Three Ashleys

For better and worse, my namesakes become part of the political rhetoric.
And to think, I was Obama's Ashley. I guess I will settle for being Obama's Ashley in China!

The Logic of Subjectivity

Not much time to think about non-translating things right now, but these caught my eye.

It seems David Brooks is on to my new ideas and even sees a place in the world for me!

My sense is that this financial crisis is going to amount to a coming-out party for behavioral economists and others who are bringing sophisticated psychology to the realm of public policy.

While I may be focusing on entrepreneurial subjectivity in the Chinese periphery, I still think there is something to be said generally for looking seriously into HOW people perceive risk and stability and commit Errors of Perception that can being entire economies to their knees. All this is about HOW you look at the problem, according to Brooks. POINT: Subjectivity Matters.

And Tom Friedman usually makes me feel good about studying entpreneurialism.

Ultimately, we can’t bail our way out of this crisis. We can only grow our way out — with more innovation and entrepreneurship, which create new businesses and better jobs.

This editorial has a very good illustration of what government-held banks may mean for the future of financial risk-taking and credit. 'The new, the small, the foreign and the risky' are all at serious risk of becoming categorically un-creditworthy in the new world order. The US Congress will generally engage in risk-averse behavior and could get itself into some pretty sticky favors or even outright corruption. POINT: Protect Entrepreneurialism and Innovation!

From the Deep Thought Files

Is America really ready to move 'beyond this politics of division'?
Are Americans really paying attention to political words?
And are they really ready to stand up (and walk out of their call center job in Indiana) to protest disgusting lies and savage desperate politics?

Damn. Go Indiana!

Good News

As the campaign seems to have hit a tipping point...

As I am busy translating (ie. working!) another calligraphy course...

As autumn rains pour and my new roommate takes a nap....

Here are several things that inspired me today:

Fiercely Good People Winning Awards!

NYT: Chinese Activist wins European Human Rights Award

Hu Jia, a soft-spoken, bespectacled advocate for democracy and human rights in China, was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, Europe’s most prestigious human rights prize. Last year, Mr. Hu testified via video link before a hearing of the European Parliament about China’s human rights situation. Weeks later, he was jailed and later sentenced to three and a half years in prison for subversion based on his writings criticizing Communist Party rule. Mr. Hu has been one of China’s leading figures on a range of human rights issues, while also speaking out on behalf of AIDS patients and for environmental protection.

“Whatever he does, he always stands in the forefront,” Mr. Teng said in an earlier interview. “Everything he wrote, everything he said, is straight from his heart. We have poor people and marginalized people in society whose voices are being muzzled. Hu Jia was trying to be the spokesman for the unheard voices.”

Packer: Burmese Journalist wins Media Foundation Courage Award

There’s one journalist in Burma who, through guts and guile, somehow finds a way to write real news stories: Aye Aye Win, the country’s A.P. correspondent. At a rare government press conference after last year’s suppression of the monks’ demonstrations, she kept pressing a police official for information about how many people had been killed.

Yesterday Aye Aye Win was awarded the Journalism and Courage Award of the International Women’s Media Foundation. The ceremony took place at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria; the winner’s remarks, which had to be delivered in absentia, make me slightly ashamed of the slackness and mediocrity of most American journalism: “I have pledged to work as a journalist in my own country, Myanmar, to serve the people and country with a firm belief that a free and independent press is vital to a free society…Journalism in Myanmar is a risky business. Anyone in my country, particularly journalists, can at any time be arrested, interrogated and charged without any sound reason. A knock on the gate at midnight unnerves and traumatizes our lives.”

Looking for a job?

This job posting just arrived in my email inbox from the State Department. Let me know if you want the details.

The Department of State: Office of WMD Terrorism is looking for a Nuclear Smuggling Operations Specialist.

I actually considered becoming a Nuclear Smuggling Major at Cornell. Damn.

Organic Farm: 10. 12

More pics here on Facebook!

It's Starting

! i am picking up many happy birthday wishes on the networks !
! happy 25th !
! kisses and hugs !

more later...after bed!

Politics

Fallows is right on so many things, especially Obama on China:

Obama really needs to raise his game when it comes to answering questions about US interactions with China. He fell back on the same old lame "they're manipulating the currency" argument, as simplistic and misleading a slogan as those on other issues he criticizes from McCain.

Nate at 538:

It's as though you could see avatars of Steve Schmidt and John Weaver perched atop John McCain's respective shoulders, wrestling for control of his message.

This is eerily similar to an earlier post I wrote speculating that J.S. McCain has indeed been pulled into multiple parts by his warring campaign advisers.

Me Two Weeks Ago:

McCain has turned into a human talking points memo... a broken record... a canned act... a puppet. His mistake is continuing to rely on a team that is internally split; one side is the maverick who wants to champion his departures from party line (ie. immigration) and the other side is the Bush-style-red-button-pressing-Rightist. He is bound to come across as schizophrenic, unsteady and disingenuous (at best).

Have you been everywhere, man?

This is a fun game for traveling down memory lane.
It seems Johnny Cash has me beat...by a long shot!

---------------------------------------------------
(I have been, I think, to all the places in bold. Copy the list, bold your places or pass it on!)

Reno, Chicago, Fargo, Minnesota, Buffalo, Toronto, Winslow, Sarasota, Wichita, Tulsa, Ottawa, Oklahoma, Tampa, Panama, Mattawa, La Paloma, Bangor, Baltimore, Salvador, Amarillo, Tocopilla, Barranquilla and Padilla.

Boston, Charleston, Dayton, Louisiana, Washington, Houston, Kingston, Texarkana, Monterey, Ferriday, Santa Fe, Tallapoosa, Glen Rock, Black Rock, Little Rock, Oskaloosa, Tennessee, Hennessey, Chicopee, Spirit Lake, Grand Lake, Devils Lake and Crater Lake.

Louisville, Nashville, Knoxville, Ombabika, Schefferville, Jacksonville, Waterville, Costa Rica, Richfield, Springfield, Bakersfield, Shreveport, Hackensack, Cadillac, Fond Du Lac, Davenport, Idaho, Jellico, Argentina, Diamantina, Pasadena and Catalina.

Pittsburgh, Parkersburg, Gravelbourg, Colorado, Ellensburg, Rexburg, Vicksburg, El Dorado, Larimore, Atmore, Haverstraw, Chatanika, Chaska, Nebraska, Alaska, Opelika, Baraboo, Waterloo, Kalamazoo, Kansas City, Sioux City, Cedar City and Dodge City.

saturday notes

Last night, I actually met a sub-prime mortgage investment banker who was fired from Bear-Stearns in London. He is now in Kunming trying to learn Chinese. The grass really is greener over here on the other side. His temperament was strikingly, um, fierce and antsy. He really hated getting advice from the Icelandic guys who always tried to tell him how to invest. Ha! They are all done now. And they wish they spoke Chinese....

AND

I will post this here for now, but will come back to it. I have been telling people for weeks that we should just buy all the damn poppy in Afghanistan, infiltrate, deprive them of the revenue, save our cash, and maintain the largest national warehouse of opium. Then Christopher Hitchens has to go and actually write the article (this week!) that lays out the logic in a contextual way. I just spout. See Sudarshan, this is no joke! This is How We Win In Afghanistan.

Here:
I happen to know that this option has been discussed at quite high levels in Afghanistan itself, and I leave you to guess at the sort of political constraints that prevent it from being discussed intelligently in public in the United States. But if we ever have to have the melancholy inquest on how we "lost" a country we had once liberated, this will be one of the places where the conversation will have to start.

AND

China is going to announce major land-ownership reform in the next few days?!

As the population ages and the workforce shrinks, agriculture will need to be modernized.
As the country modernizes, urbanization will draw people off the land.

I have been thinking about this issue for a long time. Wow! And now, on the 30th anniversary of the Reform and Opening, Wen is looking for a way to inject some energy into the rural economy, to incentivize efficiency and offer a pathway into the cash economy for those 800 million farmers tied firmly to their subsistence plots (by a precarious red government string, of course) What an exciting time!

Voting, Crisis and Laundry

I have been busy the last few days... getting back into my routine, going to pilates class, four loads of laundry (by hand!) doing research on Yunnan, having a send-off for a friend headed back to the States, celebrating birthdays.... regular life stuff. Oh and thank you to the Cook County Board of Elections for sending me all my fancy absentee ballot materials to my email inbox. How nice of them.

Here are a few interesting things I have come across lately:

George Packer's profile of real voters in Ohio, people talking about how they are organizing, not voting, undecided... The whole spectrum is represented, in their own words! Captivating.

I have made friends with an Icelandic kid who rides around Kunming everyday. One day his country's financial meltdown might make sense to him. I wonder if this is the first of many casualties.

Perhaps we can all feel better that some portfolio managers are taking note of the low stock prices and seem eager to get back in the buying state of mind. Perhaps fear really will trump logic? This NYT article looks at how people are reacting.

Steve Coll at the New Yorker takes a short look at how we got here in the first place.

People don’t generally panic in the sunshine. They panic in the dark. And we are in the dark about what assets and liabilities are truly held in what has been properly labeled the “shadow banking system”--the global aggregation of hedge funds, privately placed debt securities, and the hedging or insurance contracts known as credit default swaps.

And in China...
Chinese banks had to write-off more than 300$US billion in stocks and bonds when the big collapses occurred. They seem to think this is a drop in the bucket. China needs the United States to not collapse.
But their are certainly many many opportunities in this mess for them, not least among them the chance to buy into cheap foreign companies, a strong rationale for a strong continued government hand at the wheel of the macro-economy, and a growing understanding of why China is indeed a major player in the health and future of the US economy. Their optimism looks something like reassurance.

Prime Minister Wen: "So long as people of all countries, especially their leaders, can do away with hostility, estrangement and prejudice, treat each other with sincerity and an open mind, and forge ahead hand in hand, mankind will overcome all difficulties and embrace a brighter and better future," he said.

"China, as a responsible major developing country, is ready to work with other members of the international community to strengthen cooperation, share opportunities, meet challenges and contribute to the harmonious and sustainable development of the world," he said.

Asia Times: "In the past, China has been blamed for the low-degree of internationalization of its financial industries. Now it seems we are profiting from this 'fault,' according to XinHua commentary.

"Our not-fully-open financial system and not-fully-convertible currency saved China from being rattled during the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. And now again this seems to be a strong dam to protect us against the current financial tsunami," an economics researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) said.

This picture is for my mom.
She bristles at Barack's finger pointing.
There is much blame to be assigned.
Go Get 'Em Barack!

As John Falls, So Shall We Stand

Why is John McCain acting so angry and delusional? Why is Sarah Palin so frustratingly evasive? Why are both sides lying or exaggerating about so many issues and policies? I am happy to hear that Barack is staying steady in his tone and climbing in the polls. It seems McCain (or McCain 2.0, depending on your beliefs in body-snatching) is doing himself in each time he opens his mouth. But as I have noted before, McCain has turned into a human talking points memo... a broken record... a canned act... a puppet. His mistake is continuing to rely on a team that is internally split; one side is the maverick who wants to champion his departures from party line (ie. immigration) and the other side is the Bush-style-red-button-pressing-Rightist. He is bound to come across as schizophrenic, unsteady and disingenuous (at best).

I like this video of Maddow; you can see McCain being described as 'Uncle Ziggy in the ZigZag Express' by Newsweek's Jonathan Alter. Watching McCain blame Barack for the financial crisis has helped me realize how purely delusional he really is. Thank goodness Barack can use it to highlight the fact that 'John must be feeling panicked.' An irrational panicked old man for president will hopefully scare the centrists over the fence to the side of all that could be good in the world.

UPDATE: This profile of McCain in Rolling Stone is captivating. He comes across as entirely consistent... in his blind ambition, disregard for others, complete lack of humility and inability to stand up for anything. SCARY!

AND: Frank Rich has put together a compelling rationale explaining why Palin is Cheney with lipstick. SCARY!

AND: Apparently, Barack is going to hit John on the Keating incident in a big way. As Joe would say, "What is past is prologue." I hope the chickens are coming home to roost.

Shangri-La and Beyond

I have put together some photos from our recent trip up north to Zhongdian, Lijiang and Dali. You can visit my Facebook page to see more pictures here to get sense of what we were up to in Paradise!

Earmarks for All (& I Love Ezra)

This post over at Foreign Policy Magazine's blog, Passport, seems to sum up the ridiculousness of McCain's hollow, out of proportion rants against 'earmarks' and 'pork barrel spending.'

I remember working in the Governor's Office and encountering many kinds of earmarks. There was money for roads and bridges, schools and hospitals, stadiums and community centers. I remember thinking that everyone must have one of these projects in their backyard. And I thought about the Governor teaming up with Mayor Daley to go to Washington to ask for federal dollars for the regional public transportation network. When I actually worked for the regional commuter transportation agency, the Governor said no to a state-funded bailout package. I guess my point it that sometimes federal funding of infrastructure and community projects should come from the federal government, but there should be a mechanism for the Feds to work with State and Local authorities to prioritize, manage, monitor and evaluate projects on a case-by-case basis.

Hell, I live in an increasingly inequitable country where the State government continues to get subsidized infrastructure loans from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank at below market interest rates just because they ask for them. In China, hundreds of subsidized kilometers of roads and rail track are laid each year while the government holds $518 billion in US Treasury Bonds and fails to make any noticeable investments in education, poverty reduction, social security or health care.

I will take some earmarks any day, thanks.

UPDATE (10/03): Apparently, Ezra was having some similar thoughts. He has, of course, gathered some interesting sources that illustrate my point exactly.

The "how-a-bill-becomes-a-law" lesson from last night's bailout bill vote is pretty simple: Pork.

McCain loves to condemn pork, but the fundamental reality of lawmaking is that pork is how bills get passed. Brad Plumer wrote a great article on this for The New Republic back in 2006:

"The point is this: Any big-government program on the progressive wish list will likely prove even more difficult to pass than the 1986 tax reform or 1993 budget. Single-payer health care? Card check for unions? Reductions in carbon emissions? It won't get done without an orgy of earmarks to entice the inevitable skeptics in Congress. That won't be pretty, but if the price of, say, universal insurance is a bit of borderline corruption here and there, it's a tradeoff worth making."

Like a lot of McCain's posturing, his war on pork makes for good headlines and bad governance. If he were anywhere near as dogmatic on earmarks as he claims to be, it's impossible to imagine him passing any major legislation. Ever. Or voting for any major legislation. or approving budget bills and spending. Or having a working relationship with Congress. Or getting reelected, as every district in the country finds crucial programs and infrastructure subsidies are being cut.

Meanwhile, whenever the topic turns to earmarks, I always suggest that folks go play around the the Sunlight Foundation's interactive earmarks map. Earmarks are rarely obviously wasteful. Rather, they're small appropriations that exist beneath the urgency level that would merit federal consideration. So districts and states elect individual representatives and one of their side jobs is to push through local priorities. Those priorities may be odd, but relatively few are obviously wasteful. Type in my hometown of Irvine, and the nearest earmark is in Long Beach: $450,000 to outfit the children's hospital. Near to that is Mission Viejo, with $400,000 for the Neonatal and Pediatric Intensive Care Unity. And a tick over from that is Huntington Beach, which got $50,000 for an afterschool arts education program for low income youth. It's easy to talk about cutting studies on bear DNA. It's a bit harder to explain why you want to cut children's hospitals and afterschool programs. And it's nearly impossible to then say how you're going to pass bills after you do.

Go West!: Philanthropist Entrepreneurs in Western China

James Fallows took a trip out to the rural West of China where cities are rare and desert landscapes dominate. He and his wife happened upon a fascinating project that has evolved over many years- Taiwanese entrepreneurs who decided to invest in the lives of poor rural children on the mainland. This is an example of people with no direct interest thinking about equity and equality and opportunity in ways that hopefully may become more pervasive.

Here are some excerpts from his story:

On Western China:

If I were running a travel agency, I would skip the likes of Beijing and Shanghai and send foreign visitors out toward these western villages, where they would see aspects of China beyond its urban spectacle and manufacturing prowess.

In the villages, people effectively live in a different century.

This is not the China that most foreigners read about or experience on visits, but its isolation and poverty are important parts of any understanding of China.

On Sayling Wen, entrepreneur, founder of Inventec:

In 2000, he developed a new and very powerful passion: to save the poor people of western China. He had a new idea: western China would have to become fully modernized—brought into parity with Shanghai and Beijing—by 2010. Soon he had written a manifesto called Develop Western China in Ten Years, which was published in English and Chinese, and he steered Inventec’s money toward sites in the west.

On Kenny Lin, engineer, researcher and manager:

The hardship that stunned him most was the powerlessness of rural people against brute natural misfortune. “Oh God, help these simple and innocent children out of the poverty, deliver them from the tortures of the lack of rain,” Lin wrote.

The Story:
These two men made a grand scheme replete with grand gestures. They planned to transform 1,000 rural villages into globally integrated 'internet villages' and worked with western schools on exchange projects. They made grandiose plans for a hotel, resort, conference center that would welcome easterners in a non-confrontational setting where they could learn about the economic reality of their fellow compatriots.

THEN ONE OF THE GUYS DIED...

The management of the resort was turned over and the eco-tourism, international exchange vision was scrapped in favor of a lure-Chinese-businessmen and tourists model.

The internet villages that were training the village kids to dream of an urban lifestyle instead has been refocused to help lure global business to western China.

And the company has also ventured into 'outright philanthropy' where kids apply for a stipend that essentially covers their public school fees and boarding costs ($115/year). In exchange, the kids are required to research and write about aspects of their rural life. As Fallows puts it, 'They are essentially paid to become bloggers.'

The essays are available at WestChinaStory.com; One middle-school student writes about the “moment of joy” when the family wheat crop is ready for harvest. A high-school boy tells about how great it was when his school got a basketball to play with outside. Another, about learning Tibetan dance. Another, what is hard but satisfying about herding sheep. It might sound maudlin, but having met some of these children, I take their accounts as alive, hopeful, human.

Some 2,200 rural students now earn their keep through this kind of blogging, supported by half a million dollars in donations mainly from Taiwan, Hong Kong, the United States, and a few businesses in mainland China. My wife and I signed up to “hire” a number of blogging students from the school that welcomed us. (On the site, you can not only see all of the students’ essays in Chinese and their pictures but also choose students to sponsor at 800 RMB, or about $115, per year.) I’d like to know what becomes of them.

It is fascinating to see this kind of homegrown philanthropy, one that recognizes the huge burden that the Chinese public education puts on poor families. I remember meeting an American woman in Zhong Dian years ago who had set something like this up specifically for girls in Sichuan and Yunnan. This kind of story makes me hopeful that more people will understand the bifuricated nature of China- East and West- and the great growing inequalities that threaten to undermine any hope of gender and class equality going forward. I personally will continue to think about the modes of development that are most likely create opportunity for rural kids and families.

Home Sweet Home

There is so much to write about from the trip these last two weeks. I have stories...photos...musings! But I realize that I have so much to do in the next few days to catch up on my (growing) To Do List.
Being away from a computer for so long makes it harder to jump back in, but....
1) The world continues to be fascinating
2) I can't help myself from diving into the news
3) My little Vaio is chugging along alright for now
4) My new b-day presents from my mom (mini-flatscreen + dvd player) helps draw the line between work and audio visual entertainment
5) I am really excited to finish some work in order to get back to musing on the places I have been recently and even places I wish I had gone

SO, look for pictures soon and stories soon after. I will be putting my nose to the grindstone.