Book Review on ‘The Myth of America's Decline’

choi

Bret Stephens, After the 1957 Sputnik launch, one Nobel Prize winner predicted that the Soviet Union's economy would overtake America's by 1984. Wall Street Journal, Nov 7, 2013
http://online.wsj.com/news/artic ... 4579167540016173808
(book review on Josef Joffe, The Myth of America's Decline; Politics, economics, and a half century of false prophecies. Liveright, 2013)

Note:
(a) Mr Josef Joffe wrote, as a preview of his impending book, “China’s Slowdown” that was published on Wall Street Journal and that I introduced here that same day (but cautioned not to read the text except the quotation).
(b) Paul Samuelson (1915-2009; Nobel prize in economics 1970; considered to be one of the founders of neo-Keynesian economics)  Wikipedia

(c) "But the heart of the book lies in Mr Joffe's vivisection of the China myth. * * * In reality, countries that start from a low base, as South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand did, often grow quickly at first but inevitably slow down as labor costs grow, corruption and rent-seeking spread, the population ages, political expectations rise, and the export-led growth model runs out of steam."
(i) vivisection (n; Latin vivi + English section):
"the cutting of or operation on a living animal usually for physiological or pathological investigation * * *
2:  minute or pitiless examination or criticism"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vivisection
(ii) 3Q13 saw Taiwan's GDP growth rate at 1.58% (preliminary figure; annularized; year-on-year), well below economists' estimates.

Michael Gold and Jeanny Kao, UPDATE 1-Taiwan Q3 GDP growth slows to 1.58 pct y/y, below forecast. Reuters, Oct 30 (US date; Oct 31 in Taiwan), 2013
http://www.reuters.com/article/2 ... USL3N0IJ26X20131031
(Q/Q seasonally-adjusted pace only +0.09 pct; far below the 2.44 percent growth median in a Reuters poll; "Exports are pivotal for Taiwan, but by the government's statistics, the services sector accounts for nearly 70 percent of gross domestic product (GDP)")
(iii) This, despite Taiwan's central bank busy itself with manipulating Taiwan dollar's foreign exchange rate.

Argin Chang & Justina Lee, Taiwan’s Foreign-Reserves Income Halved Since ’08 on Fed Easing. Bloomberg, Nov 6, 2013
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/20 ... -on-fed-easing.html
("The monetary authority [Taiwan's central bank] has sold the local dollar[, which is the other side of the same coin: buying US dollar] on most days since March 2012, according to traders who asked not to be identified. Taiwan’s dollar has declined 1.3 percent this year to NT$29.407 against its US counterpart")