Government

People of Japan, what are you waiting for?

Albert Zenkoff

Seeing pointless abuse, injustice and absurdity, do not rush to explain it with stupidity; first try to to explain it with vile shrewdness.

Japan is officially in recession after seeing its economy shrink for the second consecutive quarter. This comes as no surprise at all when you check what the economy is based on, how it develops and what the infamous Abe did to it. I, for one, am happy to see it work this way, seeing the Japanese economy react in obviously bad ways to the dirty manipulations of its government. It would have been much worse if the so-called “growth” continued yet for a longer while and then would come crashing hard. People suffer first, so this gentle decline is much better than a hard landing for the Japanese economy. But, again, what is happening?

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, BBC’s guy in Tokyo reports:

In the spring of 2013, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe launched an ambitious growth strategy that rapidly became known as Abenomics. Its aim was to drag Japan’s economy out of 20 years of deflation and put it back on the road to growth. Billions of dollars were pumped into the economy through stimulus spending. The Bank of

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Chinese can!

Albert Zenkoff

Reuters is amazing me today. Another short article gives a quick update on the Chinese affairs in Africa. Chinese were copying small stuff from everywhere until now: products, technologies, machines, tools. Now they are copying the big politics and economic strategies. US has used this strategy successfully for a long time in South America, Europe, Asia and Middle East, enslaving multiple countries with horrendous amounts of debt. Now China is copying their approach in Africa. There is a lot of agricultural land in Africa and securing access to this land in the long term is a very wise decision. Not that it is going to do any good for the others but for China it is definitely a very good move.

Update: another good article from much later: http://permaculturenews.org/2013/09/18/the-global-land-rush/

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Greece and … IMF?

Albert Zenkoff
Graffiti on the wall in Athens says "I.M.F. GET OUT"

A very interesting thing has caught my eye in the photographs from the recent riots in Athens, Greece.

If you look at the pictures, it very definitely says “I.M.F. GET OUT“. Why would demonstrators talk of IMF in Greece? Would it be possible that Greece bought into one of those IMF backed plans? If so, it would be interesting to learn a bit more about what economic development “plan” was sold to Greece. It is also quite interesting to see that Reuters does not mention IMF in their articles on Greece for some reason. Did they not see their own pictures?

Eurozone troubles drove U.S. treasury debt prices higher as investors fled to havens including gold and the dollar.

Seek the one who benefits, right?

Did you see how much Euro went down recently? Do you think it is normal? Do you think if Greece went bankrupt it would really mean something apocalyptic for the Euro-zone? No, really? How much of the all-European economy is in Greece? Come on, be realistic, Greece is too small for the kind of impact pictured in those articles. But panic! yes, panic can hurt Euro-zone, oh, yes… I have seen …
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South America bloc

Albert Zenkoff 2 Comments

There was an interesting event in South America – a meeting of the Rio Group happened in the middle of February as DW-World reports. What is interesting? The Latin American and South American countries have announced their intention to create a union similar to the EU in nature. This is a great answer to many problems connected with their northern neighbors.

See, the real integration like in EU is unlikely coming any time soon, the South American countries are far too independent and nationalistic for that. Not that it is a bad thing either. But, but, what is quite possible is that they can create a no-Visa-required travel space in the South and Latin America and organize a monetary union. Especially now that the US Dollar is in trouble and everyone and their neighbor is looking for an alternative to the USD trading, the South American monetary union could be very successful, especially if they manage to avoid the blunders with the local monetary policies like it happened so many times in the past.

If they succeed, South and Latin America may well become the newest place-to-be, the region could really develop into a more balanced and highly attractive …
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Smog alert reality check

Albert Zenkoff

The government declared a “smog alert” here today. It will last for a week if anything from the past is an indicator. The purpose of the “smog alert” is to reduce the speed on the roads, especially the highways. Highway speed is limited to 90 km/h on days when “smog alert” is in force.

Local radio just gave a good summary of facts about the today’s situation:

  • The smog is caused by a cloud of particles (pollution) brought to us by wind from the east, it is not originating in the country.
  • The morning traffic jam was exceptional with roughly 400 km of jams covering the country (against the usual 100 km).
  • The number of accidents was something extraordinary as well, although they did not provide specifics.
  • Traffic jams happened even in places that never see traffic jams and without visible cause (like road works or an accident).

Managing a country is similar to managing a corporation, the basic rules are the same. So there is nothing wrong with the businessmen looking at the governmental decisions from the business point of view. What do we have?

The smog was not caused by any internal source in the country. The wind …
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