Firat Ünlü

The Real Crisis: Collapsing Capital Accumulation Process

Well, half the world lives in poverty because their governments are f***** useless. Poorly educated workforce combined with bad regulations and bad investment return is a lethal combination.
China's done very well in abolishing poverty, the number of poor people actually did increase slightly in India recently (same number as in Sub-Saharan Africa and how can it be to get people to live on more than ONE dollar a day??!?!), together India and SSA account for most of the world's poor people. A fair few countries in Latin America are doing well and other Asians such as Vietnam seem to get an track, so the picture's not too bleak.

India Unraveling: Stay Short Emerging Markets

There's a huge difference between South East Asia and East Asia, whilst I don't see much potential for SEA now, EA has all the tools to buck the trend in 2009. I'm still not sold on India.

14 ETFs to Consider for 2009

Thailand's too dangerous, imo. They set a bad precedent by ousting an elected prime minister, too much chance of the opposite side doing the same.
Agree about commodities, they're worth getting into once the US gets back on its feet or geopolitics change, lots of conflict going on.
The only country I trust to have some sort of decent growth next year is China, I'd like to see first how the rest deals with a downturn before making a decision on them, almost any not to shabby run emerging economy achieved 4%+ rates recently, let's see...

2009 Economic Forecasts Ignore Demographic Shift

Could people please stop using consumption as a means to measure the economy? GDP growth in the past was a mirage and now it's time to realize that an economy where consumption made up 70%, that's largely based on services, whose mayor growth engines are in decline (fire), whose people are maxxed out, whose states cut spending etc will maybe, just maybe have to deal with a downturn that could turn out to be severe.
Now's the final chance to get it right, it'll all depend on the stimulus package, restructuring and finding new opportunities in new areas.