Is China Really an ‘East Asian success story’?

When the Nobel Prize-winning economist Kenneth Arrow was asked which countries had the best managed economies for a 2004 Wall Street Journal article, he nominated China, Taiwan and South Korea.  Arrow’s point of view is consistent with the widely shared belief that China is the latest successful instalment of the ‘East Asian model’ of authoritarian development (the ‘model’). As David Dollar, the head of the China desk for the World Bank, consistently argues, China is pragmatically replicating many elements of the model. According to Dollar, China’s approach ‘is not that different from what other successful East Asian countries have done before.  Don’t be too sure though.  <<<To read full article, click here.>>>

Above and Beyond: The Apollo Space Race to the Moon

It is 40 years since Neil Armstrong took his ‘giant leap for mankind’ on the early summer morning of July 20th, 1969. It was the high point of a vast and expensive space program initiated by President John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s which ended when Apollo 17’s lunar module lifted off from the Moon on December 14th, 1972. In just under three and a half years, 12 US astronauts walked on the Moon, drove around in their Moon buggy and thrilled television viewers around the world with their barely believable pantomime on a celestial body 236,000 miles from Earth.  The Apollo space program that put them there was the product of an age of optimism and daring very different from our own.  Andre Balogh argues that Apollo would have never happened if the society of today lived in society’s yesterday.  <<<To read full article, click here.>>>

The Great American Bubble Machine

In Rolling Stone Issue 1082-83, Matt Taibbi takes on “the Wall Street Bubble Mafia” — investment bank Goldman Sachs. The piece has generated controversy, with Goldman Sachs firing back that Taibbi’s piece is “an hysterical compilation of conspiracy theories” and a spokesman adding, “We reject the assertion that we are inflators of bubbles and profiteers in busts, and we are painfully conscious of the importance in being a force for good.” Taibbi shot back: “Goldman has its alumni pushing its views from the pulpit of the U.S. Treasury, the NYSE, the World Bank, and numerous other important posts; it also has former players fronting major TV shows. They have the ear of the president if they want it.” Here, now, are excerpts from Matt Taibbi’s piece and video of Taibbi exploring the key issues.  <<<To read full article, click here.>>>