When the economy is bad, it is the time for economists to shine! During the annual meeting of American Economic Association this year, economic recovery and market restructuring became the central topics among the attendees, among whom included five Nobel economic laureates.
globalEDGE Blog - By Author: Tony Ou
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Some people thought that Asia, with high growth rates, huge trade surpluses and substantial foreign reserves could be less affected by the economic storm which originated in the West. Yet, a number of economic indicators show us that Asia in fact could not avoid being hit by such a global disaster because of the fact that it heavily depends on West to fuel it's own economy. For example, exports contribute 45% of Asian countries’ economy and out of these exports, western consumers count for a half of it.Western investors are also the major players in the Asian markets. The depreciation of Asian currencies caused a huge loss on currency-hedging products. Even so, Asia - the source of one third of global GDP - can play a crucial role in bringing the economy back to the prosperity.
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The domination of English literature and jounalism did not stop users of other languages from contributing to the diversity of global communication. Arabs are a good example of this. Taking advantage of wealth from oil export, they are making efforts to ahieve the popularity of Arabic literature worldwide. For example, on Oct 15th, Bloomsbury announced at the Frankfurt Book Fair that it will launch an Arabic Language publishing house in Qatar. Another multimedia centre is going to be stationed in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates' capital. The purpose of these centres are to train and develop Arabic talent in jounalism, publishing, or broadcasting, who can hopefully build to the success of Egypt's Alaa Al-Aswany and Afganistan-Born Khaled Hosseini; both of them have been international bestsellers. In fact, lots of western readers have interest in Arabic literature, and the recent promotions of Arabic literature are to fulfill "the desire of ordinary people in the west and in the arab world to engage with each other."
Full article can be found here www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/16/middleeast-germany.