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There’s No Such Thing As An Economic Miracle Money

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East Asian countries from Japan to China, by way of Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and others, achieved “economic miracles” in the late-20C by sustaining growth of 8-10% a year, vaulting in a single generation from developing to developed world. They did this by adopting technologies, ideas and models created in the rich West. This catch-up phase is now over. The low-hanging fruit has not merely been picked, it has been eaten. There will be no more miracles (660 words)

Putin’s Shrinking Circle World

Mark Galeotti | Open Democracy | 15th August 2016

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Perceptive note on the departure of President Vladimir Putin’s chief of staff, which may turn out to be a watershed in Putin’s reign. Sergey Ivanov was Putin’s closest confidant from day one in the Kremlin; now he is being “taken conclusively out of the running as a potential successor, but with honour”, and his job given to a former chief of protocol, a man who used to carry Putin’s umbrella. This cannot be good. Is there anybody now left in the Kremlin who will dare to disagree with the president? (980 words)

The Distant Shore Society

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For more than a century the Mashco Piro people of Peru have lived in isolation in the Madre de Dios rain forest. They were last disturbed when the 19C rubber baron Carlos Fermín Fitzcarrald — Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo — tried to run a railway through their territory. So why now are they showing themselves on the river bank, and yet killing strangers who come near? Are they asking to be introduced to the outside world, or is that the very danger against which they are fighting? (Metered paywall) (10,800 words)

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There’s No Such Thing As An Economic Miracle Money

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Putin’s Shrinking Circle World

The Distant Shore Society

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