charles hugh smith-what's new

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	What's New (as of September 17, 2004) Shanghai Revelations We just returned from several weeks in China, where we visited friends in Suzhou and then played tourist in Nanjing, Hangzhou and Shanghai. Can you say "duay bu chi"? I'd first visited Shanghai back in 2000 (see "Shanghai Postcard" in "feature articles"), and the pace of building is even more frenetic now. It is an interesting time to visit China, and I will collect my observations into a somewhat coherent essay in the near future. Fundamentally, the question of China's future boils down to this: are there enough resources in the world for another 350 million middle-class consumers--to be followed by another 350 million after that, and then another 350 milliion after that? (Don't forget about India's first 350 million, too.) The second question is: as the expectations of the people rise with the all-too-visible wealth of the "to get rich is glorious" generation, how will the country manage to meet these high expectations for the good life? Does it have the governmental, financial, physical and cultural infrastructure and resources to do so? These are the big questions, and the answers are not obvious. This is the fifth big trip of the year for me so I'm a little frayed around the edges. With all those frequent-flier miles piled up, I've already scheduled a European jaunt and another trip to Hawaii. Given the fragile state of the U.S. airline industry, it seems wise to use those miles up before your airline of choice vanishes in a cloud of bankruptcy or merger proceedings. Ming era garden, Nanjing, Sept. 2004 Bridge, Tongli "water village," China, Sept. 2004 The Stock Market: Look Out Below I'm going out on a limb here and predicting a severe stock market decline (i.e. more than 20%) in the coming months. My reasoning can be found in a lengthy piece I've posted on my "feature articles") page: Breakdown: What the Stock Market Is Telling Us. Check it out and then start selling any equities you have: in IRAs, in 401ks, in any portfolio you control. You'll thank me even more if you buy some QQQ puts (the triple-Q is a tracking stock for the Nasdaq 100). You read it here first.... Is This A Nation At War? I return home from the spatial and cultural distance of the People's Republic of China to find my own country in the grips of a surreal complacency. As I scan the headlines--baseball scores, tepid bits of electioneering, and ongoing local topics such as deciding who should pay for the new bridge across the Bay--I wonder: is this a nation at war? Where are the sacrifices that a populace at war should be making? It seems there are none being made, and none being asked for, except of those citizens who have chosen to serve in our military. Regardless of whether you think the war is justified, doesn't it seem more than a little odd, even morally repugnant, that the country lazes along in a false bliss of consumer paradise--lowest interest rates in a generation!--oil prices dropping!--everything on sale this weekend!--when men and women of this nation are fighting and dying in combat? While visiting the "Rosie the Riveter" memorial display in Richmond, Calif., just north of Berkeley, I came across a news clipping from March, 1944, which offered a stunning portrayal of civilian sacrifice in time of war. The story reported that industrial deaths--some 38,000 in just over two years of war--had exceeded combat deaths. (Battlefield casualties would surge after the June 1944 D-Day invasion of Nazi Europe and the brutal Pacific Theatre battle for Okinawa, eventually exceeding 400,000 by the war's end in 1945.) I had to re-read the story to make sure I hadn't misunderstood the statistics. Almost 40,000 people had died in the civilian industrial effort, and this number exceeded total casualties from two years of combat? It is astonishing that this fact has been so completely lost to the popular history of that war. Have we become so inured to war's costs since Vietnam that we now accept the surreal facade of peacetime prosperity at home while our soldiers risk their lives in some distant land? Is this a healthy state of mind for a country at war? I think not. The notion that civilian excesses should continue unchecked during wartime is reprehensible on two levels. It is wrong that all the sacrifices of a war are borne only by volunteers in uniform. It is also wrong for our government to fund the war by borrowing the money from the Chinese and Japanese governments via Treasury bond sales; rather, the government should demand its citizens bear the costs of the war honestly and forthrightly by making the minimal sacrifice of paying the taxes needed to fund a war made in their name, supposedly for their benefit and safety. But such honesty is not just out of fashion--it is verboten in the fairyland of modern politics, where we speak only of benefits and tax cuts, never of sacrifice or burdens. Those, it seems, we leave to the few citizens who volunteered to hold the tip of the spear, and it is those citizens who are making all the sacrifices. This wrong will eventually haunt the nation--as it should. Recent Feature Articles My article on "transit villages" in the S.F. Chronicle Sunday Magazine made the cover (guess it was a slow news cycle). "What's New: August 2004" "What's New: June 2004" "What's New: Feb. 2004" "What's New: Jan. 2004" "What's New: Sept./Oct. 2003" "What's New: July/Aug. 2003" "What's New: June 2003" "What's New: May 2003" "What's New: April 2003" "What's New: March 2003" "What's New: February 2003"