The Chinese (supposed) nonsense

SHANGHAI -- The long lunch-hour lines at this city's downtown Bank of China are filled with people who not long ago stuffed their accounts with U.S.
currency. Now they are dumping dollars.

Yuan Man, ticket No. 252 in line, has set aside more than $50,000 to support his son's dream to study in the U.S., but regrets not holding a stronger euro, or even a firm yen. Ron Chen, an Australian pharmaceutical executive, is paid monthly in dollars and converts each paycheck immediately into yuan . A middle-aged woman and her elderly mother sit nearby awaiting the arrival of an overseas wire transfer. They, too, plan to get rid of their dollars the same day.

"The dollar doesn't mean anything anymore," says the woman.

From black marketers to anxious grandmothers, Chinese have become disenchanted with the dollar. The selling has posed problems for Beijing as it tries to keep the yuan pegged to the dollar, adding to pressure China is getting from its trading partners to revalue its currency.

The selling also signals a startling shift that may have damaging implications for the dollar down the line: Many Chinese view the yuan , also called the renminbi, as the safer currency to hold.

"The U.S. dollar is weakening! The renminbi is the hard currency now!"
shouts a 40-year old man after pulling $10,000 out of U.S.-dollar-denominated stocks and plunking the sum into yuan deposits.
"It's the best choice," he says.


"This kind of fight between the eater and the eaten never goes so far that the predator causes extinction of the prey: a state of equilibrium is always established between them, endurable by both species.
What directly threatens the existence of an animal species is never the "eating enemy" but the competitors."

The lack of "prey" would be the lack of food and would mean subsequently the death warranty of the "predator".

Admitting the forwarded scenario, the Chinese would abandon the dollar, this would create a very strong alternative currency (let's think the Euro).
But this would sign their death warranty.
The Chinese more than the rest of the world rely their successful economy on exports, when the dollar will be too weak and the Americans too poor, when the Euro will be too strong and the European economy at the bottom: Where will they export?

What directly threatens the existence of an animal species is never the "eating enemy".
The Chinese know (or should know) too well the next scenario.

Patrizia from a World on IP

Are Stupid Networks a Smart Idea?

If you start from the assumption that "Economics really do matter" and you come to the conclusion that the "Smart networks" at least feed a lot of people, while the "Dumb Network" as far as today didn't make any millionaire, well we could think that the Stupid Networks Is NOT a good idea at all.

Bur then, when they invented the textile machines, since they created a drastic change in the society, and of course reduced millions of people on the verge of starving, one could have come to the conclusion that Progress is not in the interest of the Economy and even more, not in the interest of the society.

In principle a computer can steal thousand of jobs, so that it probably would have been better not to invent it.

And we could go on for hours.

But we ALL know that Progress is something almost as definitive as birth and death.

We are born, we progress and we die.
Period.

Patrizia from a World on IP

Why

Life imitates fiction, people like fiction, people want to live in fiction, life is a fiction.

That explains America's voting, that explains why Bush won.

In life usually what wins is not necessarily the best, but surely is the "best commercialized".

Life is a big advertising and nobody cares to know if it really is what they say it is.
The important is to "have"it.
Our society is the society of the "must have" at any cost.
And the "must have" of what is best commercialized.
It works this way: the people who want to sell create the need, find the best solution and offer, advertise it, and people buy.
It doesn't really matter what it is.
A car, a TV, a Plasma screen, a new GSM, a president, a movie, whatever.
They know what words to use.

When you want to sell something you do not need to be an expert, you do not need to know what you are selling, you need to know psychology, how people think and behave and you are done.
Let the best win.

That is it for today.

Patrizia from a World on IP