The World is Curved, by D. Smick

http://fora.tv/2008/11/06/David_Smick_The_World_is_Curved

http://www.theworldiscurved.com


A very interesting read for people who wish to examine the financial situation, and how it got that way. Most informative are the chapters that discuss the effects of Sarbanes-Oxley on New York and London, and of the Basel Standards in general.

An excerpt from p. 34:

"the world today is moving away from globalization and unfettered free markets of recent decades toward something more reminiscent of the nineteenth-century model of globalization - a new, more mercantilist era of backroom rivalries, deal-making, and tensions based on ambitious political agendas and capital shifts controlled by governments."

Japan revisited

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/64917/robert-madsen-richard-katz/comparing-crises

In which Madsen and Katz write on the economic situation and its parallels, or lack thereof. (in Foreign Affairs)

Japan pt III

how did they do it?

banking laws relaxed, credit bubble

kind of like now

we don't have the duality in our culture that he mentions however, we have a plurality.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1884815,00.html