One Western-trained Chinese economist said: “We just don’t know how to do capital markets. The only countries that get the message — proper financial risk accounting, etc — are the ones that were formerly in the British Empire. Anglo-Saxons seem to have something the rest of the world just hasn’t got.”
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Asked about reserve diversification, a senior Chinese official told a leading Western banker that China took the long view: “In half a century from now, there will still be the dollar and there will still be China.” What this remark drily acknowledged was a truth overlooked by the “decline of American power” school. Viewed from one angle, the US is the world’s biggest debtor. Looked at from another, however, it has taken over the business of managing the world’s savings.
Taking note of Asian Achilles’ heel (Financial Times)
Anglo-Saxons seem to have something the rest of the world just hasn’t got.
Nonsense. Are the residents of Hong Kong to be considered Angles or Saxons? How about the Singaporeans? Japanese? Indians? The means of the Anglosphere are not kept a secret, especially now that Mr. Bennett has blown the secret in public for all to see. The Chinese get it, they just won’t accept it. I know I should lose 40 pounds and that there are negative consequences to failing to do so. That I don’t doesn’t mean I can’t, just that I won’t.
Anglo-Saxon as used today is a culture not a ethncity or race. I would say, yes, the folks in Hong Kong are Anglo-Saxon (but to a far lessor degree).
My family emmigrated from Italy around 1900 and I consider myself Anglo-Saxon, even though I’m a 4th Generation Italian-American (somehow everyone managed to keep it in the Italian gene pool until 1974)
The Hong Kongers and Singaporeans are “Anglo-Saxons” in the sense used here. It is not genetic. It is institutional and cultural. The people in those places have adopted models that work from their former colonial overlords.
I don’t have a drop of English blood, so far as I know, but I am typing this in English, I practice law in the USA in a system which is virtually entirely derived from English law and Equity, etc.
The person I quoted would have more properly said “the people in the Anglosphere” have got something. And Mrs. Davis is right that others can, to the best of their ability, adopt it. How well that will work is an open question.
I guess that answers my question: “When does the music stop?” – Never? Let the good times roll!
Laissez les bons temps rouler!
The Anglosphere has many strengths, but some things do sound better in French.