MA & PhD in Critical Thinking Blog

Kind of a bummer to start the week with this, but the unemployment picture in the US looks worse than at any time in recent memory …

and, for a variety of reasons, seems most unlikely to improve any time soon …

But the piece will probably make you smile anyway , albeit NOT because there’s much good news to be had … …

Well, this is one week that I’m more than happy to see over, altho despite all the craziness, things seem to have ended about as well as could be expected, under the circumstances … …

But we’ll see what next week – which will conclude with my departing Singapore for San Francisco and the start of a multi-week visit to the reeling US — holds …

All I wanted, therefore, for the end of this week was a simple blog post, continuing with our week-long “Asia” theme, and get to sleep early for a change … …

But then, as the latest blog post in Economy Watch notes, I decided to do a scan of the latest news, just to see if anything was happening,

and the next thing I knew I was writing the longest post yet, referencing five different pieces, all of which COULD have been subjects on their own, and going to sleep WAAAY too late, even for me … …

So I hope you all find this interesting, as it draws together what might otherwise seem unrelated, if significant, topics under what is, I think, an unexpectedly unified rubric –

namely, the lack of leadership almost everywhere, despite the on-going and not-un-connected financial and ecological crises … …

One of the few relatively recession-proof industries is education, especially higher education, for adults in particular.

With exponentially growing numbers of Chinese and Indians being willing and able to buy English-language higher education,

Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia are looking to capitalize on that demand,

as this latest piece in Economy Watch points out … …

As promised, here is an Economy Watch piece about the darker side of Chinese political economy …

The good news is that there are clearly both public and private actors in Third World countries that have themselves struggled with corruption that seem determined to do something about ties that are not always so clean … …

After a lovely three-day weekend, much of it spent introducing my friend J to the joys of Godfather, Parts I & II, back the grindstone …

In today’s Economy Watch piece, we look at some of the POSITIVE aspects of Chinese political control of the banks,

which contrasts starkly with the situation in the US,

where it looks like the banks have control of at least Obama and most of the top political leadership, in both the Senate and the House, Democrats as well as RPBs … …

Tomorrow, tho, we look at the DARKER side of Chinese political economy … …

“Casual Friday” piece for Economy Watch … … glad weekend is coming — especially because it’s three-day one in Singapore … woo hoo …

Hope everyone has a good Friday — so to speak — and good weekend … …

Here’s the latest from Economy Watch …

a piece on how Obama’s key economic appointees tipped off early on that he wasn’t going to be much of a “change” from Cheney and Bush …

and on the person who SHOULD be Treasury Secretary … …

Piece # 3 on Economy Watch … enjoy … …

Shakespeare said First, Kill All the Lawyers – but today it is bank accountants who do the most damage, hiding the truth by changing, subverting or ignoring disclosure rules. International accounting regulators want stronger rules that promote transparency, but they are under at times intense political pressure to help the banks.

Check out my second piece for EconomyWatch …

Has a little “local color” about what is, in fact, one of my favorite neighborhoods in New York — Lower Manhattan …

Please feel free to comment anywhere … …