The End Is Not Nigh

by Louis-Vincent Gave, Anatole Kaletsky, Charles Gave, et al.

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9889975211
• ISBN13: 9789889975210
• Release Date: January 2007
• Publisher: GaveKal Research
• Length: 161 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The World as seen from Hong Kong. Refreshing!

The authors' location in Hong Kong gives this book a refreshing point of view which I appreciate because most of my financial reading is America centric. The book analyses the present financial and economic balance between the major economic blocks and explores various potential scenarios should things change. The authors divide the world into four economic spheres for the purpose of their analysis: 1.- Asia, the workshop of the world with tightly controlled exchange rates to keep their currencies devalued. A change of that policy would have world wide repercussions. 2.- The Anglo world, leader in profits. Should the world economy blow up, the Anglo world will not be the detonator. 3.- Euroland, the socialist disaster waiting to happen. 4.- The rest of the world, essentially a bystander, mentioned only in passing. In a sense, this is a sequel to "Our Brave New World" and if you have not read it, it would be good place to start before reading "The End Is Not Nigh." I would suggest two corrections. On page 132 they show a graph "Tangible and Financial Assets as a % of Total Assets." If those numbers rely on GAAP accounting, they are wrong, I don't know by how much, but wrong they are. GAAP accounting expenses R & D which means that Windows, for example, is on the books at Microsoft at zero dollars. Clearly that is absurd. Windows is a capital investment for Microsoft, an investment that is producing revenue and profits. Windows should be included as "heavy" capital. The same applies to all other technology companies like Oracle, Apple and so on. The second correction has to do with stock buybacks, page 136. I believe they should subtract "exercised stock options" because a lot of the buybacks are designed to simply hide the stock dilution created by the options. All the talk about doing the right thing for the stockholders is just that, talk. Let them pay dividends instead! ;-)