the global economy seems to be at the end of a long, dark tunnel. Goldman Sachs' reported quarterly profit of US$3.19 billion is unimaginable a year ago. across the Atlantic, British exports are growing at their fastest pace since January 2008. notably, China's club of the rich and the famous is celebrating a membership of 130 billionaires. elsewhere in Asia, Hong Kong has just sold the world's most expensive apartment at US$57 million, and Vietnam's VN Index closed at 609 today, passing the psychological mark of 600 for the first time in 19 months.

actually, such figures are not the only way to appreciate the ongoing macroeconomic changes. for one, the men's underwear index (MUI) is a pretty good gauge of the state of the economy: sales of men's underwear tends to be strong when the economy is doing well and, as expenditure on men's underwear is more discretionary than women's lingerie, such expenditure would be first to forgo during a downturn. on a personal note, I do think the MUI is valid, at least to a larger extent than the hot waitress index. and by the way, Alan Greenspan follows it too. the beauty of economics.

despite the fact that the world's gentlemen are probably doing better underneath it all, the bad time may yet to be over. although Singapore is probably the first Asian country to be out of recession, Lee Kuan Yew still repeatedly cautions that this might not be a V-shaped recovery. in fact, Singapore is continuing its Job Credit scheme to help sustain the moderate upturn. and to Paul Krugman, it's "mission not accomplished" for the U.S. as unemployment should average 9.8% in 2010, resulting in an "output gap" of US$2 trillion. that's the annual GDP of the U.K., the world's 7th largest economy, forgone a year.

yet another, even starker, way to assess the state of the world is to look on the other, often neglected, side of the poor and the hungry. coincidentally, today's the World Food Day, marking the establishment of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. but I doubt there is much cause for celebration: the world's chronically hungry population will exceed 1 billion this year, an increase of almost 90 million from 2008. certainly the ongoing economic crisis should shoulder part of the blame, for the number had steadily decreased since the 1970s. no wonder the 2009 World Food Day theme is "Achieving food security in times of crisis."

now we can further share the populist sentiments against Goldman Sachs' US$16,700,000,000 executive bonuses to be paid out in 2010. mere sum for the U.S.' largest investment bank? that translates to more than half a million on average for each of the bank's 31,700 employees. yes, the Dow passed the 10,000 mark this week. but the first time it did so, back in 1999, America's unemployment rate was 4.2%, not 1 in 10 as at the moment.

and as China's billionaire club is expected to surpass the U.S.' within just 4 years from now, it is unacceptable that 1 billion of us are, not hungry, but chronically hungry. admittedly, there have been commendable exceptions to the trend, such as Kuwait, Mexico and Vietnam. but if China, with all the resources and political support, takes 10 years to bring 58 million people out of chronic hunger, that would be almost 200 years to achieve the UN millenium goal to end poverty and hunger. not to mention that the worst affected regions, according to the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2009, are in sub-Saharan Africa, which cannot match China's effort in any sunstantive way.

so yeah, should the MUI or the GHI reflect the fortune of the world? you decide.

there was a time when I often mulled over whether having Vietnamese as part of my language proficiency would value add my resume. yes, it's among the top 20 spoken languages in the world and yes, there're more native speakers of it than of Italian. but chances were that you would be hired not because you could speak Vietnamese.

and so it's a pleasant thing how for the first time, I can feel, for both pragmatic and nationalistic reasons, that Vietnamese is an asset. everyone is eyeing a piece of Vietnam, and there's no better way to get started than understanding the language. and although English is the medium for almost anything nowadays, there's still something that should be, and is best, said in Vietnamese.

it's a thing to be proud of as your language gets recognised. it's like the coming of age of the nation. think how China had no interest in English before the industrial revolution, and how Chinese is today probably the fastest growing language in the West (let's not delve into the exponential growth of Nerdic). yeah, it kind of marks the point when your country is in the globalisation game, despite having heard the talk for years.

but this asset could very well become cost. bloggers Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, Bui Thanh Hieu , Huy Duc and journalist Pham Doan Trang should know better than most, for all are under arrest for speaking out against the government. I couldn't access their posts and so don't know what it is exactly. my guess is that it should be on bauxite mining in Vietnam's central highlands, on the South China Sea disputes, along those lines.

I suppose we could say Vietnam has been soft on the Spratlys and the Paracels. but it's a whole different thing labelling, say, the government as a feeble machinery that could only hold press conferences to a mere roomful of domestic journalists to "protest" against China's expansionism. we may not be fully aware of the constraints Nguyen Tan Dung faces. no, having constraints is not a weakness. even Obama has his fair share of those. in fact, understanding constraints is key to effective governance - look at Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore and Hayato Ikeda's post-war Japan.

and let's have some perspective: the South China Sea thing and central highlands bauxite mining are separate issues and should be approached differently. it is unbelievably ridiculous to think that China once again wants to "invade" Vietnam as "whole villages of Chinese workers have mushroomed on the [central highlands] plateau, and 10,000 Chinese settlers are expected in the coming year." China had tried that for a thousand years without success. and, to be objective, China would be better off "occupying" energy-rich CIS states than Vietnam for the matter.

I understand the green and the wealth redistribution movements against the Aluminum Corporation of China Limited (CHALCO) in Vietnam or the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) in Wasit, Iraq. but xenophobia, excuse me! when the world gravitates around China, it's a good thing that Hu Jintao is sending trade and not troops to Vietnam. the blame's not on China that Vietnam has no money to develop its central highlands. beggars cannot be choosers, that is.

I agree that the bauxite project is a bad call, for environmental and strategic reasons very much as General Vo Nguyen Giap has written on. there could be better ways to devise a long-term strategy on the matter. in the meantime, people with an asset and a mind to work it should work it with care and responsibility, especially the anti-China lobby, so as to reach the masses effectively and avoid regrettable arrests.

it's been a really long time since I last blogged. it was a whole new environment as soon as April was over and May heralded in a long blast of summer of anticipatory travel, age-old family affairs and, of course, friends, lost & found. in all, I'm lucky that no matter how bad I do during school terms, the summer has always been good. and this one was great. and I didn't even screw up my study.

things do change.

for one, I used to be puzzled why people would visit Thailand over and over again. be it an urban escape to Phuket or just a weekend shopping spree in Bangkok. now I kind of get it. the cultured and hospitable mix of malls and temples, highways and getaways have done the country good. I would wanna visit Suan Lum night bazaar again. it was like a safari of street-wear varieties where one can appreciate the bargain galore in comfort.

also, the few weeks of backpacking from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City have made me feel better attached to Vietnam. the experience must have been amazing to strip me off the long-held prejudice against the country, that it was hardly fun, that the people were more often than not rude, and that you might as well move Mount. Fuji before attempting to do business in Vietnam. in place of that is now a new-found respect for the nation, for its drive to change. coincidentally, it's Vietnam's 34th national day today, 2/9/2009. may there be more than just fireworks and musical propaganda to eventually unmask the hidden charm.

and in the end, the (extended) family matters were still pretty hot. but even that has changed. what previously seemed permanently impaired has now been pretty much ironed out. I'm just glad people are beginning to be brothers and sisters again. but of course, it may never be the same. some things do change; some things just don't.

like how even when something as monumental as "Ikea" typefaced in ubiquitous Verdana instead of the customised Futura of the past 60 years happens, Ikea remains the leading low-cost proponent of fine living, just as it has been paying close attention to the design of even a $9 lampstand since 1943.

or like how although the DPJ has finally unseated the incumbent LDP from its 5 decades of uninterrupted rule, and Yukio Hatoyama repeatedly promises to change Japan, the land of the rising sun is still facing a severe confidence crisis. in fact, Hatoyama has been constantly moderating his change rhetoric since his apparent election victory at 9:40pm, 30 Aug, realising the full extent of challenge on the DPJ.

change, of course, should be good. change is necessary for development. and so, as much as I would like to see Vietnam changes, it's not going to be easy.

update: Paul Krugman's excellent piece on China's dollar trap half contradicts and half supports what I've written. Krugman believes that governor Zhou's call for a "super-sovereign reserve currency" only shows the T-bills Republic's mistake in over-accumulating the dollar. so yeah, I may have been off suggesting that it's a sign of China's economic might. But my counter-argument that China's not ready to up the ante on the dollar any time soon still holds. on another note, I am totally in line with Krugman on China's desperation for trade.


me and Lusi were on a quick lunch, and we were on the topic of China's international clout vis-a-vis the U.S., from the perspective of the yuan-dollar relative importance. that is some serious talk (which rarely happens between the jolly us), and so this is a complementary piece to my recent opinion on the increasingly relevant US-China rivalry. but instead of a general, multi-faceted picture, this time there'll be a focus, on the yuan-dollar balance as a proxy for US-China competition.

Barry Eichengreen has just dismissed the G-20 as a too diverse grouping for consensus-building and effective crisis management, contending that the rich world, i.e. the U.S. and Europe and Japan, cannot quite align their interests with those of Indonesia and Argentina. but China seems to be offering an innovative solution: on the eve of the G-20 London summit, China and Argentina have agreed on a yuan swap facility of up to 70 billion yuan to allow dollar-tight Argentina to directly trade with China without the usual intermediary U.S. dollar. This should help prevent a further drop in trade volumes, thus stemming the adverse effects of the financial crisis on export-driven China.

China has already inked yuan swap agreements with many other countries before Argentina. there is a recent 100 billion yuan swap line with Indonesia, and another 20 billion with Belarus, in addition to earlier arrangements with South Korea, Malaysia and Hong Kong that in all total 650 billion yuan, or US$ 95 billion. and so what's significant about the Sino-Argentina swap deal is that China is extending its sphere of influence into Latin America, the traditional backyard of America. here's a large country in a large continent right next to the U.S., where many countries either officially dollarise or practically prefer the dollar to their domestic currencies. and yet Argentina is taking the option to bypass the dollar and trade directly with China on the yuan.

this, coupled with the recent assertion by China's central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan that the world needs a new reserve currency in place of the dollar, should prompt Obama & Co. to have an economic Cox Report on China, as the assault has now entered a new realm of currency supremacy, besides cyber-war and aircraft carrier and space race.

nevertheless, when the going gets tough, the tough usually gets going, for the United States of America. many people thought Japan was going to overtake the American economy in the 1980s, the same way Germany was believed to be on its way to surpass America after World War II. the U.S. and its people have this quality that brings the country to where they are today, a quality that has trumped Germany's "soziale Marktwirtschaft" and the Japanese perfectionism. of course China can bring a different ballgame altogether. but there's no obvious reason why the U.S. cannot respond with its trademark American enterprise.

also, China can, but whether it is ready to bring the dollar to task is a very different thing. as recent as November 2007, governor Zhou was still supporting a strong dollar as the subprime crisis emerged in America. and the yuan cannot replace the dollar as long as it is still pegged to the dollar, although China seems to have allowed minimal yuan movements since 2006, and the peg is at its lowest level since inception (See chart). in addition, China is currently the largest holder of American bonds, and the Chinese Communist Party cannot afford to have 70% of their foreign reserves eroded away following the collapse of the dollar. this is no wild guess: China's central bank assistant governor Yi Gang said in November 2007 the dollar must remain the key component of the country's then 1.4 trillion dollar reserves because it was "the largest currency that we use" for trade and FDI as well as other international financial settlements.


let's also note that for every country in need of a yuan swap agreement with the People's Bank of China, there are almost three who are on dollar swap lines with the Federal Reserve. my guess is that China is extending the yuan swaps not with the primary intention to signal the coming of age of the currency, but for the practical reason of trade. China needs trade to prevent further economic slowdown, and so it is simple logic to provide swap facilities to Asian countries who trade extensively with China, as well as Argentina, of which China is the second largest trade partner.

I suppose the most important fundamental question to ask when assessing the declining role of the U.S. dollar is, what are the alternatives? the dollar may be unreliable, and it gives America too much financial and political leverage over the rest of the world, and it is almost immoral to have third-world savers fund the American consumer who lives on credit. but China is not ready to do it. Japan is not ready to do it. and the EU is not prepared to slam Benjamin Franklin any time soon.

well, instead of a single supreme global currency, we can have the best of all worlds. but that is going to take real long before the U.S. and the EU and China and Japan and the UK and Russia and India and Brazil come to a consensus on the relative weights of their currencies.

can China go it alone? Lusi thinks 2009 year-end would reveal something interesting on that. and so she was totally surprised when I said, give China 20 years. at the least.

when the unarmed USNS Impeccable was harassed by 5 Chinese vessels 75 miles off the Yulin Naval Base on 8 March, 2009, what matters is not plainly who infringed upon whose legal rights. after the 2001 Hainan Island mid-air crash, this is yet another episode in which the U.S. and China collide. how the greatest contemporary rivalry of our time plays out will alter the balance of power in Asia, with significant bearings on the perennial South China Sea territorial disputes.

actually, a simple memory jog evidences that there has already been a shift in the U.S.-China power balance. 60 years ago, the then rudimentary People's Liberation Army (PLA) had only mere numbers to halt the American advance into North Korea. Victorious or not, communist China was destitute, and Chairman Mao's Great Leap Forward further crippled the economy. 30 years later, a confident Deng Xiaoping swarmed northern Vietnam with 200,000 troops in response to the latter's engagement in China-sponsored Pol Pot's Cambodia. Although Deng's "short-arms-short-legs" PLA could not quite "teach Vietnam a lesson" as he had wished, the bold move sent a powerful message to nuclear-armed America that China was not deterred to make its own decisions (even without the backing of the Soviet Union). and which other country has ever held official American personnel hostage to an impotent U.S. as China did in the Hainan Island incident of 2001? besides Iran, I think there is none.

America is certainly not getting weaker. it will stay the world's greatest economic, technological and military powerhouse and no others will come close even in a hundred years. what's happening is that China is fast - and I mean really fast - rising; nobody can afford not to be swayed by the sheer gravity of this 9.6 million km² landmass of 1.3 billion people who produce US$7 trillion (PPP) a year and spend more than the UK or France or Germany or Japan on their military - and rising. it will not take long before the Chinese walk the moon. and as Lee Kuan Yew put it to Deng Xiaoping, if the landless peasants from China could come build a first-world Singapore, the mainland can definitely better that in no time.

it is also interesting to note how, when the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis hit East Asia, the West was preaching and America's trio Robert Rubin - Alan Greenspan - Lawrence Summers were featured by Time as the "committee to save the world." 10 years on, as the subprime crisis hit the U.S., while Rubin had resigned from Citigroup's board, Greenspan admitted he was wrong and only Summers remains (epitome of Krugman's magazine cover effect), China's central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan is advising the U.S. and other Western governments to follow China's "prompt, decisive and effective policy measures, demonstrating its superior system advantage when it comes to making vital policy decisions" to deal with the crisis.

and just back in 2007, then U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was pushing for China to revalue the yuan to help fight China's inflation and correct trade balances, only to have Chinese vice-minister of commerce Chen Denming flatly refute that the weakening dollar, and not the pegged yuan, was the problem. today, China needs no such provocation from the U.S. to assert its will. when Premier Wen was "a little bit worried" about Chinese assets in the U.S., he said so on national newspaper, and had Obama promptly assure him of the safety of China's US$700 billion in American bonds. soon after that, governor Zhou has gone as far as to boldly suggest, in both Chinese and English, an international reserve currency to replace the U.S. dollar, much to the anxiety of Timothy Geithner and Ben Bernanke half the world away.

but China does not actually need the proposed reserve currency to be materialised; the country already has a burgeoning economy to bolster its growing international clout. as China continues to peacefully rise, it will further pull its weight on important global matters. and there is no better time than now for China to take centre stage of the world when the West is in disarray. it is noteworthy that Lee Kuan Yew once commented how China's "peaceful rise" was semantically contradictory - a rise is meant to be violent, not smooth. Lee thought a "peaceful renaissance" should describe China's designed vision better.

there is a good reason why the U.S. keeps such a close watch on China's military expenditures. for one, Americans know they are king of the sea. but they also very well understand that as long as they are not god, China is capable of outsting any king. there is no guarantee of America's predominant naval position in Asia now that China is expanding deep into the South China Sea. and so how the U.S. should respond hinges on whether this is a rise or a renaissance of China. a Chinese renaissance should not be a cause for American reinforcements of destroyers and battle ships to the region, not when the U.S. is still deep in the quagmire of Afghanistan. but a rise would call for a different, hardened, approach - the U.S. must firmly neutralise South China Sea conflicts and promptly support Southeast Asian claimant states, who cannot match China's might in any substantive way.

in the meantime, let's hope no oil is found underneath the seabed.

2009 is like the sick cousin of the high-time 2006. Singapore’s GDP was first projected to slide by 2 to 5%, before the gloomy Lee Hsien Loong admitted in Hua Hin, Thailand, that the economy could decline by up to 8%. And to further pepper an already too spicy crab served at the Thomson Reuters dialogue, MM Lee raised a doom scenario of a 10% contraction this year.

an impactful speech at the 2004 Democratic Party Convention. an arduous 2 years through the 2008 presidential elections. and, with much blessings from above, the world witnessed a Hawaiian-born nobody, whose father left the family when he was yet able to speak and whose mother passed away before he became a politician, turn into the Obaman, President of the U.S, on 20 Jan 2009 (albeit a few hours late, constitutionally, due to a verbal hiccup by Mr. Roberts).

there is more than just novelty about the Obama's presidency. first, he openly criticised Bush (who was just a few feet away) and was against the unpragmatic ideological zeal characterised by the predecessor's administration that culminated in a disastrous inheritance for America 2009. second, Obama fervently called for the dictators of the world, i.e. Iran and North Korea, to recognise that they are on "the wrong side of history," and offered them "a hand" to join the rights of democracy.

just that i do think ideology still has a very important place in politics. Obama may champion pragmatism, but it should be remembered that Winston Churchill was not pragmatic at all when he urged the RAF to defend the British shores against titan Germany; Sir Churchill had masterfully instilled his ideology of freedom and righteousness into his soldiers. and since then, the world's seen, and celebrated upon, the rise of ideologically-driven Asia's Vladimir Putin, and Junichiro Koizumi Australia's Kevin Rudd, Latin America's Hugo Chavez and Michelle Bachelet, Africa's Morgan Tsvangirai or the Middle East's Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Bush might have had really bad judgements, but i still very much admire the man for his ideological conviction and for making the difficult decisions that faced him. no i don't think it's a lie when Bush said he had made those choices because he believed they were in the best interests of America. Bush may have the lowest post-office approval rating among the Presidents, but Jenna and Barbara totally love him, and they know who their father truly is. and elsewhere, Africa will miss Bush, and the Middle East will need the like of Bush's two-state solution for the Palestinians.

and Mr. Obama, please also remember that Iran and North Korea are not exactly part of the "axis of evil." how could Iran be more evil than the U.S. when the democratically elected Shah was overthrown with American hands, which then installed a puppet government that ruled Iran until the hostage crisis? and as for North Korea, what evil things could they ever do to the U.S., or any body for the matter, when there is not even enough power to even light Pyongyang? the U.S. simply does not like and cannot tolerate anyone who defies them, since that will create a very harmful precedent for others, particularly in the current backdrop of revived nationalism.

well yes, Obama does not belong to the elite Washington class. he was not born into the job. he's earned it. but perhaps as he is offering change to America and a helping hands to the people of the world, he could be mindful of history so as to clearly see the present and better touch the future.

imagine a group of people. they are being forced out of their homes by the authority and that is not being fairly compensated for. imagine you as the people's representative. you volunteer to speak, on their behalf, with the public office. you are a good man/woman; you devote your time and efforts, despite that you are ridiculed and criticised as "nonconstructive" by, of course, the authority.





and you have done a good job voicing out the people's discontent, before their old block is demolished to make place for the posh complex. so good that the head of that authority kindly offers you a lump sum so that you'll shut your mouth. a mutually beneficial move, you stand to gain, and the authority needs to only spare a few cents to avoid the huge compensation packages otherwise incurred.

but you keep going, for the people. you refuse to accept the bribe, or dis-bribe since it is from and not to a public officer. and oops, you caught him making the offer on tape. ha! you may choose to do something with the record, or you may not. that perhaps depends on whether the people's rights are met.

you are 63-year-old Mr. Ngô Tiều (nguyên Tổng biên tập Tạp chí Thanh tra, nguyên Trưởng Phòng tổng hợp Ủy ban Thanh tra nhà nước tại TP.Hồ Chí Minh). and your nemesis is Mr. LÊ MINH TRÍ (Phó Bí thư, Chủ tịch UBND Quận 1).


in another exchange between Mr. Ngô and Mr. LÊ, before the people were forced out of their homes, Mr. Ngô said that if there was a forced eviction, "there will be blood." in response, Mr. LÊ did not hesitate to counter that he would "be rang nhung ke chong doi," i.e. break the jaws of those who oppose.

chairman of the people's committee of district 1, oh my goodness, seriously? maybe this is not as headline-grabbing as the PCI fiasco by the shamed Huỳnh Ngọc Sĩ or the 26-year-long ordeal of Mr. Giáo Sính. but oh my goodness, seriously? why are there full of these maggots in the public office?

disclaimer: the above information is not published in print or any electronic form to date. those incidents are as told by Mr. Ngô, who in my opinion deserves the Integrity Award from Transparency International like Ms. Lê Hiền Đức, to the people he, along with a few others, represents.

and LÊ MINH TRÍ, fuck you!