[Vnbiz] Ministries participate in fighting inflation

Thu Apr 10 16:57:21 PDT 2008

This house, then mud hut with tin roof, narrow escaped the regional 
conflagration that badly damaged the neighborhood then known as the Asian 
Financial Crisis.  Even before the smokes cleared, the more conservative 
among the firemen went on a victory lap, congratulating themselves about 
how well Vietnam fared.  The reality was that, since Vietnam was so 
unintegrated at that time that the financial contagion could not spread; 
there was no fuel for the fire.  That episode set back progress and 
reforms for at least a couple of years.  While the neighbors rebuilt and 
put in sprinklers, Vietnam was still trying to delay equitization of the 
banking sector, and lost valuable time for putting in place needed 
regulations for a healthy financial sector, as if the rope and bucket 
approach to financial fire-fighting is still acceptable.  (Former PM V V 
Kiet, in his report on 2 decades of Doi Moi, outlined this back-and-forth 
struggles between those in Party who advocated stability and protection of 
the Party and those who would push the limit for more progressive 
changes.)  It took a few years for the progressive to gather forces and 
move forward again.
Now, more than a decade latter, we have a decent wooden house that we can 
be justifiably proud of compared to the mud hut, and a couple of garden 
hoses for fire protection.  The time to plan for the fire is before it 
stated.  With an under equipped fire department, Vietnam can't afford to 
be self-satisfied and shouldn't be cheered on indiscriminently.  Moving 
back to mud huts isn't a very good options.  Building fire-safe brick 
houses will require stronger foundations, a proper municipal water system 
with enough pressures, large enough roads for fire trucks, fire trucks and 
fire fighter who know how to use foam to suppress electrical fires, and a 
thousand other things.  All of these take careful, plodding, planning, 
much resources, vision and leadership, a different kind of leadership than 
arriving at the fireline with a bullhorn to call on the entire 
neighborhood to line up with the ropes and buckets.
Cheers,  HPP

"Tran Dinh Hoanh" <tdhoanh at gmail.com> 
Sent by: vnbiz-bounces at mail.saigon.com
04/10/2008 07:06 PM
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Re: [Vnbiz] Ministries participate in fighting inflation

[ Vietnam Business Forum ]

Dear Craig & CACC,

That is a very nice exposition of ideas, Craig, and they all are valid 
ideas.   But crisis management never allows anyone any kind of theoretical 
reasoning.  The only thing a fireman should think and should do when a 
house is on fire is "How do I put this fire out immediately?"  And if a 
person is the fireman, she has the ethical duty to use the method she is 
most familiar with and she is sure that it will work.  She will do the 
homeowner a great disservice if she tries new unproven methods while his 
house is on fire.  That may be considered professionally incompetent and 
unethical in both the court of law and the court of conscience.

After the fire, the house will have to be fixed or rebuilt, and everyone 
will have time and luxury to thinking about how to make this damaged house 
beautiful and modern.  And at that time, the professional and ethical duty 
may be "to think about all modern ideas to make sure the house will not 
become obsolete after 2 years."

In order for us to do a good management job, we have to be very clear 
about what our job is in a given situation--are we doing immediate crisis 
management or are we planning for future growth?  Most of the time, the 2 
sets of methods used for these 2 different situations are completely 
different. 

You have a legitimate question, Craig:  When is near future, when is far 
future?   When is crisis, when is normal?   Admittedly the answer may not 
be so clear--one person may say "We're out of crisis now," another may say 
"No, we're still in danger."  That is a very good question to keep in 
mind.  We will have to cross that bridge when we get to the river.  For 
now, let's agree at least on one thing:  That is, Vietnam is facing a 
serious inflation issue that must be solved immediately to prevent a major 
economic crisis.

Have a great day!

Hoanh
____________ 

On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 11:29 AM, Craig Stevenson <
cstevenson2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
[ Vietnam Business Forum ]

Dear Anh Hoanh and CACC:

Well, where to start.  I am not a big fan of James Bond movies but I 
believe there is a character in them called "Dr. Evil" or something.  Dr 
Evil is symbolic of the external actor excuse.  The fact is that we are 
all factors.  The choices we make, the directions of our passions and 
desires, the hopes for our futures, the decisions we make in the present. 
I believe that acting in the moment is necessary, assuming we don't accept 
old models to base our present decisions upon.  Again, the comfortable 
thing, the thing we feel we know best, is to base our present actions on 
our past experiences.  If this globalization requires a nimble and 
flexible approach, if the speed at which things are coming at us is 
accelerating, if to excel, as businesses are told, we need the flexibility 
to jettison those business units/strategies/models upon which our past to 
recent success has been built than we need do more than simply act in the 
moment.  We have to throw our net forward, we need to question the utility 
of our present understanding of how things work, we need to be beyond the 
curve mentally before we reach the curve physically.

NASA developed a technique called Horizon Mission Methodology, where they 
would take an impossible scenario, such as getting to Jupiter in a day. 
The would then work backwords and state what were the technological feats 
which would have to be realized to accomplish this mission.  What would be 
the ordering of each of those subsequent advances (in some way perhaps a 
disruptive innovation)?  What would be the opportunity, what would we need 
to work on, in between each of those milestones (in some way perhaps a 
sustaining innovation)?

Now FAR shocks or NEAR shocks are relative terms and mean little without 
further definition.  Whether near or far what is certain is we, humanity, 
can not continue to sit on our hands expecting the best, when it is quite 
clear that trends prove otherwise (from pollution to water, from air to 
the quality of our soils and, even, the sustainability of our economic 
models) .  Anyway....
Ability to control more, less absolute control of everything, greater 
desire and absolute ability to consume more things, the quickening pace 
with which the world will do just that, and the quickening rate at which 
we will prove trends correct, the quickening rate at which we will defile 
more of the other important forms of capital, while we humans move along 
with doing more in the same ways, we base our judgements upon what we knew 
yesterday, forgetting what we need to know tomorrow which seems little 
more than mere abstractions to our poorly visioned minds.

Craig 

-- 
Tran Dinh Hoanh, Esq., LLB, JD
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