Taoyuan Nights

A Taiwanese blog called Obblogatory kindly linked to my blog, and raised some views on housing in Taiwan. First of all – thanks for your kind words, Obblogatory.
Regarding the topic of housing, however, I thought I should respond.
Across the last 100 years or so, across every country in the world I’ve looked at, housing [...]

A university professor was giving a lecture about supernatural beliefs within Taiwanese culture.
To get a feel for his audience, he asks “How many people here believe in ghosts?”
About 90 students raise their hands.
“Well, that’s a good start. Out of those of you who believe in ghosts, do any of you think you’ve seen [...]

Michael Turton has just written an excellent short article about Taiwan’s economy. I should probably make some comments of my own. My main concerns at present are:

Exports. Particularly, Taiwan’s DRAM manufacturers are being slaughtered by the Korean DRAM manufacturers, because the Won is cheap. Makes me wonder if Taiwan is going to crash the [...]

This person seems to have misunderstood the nature of graffiti.

A smiley face over Taoyuan!

Those aren’t stars in your eyes…“Stellarium” is a useful, free program. Here it shows Venus and Jupiter.

Economy
“Hong said that the composite score for the business indicators stood at 12 last month — the same level as in September, signifying tough times ahead with recession forecast to hit the country’s major trade partners. “
“Share prices plummeted 47.5 percent last month, compared with a 31.6 percent drop in September, as investors exit the [...]

Voucher plan will help stimulate economy: poll
OK, I’m going to give you some quotes from this article, but in a different order, to show you how crazy their conclusion is.
Item 1: Is this coupon going to stimulate new spending?
“Asked whether or not they believe the plan will encourage the public to spend more, 57.9 [...]

Taiwan’s media seem to be implausibly gullible in their discussion of these ’shopping coupons’. Let’s have some clear thinking about this supposed free money coupon that’s being ‘handed out’ by the Taiwanese Government.

Firstly: This is not an ‘economic stimulus’ – it is a voter bribe. If it were an economic stimulus it would be handed [...]

Taiwan’s latest plan is to hand out free money to lots of people. That way, we won’t be in recession any more! Hurray!
Just one problem. It’s completely daft, and it doesn’t work.
As I understand it, Keynes’ idea of monetary stimulus involved government spending on projects in situations where consumers had stopped spending, in essence, [...]

See Michael’s blog, here.

Recently, events in Taiwan have become rather strange. The ruling KMT party is cracking down on popular protests, while it negotiates with the Chinese government. I should confess that living where I do, I am quite isolated from political events and protests, and not speaking Mandarin very well, I am relatively poorly informed about what [...]