Chimerica

I had no idea that many of those oil paintings that hang in hotel rooms and starter homes across America are actually produced by just one Chinese village, Dafen, north of Hong Kong. And I had no idea that Dafen’s artist colony — the world’s leading center for mass-produced artwork and knockoffs of masterpieces — had been devastated by the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble. I should have, though.

“American property owners and hotels were usually the biggest consumers of Dafen’s works,” Zhou Xiaohong, deputy head of the Art Industry Association of Dafen, told Hong Kong’s Sunday Morning Post. “The more houses built in the United States, the more walls that needed our paintings. Now our business has frozen following the crash of the Western property market.”

Dafen is just one of a million Chinese and American enterprises that constitute the most important economic engine in the world today — what historian Niall Ferguson calls “Chimerica,” the de facto partnership between Chinese savers and producers and U.S. spenders and borrowers. That 30-year-old partnership is about to undergo a radical restructuring as a result of the current economic crisis, and the global economy will be highly impacted by the outcome.

Restul aici, in The New York Times. Despre nesabuinta consumului american si despre diferentele culturale (in sens antropologic) care se reflecta in comportamentul economic.

M'a distrat felul absolut mirat si oarecum panicat in care Friedman exclama despre ipotecile din China:

In China, for instance, to buy a home you have to put at least 20 percent down, and the average is 40 percent.

LOL. Mustaciosule, ar trebui sa vii si prin Romania, ca si aici e la fel. Mama, ce chinez ma simt!

:)