LECTURAS & COMENTARIOS. EL INDISPENSABLE "FINANCIAL TIMES"
. Financial Times

La lectura del Financial Times es indispensable para entender la globalización. Economía y finanzas, innovación y diseño, política y noticias: nada le escapa a este excelente diario británico. En un esfuerzo por ordenar mis papeles, estoy a punto de tirar a la basura decenas de recortes. Trataré de ir dejando constancia de los más interesantes.

- Big-Bang financiero en Asia. [Joydeep Tucker. "Asia seeks its centre"]. En esta imperdible nota, Sundeep Tucker analiza la encarnizada competencia entre Mumbai, Singapur, Hong Kong, Shanghai y Tokio por transformarse en el centro financiero de Asia. Singapur le permite registrar un hedge fund en ... ¡24 horas! Tokio desea más emisiones extranjeras. Los australianos quieren manejar $1.8 trillion hacia 2014. Todas estos países y plazas intentan facilitar las operaciones en acciones, bonos, commodities y productos derivados.

Tucker cita a un asesor de Mastercard Asia: "The future for developed countries is making money with ideas as opposed to making money with physical outputs. Asia's leading cities have realised this." Me temo que la Argentina, una vez más, confundirá progreso con "progresismo", una ideología que desconfía de las finanzas. Sin embargo, no habrá manera de reducir la pobreza sin innovación empresaria, y sin un sistema financiero dinámico, moderno y globalizado que permita canalizar lo que tanto necesita el país: capital.

- Stefan Wagstyl sobre la Rusia de Putin. [Stefan Wagstyl: "Murder and oppression will not earn Russia respect"]. Este párrafo se aplica a varios aprendices de dictadores: "Russia is not a democracy in any normal sense of the word. It is an authoritarian state in which the rule of law is based not on the rights of the citizen but on the dictates of the Kremlin. The fact that Mr Putin is hugely popular does not detract from the argument. He is profiting from Russia's biggest economic boom in a century. History is full of authoritarian leaders who have been lucky with their economic timing".

- ¿Progresiva democratización en China? [Richard McGregor. "Why fast-changing China is turning back to Confucius"]. McGregor cita a Yu Keping, un reformista chino que a finales de 2006 causó cierta controversia con un libro titulado La democracia es algo bueno. "Mr Yu envisages incremental democratic reform, under which the party would be largely separated from government and also subject to the law ... Elections would be extended from villages, where they are allowed now, all the way up to the choice of representatives for the National People's Congress, but from candidates screened by the party. We want to absorb all the excellent results from human political culture, including of democratic politics, but we will not import an overseas political model".

- Martin Wolf sobre Rusia ["How Russia slipped on the road to Yeltsin’s new era"]. Wolf llama la atención sobre el nuevo Estado ruso bajo Vladimir Putin: "The backlash has taken on traditionally Russian characteristics, through the rebirth of a strong arbitrary state, unchecked by parliamentary or legal contraints presiding over a cowed civil society ... Russia today is a politically centralised and corrupt petro-state. As long as this continues, reform will remain stalled and the political system centralised and oppressive. That is the lesson not just of Russian, but of worldwide, experience".