Take prudent stock, don't make bold moves

My correct prediction of the exact cause, the precise timing, and the enormous severity of the current US-led world recession in this newspaper as early as October 2005 can perhaps lend me a little weight on how to deal with the situation when we are now clearly in the middle of this financial crisis.

For a long time, I was naive enough to believe that those 15 percent returns on the equity of American financial centers were real. To maintain their brand superiority and dominant market positions, financial media charlatans have so far been very successful in perpetuating our inferiority complex with the vaporware peddled mainly by the United States, and the United Kingdom.

China believed in the superiority of American management too. Chinese bank shares were sold for a song not so long ago to foreign banks. This is the price we have to pay to learn from the masters on how to manage modern financial institutions, they say. This is a hefty price indeed, to the tune of $1,000 billion of hard-earned money.