ZZ blog in English.

Inflection point?

"... Let’s today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”

We have created a system for growth that depended on our building more and more stores to sell more and more stuff made in more and more factories in China, powered by more and more coal that would cause more and more climate change but earn China more and more dollars to buy more and more U.S. T-bills so America would have more and more money to build more and more stores and sell more and more stuff that would employ more and more Chinese ..."

Thomas Friedman @ NYTimes again. "The Inflection is Near"

Making money from money

"As a country, too many of us stopped making money by making “stuff” and started making money from money — consumers making money out of rising home prices and using the profits to buy flat-screen TVs from China on their credit cards, and bankers making money by creating complex securities and leverage so more and more consumers could get in on the credit game."

Thomas Friedman, "Obama's Ball and Chain", NYTimes.com, 4/03/2009

Oversimplified, but so true. And even more true for Latvia. It's all about value creation. If you (country, company, personally) do not create value for others, true value I mean, sooner or later you are in trouble. As a country, as a company or personally. 

But actually there are few more great metaphors in this commentary.