aid of textbooks.
Big changes in our world are on their way. You can either believe that or bury your head in the sand, but big changes will happen anyway. There is nothing we as individuals can do to prevent those. Here I'm going to focus on the economic and political outlook. I know a little about economics and I'll just give you the benefit of my limited education.
Let's say it's correct that soon world production capacity outstrips consumer demand. What happens then? That's simple enough to answer: Prices will fall as companies are forced to compete to protect their market share. As prices fall, profits are put under pressure. As profits come under pressure, markets fall. If markets fall long and hard enough, it's called a recession, or a slump or a crash. When that happens, unemployment increases. As unemployment increases, so does social unrest. So that's one hypothesis that may underpin social change.
Also at present the USA is the dominant political and economic power in the world. It is dominant, not because Americans are nice people or that they make good movies. It is dominant because it is one of the wealthiest nations in the world. It is sheer economic power that underpins the USA's power and influence, nothing else. This may change in the near future.
Despite what some people might say, George Bush is no fool. He has bolstered the American economy by allowing the dollar to devalue against other currencies by approximately 33% over the past five years. What that means effectively is that American goods are a third cheaper than they were five years ago in world markets, if the selling prices have remained the same. There has been some inflation in the USA too but nevertheless, this devaluation is very significant. A country cannot continue to devalue its currency indefinitely. In effect, it's reducing the price of the dollar and ultimately that has the same result as reducing the price of goods.
Let's go another way for a moment. I understand that the price of electrical, leisure and clothing goods have fallen in the UK over the past couple of years. I seem to remember that the price drops have been dramatic, like in double figure percentages. Two factors may be in play here: One is that supply may be outstripping demand in these areas already. The other might be the influence of China and its developing economy with its lower costs coming into play in the new global economy. Certainly we have benefited economically from the exploitation of lower cost labour from countries in Eastern Europe that have recently joined the European Union.
Now let's go to China. China's economy is in a very early stage of capitalist development. Its economic capacity is huge. It's vast and it's many times greater than that of the USA. So what happens if China becomes the new economic super-power of the 21st century? What will happen if China, not the USA, is pulling the strings on the world stage? There's another factor, the costs structures in China are perhaps below 10% of what they are here in the west. What happens to our markets if we reduce the cost of goods by 90%? Could you manage on 10% of your wages? These are rhetorical questions.
We could try and keep the Chinese at bay through tariff barriers and other means of market exclusion, but we left that kind of stuff behind twenty or so years ago. We're living in a global free capitalist economy now. No-one wants to get back high degrees of state regulation again, economically or otherwise. If anything they want the degree of State control reduced still further. That after all is what George Bush is actually doing at present!
There's the other factor too. Our western businesses need access to the Chinese markets to bolster their flagging profits and to realise growth. There is not too much more dramatic economic growth that can be achieved here in the west anymore. We have full supply already.
One last thing: Most of our economic development and most of our technology development in the west over the last sixty years have been caused by wars. It's no wonder that the Germans and the Japanese economies have grown to be so strong. Their countries had the opportunities to rebuild and modernise their economic infrastructures as a result of being completely devastated in the second world war. In the UK, we tried to keep doing the same old thing but then everything changed as international competition in world markets intensified, particularly during the last twenty years of the 20th century.
But think about all that new technology we have now, miniaturised electronics and the like. Most of our brave new world of electronics has been developed as a result of, or at least the pace of its development has been supported by, war. By going out and killing people! There was the cold war too, there were not too many people killed in that one, but it did have that certain feeling that if the cold war had gone hot, then we might reasonably have contemplated the end of the world in a nuclear holocaust.
I'll leave you with that thought again. What happens when and if China displaces the USA as the world's new economic and political superpower? Who becomes the third world then? If you know the answer, then let me know. I'll end with a quote from Napoleon Bonaparte who said, "Let China sleep, for when she awakes the whole world will know."
Well, it's wakey-wakey time in more ways than one!
Footnote: This was written originally in October last year before the collapse of the “sub-prime” mortgage market, the banking crisis – the extent of which is not yet known (and may not be known until after the US presidential elections), and the recent surge in oil prices.