deja vu

Yesterday I reposted “Invisible Man“.  Today, it’s about “invisible hand“. There is an invisible hand that definitely plays with events in history, and this Adam-Smith-like hand seems to run out of tricks every 40 years or so, so it seems.

In Understanding Vietnam (Berkeley Press), we learn that history seems to recycle itself every 40 years also

(29-69-09).  First the French romantic/liberty movement, then the generation gap movement, and now the consumer movement.

This time, with the confluence of technological shift, policy shift and evolutionary shift, we  see Vietnam emerge

and leap-frog (it now exports more handsets than garment) into the world scene. After all, it has

survived quarrels with three of the UN Security Council members and emerged unscathed (France, US and China).

Saigon Tourist (a Vietnamese consortium in VN) once acquired a SF hotel in Fisherman Wharf  for $44 million (as of…