Oh yes, if you take into account that approximately forty percent of global cash reserves fall in the hands of China and Japan, and the fact that China is one of the largest lenders to the United States by investing in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae bonds, then the story becomes a lot more clear. Americans spend too much and Asians spend to little, so the flow of money goes from east to west.

And don’t get me wrong here, but that flow comes with a price. As with any loan of money. Debt never comes cheap, as they say and this one doesn’t either as it drives the national debt higher and value of the US dollar lower into the ground.

Unfortunately, even the investment into America has had a drastic effect. With the latest downturn with toxic sub-prime mortgages, Asian markets are grounded in investments that were made through these bad loans. Which is also the reason why global markets have been falling when US markets fall.

Culturally, and interesting enough, Asians have a tendency to save, save, save…. while Americans actually created the consumer culture. Overall, the US economy can make a turn for the better by spending less and increasing more exports than imports. At the same time, it also wouldn’t be bad to get Asians to buy into more American goods. Believe me. They love “stuff” just as much as the next person. But somehow or another, I doubt that most people in China own credit cards and probably cash buy most things. Meanwhile, here in the West, we’re taught by television and other mediums, to buy now and pay later.

One day, the tables will turn. But until then, we need to quit borrowing so much money from Asia. And that needs to start at the bottom of the totem pole.

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And the NPR story spoke about Japan’s economic crisis approximately twenty years ago and how the government there had hunkered down and invested in what the people were looking to get into, which was savings mode. And within years of just paying attention and putting it away, the Japanese now have a lot more to work with than before. It was a totally worthwhile listen. On top of that, you can see that with the recent declaration of bankruption by Lehman Brothers (LBC: 5.98 -3.55%), the liquidation of their assets allowed Nomura Holdings (NMR: 10.90 -10.87%) to snap up the Asian arm of Lehman for cheap. Which seems definitely like a return of the 90s again doesn’t it. Remember when the Japanese were buying up buildings everywhere in Manhattan? It seems that they’re cash rich again.

And this time around? I don’t believe that they’re going to make the same mistake twice. Should give those politicians in Congress something to think about when someone’s already paved the way of bad economic plays. Learn from other countries’ mistakes and don’t reinvent the wheel. Because in the end, you just end up with irate taxpayers and corporations that never learn that you have to pay for bad mistakes regardless of whom you know.

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Obviously from a personal perspective, I find it an atrocity. The bailout is basically shifting the consequences onto the American taxpayers, while allowing the banks that committed the bad decision making to exist and continue to make bad decisions. On top of that, there are clauses in the current bill that are along the same lines as the Patriot Act as far as allowing the Treasury Secretary to not need oversight. Thanks, but no thanks.

Of course, it didn’t help that CNBC World last night was showing what was going on with Australian banks either. Apparently they’re also looking to offload the “toxic sub-prime mortgages” into the $700 billion bailout. I didn’t know that American taxpayers were going to be paying for world-wide relief either? If the Aussies are looking to do that, then what other countries are looking to offload their debt into the American middle class? And why exactly should we put up with this?

Here’s the deal. Every single country that has encountered economic fiasco has made it through, without a hurried and “cowboy” attitude about how to fix things. Sweden has done it, as has Japan. It’s a long road ahead, but it can be done. But throwing $700 billion USD at the problem in hopes to make it go away is just ludicrous. This is no different than when the Federal Reserve cut rates multiple times in hopes of jump starting Wall Street. After the first few times, it really should start sinking in that it’s not working and maybe we should just ride it out.

If worst comes to worst though? The American taxpayers will get stuck with a huge bill that will take decades to pay off while the rest of the world just gawks in amazement at why we dig ourselves deeper into a hole.

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Yes, you heard it. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is rushing out a plan to insure money market funds.

“Huh? Wait a second,” you say. “You can’t…. ”

That’s right. Why the government is bailing out mutual funds is beyond all logic. Here’s why. Money market funds are where you place your money in a bank if you allow the bank to use it in investment in market play. They usually provide these funds with a better percentage return than your comparable savings account but the big risk that you take is that it’s not FDIC insured. This is due to the fact that FDIC has certain rules and regulations on what the money can be used for in savings accounts and how much the bank has to hold onto whereas non-insured money can go “kaput”.

So why are they insuring it the next year? Because of all this Armageddon talk and how it’s the Great Depression again. A lot of negative buzz words if you ask me. I’m not an economics professor or expert by any means, but comparing now with 1929 is extremely coarse logic at best in my opinion. These days, financials are very much dependent on the global economy and the borrowing and lending on the global scale. If anything, globalism prevents these types of catastrophes from happening unless the entire global economy falls prey to itself. That’s actually a possibility also, but with as many variables in play as it is, it would be one of those statistical anomalies. Also in play is the general evolutionary timeline for any corporate environment. Corporations live and die by how they adapt to the current environment. My favorite example is DEC. Anyone remember it from the 1990s? They were one of the biggest technology firms around. Yet, not one mention of them these days due to non-adaptive management.

So why should we bail out the same investors? In every money market fund I’ve ever invested in, it’s in black and white that it’s not insured. You take the same risk just as you do with stocks, except you’re hoping that the bank portfolio managers know how to invest better than yourself. That’s the difference, just as it is with mutual funds. You never get a better percentage in investments for nothing. There’s always collateral. Always something. What are those famous words your daddy told you when you were little? Oh yes. “There’s no free lunch.”

So why is it that there’s a “free lunch” going around here? So why are these financial institutions and investment firms getting “get out of jail free” cards for making bad decisions is all but a political move to save people from themselves instead of actually forcing people to learn from their mistakes? Think of the parent that keeps interfering with the learning of a child because it’s not “safe”. Will the child ever learn to quit making errors? Of course not. Why would you when you have a safety net?

And all the while, those that understand just a little bit about how money works gawk at the fact that again they’ll be forced to pay for other people’s mistakes through taxation. It’s no wonder that other countries hesitate at loaning money back which drives us further into a hole. We dug ourselves in. It’s time that we quit digging ourselves deeper.

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While partnerships, and mobile web are definitely players in the problems of the Asian markets, there are a couple other pretty obvious things that escapes most English driven markets.

1. Dual market launch - If you’ve noticed when Twitter rolled out that immediately in close behind, China was rolling out different types of Twitter clones. Fanfou being one of the first, but also ones such as QQ backed TaoTao. Immediately, the hit that made microblogging popular in the US and Europe also had its market share taken away in Asia because it didn’t launch there. Here, it wasn’t a matter of translation or culture but a matter of first to market. And the first guy to market always has one of the greatest advantages.

2. Translation. And we’re not talking about technology differences. Plain ole’ word for word translation. The moment you launch a product where you seem to be using Babelfish or Google Translate for the text is the moment you lose to any native speaking copycat. Not only does it come across as amateurish, but most native users won’t use something that can’t communicate better than a preschooler.

3. Culture. This is a huge issue regardless of what industry you play in. Why? Each culture takes on technology differently and how you term something in your native tongue might be an insult in another. Thus, there needs to be careful planning when the user interface is created with localization teams involved throughout the entire development process. If the localized team can’t understand why the product itself should be in the market, then what makes you think that anyone else in that market would?
   

While there are many other things involved in global mediums, these are just a few of the reasons behind failed business launches in Asian markets. It might seem like petty basic things, but sometimes it’s the most basic of reasons that takes your product and flushes it down the drain.

Easiest solution outside of carrying two phones? Carry one that can support both technologies. The beauty of the Coolpad phones is that they’re dual-sim phones and they can switch from network to network. From a phone technology perspective, it’s definitely a worthwhile look just for sake of convenience and price. Believe us when we say that two phone plans really beats out those nasty international roaming charges.

What’s interesting about this news is that two-fold. One is that there are a lot of foreign businesses that are currently based in China. That in itself is not surprising considering that China has become the worldwide manufacturing giant. The other is that a Japanese corporation would be investing with current markets since everything in China currently is in vast flux as shown with Shanghai’s index. I believe that this is actually and interesting maneuver for more regional growth.

What’s interesting here is that there two corporations are not in the same boat as Bear Stearns (BSC: 5.90 -9.09%) which was definitely going to financial ruin. Both Fannie and Freddie seem to have decent cash funds and their concerns for a federal bailout are more dealing with how much it’s hurting their area of the market. It’s actually very strange that even with the news that the feds were willing to lend and buy equity in the firms, that it didn’t alleviate the pain.

What’s more disconcerting is how much the Asian banking sector took the hit. Unless these banks have a lot of investment in US properties and these particular firms, I don’t see why they would be suffering on a whole across the board.

Overall, the financial sector has been kissing the floor in the last few months due to the American mortgage crisis and this mop isn’t done cleaning yet it seems.

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While Japan’s economics has been in the dumps for a while now, and the Shanghai index has been on a roller coaster ride, the economics of the major countries in Asia have been one of the driving forces behind much of the world financial growth. One very prominent trading area currently are ETFs (exchange-traded funds) where in February of 2008, WisdomTree started the India Earnings Fund (EPI: 9.90 -9.34%) which was the first India-only focused ETF. A month later, Powershares introduced the Powershares India Portfolio (PIN: 10.71 -9.54%). Both of these show that the growth of these markets have obviously gained the respect of investment portfolio managers to actually have their own focused funds.

The other gigantic major up-and-coming player is China. In 2005, Barclays introduced the FXI (FXI: 21.65 -9.98%) which was the first China-focused ETF. On top of this, many of the Chinese corporations that have traded on the NYSE and NASDAQ have done fairly well such as Sina Corporation (SINA: 27.68 -4.45%).

All in all, if you’re looking to invest in world markets, there is definite some growth happening in the Far East. And with all everything going on there, the rewards seem to be worth the risk according to the professional investors. And while I could be out of my league in saying this, but hanging off the coattails of those that know-better is probably never a bad thing when it comes to financial speculation.

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