Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Aug 24, 2015 (I)

choi

(1) Enda Curran and David Tweed, To Eclipse Economy of the US, China Needs to Stop Fighting Itself. www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... top-fighting-itself  China’s

Quote:

“To supplant the US as the No. 1 world economy, China has to overhaul its own. Yet its rulers are caught between the desire for far-reaching reforms and a deeply ingrained instinct to shelve them when things go wrong.

“ ‘The leadership is so paralyzed and preoccupied by even a modest downturn that it reacts with the same old fiscal tools of investment and pump-priming,’ says David Shambaugh, director of George Washington University’s China Policy Program.

“ ‘There are so many balls in the air, and one of them is going to fall,’ says Jian Chang 常建 [a woman], chief China economist at Barclays 巴克莱. ‘It is just impossible to achieve so many potentially conflicting objectives at the same time.’

"The Chinese government, as a rule, doesn’t show its cards to the financial markets. Major economic policymakers elsewhere typically either signal big policy changes well in advance or explain once a decision is made. * * * 'There was no such thing in China. They just devalued, and you are left guessing at what it is they are trying to accomplish,' he [Patrick Chovanec, chief strategist at Silvercrest Asset Management Group in New York] says.

Note:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: China’s leaders are loving—and hating—reform

(b) “With the yuan floating who knows where and China’s markets looking for a bottom, investors, analysts, and economists worry the country is headed into a time of volatile swings in public policy.”
(i) The term “who knows where“ (as an adverb) can be replaced with “God knows where.”

God knows: "INFORMAL  used to emphasize that you do not understand something at all or have no knowledge of something at all <God knows where he's put the keys!>  <'What did he mean by that?' 'God knows!'>"
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/god-knows
(ii) Similar terms are “who/God knows what” (as a noun), and “who/God knows when.”

(c) Regarding quotation 4. That is also why I have restrained from commenting about China’s devaluation of renminbi.

choi

(2) Indira AR Lakshmanan, A Breakout year for Cuban Entrepreneurs.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/ar ... uba-s-entrepreneurs

Quote:

“Entrepreneurs must overcome obstacles unheard of in the US.

"Hugo Pons, of Cuba’s National Economics and Accounting Association, cautions that 'the aim is not to build capitalism or a market economy; the idea is to preserve socialism.'  Even many Cuban entrepreneurs say they don’t want a total market economy. They credit their government with providing health care, education, and public safety at levels far above most of Latin America.

"The 'original vision' of Cuban socialism is gone, he [Sasha Ramos, co-owner of his factory-turned-restaurant in Havana] says, but what remains is 'a model trying to preserve itself without abandoning its original principles, at the same time conscious that if it doesn’t advance and evolve, it will die.'

My comment:
(a) Perhaps you are like me, not interested in the tiny country Cuba and think recent reports on it are a fad. But this Bloomberg report repeats the common theme that almost no communist country make a smooth transition into a capitalist one (I have to observe Poland longer, which some maintain is a success story but which also has received money from EU): people may be hard to change mindset, insiders-turned-profiteers, etc.
(b) There is no need to read the rest, which talks about problems confronting Cuban entrepreneurs--unique problems not found elsewhere, which Mr Sasha Ramos describes this way: “You could study economics in any part of the world and not be able to apply it here.