May Day: Time to Ponder the Future

May Pole, Germany

Future cities

The First of May for most people today, is associated with socialist movements. But in this context I will adhere to the traditional meaning when May Day marks the end of the un-farmable half of the year in the Northern hemisphere and ushers in a tangible Spring.

In keeping with that theme, I thought it would be good to ponder the future. By the end of this year 2011, there will be 7 billion of us residing on this rock we call Earth. That is an increase of 5.5 billion in my lifetime. To illustrate what a world with 7 billion would be like, take a few minutes to check out this link.
7 Billion: National Geography Magazine 

Now that you have an idea of how many humans will as the video notes, would if standing shoulder to shoulder, fit in the city limits of Los Angeles proving that balance, not space will be the challenge of future generations.

This century has been heralded by some as being the Pacific century when Asia rules the world. Before you get too complacent with that concept, take the time to read this next post from Thomas Barnett who comments on whetherAsia will stall or fulfill that dream.

Next comes two fascinating posts from Tom Barnett's colleague Steve DeAngelis of Enterra Solutions. In a two part post entitled "Life a Hundred Years from Now" DeAngelis chronicles predictions from noted futurists about what life would be like in 2111. Steve begins.

Earlier this year I posted a few blogs dealing with short-term predictions about the future. A few daring souls have taken the long view and predicted what life might look like some hundred years from now. The thing that always strikes me about early science fiction movies that depict the future is that completely missed miniaturization except perhaps for "ray guns." So I'm not too sanguine about anybody's ability to predict things very far into the future.

This first part makes some startling predictions about space travel and exploration and touches on the changes in the nuclear family and other social issues.

Read more:
Life a Hundred Years from Now: Part 1

Now for part two and what I found was the real meat of predictions. As you read the post and feel a level of scepticism creeping in, remember to stop and think what someone your age and living at the turn of  the 20th century would feel if told of the all the advances in technology and medicine we enjoy today. Only the most esoteric dreamers would entertain such thoughts. Steve starts by quoting from Michio Kaku, author of Physics of the Future.

"If someone from 2100 could visit us now, how would we view them? Probably like the gods of mythology. They would command everything around them by wishing for it. They would have perfect and ageless bodies. And they would ride across the universe in magical chariots. In the past, we feared the gods of mythology. In the next 100 years, we will become them. Based on interviews with 300 of the world's top scientists, I've put together some predictions for what that world, 100 years in the future, will look like. This is not a work of science fiction, since prototypes of these inventions already exist, and all of them obey the laws of physics."

The post goes on to list the ten predictions about the future that seem not so far fetched in light of how far we have come in the past century.

1. The Internet will be in your contact lenses.

2. Computers will disappear, as will cell phones, clocks, watches, and MP3 players.

3. Cars will be driver-less, using GPS to navigate without the help of an alert human behind the wheel.

4. Doctors will be able to grow 'spare parts' for our organs as they wear out.

5. The human life span will be extended.

6. Molecular 'smart bombs' circulating in our blood will home in on, zap, and kill cancer cells.

7. Our toilets and bathroom mirrors will contain DNA sensors, capable of detecting proteins emitted from perhaps a hundred cancer cells in a cancer colony, 10 years before a tumor forms.

8. The robot industry will dwarf the size of the current automobile industry.

9. Tourists will soar into outer space via space elevators.

10. With advanced technology also will come advanced dangers, especially biological warfare, nuclear proliferation, and global warming.

A fascinating list that bodes of great advances and as noted in prediction 10, might be the residual of 7 or 8 billion people trying to find balance amid a growing demand for excellence, where unskilled and semi-skilled becomes as obsolete as the tools noted in prediction 2.

Read more
Life a Hundred Years from Now: Part 2

Two Damn Good Reads About the Future

Tom Barnett answers an important question

A connected World

Profane, but concise description of the importance of these two recommended articles for the information contained within each.

The first, comes by way of Thomas P.M. Barnett in response to questions from a college student. Barnett's answers are solid gold advice for any person who interested in making a serious difference in the world. I was stimulated to pursue my current course after picking up his first book, The Pentagon's New Map back in the Spring of 2004. Barnett's horizontal thinking philosophy meshed with my own constant need to keep seeking new targets and subjects to uncover. Barnett answers three questions which pretty much chart out a pathway for any one seeking a rewarding future, where to quote Barnett's father is; "Making your natural hobby you career and getting paid for it." As a father, and teacher, I find Barnett's response perfectly suited for today's youth who have grown up on multi-tasking and used to constant change with each new technology advance. Here are the questions and a sample of Tom's answers.


How did you translate a career from being a Cold War analyst to an idea generator?

I didn't really. I wasn't really ever a "Cold War analyst," despite my training. In truth, I would have been magnificently unhappy if I had stayed a classic academic or become an intell analyst - or if the Cold War hadn't ended. I just have no staying power on subjects, defined by me as working a particular field for years and years as many people do. It just would have driven me insane. The longer I get trapped in one subject, the more depressed I become. I truly get off on drawing linkages between things versus cracking nuts on any one subject.

Is there any advice you have for students who are interested in making a serious difference in the world?

That's an inherent skill set for thinking laterally/horizontally, and since you will be changing subject matters constantly, the key is to develop your preferred tool kit of analytic approaches. There is no set way to do this, in my mind, you just want to consciously collect great analytic tricks, maneuvers, procedures as you go along. I probably have about three dozen that I use over and over again in all sorts of subject areas, because I've come to trust them in terms of the revealed output. So you think of them as tracking tricks, like stuff I always do when I'm canoeing a new river. Not the fastest route, but one that rewards you in the accumulation of impressions that lead to analysis. Being observant is everything. Analytically, my whole life feels like one big deja vu, meaning I am constantly saying to myself, "I think I've spotted this dynamic somewhere else before."

How did you develop your philosophies?

By constantly seeking out the most interesting and fear-filled work I could find, subjects where, by most accounts I had no business trying to forge new thinking (Isn't there somebody more established who can crank out an answer we all know and love - in advance?). If I don't feel over my head on some level, I don't like the work as a rule, unless the balancing factor is some insane ambition or unusually deep-in-the-future scope that allows a whacked amount of freedom in approach. One of those three factors needs to be in place.

Read the rest:
Questions from OH college student

diaper recycling plant

Someday Starbucks will be the only name?

This next article comes from Steve DeAngelis, CEO of Enterra Solutions and the fine blog Enterprise Resilience Management. Steve turns his attention in this post to the three "R's" with a twist where before they meant; reading, riting, and rithmathic, they now mean; reuse, recycle, and repurpose.

When companies think about waste, they think about shrinking profit margins. Every effort is made to reduce waste so that profit margins can be increased. I suspect that consumers won't get serious about waste reduction and recycling until they see waste in terms of dollar signs as well. Since Americans continue to increase the per capita amount of waste they generate rather than reduce it, it is apparent that generating waste has yet to hit them in their pocketbooks in a significant way. Fortunately, there are a number of entrepreneurs and established companies that do take waste seriously because they have realized that there is money to be made from recycling waste. In America, the three "R's" used to stand for: reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic. Today the three "R's" stand for: reuse, recycle, and repurpose.

Here is an example of a few of the things being recycled.

"DIRTY DIAPERS -- A plant in Quebec turns soiled diapers into fuel. Using a method called pyrolysis, the plant heats up the diapers without oxygen. That breaks down the molecules of both the diapers and their, um, contents, yielding synthetic methane gas and diesel-like oil.

"COFFEE -- Coffee grounds can consist of up to 20 percent oil, making them an abundant source of biofuel. Researchers at the University of Nevada-Reno have separated oil from grounds and turned it into biofuel. The result even smells like your favorite java joint."

"URINE -- Ohio University's Gerardine Botte can convert urine to hydrogen, which is used to make electricity. While it's hard to collect enough human urine to make the process commercially viable, it may be a boon for hog farmers, who have trouble disposing of pig urine.

Maybe we will soon see Starbucks in competition with AM-PM where you can fuel up as you get your latte. The bottom line is this is another example of people thinking horizontally and laterally versus the vertically structured existence of the past half century where many have become slaves wearing blinders to the possibilities on the horizon.

Read more:
From Waste to Wealth
Enjoy reading, and if your a parent, pass Barnett's wisdom along to your son or daughter to consider as they plan their future path.

Economics! The Glue That Holds Our World Together

The people have spoken and we prepare to usher in a new administration. On first blush, it is impossible to guess with any certainty how great the course changes will be for our ship of state.

My blog friend Dan of tdaxp.com who was just as sceptical of Obama as I, wrote this post,Change.gov.

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Dan said:

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This is a good sign. Hopefully the transition from the Bush and Obama Administration goes well. The creation of the Office of the President-Elect and creation of the .gov domain name for it, imply that both the Bush and Obama teams are working hard to transition from one set of political appointees to another, but also demonstrate regime continuity to other countries, as well.

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I note that our nation has peacefully changed regimes 43 out of 44 times during our history. This change seems to be off to a smooth transition.

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Turning to the biggest challenge facing both the United States and in turn the nations of our shared World is the economic crisis. It is the first, and most important challenge for our new President and his team. As in past major System Perturbations, working together in a bi-partisan way is the only tactic that works. In our connected world this now means everyone.

To help illustrate my point, I will highlight a series of post this week by Steve DeAngelis of Enterra Solutions.

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Steve wrote this the day after the election.

On the day after elections in America, it seems like a good time to talk about democracy elsewhere. Politicians like to talk about politics and the ideologies behind their particular brand of politics. In the West, we are fond of democracy -- especially representational democracy -- and we try to spread the gospel about it wherever we go. Often we hear it in speeches like the one President Woodrow Wilson gave before Congress in April 1917: "The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty." Over a decade and a half before that speech, Wilson had defined what he meant by democracy.

.....My colleague Tom Barnett and I have preached that if you want to instill democratic principles in governments then improve the lives of the people in autocratic countries. Economic progress almost always precedes political progress. Asia provides two good examples of economics racing ahead of politics: relations between North and South Korea and relations between Taiwan and China. In both cases, economic ties are much stronger than political ones and economic policies in North Korea and China are much more liberal than political policies...

Read the whole post here: Economics Drive Political Change.

Steve then writes about how the effect of our own lax credit rules caused a butterfly effect that has spread it's effect across the globe.

We've all heard about the butterfly effect -- the notion that a butterfly can gently flaps its wings somewhere in the world and set in motion a series of events that result in catastrophic wind damage thousands of miles away. The current financial crisis is something like that. It began with easy credit being given to people who couldn't afford it and with so-called "liar loans." The simple act of lying on a credit form -- repeated hundreds of thousands of times -- set in motion a series of events that has resulted in catastrophic financial damage thousands of miles away in emerging markets. These emerging markets represent the future of the global financial system and governments are trying to find ways to throw them a lifeline.

Steve ends this post with these words of wisdom for our new administration.

Fear must be replaced with hope. At the same time, credit must be extended in an economically sound way. Consumption based on risky credit creates rather than solves problems. Romania sits on the cusp of prosperity and letting it slide back into the morass of poverty that gripped it while it was part of the Soviet bloc would be unwise. The same can be said about most emerging market countries. Financial isolation is no longer an option in a connected world. In the NBC television series Heroes, characters were told, "Save the cheerleader and save the world." Today's heroes need to save emerging market countries to save the world.

Read more...Trust and Credit in Emerging Markets.

In this last post, Steve DeAngelis explains why Americans should be concerned with economic conditions outside their own country.

He writes:

Many Americans who are worried about their economic futures wonder why they should be concerned about someone else's financial crisis half a world away. There are a number of reasons. It was the building boom in China that resurrected the slumping heavy machinery business in the United States. It has been consumers in emerging market countries who have helped ease America's trade deficit over the past several months. Emerging market countries are the West's best hope for reigniting a growing global economy and keeping them afloat so that they can continue to progress is critical.

The anger that has risen among the general public in the U.S. about the government's rescue plan demonstrates that they don't understand the difference between liquidity and solvency. The Treasury is trying to ensure liquidity so that insolvency doesn't become a bigger challenger than it already is. Insolvent companies are going to fail, but they need not drag down the entire economy. President Bush has called for an international meeting to address the global crisis; but Landler notes that "there is a limit to what the United States can do to solve the problems of these countries" because it is wrestling with major financial problems of its own.

"'The most important thing the United States can do is stabilize its financial system,' Mr. Lowery, of the Treasury, said. 'The other thing we can do is to support the actions taken by emerging-market countries.'"

Writing from the eastern side of the Pacific, Shawn of Asia Logistics wrap, has this post about our economic connectivity with Asia.

He begins:

Although most people understand that U.S. trade with Northeast Asia is quite large and significant, it is only tangible for many of us when you begin to break that trade down to a more local level. By using the term tangible, I am referring to the goods and services we buy, the companies or organizations with which we are employed, and the people with whom we interact on a regular basis.

Over the next few posts Shawn will offer a case study of a tangible economic connection between Korea and our own state of Georgia.

Shawn explains his motive this way.

My goal is to provide study material for those interested in better understanding the positive impacts of FDI on local, U.S. communities and also touch on what makes communities successful in attracting FDI. I believe the effort to educate others on the positive impacts of FDI is extremely important at a time when trade with other countries, including countries friendly to the United States, is more and more perceived as a negative for the U.S. economy.

Read more:

Case Study: South Korean FDI in the State of Georgia, Part I

At the top of this post I wrote that economics would be the most important task facing the new administration. To further illustrate that I offer this post by Thomas Barnett, who in this latest Sunday column, makes this observation and prediction about the legacy of the Bush-Cheney administration.

Tom writes:

Barack Obama's victory presents to America a wonderful opportunity to redefine our engagement with the world's rising great powers.

Along those lines, it's worthwhile to remember what Bush-Cheney got right with China.

....We were told by international affairs realists at Cold War's end that America would not be allowed to continue owning the world's largest gun, that other great powers would necessarily balance us symmetrically by creating one of their own.

This has not happened and isn't close to happening anywhere, not even with "rising China," whose military build-up specifically targets our ability to target their ability to target Taiwan's ability to defend itself....

Tom wrote that the most important non-issue since 2001 was:

The lack of a serious U.S.-China confrontation in the years since 9/11 is the most important dog that did not bark across the Bush-Cheney administration.

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In the grand sweep of history, this is arguably George W. Bush's greatest legacy: the encouragement of China to become a legitimate stakeholder in global security.

In true non-partisan form, Barnett in his sweeping grand visionary view made this comment.

Indeed, history will likely judge this success as greater than the Bush administration's failures in Iraq.

Barnett, who has publicly backed the change that he felt Barak Obama would bring to American leadership, ended with this important advice to the new government.

Democrats, who now control both Congress and the White House, would do well to retain the Bush administration's long-term perspective on China, especially during this moment of profound global economic uncertainty, when we need Beijing's help almost as much as it needs Washington's calm leadership.

Barnett: What Bush- Cheney got right with China .

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No nation can rule the world and try and impose it's will on others without unintended consequences coming back to haunt them. Our nation has been the catalyst for change that has benefited not only Americans, but people in every corner of the world. Let us hope we set our course carefully and sail on to meet the challenges and overcome them as we have been doing for the past 232 years.

The End of Prosperity, or A Better Future?

Back about twenty five years ago, their was a wave of Pyramid schemes that swept accross the United States. People gathered in large numbers at night in meeting rooms to willingly join in what turned out to be a Ponzi scheme that ended with 99% of the participants loosing their money. The fad died out, but not before thousands lost their investment. The current economic crisis is much more serious, but carries the scent of a similar animal. Americans were encouraged to live beyond their means. Borrow, re-finance, flip-their property, and spend, spend, spend to keep the economy churning. Easy credit, and consuming as if this was the last decade on Earth, brought us to this point.

We have become in many ways a country who's domestic economy resembles the ancient Spartans. Many of our citizens, especially those living in upscale urban areas, enjoy what could be be termed the services of twenty first century helots in the form of undocumented aliens who clean their homes, cook their food and raise their children. Not to mention, those who still work in the few factories and family farms to supply their insatiable desires. It seems ironic that the urban and suburban areas of our country seem to enjoy the bulk of these services and look at disdain on those who reside in the more rural areas, as country bumpkins, gun toting, bible thumping clods, who are too unsophisticated to be allowed to be a part of the decision making of this nation. Now, those people are being asked to bail out those who played this national pyramid game of living beyond their means. I personally, am pissed off at having to dig deep to bail out people who let greed fuel their lives. There is enough blame to go around, both political parties are in deep shit as far as I am concerned.

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The Bush Administration gave away their economic oversight to those in Congress who wanted easy credit and economic access without thresholds, for their continued support for the war effort. This smacks of Lyndon Johnson trying to fuel the "Great Society" while fighting the Vietnam War. This taking the eye of the economic ball, may turn out to be more damaging to our well being than ten, 9/11's. Bush can not escape the fact, that he was the captain of our "Ship of State" when we hit this iceberg. His legacy, regardless of success in Iraq, may turn out to be more like Hoover's, than Truman's another unpopular president, whose legacy was recognized generations later.

Now is not the time for revenge. We must find a way to get out of this manure pile so that our children don't have to spend the rest of their lives growing turnips on the balconies of their state provided housing units, just to survive.

Below are two articles that offer some ideas of how we got here and how we can salvage something for the next generation.

Historian and author, Niall Ferguson penned this article in Time magazine, about the question that is on everyone's mind if not their lips. "Are we headed into a second Great Depression?"

He begins:

Congress's initial rejection of the Bush Administration's $700 billion bailout plan calls to mind an unhappy precedent. Back in 1930, the Senate passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which raised duties on some 20,000 imported goods. Historians define this as one of the critical steps that led to the Great Depression — a tipping point when the world realized that partisan self-interest had trumped global leadership on Capitol Hill.

He explains what happened to tip the scales.

The U.S. — not to mention Western Europe — is in the grip of a downward spiral that financial experts call deleveraging. Having accumulated debts beyond what's sustainable, households and financial institutions are being forced to reduce them. The pressure to do so results from a decline in the price of the assets they bought with the money they borrowed. It's a vicious feedback loop. When families and banks tip into bankruptcy, more assets get dumped on the market, driving prices down further and necessitating more deleveraging. This process now has so much momentum that even $700 billion in taxpayers' money may not suffice to stop it.

Ferguson, a historian who specializes in economic history outlines the historical parallels of this current crisis and the Great Depression.

We tend to think of the Depression as having been triggered by the stock-market crash of 1929. The Wall Street crash is conventionally said to have begun on "Black Thursday" — Oct. 24, 1929, when the Dow Jones industrial average declined 2% — though in fact the market had been slipping since early September. On "Black Monday" (Oct. 28), it plunged 13%, the next day a further 12%. Over the next three years, the U.S. stock market declined a staggering 89%, reaching its nadir in July 1932. The index did not regain its 1929 peak until 1954.

On Sept. 29 of this year, as investors and traders reacted to Congress's rejection of the bailout plan presented by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, the stock market sell-off was dramatic: the Dow fell nearly 7% that day, a one-day drop that has been matched only 17 times since the index's birth in 1896. From its peak last October, the Dow has fallen more than 25%.

Yet the underlying cause of the Great Depression — as Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz argued in their seminal book A Monetary History of the United States: 1867-1960, published in 1963 — was not the stock-market crash but a "great contraction" of credit due to an epidemic of bank failures.

Ferguson offers thoughts about how this plunging economic jumbo jet can be pulled out before slamming to earth.

He writes this about our relationship with the other big economic player, China.

The notion that Asia has somehow "decoupled" itself from the U.S. now seems fanciful. China and America have come so close to merging financially that we can almost speak of "Chimerica." When Fannie and Freddie were on the brink of collapse, many were surprised to learn that fully a fifth of China's currency reserves was composed of their bonds. Small wonder. Having spent much of the past decade intervening on currency markets to prevent the appreciation of its renminbi, China has accumulated a huge hoard of dollar-denominated bonds. No foreign nation stands to lose more from a U.S. financial collapse.

....But while we certainly face a global slowdown, we may yet avoid another depression. Now, unlike in the Great Depression, central banks and finance ministries know it's better to run deficits and print money than to suffer massive losses of output and jobs....

His final words, offer some hope.

Given the immensity of the crisis, a Congress-approved bailout may be just a short-term fix. But a short-term fix is better than no fix. If nothing else, it would signal to the world that — unlike in 1930 — the U.S. is doing what it can to avoid financial calamity and sidestep Depression 2.0.

The whole story:
The End of Prosperity?


Steve DeAngelis of Enterra Solutions penned this optimistic post about how the United States might try and recover some of it's economic luster after the current crisis and downturn has settled.

He begins:

When the cloud of economic dust created by the implosion of large U.S. financial institutions finally begins to settle, some optimistic analysts believe that the U.S. economy that will emerge from the debris will be quite different than the economy that faltered. They believe that the U.S. will innovate its way back to health ["Can America Invent Its Way Back?" by Michael Mandel, BusinessWeek, 11 September 2008]. As readers of this blog know, innovation is one of the topics to which I continually return. Creativity not only fascinates me, but as an entrepreneur I see it as the engine that powers the future. That is exactly what the "innovation economists" are counting on.

DeAngelis sees hope amid the rubble of what is left after American's began to eat their seed corn.

The world has reason to be concerned with the latest financial crisis but has no reason to be forlorn. Mankind has managed to create more wealth in the last two hundred years than in all of the rest of history combined. One reason, of course, is that the explosion of knowledge and technology has made mankind more productive than ever. There is little reason to believe such progress will end -- even if it has been slowed down for the moment.

He ends his post with words that have been the driving force behind every entrepreneur since man moved beyond being a hunter-gatherer to develop civilization.

I have noted before that entrepreneurs are optimistic by nature. They believe in the future or they wouldn't be entrepreneurs. I'm certainly no different. I see opportunities everywhere I travel. I get invigorated being around other entrepreneurs who also see a bright future and are working to make it happen. Innovators, whether found in established or entrepreneurial organizations, share a common bond of hope. I suspect that the reason that McCain and Obama have embraced innovation as part of their campaigns is that hope is in short supply at the moment. It remains to be seen whether the U.S. can invent its way out of the current financial downturn, but my gut tells me it can.

Read the whole post here:
Innovation Economics

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and the important links.

Sunday Morning with Coffee and the Blog

In years past Sunday morning was a time to pick up the paper and retreat to a quit place with a cup of coffee to peruse the major events and opinions of the past week, laid out amid the fresh ink and ads of what once had been a tree. Today, the electronic media has largely replaced that method for educating one's self on the events of the day.

The follow articles caught my fancy and I am endorsing them over to all those interested to read and expand one's viewpoint. I don't agree with everyone, but each is excellent in the level of craftsmanship of their arguments.

Leading off:
Mark Safranski of Zenpundit who links a post by Tom Barnett and adds comments that make more sense to the average reader. Barnett on Peters analyzing Putin.

Mark says:

One departure for me from Peters and from Tom ( at least in the sense that he did not mention it) is that I do not see Putin as consumed by anger or temper in his moves against Saakashvili, though Putin may very well have a temper.

And the welcome return of abu mugqawama aka, Andrew Exum, who has returned to the blog he founded to offer these wise words. Back like Jordan, wearin' the 45 .

Nuts, that took long enough. I told Charlie last week that I would be willing to help out on the blog a bit, and she only took five days to send me an invitation. No wonder this blog has gone straight to hell in my absence. (Not really. You guys have been great.)Now don't everyone get all excited. I'm still semi-retired. I just told Charlie that I would blog once a week -- in the first person no less! -- to help out with the load now that Kip has done rode off into the sunset.

And a view of the crisis on Wall Street by Steve DeAngelis;

Amidst all the bad news continuing to emanate from Wall Street and the accusations of corruption, greed and incompetence aimed at corporate executives who permitted it to occur, Americans haven't take much thought about the effect all of it is having on emerging markets around the world. As troubles in the American economy ripple around the globe, fears of a recession or depression are starting to grow and some countries appear on the cusp of economic panic ["Russia Again Halts Stock Trading," by Philip P. Pan and Anthony Faiola, Washington Post, 18 September 2008].
Read it in full:
Wall Street and Emerging Markets

Turning to look at American politics from across the pond, is an essay from economist Martin Wolf in the Financial Times.

He begins:

We are all Americans now. By this I do not merely mean that the leadership of the US shapes the world in which we live. The world we live in is the world the Americans or, more precisely, the Anglo-Americans have made. The US will retain a huge influence. How will it use it? That is the question we should ask about the presidential election. The choice also seems clear: it is between those who expect a world of conflict and those who believe in seeking co-operation.

What the presidential choice could mean

Prolific blogger Fabius Maximus challenges all, to open their minds and explore the issues with him as he posts on the emerging financial crisis gripping the nation.

Slowly a few voices are raised about the pending theft of taxpayer money

What do we know about the financial crisis? What are the key questions?

A vital but widely misunderstood aspect of our financial crisis

Op-Ed column from Thomas Barnett Barnett: America's hard-learned lessons from Iraq


Finally, a short report from Michael Yon on what happened to the French last month in Afghanistan, where he asks: Please read this short dispatch

So grab a second cup of coffee and go back and enjoy your Sunday blog.

It's The Money Stupid!

Trade beads 500 BC

Ancent Chinese Money

Gold Dubloons

$Money$

"It's the money stupid" has been a refrain, made popular by politicians in recent years. I first heard this term decades ago when a history professor in describing the motivation behind the Age of Discovery exclaimed that, "It was the money, that rich white guys sought, when they expanded across the globe." That quote as politically incorrect as it would be interpreted today, is at the core of what makes the world function. Money, the token of value that allows for easy trade transactions, is also the primary tool of peace.

Examples of societies who gravitated to trade and in turn creating methods of currency, stand out in contrast to those societies whom, only relied on total warfare to restock their community pantry.

Robert Wright the author of The Moral Animal, pointed out that societies that cooperated and avoided conflict thrived, where societies that were constantly at war with their neighbors eventually were cut off from all contact and withered. And Jared Diamond, in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel (1998), gave further support that societies became less violent when they learned through trade, that those they trade become quasi-kin, with whom conflict needed to be resolved quickly, in order to maintain the all important life sustaining trade.

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This week I was reminded of the these two books, and the words spoken by that long ago, history professor about it being the "Money" that makes the World what it is today.

The trigger for that recollection, came when I perused Tom Barnett's column this week. He writes to remind us of a future that is linked to interconnection through trade and in turn, "Money." The product of ecomomic interconnectivity is security and the advancement of civilization, by connecting as many people on the planet to each other through mutually beneficial arraignments. Thus, reducing the likely hood of total war conflict.

Tom writes:

Think about what made America the world's most stable and prosperous democracy for almost a century and a half: the middle class ideology that emerged when we knit together our sectional economies into a continental juggernaut following the Civil War. That class consciousness wasn't born when the victorious North imposed itself on the prostrate South but when the ambitious East integrated the frontier West.

Today's globalization echoes American experience as West networks East and East integrates South, reducing global poverty at speeds never before seen in human history. This international liberal trade order, modeled on our "uniting states," is America's greatest gift to the world.

Read the whole article:

Barnett: Finding logical center for grand strategy

Looking back one week the theme of money and the economic activity to make it is the theme of an earlier column by Barnett.

He begins:

With American combat troops now slated to depart Iraq by 2011, our intervention moves into its final phase, with the crucial goal being the expansion of economic opportunity for ordinary citizens.

When international business looks at oil-rich Iraq, it sees plenty of opportunity. What it doesn't see in many instances, despite rising security, are sufficient local counterparties - both private and public - to make the necessary deals happen.

As America moves on, we must leverage that example to lock in our hard-fought security gains with follow-on economic progress in connecting Iraq to globalization's juggernaut.

Read the whole article:

Barnett: Develop Iraq to cut deals with world

Adding more to the theme today of it being "It's the money stupid," are two posts by Steve DeAngelis, Enterra Solutions blog.

Steve writes:

The news coming out of Afghanistan over the past several months has been mostly bad. Violence is up and development progress has been stymied by the security situation. For most Americans, Afghanistan was the right conflict to undertake following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The fact that progress has been spotty and that the Taliban seems to be gaining strength in their Pakistani sanctuaries has generated calls for an Afghani surge comparable to the one that made a difference in Iraq.

As tense as U.S./Afghan relations might be at the moment, even the Afghans understand the importance of creating a secure environment to foster a better future. Sustainable development requires a stable and secure environment. President of the World Bank Group, Robert B. Zoellick, recently provided his thoughts on how to proceed in Afghanistan ["The Key to Rebuilding Afghanistan," Washington Post, 22 August 2008].

Read the whole story at"

Moving Forward in Afghanistan

And turning to another example of ecomomic progress being the catalsys for permanent change is this post by Steve DeAngelis about North Korea.

North Korea looks to be once again a country in trouble that cannot even feed its own people [see "U.N. says North Korea needs $503 million in food aid," by Ben Blanchard, Washington Post, 2 September 2008]. I have repeatedly asserted that historically economic progress precedes political progress. Impoverished people are much more tolerant of repressive governments if they believe they hold the key to a better economic future.

Anyone that has followed the Beijing Olympic Games has to have been struck by the Western character of the Chinese audience. I don't know if the Chinese government issued grooming and dress standards for ticket holders, but gone were the drab military-style outfits that characterized the awful days of the Cultural Revolution. The Chinese audience was genuinely polite to the achievements of foreign athletes and just as clearly thrilled with the achievements of their own athletes. There was nothing staged about that. Economics has clearly changed China for the better and its citizens are the beneficiaries of most of those changes. That is exactly the kind of changes that the South Koreans would like to see in the North.

Once globalization washes over walls of North Korea's isolation, it will help bring millions of people living there out of poverty. It will do it one job at a time, but it will succeed.

The whole post:

Breaching North Korea's Walls using Economic Development

In reflection of today's links about money, often touted as the root to all evil. I have another take. Money and economic interaction is the essence of kinship that binds people together. Individuals and societies may falter and fail to see this truth for moments in time, but those who recognized this truth will endure.

Will China's Economy Overtake That of The U.S. By 2035?

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The headline asks the question that some economists have already answered. China's economy will overtake that of the U.S. by 2035. The report was produced by economist Albert Keidel of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Keidel believes that China's growth will be sustained by domestic growth more than exports in the coming decades.

"China's economic performance clearly is no flash in the pan," Keidel writes.

"Its growth this decade has averaged more than 10 percent a year and is still going strong in the first half of 2008. Because its success in recent decades has not been export-led but driven by domestic demand, its rapid growth can continue well into the 21st century, unfettered by world market limitation."

Is this a undisputed fact? China faces great challenges in maintaining the pace of growth that Keidel notes. China faces all of the challenges that developed countries in Europe and North America face, plus a host of problems born of their population, and problems in sustaining a livable lifestyle for 1.2 billion people.

Keidel continues by reporting that he believes that China's economic power will eclipse the United States totally by 2050, by having a GPD of 82 trillion dollars versus 44 trillion for the United States. He further claims that China will dominate the world in every aspect that the United States enjoyed the past half century.

He writes.

"Leadership of international institutions will gravitate toward China. This movement could include the equivalents at that time of the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, regional international development banks, and more specialized bodies. Various headquarters could shift to Beijing and Shanghai."

Keidel admits that China's communist system of government and social unrest is the biggest hurdle to achieving this goal. That statement represents the twin elephants in the room. How China integrates a bulging population into middle class, and then peacefully opens their government to a more representative society is the great question of the age.

The clarion call is being sounded by several Americans that in order to maintain our leadership, the United States needs to re-invirgorate and rediscover the things that made our nation the role model and desired destination for almost everyone who seeks a better life.

There was an important post today on the Steve DeAngelis, Enterra Solutions blog. It title hints a return to an important facet that for the past thirty years has been fading as an American icon, our manufacturing base. The post, Reviving U.S. Manufacturing addresses the critical need for America to get over the malise of self loathing and naval gazing, and get into the business of self development.

In a recent post entitled "Development-in-a-Box™ at Home in America," I focused on an op-ed piece by Thomas Friedman. In that piece, he chided U.S. politicians for not embracing policies that fostered the "next great global industry — renewable energy and clean power." Their lack of vision and action, he lamented, meant that America was not taking advantage of an opportunity clearly ready to be exploited. In another New York Times' op-ed piece, former Democratic senator and presidential candidate Gary Hart called on his party's candidate, Barack Obama, to use the campaign to outline a new chapter for American politics ["America’s Next Chapter," 25 June 2008]. Hart argues that new political chapters are, historically, written about every three decades and that the time is ripe for a new one.

DeAngelis turns to a question asked in a Business Week article.

Can the U.S. recapture its manufacturing base? Pete Engardio, writing in BusinessWeek, asks just such a question ["Can the U.S. Bring Jobs Back from China?" 30 June 2008 print edition]. His answer is "maybe." But he warns, "American industry may not be ready to seize the opportunity" even when it presents itself. He begins his article with the story of a New England battery developer who couldn't find a U.S. company to produce her batteries.

Steve worries that.

In the post I mentioned at the beginning of this blog, I indicated that I had observed the same thing about U.S. businesses and workers. They seem to have lost their competitive edge, especially when dealing with emerging economies. I argued that America needs to reinvigorate the culture of hard work and ambition that made it great in the first place.

DeAngelis ends writing about what Engardio found in his article that needs to be done to get America back on track as a manufacturing economy.


He believes that government agencies can also play a role by providing seed capital to promising startups and by building industrial parks with low-cost facilities and services that rival those found in China. Friedman called that "nation-building at home" and I referred to it as Development-in-a-Box™ at home. Whatever you call it, America needs to build world-class facilities to support emerging economic sectors as well as reinvigorate the pioneer spirit that made American workers the most productive in the world.

Another person who has been in the forefront of leading the way to a return of America's traditional role as the most innovative country in history is John Kao. a recent The New York Times profiles John Kao looks at his message and what makes Kao tick. His book Innovation Nation: How America Is Losing Its Innovation Edge, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do to Get It is a primer on what America can do to regain it's leadership.

. The above posts are offered to stimulate the dialog and encourage Americans to dream about a future worth creating for their children and their grandchildren. For the members of the Boomer generation, our time is waning, we can use that time to become visionary and guide the next generations to renew the American Dream and understand that for much of our history we used our economic power for good and influence around the globe, while building our nation and enriching our people.

Update: hat/tip to Fabius Maximus for linking Keidel's report.
“China’s Economic Rise - Fact and Fiction“,

And comments from China based blog, All Roads Lead to China, questions several assumptions made by, Anthony Kiedel Report: China’s Economic Rise - Fact or Fiction.
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Mother Nature is a Bitch!

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The news of two devastating natural disasters within the past two weeks, remind us that Mother Nature is not always the nurturing wet nurse, we were taught about in prose.

The great Sichuan earthquake: What we know so far (and a second earthquake this morning)

Warning! Graphic scenes!
Slide show: Digging Through the Disaster. and Rescue Efforts Continue After Deadly Quake
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In fact! as Howard Bloom writes about Mother Nature, "She's a bloody bitch!" In two posts Bloom strips away the covering and reveals that nature's "curve balls" are what stimulates innovation and change. The links are well worth the time to read. Screw 'Sustainability' - And I Am Here To Tell You Why and Screw 'Sustainability' - And Cheer Up About It.

Disasters like cyclones and earthquakes serve to remind us that humans are at their best when responding to those challenges. Steve DeAngelis has a post this week that notes those traits don't need a catastrophic event to trigger the desire to reach out to help those in need. The Psychology of Philanthropy. Building on an article by Shankar Vedantam entitled, ["Where the Conscience Meets the Checkbook,"

DeAngelis adds his own wise words:

I agree with Vedantam. Whether you decide to contribute to the rebuilding efforts in Myanmar, China, or Georgia, or decide to make small loans through a group like Kiva, or decide to help a church group or other established charity that helps others in need, the decision to help is the most important first step you can take.

And turning back to their roots as a force that traditionally has been the nation's fire brigade that responded to the aid of fellow nations is the United States Navy. Poised to offer a response similar to that offered after the 2004 Tsunami, is the7th Fleet Focus: Ghost of Macarthur Lands in Myanmar. The first man off the plane was Admiral Timothy Keating, Chief of US Pacific Command, who met with the Junta leaders in a mirror of the days when the Navy took the lead, in contact with regimes outside of normal diplomatic relations.

Meanwhile in China, More troops rush in to help China quake rescue their military musters every branch, even sending in paratroops to drop into areas cut off by road. News Analysis: A Rescue in China, Uncensored

Great battles will resonate in the history books, but the the personal rewards gained by saving a life will resonate in the heart of the giver until his last breath.

Please consider a donation to the which can be earthquake relief fund established by CaringforChina.org, made over the web or mailed in to the address provided.

Thoughts for Sunday Afternoon

The posts that caught my eye this week are a diverse lot. But in reflection, they hold an element of connectivity.

Steve DeAngelis, posted on Two Views of the Emerging Geopolitical Landscape where he comments on book reviews in The Economist, that try and forecast the future political landscape of the world. He concludes his comments by referring to his colleague Tom Barnett.

I have heard my colleague Tom Barnett argue that most developing countries that embrace globalization and free markets do so as single-party states. He asserts that many Americans suffer from attention-deficit disorder when it comes to remembering how democracies emerge – "the process is slow and painful." Alternative futures analysis can be very useful in exploring how autocracies might evolve and what that might mean for the global economy.

Moving along to Chet Ricards blog, we are treated to a story connecting orientation, to genetic heritage, Note on Orientation: Genetic Heritage where Chet draws a connection to John Boyd's OODA Theory.

Orientation is an interactive process of many-sided implicit cross-referencing projections, empathies, correlations, and rejections that is shaped by and shapes the interplay of genetic heritage, cultural tradition, previous experiences, and unfolding circumstances.

Related to Chet Richards is the site Defense and the National Interest which introduces itself as:

Our aim is to foster debate on the roles of the U.S. armed forces in the post-Cold War era and on the resources devoted to them. The ultimate purpose is to help create a more effective national defense against the types of threats we will likely face during the first decades of the new millennium.

Thomas Barnett's in This week's column sees a great religious awakening on the horizon.

As our era features globalization's rapid and unprecedented advance, it will logically also feature the greatest single religious awakening the world has ever seen. Religion will become eminently more important because economic conditions will change more dramatically in coming years and decades than at any other time in human history.

Barnett's column deserves a careful read as he traces the development of the major religions and how they have been challenged by globalization. He offers two answers to that perceived challenge.

Based on the American experience, there seem to be two answers: (1) encourage nondenominationalism among the major sects of a country's dominant religion or among the competing religions; (2) allow the religion in question to maintain its social model of separatism while subjugating itself to the secular state.

His final sentence offers hope.

American awakenings share a history of triggering mass social reform. The same can and should be true of globalization's current awakening.

Intrinsically linked to the challenges of change that comes with more and more people getting a fair slice of the pie is the ongoing clashes that are drawn along culture and religious lines. Heading into this next week our attention is drawn to observations made over at Information Dissemination by Galrahn, Observing the Rotation of US Naval Power to the Middle East. His read of these events:

As we read the events as they are disclosed in public sources, we believe the United States is on the verge of major offensive operations in the Middle East.

These rotational periods where strike groups overlap durations in forward theaters do occur every year, and are not abnormal, however it is noteworthy that this year the rotation coincides with a large naval presence from Europe in the 5th Fleet theater. We also observe the possibility that this massive increase of naval power may not be reduced as quickly as we observed it would last week.

And in a related post on Destroyerman, War Beckons, and another link, posted by Galrahn we are left to our own conclusions.

The Nimitz CSG currently on deployment to the Pacific is getting more escorts half way through its deployment. We observe it very rare for a CSG already on deployment to have escorts surged. Can't say we have seen this before, makes us wonder, what is going on in the South Pacific we aren't hearing about.

Time will reveal the whole story, until then we can only watch and wait and reflect on this post about a discovery from another time, Missing WWII Airmen are Identified.

WILLPOWER

“Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties – and confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” — Vice Admiral James Stockdale

The past weeks this blog has been spending time recognizing and discussing the military forces that as the last post will attest, we need desperately in order to maintain order and ensure the environment where humans can flourish. Turning away from that subject, this post will highlight a post today by Steve DeAngelis, Enterra Solutions blog.

Steve addresses The Importance of Willpower, something that every single person on this planet can relate too. Steve starts out by noting how important willpower is to a successful business. He goes on to illustrate it's importance to our everyday lives. By linking an article in the April 2nd, New York Times by Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang, entitled,"Tighten Your Belt, Strengthen Your Mind."

The brain’s store of willpower is depleted when people control their thoughts, feelings or impulses, or when they modify their behavior in pursuit of goals. Psychologist Roy Baumeister and others have found that people who successfully accomplish one task requiring self-control are less persistent on a second, seemingly unrelated task.

Steve's dissection of the article is masterful and serves to give the reader ample substance to consider. He adds sparse comments as he includes larges swatches of the Times article to strengthen the reader's willpower to take the time to read the whole article and then spend time thinking about how it relates to their busy lives.

Many days we all feel overwhelmed by the Black Swans, those unexpected things that alter our lives either by a degree or a whole compass heading. Having the willpower to be prepared to weather the unexpected is crucial to survival.

The past few months this blog has written about many who have demonstrated willpower, people like Michael Monsoor, John McCain, LT G, Tom Barnett, the men of the USS Russell, and those who are nameless, except by the description of their talent and perseverance. We all know people around us who are focused and dedicated to achieving their goals against difficult odds. It is important to encourage them and share all the tools of life in order to prepare them for the future.

It is to those nameless people, this article is posted as a reminder to maintain faith in yourselves. The distance of time and location does not dim the hope I have for your futures.

The Changing Image of Women

When I returned to school a few years ago, one of the first classes I took was Westward Expansion in U.S. History. I thought the class would be a easy start for my return to academia, [IE] all about cowboys and Indians. But, to my surprise the class theme was the role that people other than white guys played in the American frontier experience. It was eye opening and I came away with a new respect for the other people, made up of ethnic groups and woman of all races. History has overlooked much of the contributions made by women in particular. The last decades have seen a shift to focus on their accomplishments and achievements. That professor, Dr. Gordon Bakken, has been a leader in championing the role of women in western history.Gordon Bakken homepage. He opened my eyes and pointed the way to a new understanding of American History.

A few items caught my eye today as I scanned the blogs. The first is led off by Steve DeAngelis who writes on his blog that Nerds get Curves. He notes that teenage girls are becoming prolific computer geeks. That is not to say that they will enter the field of computer science. DeAngelis writes:

That as Thomas Barnett, noted on his blog that girls around the world are starting to be appreciated more [To go Core is to value daughters]. As father of daughter, this is a trend I'm pleased to see. It is also a concomitant benefit of globalization that rarely gets mentioned. I do think that as more young girls become familiar with technology more of them will eventually get interested in the technical side of IT. These, however, will be the girls who are fascinated with how things are done (i.e., how the programs work) rather than the girls who are fascinated by what's done with them (i.e., content created for the Web). We are all better off when half of humanity is neither sidelined nor pigeon-holed into stereotyped roles. We need all of the help we can get from all of the best minds available to help solve the challenges headed our way.

Supporting this trend has been the enrollment in post-secondary schools for the past decade in the United States. At Colleges, Women Are Leaving Men in the Dust - New York Times.

Along that line, I am reminded of several young women who are up and coming minds on their way to becoming the kind of people that Steve and Tom are writing about. I have posted before about one who labeled herself (Metacognition) on her myspace page.A Resilient Nation, and is looking to make her mark in international business.

Another, is a daughter of Vietnam, who had such a passion for history that she goes to school three nights a week completing her degree, as she works full time at a demanding career.

One other, a daughter of Egypt and Persia, graduated with honors with a degree in film and television. Her goal is not to be an actress, although she has the talent and looks, but to be a director, and win an Oscar for that achievement.

That brings me to an article I found linked on Small Wars Journal's editorial review for February 29th. It's author will surprise you, Staying to Help in Iraq I will let you read the article to see who it is: note the final paragraph. A hint it is a woman not famous for being a diplomat.

As for the question of whether the surge is working, I can only state what I witnessed: U.N. staff and those of non-governmental organizations seem to feel they have the right set of circumstances to attempt to scale up their programs. And when I asked the troops if they wanted to go home as soon as possible, they said that they miss home but feel invested in Iraq. They have lost many friends and want to be a part of the humanitarian progress they now feel is possible.

Turning to the other side of the World, a post on Shangaiist blog notes that China is ending their one-child policy that caused countless baby girls to be aborted over the past decades.China to end one-child policy? What this means is that China like the rest of the World is taking note of the value of women and that civilization can not flourish without their Full participation.

This post is not to glorify women over men, it is to recognize that if you educate and empower women, the next generation will be even more prepared for the ever expanding universe of information humans are required to master.