If you ever wonder why Americans are so profoundly uninformed about what needs to be done to fix our economy, thank The New York Times and Steve Rattner for book reviews such as this one today. Rattner was an investment banker until he got caught in a pay-to-play scheme with New York state pension funds […]…
About: William Holstein
Author Archives: William Holstein
The Deep Struggle in China
Most of the commentary these days on China does not seem to grasp the depth of what is happening there politically. Having spent time on the ground there and speaking to dozens of Chinese about what happened during the Cultural Revolution, I have some sense that truly major things can happen in China and they […]…
Will Japan Inc. Protect Its Own?
I know it is currently fashionable to argue that the Japanese are finished in the global economy. They’ve been blown away by the much more dynamic Chinese economy. Sorry. It hasn’t been true and it still isn’t true. The Japanese have dominant positions in many key technologies, such as the screens that go into Apple’s […]…
The Battle for The Future of the Automotive Industry
I can remember Ford Motor CEO Jacques Nasser standing up in front of the Detroit auto show in January 2000 with Jerry Yang, the founder of Yahoo. I was covering the show for U.S. News & World Report. It was the moment when it dawned on the auto industry that two universes were beginning to […]…
A Seriously Bad Idea in China
I’m just learning about a Chinese government plan to rate every citizen on the basis of their behavior and attitudes. By 2020, the government plans to collect data from multiple points to create a social behavior rating. It is something like what credit agencies do in the United States or how the NSA looks for bad […]…
