23rd October 08

Asia Times Online

Kaixin - Topical insight into the current financial turmoil

US government throws oil on fire
By Henry C K Liu

Free-market fundamentalists have been operating in denial mode for more than a year, since the US financial sector imploded in a credit crisis from excessive debt in August 2007, claiming that the economic fundamentals were still basically sound, even within the debt-infested financial sector. As denial was rendered increasingly untenable by unfolding events, champions of market fundamentalism began clamoring for increasingly larger doses of government intervention in failed free markets around the world to restore sound market fundamentals. For the market fundamentalist faithful, this amounts to asking the devil to save god.

From the Archive

The Australian – 21st Aug 08

The man who followed Mao dies at 87

BEIJING: Hua Guofeng, who briefly ruled China as Mao Zedong's successor but was pushed aside by Deng Xiaoping as a prelude to reforms that launched an economic boom, died yesterday. State broadcaster CCTV said that Hua, 87, died in the Chinese capital after suffering from an illness, without elaborating. Hua took power after Mao's death in September 1976, but saw his powers erode until Deng took control two years later. Hua was forced out as Communist Party chairman in 1981 and slipped into obscurity.

The Age – 22nd Aug 08

China's support of Fiji does little for Fijians

In its attempt to keep Taiwan at bay, China is behaving irresponsibly.

FIJI'S interim government is on the nose more than ever these days. The coup in December 2006 resulted in Western sanctions and travel bans, but the hope was that the coup leader's commitment to holding elections by March 2009 would be met and we could all move on. Not any more, it would seem. Commodore Frank Bainimarama has reneged on his promise of elections and boycotted the Pacific's most important summit currently taking place in Niue. While other countries have united to stymie Fiji's interim regime, one has conspicuously offered a helping hand

Asia Times Online – 23rd Aug 08

China damned over floods

CHIANG MAI - As Mekong River floodwaters in Laos and Thailand recede, indignation with China for its lack of transparency on upstream dam developments is on the rise. China has recently pursued a friendly policy of economic integration with Southeast Asian neighbors but in relation to Mekong River development it has taken what many see as a covetous and less than neighborly approach.