Eric's Beijing Diary

Stopped at the Bridge Cafe before Church this morning. An expat I have talked to several times before came in and sat down. I handed him the Wall Street Journal. He said, "I'm not interested."

I asked him why not. He said, "I worked on Wall Street for 27 years. Nothing ever changes." I told him about one of my former neighbors in the Foreign Teachers' Dormitory at Beihang University who had written a book that discourages any stock investment. My stock broker friend said, "I tell people the same thing. The thing that finally convinced me is when I noticed that 92 percent of the money was being made by 8 percent of the investors."

The current disillusionment with Wall Street is understandable. But what would replace it? When I talk to young people in China about the dangers of speculation masked as investment, it goes in one ear and out the other. China has been seeing consistant economic growth for longer than most of my students have been alive.