Alarm on China - How Hitler Bullied

 Czechoslovakia

MANILA — President Benigno S. Aquino III called on Tuesday for nations around the world to do more to support the Philippines in resisting China’s assertive claims to the seas near his country, drawing a comparison to the West’s failure to support Czechoslovakia against Hitler’s demands for Czech land in 1938.

Like Czechoslovakia, the Philippines faces demands to surrender territory piecemeal to a much stronger foreign power and needs more robust foreign support for the rule of international law if it is to resist, President Aquino said in a 90-minute interview in the wood-paneled music room of the presidential palace. 

“If we say yes to something we believe is wrong now, what guarantee is there that the wrong will not be further exacerbated down the line?” he said. He later added, “At what point do you say, ‘Enough is enough’? Well, the world has to say it — remember that the Sudetenland was given in an attempt to appease Hitler to prevent World War II.”

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Mr. Aquino’s remarks are among the strongest indications yet of alarm among Asian heads of state about China’s military buildup and territorial ambitions, and the second time in recent weeks that an Asian leader has volunteered a comparison to the prelude to world wars.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan caused a stir in Davos, Switzerland, when he noted last month that Britain and Germany went to war in 1914 even though they had close economic ties — much as China and Japan have now.

Japan has been locked in an increasingly tense standoff with China over uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, and even South Korea, which has been quieter about Chinese claims, expressed alarm last year when Beijing announced that it had the right to police the skies above a vast area of ocean, including areas claimed by Japan and South Korea. 

While China’s efforts to claim rocks, shoals and fishing grounds off the coast of the Philippines in the South China Sea have been less high-profile, the Chinese have moved faster there.

The Philippines already appears to have lost effective control of one of the best-known places of contention, a reef called Scarborough Shoal, after Philippine forces withdrew during a standoff with China in 2012. The Philippine forces left as part of an American-mediated deal in which both sides were to pull back while the dispute was negotiated. Chinese forces remained, however, and gained control.

In his nearly four years as president, Mr. Aquino, 53, has exceeded expectations in his country and the region for what he would be able to accomplish in a nation once known as the “sick man of Asia.” He was a fairly low-key senator when he was propelled into the presidency in 2010 by a wave of national sympathy after his mother, former President Corazon C. Aquino, died the year before.

In the wide-ranging interview on Tuesday, Mr. Aquino said he thought the Philippines and the United States were close to a long-delayed deal that would allow more American troops to rotate through the Philippines, enhancing his country’s security. But the subject remains controversial among the political elite in the Philippines, with memories of the country’s past as an American possession making them wary of closer military ties. 

The United States is pushing for the deal to aid in its rebalance to Asia, where it hopes to retain a strong influence despite China’s rise.

Speaking of the Philippines’ own tensions with the Chinese, Mr. Aquino said his country would not renounce any of its possessions in the sea between it and China. 

China contends that centuries-old maps show that it had an early claim to the South China Sea almost to Borneo. It is trying to use its large and growing fleet to exercise effective control over reefs and islands in the sea, a strategy that could strengthen its legal position.

At the same time, China has strongly resisted applying the procedures and numerical formulas of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to the many reefs and islands that lie much closer to countries like the Philippines than to China. Officials in Beijing also oppose multilateral discussions, preferring bilateral talks with individual countries in Southeast Asia, an approach that allows Chinese leaders to apply greater pressure.

While China has been improving its military, Mr. Aquino noted that the last flight by a Philippine fighter jet was in 2005 and that the plane dated from before the Vietnam War. Most of the country’s tiny naval and coast guard fleet dates from World War II.
The difficulties with China extend beyond the arguments over the South China Sea. The Hong Kong government, with enthusiastic backing from the Chinese Foreign Ministry in Beijing, plans to stop allowing 14-day visa-free visits by Filipino diplomats and officials starting Wednesday. The sanctions are part of a long-running demand by Hong Kong that the national government of the Philippines apologize over a violent episode in 2010 in which a hostage rescue attempt in Manila failed, leaving eight Hong Kong citizens dead.

In his first public response to the sanctions, Mr. Aquino said he had no plans to apologize, saying that doing so could create a legal liability and noting that China had not paid compensation to the families of Filipinos who have died in episodes there.

Mr. Aquino, who is not married, lives in a small cottage behind the presidential palace instead of in the luxurious palace itself. He said he tries to relax before going to sleep each night either by listening to music — often jazz — or pursuing his passion as an amateur historian, reading military journals, some about World War II.
While recently reading about the predicament of Czechoslovakia’s leaders in the late 1930s, he said, he saw a parallel “in a sense” to his own problems now in facing challenges from China. 

Appeasement did not work in 1938, he noted; within six months of the surrender of the Sudetenland, Germany occupied most of the rest of Czechoslovakia. 

The Philippines, he said, is determined not to make similar concessions. “You may have the might,” he said of China, “but that does not necessarily make you right.”

Marvin Gaye's 1964 Passport Discovered in Record Bought at Garage Sale

Detroit man's rare find could be worth at least $20,000 according to 'Antiques Roadshow'

Here's hoping he gets insurance on it fast, before Ro

bin Thicke and Pharrell steal it.

Marvin Gaye's 1964 passport, which was found in an album bought for 50 centsAn avid Motown memorabilia collector from Detroit made the find of a lifetime after buying some records at a garage sale. Appearing on the February 3 episode of PBS' Antiques Roadshow, the guest — who previously worked at the legendary label's museum — brought along Marvin Gaye's passport from 1964, the year the soul legend released "How Sweet It Is (to Be Loved by You)."

The man and his colleagues from the museum went to collect memorabilia donated by the family of a late Motown musician. He later returned to the musician's estate sale to buy a collection of LPs and singles, priced at 50 cents and a quarter, respectively. "When I got home, I was going through them and out of an album fell this passport," the man said on the show. "And so it literally fell into my hands."

"The thing I'm in love with is how young he is here," appraiser Laura Woolley said. "This is dated 1964, which is great, and it is after he added the 'E' to the end of his name, because when he was signed as a solo artist with Motown, he decided to add that 'E,' and there's a lot of different theories: People say it's because he wanted to separate himself from his father or because he actually liked Sam Cooke so much, who had an 'E' at the end of his name, that he wanted to imitate his idol."

After Wooley told the man to put nothing less than $20,000 worth of insurance on the passport, he reacted accordingly: "Are you kidding me?" he asked. Said Woolley, "I'm not kidding you. Nothing comes up for Marvin Gaye. It's not a really common thing to see Marvin Gaye memorabilia."

Rather than say "ka-CHING," the stunned guest respectfully said, "Wow. I never would have thought. I mean, I'm just shocked. I mean... wow. Oh gosh, thank you."

Here's hoping he gets insurance on it fast, before Robin Thicke and
 Pharrell steal it.

Can China Fight A Modern War ? -China’s Deceptively Weak (and Dangerous) Military

In many ways, the PLA is weaker than it looks – and more dangerous.

In April 2003, the Chinese Navy decided to put a large group of its best submarine talent on the same boat as part of an experiment to synergize its naval elite. The result? Within hours of leaving port, the Type 035 Ming III class submarine sank with all hands lost. Never having fully recovered from this maritime disaster, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is still the only permanent member of the United Nations Security Council never to have conducted an operational patrol with a nuclear missile submarine.
China is also the only member of the UN’s “Big Five” never to have built and operated an aircraft carrier. While it launched a refurbished Ukrainian built carrier amidst much fanfare in September 2012 – then-President Hu Jintao and all the top brass showed up – soon afterward the big ship had to return to the docks for extensive overhauls because of suspected engine failure; not the most auspicious of starts for China’s fledgling “blue water” navy, and not the least example of a modernizing military that has yet to master last century’s technology.

Indeed, today the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) still conducts long-distance maneuver training at speeds measured by how fast the next available cargo train can transport its tanks and guns forward. And if mobilizing and moving armies around on railway tracks sounds a bit antiquated in an era of global airlift, it should – that was how it was done in the First World War.

Not to be outdone by the conventional army, China’s powerful strategic rocket troops, the Second Artillery Force, still uses cavalry units to patrol its sprawling missile bases deep within China’s vast interior. Why? Because it doesn’t have any helicopters. Equally scarce in China are modern fixed-wing military aircraft. So the Air Force continues to use a 1950s Soviet designed airframe, the Tupolev Tu-16, as a bomber (its original intended mission), a battlefield reconnaissance aircraft, an electronic warfare aircraft, a target spotting aircraft, and an aerial refueling tanker. Likewise, the PLA uses the Soviet designed Antonov An-12 military cargo aircraft for ELINT (electronic intelligence) missions, ASW (anti-submarine warfare) missions, geological survey missions, and airborne early warning missions. It also has an An-12 variant specially modified for transporting livestock, allowing sheep and goats access to remote seasonal pastures.

But if China’s lack of decent hardware is somewhat surprising given all the hype surrounding Beijing’s massive military modernization program, the state of “software” (military training and readiness) is truly astounding. At one military exercise in the summer of 2012, a strategic PLA unit, stressed out by the hard work of handling warheads in an underground bunker complex, actually had to take time out of a 15-day wartime simulation for movie nights and karaoke parties. In fact, by day nine of the exercise, a “cultural performance troupe” (common PLA euphemism for song-and-dance girls) had to be brought into the otherwise sealed facility to entertain the homesick soldiers.
Apparently becoming suspicious that men might not have the emotional fortitude to hack it in high-pressure situations, an experimental all-female unit was then brought in for the 2013 iteration of the war games, held in May, for an abbreviated 72-hour trial run. Unfortunately for the PLA, the results were even worse. By the end of the second day of the exercise, the hardened tunnel facility’s psychological counseling office was overrun with patients, many reportedly too upset to eat and one even suffering with severe nausea because of the unpleasant conditions.
While recent years have witnessed a tremendous Chinese propaganda effort aimed at convincing the world that the PRC is a serious military player that is owed respect, outsiders often forget that China does not even have a professional military. The PLA, unlike the armed forces of the United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and other regional heavyweights, is by definition not a professional fighting force. Rather, it is a “party army,” the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Indeed, all career officers in the PLA are members of the CCP and all units at the company level and above have political officers assigned to enforce party control. Likewise, all important decisions in the PLA are made by Communist Party committees that are dominated by political officers, not by operators. This system ensures that the interests of the party’s civilian and military leaders are merged, and for this reason new Chinese soldiers entering into the PLA swear their allegiance to the CCP, not to the PRC constitution or the people of China.

This may be one reason why China’s marines (or “naval infantry” in PLA parlance) and other  amphibious warfare units train by landing on big white sandy beaches that look nothing like the west coast of Taiwan (or for that matter anyplace else they could conceivably be sent in the East China Sea or South China Sea). It could also be why PLA Air Force pilots still typically get less than ten hours of flight time a month (well below regional standards), and only in 2012 began to have the ability to submit their own flight plans (previously, overbearing staff officers assigned pilots their flight plans and would not even allow them to taxi and take-off on the runways by themselves).

Intense and realistic training is dangerous business, and the American maxim that the more you bleed during training the less you bleed during combat doesn’t translate well in a Leninist military system. Just the opposite. China’s military is intentionally organized to bureaucratically enforce risk-averse behavior, because an army that spends too much time training is an army that is not engaging in enough political indoctrination. Beijing’s worst nightmare is that the PLA could one day forget that its number one mission is protecting the Communist Party’s civilian leaders against all its enemies – especially when the CCP’s “enemies” are domestic student or religious groups campaigning for democratic rights, as happened in 1989 and 1999, respectively.

For that reason, the PLA has to engage in constant “political work” at the expense of training for combat. This means that 30 to 40 percent of an officer’s career (or roughly 15 hours per 40-hour work week) is wasted studying CCP propaganda, singing patriotic songs, and conducting small group discussions on Marxist-Leninist theory. And when PLA officers do train, it is almost always a cautious affair that rarely involves risky (i.e., realistic) training scenarios.

Abraham Lincoln once observed that if he had six hours to chop down a tree he would spend the first four hours sharpening his axe. Clearly the PLA is not sharpening its proverbial axe. Nor can it. Rather, it has opted to invest in a bigger axe, albeit one that is still dull. Ironically, this undermines Beijing’s own aspirations for building a truly powerful 21st century military.

Yet none of this should be comforting to China’s potential military adversaries. It is precisely China’s military weakness that makes it so dangerous. Take the PLA’s lack of combat experience, for example. A few minor border scraps aside, the PLA hasn’t seen real combat since the Korean War. This appears to be a major factor leading it to act so brazenly in the East and South China Seas. Indeed, China’s navy now appears to be itching for a fight anywhere it can find one. Experienced combat veterans almost never act this way. Indeed, history shows that military commanders that have gone to war are significantly less hawkish than their inexperienced counterparts. Lacking the somber wisdom that comes from combat experience, today’s PLA is all hawk and no dove.

The Chinese military is dangerous in another way as well. Recognizing that it will never be able to compete with the U.S. and its allies using traditional methods of war fighting, the PLA has turned to unconventional “asymmetric” first-strike weapons and capabilities to make up for its lack of conventional firepower, professionalism and experience. These weapons include more than 1,600 offensive ballistic and cruise missiles, whose very nature is so strategically destabilizing that the U.S. and Russia decided to outlaw them with the INF Treaty some 25 years ago.

In concert with its strategic missile forces, China has also developed a broad array of space weapons designed to destroy satellites used to verify arms control treaties, provide military communications, and warn of enemy attacks. China has also built the world’s largest army of cyber warriors, and the planet’s second largest fleet of drones, to exploit areas where the U.S. and its allies are under-defended. All of these capabilities make it more likely that China could one day be tempted to start a war, and none come with any built in escalation control.

Yet while there is ample and growing evidence to suggest China could, through malice or mistake, start a devastating war in the Pacific, it is highly improbable that the PLA’s strategy could actually win a war. Take a Taiwan invasion scenario, which is the PLA’s top operational planning priority. While much hand-wringing has been done in recent years about the shifting military balance in the Taiwan Strait, so far no one has been able to explain how any invading PLA force would be able to cross over 100 nautical miles of exceedingly rough water and successfully land on the world’s most inhospitable beaches, let alone capture the capital and pacify the rest of the rugged island.

The PLA simply does not have enough transport ships to make the crossing, and those it does have are remarkably vulnerable to Taiwanese anti-ship cruise missiles, guided rockets, smart cluster munitions, mobile artillery and advanced sea mines – not to mention its elite corps of American-trained fighter and helicopter pilots. Even if some lucky PLA units could survive the trip (not at all a safe assumption), they would be rapidly overwhelmed by a small but professional Taiwan military that has been thinking about and preparing for this fight for decades.

Going forward it will be important for the U.S. and its allies to recognize that China’s military is in many ways much weaker than it looks. However, it is also growing more capable of inflicting destruction on its enemies through the use of first-strike weapons. To mitigate the destabilizing effects of the PLA’s strategy, the U.S. and its allies should try harder to maintain their current (if eroding) leads in military hardware. But more importantly, they must continue investing in the training that makes them true professionals. While manpower numbers are likely to come down in the years ahead due to defense budget cuts, regional democracies will have less to fear from China’s weak but dangerous military if their axes stay sharp.

By Ian Easton

共军超7成士兵 是独生子女 易吃败仗

在钓鱼岛争议导致紧张局势升级之际，中国独生子女政策也引发日韩媒体讨论。《韩国时报》去年12月称，由于大多数中国士兵是被宠坏的小皇帝、 小公主，一旦钓鱼岛爆发冲突，解放军将被日本自卫队击败。

中共国防大学教授刘明福曾表示，解放军7成士兵来自独生子女家庭，在战斗部队中这一比例高达8成。他在2012年给中央政府的公开报告中表 示，自古以来，将一个中国家庭的独子派上战场就是大忌。澳门军事专家黄东说，自1993年以来，许多大陆军官和军事观察家就独生子女政策对中 国长期安全的影响提出关切。

刘明福称，过去几年，军队针对“被宠坏的孩子”制定特殊训练措施以加强战力，但独生子女兵员比例高仍给中国长远军事发展带来“战略性忧惧”。 中国军队面临合格兵源不足的严峻问题至少已有10年时间。

FCPO -  Most Probably Another Smallish Cycle - 2/10/2014

 
A new buy signal came last Thursday when price closed above the middle band with the Stochastic turning positive. I bought in on the next day when price went above the signal day high. The immediate overhead resistance is at 2604 which is its recent fractal high. But price would need to close above the top band first. Both the Stochastic and MACD are positive and rising. The Stochastic is above its 50's signal line which is even more bullish. The DMI has gone neutral (both are at 22's) and the ADX has begun to fall and it has gone below 20's. This is confirming a lack of trend in this market.

If a new buy position is in, I would place an initial stop at below the middle band and move it to below the top band.

 
The weekly chart's Stochastic and MACD stay negative and continue to fall. But the DMI remains positive with the ADX continues to fall. The falling ADX is telling us there is no trend in this market. The Japanese Candlestick is a smallish body Candle that got sandwiched between the top and middle band. This is pointing at more evidence the market is stuck in a sideway mode. As same as last week, I would need to see a breakup above the top band for a new bullish move or a breakdown below the middle band to get the bear moving. The weekly fractal high of 2669 remains important.

As the US Dollar continues to get stuck in a range bound mode, I doubt we would see FCPO goes very far as at the moment.

FKLI - Bull flex muscle But Is It Real ? - 2/10/2014

 
The market got back after the long holiday and took clue from the Dow Jones. It lost another 16 points but recovered half of it on the next day. At this point, it is either you continue to place the stop at the bottom band or you can take profit when price went above the prior day high. In both case, the stop was hit on the next day when price gapped up and went above both the stop levels.  A new signal came in when price closed above the bottom band with the Stochastic went positive. If you are one of the more adventurous type of trader, you would take this as a signal day. Or if you are of the lesser adventurous type, last Friday provided the more solid buy signal as price continued to go above the middle band with the Stochastic crossing above its 20's signal line and also the MACD has turned positive. So you would buy on the coming Monday if price goes above the signal day high of 1812.

The DMI improves as the D+ is fast rising while the D- is falling. We may see this indicator turning positive by the coming week. The ADX has begun to fall confirming an end to the prior cycle. As the ADX is falling and the MACD is relatively "far" from its zero signal line, so I would continue to pay more attention to the Stochastic for the current trade. If price continues to go further up , I would place my stop initially at below the middle band and then the top band. Otherwise if price begins to go sideway, I would place my stop at the prior day low. Meanwhile watchout for the overhead resistance at 1841 which is the recent fractal high.

 
The weekly chart indicators do not switch sides from the bears as the Stochastic and MACD stay negative and continue to fall. The DMI is fighting back as the D+ pulled back upward which is indicating the buyers are making another effort to fight off the sellers. The ADX has gone flat as this may mean something new may be around the corner. The only big bullish happening here would be the Japanese Candlestick which is a big white body which closed above both the bottom and middle bands in one go. But as far as the weekly chart goes, I do not have any new buy signal yet as the indicators are not complimenting the price bar. One thing to pay attention to would be the recent fractal low of 1775 has been holding.

As far as Malaysia market is concerned, I would not be too surprised if the market "refuses" to die as some people are constantly in a denial mode and refuse to accept that our economy is not as good as they would want themselves to believe. But never mind that, we as a trader, would just read and react to any new signal that comes along.

Malaysia's Bubble Economy Will Pop Soon

I recently wrote about how Indonesia’s economy has devolved into a classic credit and asset bubble-driven growth story, and its neighbor Malaysia is on the same path along with most other Southeast Asian economies, which are part of the overall emerging markets bubble that I have been warning about in the last couple of years.
The emerging markets bubble began in 2009 after China pursued an aggressive credit-driven infrastructure-based growth strategy to bolster their economy during the global financial crisis. China’s economy quickly rebounded as construction activity flourished, which drove a global raw materials boom that greatly benefited commodities exporting countries such as Australia and emerging markets. Emerging markets’ improving fortunes began to attract the attention of global investors who were seeking to diversify away from Western nations that were at the epicenter of the financial crisis.

Rock-bottom interest rates in the U.S., Europe, and Japan, combined with the Federal Reserve’s multi-trillion dollar quantitative easing programs encouraged a $4 trillion torrent of speculative “hot money” to flow into emerging market investments over the past four years. A global carry trade arose in which investors borrowed at low interest rates from the U.S. and Japan, invested the funds in high-yielding emerging market assets, and pocketed the interest rate differential or “spread.” Soaring demand for EM assets led to a bond bubble and ultra-low borrowing costs, which resulted in government-driven infrastructure booms, alarmingly fast credit growth, and property bubbles in numerous developing nations.
Surging capital inflows into Malaysia after the Crash of 2008 caused the ringgit currency to rise 25 percent against the U.S. dollar in just two years:

Foreign holdings of ringgit-denominated bonds hit an all time high:

Foreign direct investment (net inflows, current dollars) immediately recovered from its crisis-induced plunge to dramatically surge to new highs:

Source: IndexMundi.com
The Kuala Lumpur Composite stock index rose 120 percent, aided by growing interest from foreign investors:
Malaysia Is A Classic Credit Bubble Story
Malaysia’s $303 billion economy has been growing at an average 6 percent rate in recent years due in large part to a growing government and household credit bubble.
Since 2010, Malaysia’s public debt-to-GDP ratio has been hovering at all time highs of over 50 percent thanks to large fiscal deficits that were incurred when an aggressive stimulus package was launched to bolster the country’s economy during the Global Financial Crisis. After Sri Lanka, Malaysia now has the second highest public debt-to-GDP ratio among 13 emerging Asian countries according to a Bloomberg study. Malaysia’s high public debt burden led to a sovereign credit rating outlook downgrade by Fitch in July.
Malaysia’s government has been running a budget deficit since 1999:

Like their government, Malaysian households are also binging on debt, which has caused the county’s ratio of household debt to GDP to hit a record 83 percent – Southeast Asia’s highest household debt load – which is up from 70 percent in 2009, and up greatly from the 39 percent ratio at the start of the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997. Malaysian household debt has grown at around 12 percent annually each year since 2008.
It’s no surprise to see an inflating household debt bubble when Malaysia’s bank lending rate is at record lows:

Ultra-low interest rates have caused Malaysia’s private sector loans to increase by over 80 percent since 2008:
Malaysia’s M3 money supply, a broad measure of total money and credit in the economy, shows a similar worrisome trend:
Malaysia’s high level of household debt led the country’s central bank, Bank Negara, to recently impose lending rules that cap maximum terms of personal loans to 10 years and mortgages to 35 years – a decrease from the common 45 year mortgages.
Datuk Paul Selva Raj, CEO of the Federation of Malaysian Consumers Associations (FOMCA), said 47 percent of young Malaysians are currently in “serious debt” (debt payments amount to 30 percent or more of their gross income), something that could catch up with them very quickly.
“Car purchases and credit card debts are among the main reasons for bankruptcy in Malaysia,” said Paul. “It’s the culture we live in. There’s a lot of emphasis on status and being ‘cool’ – but being cool costs money.”
Malaysia’s household credit bubble is helping to fuel a consumer spending boom:
Malaysian car registrations are up by 50 percent since 2008:
Malaysian corporate leverage, which includes corporate bonds and bank loans, is also rising at an alarming rate, reaching 95.8 percent of GDP in 2013 from 79.9 percent in 2007.
Malaysia Also Has A Property Bubble
Like most other countries that are part of the emerging markets bubble, Malaysia has a property bubble in addition to its credit bubble.
The charts below show the parabolic rise of overall Malaysian property prices:

Source: GlobalPropertyGuide.com
Accounting for nearly half of all household debt, soaring mortgage loan growth is a primary reason why Malaysia’s household debt is increasing at such a rapid rate.
Plans to build the tallest building in Southeast Asia, the 118-story Warisan Merdeka Tower, are a major Skyscraper Index red flag.
How Malaysia’s Bubble Economy Will Pop
While Malaysia has fared better than Indonesia, India and Brazil during this summer’s emerging markets rout, the country still has an extremely dangerous economic bubble that will pop when the overall emerging markets bubble pops in earnest. Malaysia’s bubble will most likely pop when China’s economic bubble pops and/or as global and local interest rates continue to rise, which are what caused the country’s credit and asset bubble in the first place. The resumption of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s QE taper plans may put pressure on Malaysia’s financial markets in the near future. Malaysia’s rapidly deteriorating current account surplus due to weaker exports is another worrisome development.
As I’ve been saying even before this summer’s EM panic, I expect the ultimate popping of the emerging markets bubble to cause another crisis that is similar to the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, and there is a strong chance that it will be even worse this time due to the fact that more countries are involved (Latin America, China, and Africa), and because the global economy is in a far weaker state now than it was during the heady days of the late-1990s.