Saturday, July 9, 2011

Book: Exorbitant Privilege and Risks to us

About done half of this book, "Exorbitant Privilege, The Rise and Fall of the Dollar". Get this uneasy feeling of what if one day, we have our own Greenspan, Rubin and Summers? We will be screwed. Worse, if we have our Brooksley Born but was over ruled? All these can happen. No, they will happen. It is only a question of when. What we need to do is eternal vigilance. Don't pay so much attention to military defence. As a small island state, we have far more other forms of vulnerabilities. The most dangerous are ghostly invisible.

There are no sure ways to be secure. That's life.

The sure way to be vulnerable is to feel secure. Don't be so narrow minded to think only of territorial rights and access or even the external environment. Our greatest threats will always be internal. The best way to guard against them is keep raising the level of transparency and have random (I didn't say surprise) but thorough independent inspections. To trade quick short term gains for greater risk is not wise. It was stupid of the government to pursue red hot economic growth but with low productivity.

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