Assalamu’alaikum wr wb
Lately i felt discomfort and drowned by the sea of information I received from TV, Internet, Newspaper, Social Networking as well as my colleagues’ conversation. Furthermore, I saw people tend to feel uneasy about this event so called global financial turmoil. The fear of radical change results on our reduced quality of lives, not merely affected by our daily consumptions but also public information like workers’ layoff, potential threat on economics as well as investors’ panicking . The wealthy as well as the poor are pinched by the deteriorating condition around them.
Analyst said that the world has entered the recession, and we must act cautiously. It was not too long time ago that our country just recovered from the worst of Asia financial turmoil taking place in 1997. Indonesia was one of the worst affected nation because lots of institutions were fed with high leverage in the form of foreign debt in US$ currency. The crisis hit most of the banking system in the country, forced them to be nationalized by the government. Our characters were under severe test, and every aspects of our lives was attacked, and I believed that the middle class were suffering the most.
I read Alan Greenspan’s comments, the former chairman of Federal Reserve, on his book “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World” in his conversation with the former Prime Minister of Japan, Kiichi Miyazawa, he mentioned that the US strategy in solving the crisis of Financial market and real estate taking place in Japan in 1990 was by way of institutions restructuring & forcing bankruptcy for unfriendly debtors , depressed assets acquisition in big discount, and selling them once acquired. It is a pragmatic way that Americans would likely to take. But the smiling Keiichi responded in a very friendly way, “Alan, it was such an accurate analysis on our financial system problems but the solution offered was not the Japanese way”, that action would never been taken by the Japanese because selling assets and forcing institutions’ bankruptcy act were never been the Japanese way. It was like firing people from their jobs, it was considered embarrassment in our culture, and Japanese would never choose that option.
Japan from the year of 1990 to the year of 2005 had a stagnant macro economy and never recovered as quick as expected. What kind of economics prowess that hold up the Japanese? The answer was not the economy itself, but it was the culture of the Japanese who purposely accept the fact of the economy stagnancy as a result of avoiding the feeling of embarrassment for any institutions and individuals. Alan Greenspan couldn’t imagine that the US would take such a position as their fellow counterparts.
Strangely, the culture of the japanese known as collective solidarity will save their economy from the conditions of pension funds reserve requirement faced by most of advance coutnries in the coming future which may not be fulfilled by the Japanese government. One of the Japanese ranked officer explained the question on how Japanese government run their commitment for their retired populations in the future that might not be fulfilled. He answered that the benefits for the Japanese can be cut and in doing that will not be a problem, because the Japanese see the change is for the best of their country, and this reason is absolutely enough.
Learning from the conversation above we as Indonesians have our own prides. The question is whether with our own prides can we go through this so called global crisis into a save heaven compared to other nations?
The answer could be a definite “yes” or less confident “no”, but do our people have the commitment like the Japanese having their collective cultures, or Americans having their pragmatism, or Australian or New Zea lander with their capital account liberalization, or European with their excess nationalism?
Only time will tell, and in the end we will eventually choose by ourselves our path to our destiny. I believe while there is a time, we can learn to choose better path, who knows?
chao,
ghifi.blogspot.com
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