Euroquake

Fülszöveg

There are over a hundred specific predictions about the world of the
future inside this book* here are a few of them:
• German reunification will be one of the great economic success stories of mod-
ern times, with living standards in the former East Germany rising to reach
today's West German levels by the year 2000.
• The European Community will have achieved a sufficient degree of political
union to hold a direct popular vote in the year 2000 for the first-ever "President
of Europe."
• The recession of 1991 in the United States wHl not be the "big one." The worst is
still to come later in the 1990s. A quarter of all United States assets will end up
owned by European and Asian investors.
• The alliance between Japan's Mitsubishi and Germany's Daimler-Benz will
prove to be the deal of the decade. Other large-scale Japanese-European
corporate alliances will follow, reflecting a deepening strategic partnership
between Japan and Europe.
• Mikhail Gorbachev will fail... Tovább

Fülszöveg

There are over a hundred specific predictions about the world of the
future inside this book* here are a few of them:
• German reunification will be one of the great economic success stories of mod-
ern times, with living standards in the former East Germany rising to reach
today's West German levels by the year 2000.
• The European Community will have achieved a sufficient degree of political
union to hold a direct popular vote in the year 2000 for the first-ever "President
of Europe."
• The recession of 1991 in the United States wHl not be the "big one." The worst is
still to come later in the 1990s. A quarter of all United States assets will end up
owned by European and Asian investors.
• The alliance between Japan's Mitsubishi and Germany's Daimler-Benz will
prove to be the deal of the decade. Other large-scale Japanese-European
corporate alliances will follow, reflecting a deepening strategic partnership
between Japan and Europe.
• Mikhail Gorbachev will fail in his effort to hold the Soviet Union together, and will
be ousted from power before 1995.
• Saudi Arabia will ask American troops stationed there to leave by 1992, as the
Kingdom shifts back to a nonaligned stance and begins to price oil in European
Currency Units and yen instead of dollars.
• Early in the twenty-first century, both Japan and Germany will begin to show
themselves as major military powers, with high-tech arsenals that will include
nuclear weapons.
• The new Berlin Wall will be the invisible one dividing north and south, haves and
have-nots. On one side, the nation-state will be in decline. On the other side,
nationalism will be resurgent, replete with religious extremism and terrorism.
• Pushed to the brink by the competitiveness crisis, the United States will finally
embark on the road to economic renewal toward the end of the 1990s—but only
after enormous pain has been inflicted by the misguided policies of the past.
Thought-provoking, visionary, and always controversial, euroquake
is the first book to offer a detailed image of life and business in the post-
postwar era.
The ascendancy of Europe and the end of the Cold
War mark the beginning of the "battle of the capital-
isms/7 The outcome of this battle will determine a new
economic era—and our future.
In Euroquake, Daniel Burstein argues that the 1990s
will be a time of "tough trade" and even economic
warfare, as Americans, Europeans, and Japanese
compete for power and influence in the world's newly
globalized markets. Burstein previews the major eco-
nomic issues of the coming years, telling us what to
expect before it happens. In doing so, he brings the
same visionary acumen to the subject of the New
Europe that he previously displayed in his pathbreak-
ing international best-seller, YEN!
Just when the threat of Soviet military aggression
has all but disappeared, Burstein reveals how busi-
ness, financial, and technological rivalry among the
world's leading capitalist economies is rising to a fever
pitch. With the European Community rushing to build
the world's largest single market by 1992, and a pow-
erful New Germany pushing the frontiers of capitalism
eastward, Europe has emerged as the focal point of
this global competition. It is in Europe where some of
the greatest opportunities of the 1990s will be found,
as well as some of the decade's most daunting risks.
Corporations are the "new armies," Burstein says.
Their CEOs and managers may prove to be more
important than presidents and prime ministers. But
American business is seriously disadvantaged. While
European and Japanese companies can call upon
their governments for a strategic edge in creating
financial resources, developing new technology, or
fighting for international market share, Americans
cling to a nostalgic, unworkable version of laissez-
faire. As a result, the great strengths of American
business and industry are rapidly eroding.
Euroquake is anything but a "gloom and doom"
book, however. Burstein brilliantly identifies the new
possibilities opening up to American business in
Europe. He shows how new global conditions have
temporarily thrown Japan off balance and caused
Germany to look inward. This situation buys time for
the United States to get serious about rebuilding the
American economy—before it is too late. With a final
chapter focused on 100 specific predictions of change
over the course of the 1990s, Burstein offers a fascinat-
ing look at the challenges and opportunities ahead.
No other discussion of Europe has so vividly ana-
lyzed the emerging issue confronting Washington,
Wall Street, and Main Street alike: The New Europe,
led by the New Germany, is joining an already power-
ful Japan to create a competitive pincer around the
(continued on back flap)
(continued from front flap)
American economy. If Americans are not willing to
rethink our basic institutions—and act urgently to
change them—we face a twenty-first century of
declining international competitiveness, with poten-
tially disastrous implications for our living standards
and social peace.
Americans have done more than any other people
to bring about the prosperity of today's capitalist
world and to protect it from forces that at times have
threatened to destroy it. The United States, in short,
won the Cold War. The question posed by Daniel
Burstein's provocative Euroquoke is: How do we stop
losing the peace?
Stimulating, challenging, and searing in its insights
into the future, Euroquoke is an important book for all
Americans.
Daniel Burstein is an expert on global economic and
financial issues. His 1988 book, YEN! Jopon's New
Financial Empire ond Its Threat to America, was a
best-seller in the United States, Japan, Australia, and
14 other countries. An award-winning journalist, Bur-
stein has written articles that have appeared in The
New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, New York
magazine, and more than 200 other publications in
the United States, Europe, Latin America, and Asia.
He has also served as a consultant to some of the
world's leading businesses in the fields of high technol-
ogy, financial services, and investment banking. Vissza