Years of Poems and Spirits

My friend Cortilia forwarded me this article: Paulson Says China Must Open Financial Markets Faster

Somehow that got me distracted from my finals. But I have read about GCC (Gulf Coop. Council) countries’ currency issues recently so here is what I wrote her back:

The problem with Paulson’s arguments is that without a net benefit analysis (e.g. benefit minus expected risks of opening capital market), he is only pressuring but not persuading the Chinese.

God knows whether the 2.5 return is or is not the best given the production infrastructure (labor, productivity, capital stock, etc.)? I mean the Saudis are running a 15% inflation rate right now with an open capital market. Since China is so regionally stratified, can the nation handle such a high inflation rate politically?

Anyway, just remembered there is a off-the-main-stream study on Cultural differences based entirely on each’s innate tolerance for risks. The more I think of it, the more I realize how highly this index (tolerance for risk) correlates to a culture’s past. In other words, I suspect that as a culture grows older and has experienced more traumas, it becomes less risk-tolerant.

Anyway, here is the culture-risk link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Theory_of_risk

Enjoy.

Bing

Q: How to tell whether the public trust journalists? To be more precise, what do public think of whether journalists working for reputable media company are sufficiently faithful to truth and, thus, more objective?

Answer: In a high-profile, crucial trial, given a choice between a journalist and someone else (depends on who you are comparing journalists to, e.g. a univ. professor?), who would BOTH sides accept as a juror?

Inspiration: one of the jurors, Dan Collins, in the Libby case was an ex-WP reporter.

Hypothesis/reasoning:
Lawyers on both sides will choose a reporter (from a reputable organization) over all others because they are trained to be conscious of (if not to surpress) their personal judgement in reflecting on the facts.
1. Lawyers are professionals who are in a high risks/high return business. Their judgement of who is objective is perhaps the best one can find on the market.
2. High-profile trials (or trial by media) represents the judgement of the “silent majority”. Lawyers are less likely to choose fringe characters in fear of being ridiculed afterwards.

Why this matters:
It is one way to tell whether journalism is a reputable profession.