The New Strategy

The role of successful Dictators always fascinates the News media, and Suharto of Indonesia may have been the most successful of all Time. He differed from his predecessor, Sukarno, by never attempting to move the Country in any given direction, and only responded to the Events he had to respond to in order to survive in power. It may have the key to his survival, though I believe that Survival came from his refusal to impede economic agents from Capitalist operations. The article makes much of his family acquiring great wealth under his Rule, but so did all Indonesians, as well as private segments of Indonesian society and international conglomerates. Suharto fostered a regime which was economically profitable to All, and fell only under economic crisis. Indonesian rule since his reign can arguably not have been as superior from an economic standpoint. His Human Rights abuses, while admittedly vile, can be seen as the commission by the entirety of the Ruling classes of Indonesia, not his or his family’s alone.

Robert J Shiller gives Us an excellent article which should be read by Those interested in Market structure, but is a basic Argument with which I disagree strongly. The current trend by all major scholars in the area remains to remove Risk from the operating environment of the Markets. This is exactly the wrong Signal to send. Government never successfully removes Risk as a factor in the Market, and that Risk inevitably carries greater impact, due to the enjoined delays of its operation from Government intervention. Markets would be far more stable with less Inflation in their expansion, if Wealth was allowed to be destroyed as easily as it is constructed; We would lose the basic Wildcatting so prevalent under the current system. Profits are supposed to be bounded by the degree of Risk associated with the investment. Reduction of those Risks to leave only Profit-taking capacities only incites widely inadequate financial management.

Christopher Caldwell has written an article I can agree with, though I doubt We would agree on the adoption of Curatives. The decline in Manufacturing over the last thirty years contains the aberration, not the development of ancillary Marketing venues. Our labor cadres will never be geared towards an international Marketing framework; unsuited by Education, Experience, and Imagination. The failure of the modern American economy is the failure to provide sufficient employment for ordinary labor, who are afflicted with only average skills. Their effective underemployment is pulling down the American economy, while Trade Deficits are eroding our Exchange rates. Domestic entrepreneurs must once again be reinvented, providing widespread employment at competitive rates. We need labels proclaiming American Made on the extensive assortment of domestic consumption Products on Retail shelves. Technical Minds need to forget about designing Software programs, and start to contemplate construction of competitive Production lines. Financial Minds must invent the new competitive American Product lines. lgl