The practice of doing business in China has come into question early this year. The disputes between Google Inc. and the Chinese government have been one factor; others have included the continued concerns raised in the West about China’s currency policy, and in China about Western financial policies. Moreover, questions about intellectual property protection in China have not gone away. At the same time, the consumer markets within the country are more vibrant as its pace of growth increases, and Chinese businesses are becoming innovative, fierce competitors within their country, and increasingly in the world outside. There has never been a time when getting China right is more important — or more difficult.

How do we view China in here at Blackhawk?

What is our investment policy vis a vis China given the increasing tensions that are raising concerns among some business people out there and given our increasing exposure to China through our strategic investments in Linktone and China Security & Surveillance Technology?

It is clear today that no capitalistic entity on Planet Earth can afford to ignore China’s role in global political and business affairs.

Whatever friction there is between US companies and China, I think it is time for us all in the West to step back and try to understand what China means to their business. We also have to understand what China has been achieving over the last couple of decades since it started its economic reforms. Ignoring China is not an option. The only way any company can take advantage of its massive opportunities is by placing its China activities in a global context — as part of an integrated web of capabilities, including manufacturing, marketing and sales, innovation, new business model incubation, and talent development.

Continuous Reading : The Challenges and Opportunities in China

The financial system may well have recovered more quickly if the bailouts hadn’t happened, but the suffering in the meantime would most likely have been unacceptable

The financial system may well have recovered more quickly if the bailouts hadn’t happened, but the suffering in the meantime would most likely have been unacceptable. Everyone who had savings would have seen them wiped out and a great many businesses would have ceased trading because they depend on credit for their cash flow, resulting in mass unemployment. Military coups in previously stable democratic countries could not have been ruled out and the prospect of extreme left or right wing groups taking control would have been a real possibility. The global economy was able to absorb localized banking collapses such as that in Iceland or of Lehman Brothers, but the human cost of a wider collapse would have been far worse.

The bailouts have been “successful” in the sense that some stability has returned, but they have not solved the underlying problem. Despite commitments in some areas to split up retail and investment banking and to improve capital ratios, the moral hazard remains because banks know they are too big to fail and will be bailed out again should the need arise. Only a total, irreversible disengagement of government from the financial sector could resolve this, and that is politically unrealistic. The main issue remains that the real cost of the bailouts is that they have reinforced the promise which was the root cause of the problem, that governments are there to rescue the banks when they fail.

Continuous Reading: How can we avoid another 2007-2008 type Financial Crisis in the Future?

Thank you

Would you tell us in your own words who Ziad is? What does he do, what are his experience, achievements, expertise?

I am a Lebanese American dealmaker, trader, financier, lobbyist and philanthropist with over 25 years of experience in merchant banking, private equity, alternative investments, and physical Commodities trading.

Since 1985, I have been involved in over 125 transactions worth in aggregate more than $10 billion in the investment banking, high-yield bond, and distressed debt markets and have been widely recognized for playing an integral role in those three key market sectors.

I am President & CEO of Blackhawk Partners, a New York based private equity “family office” that focuses on originating, structuring, advising and acting as equity investor in management-led buyouts, strategic minority equity investments, equity private placements, consolidations, buildups, and growth capital financings in companies and projects based both in the US and emerging markets.

I hold an MBA in Finance from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and a BS in Economics, Summa Cum Laude, from the American University of Beirut.

I am the author of the bestselling book “Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics” http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Economic-Warfare-Creating-Regulation/dp/1118150120/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1311437307&sr=8-2 which sold over 100,000 copies since its publication in December 2011. A MUST READ for anyone involved in finance.

thank you

Ziad K Abdelnour

Businessman, dealer, financier, philanthropist,This Lebanese-American has more than 25 years
of experience in investment banking, private equity and international trade and has been involved in more than 125 transactions with a value as a whole that exceeds 10,000 million in banks
investment, high yield bonds or debt markets financier difficulties.

He is currently president and CEO of Blackhawk Partners, a family office private equity based in New York acts in companies and projects based in both the United States and emerging markets. Ziad K Abdelnour is also author of the bestseller Economic Warfare: Secrets of wealth creation in the age of welfare politics, published in December 2011

Obamacare’s Subsidy Trap For The Poor
By Eric Dixon – Board Member – Financial Policy Council Inc

Obamacare critics fearful of the federal government controlling one-sixth of the nation’s economy and the resulting loss of freedom have missed both the most serious threat to freedom and its likeliest victims. Obamacare stands to turn millions of our neighbors into criminals. That’s because seeking a subsidy in order to obey the mandate of — never mind afford — the Affordable Care Act (“ACA,” but referred universally as Obamacare)1 can easily put our most economically and educationally vulnerable fellow citizens on a path to jail. If this be compassion, it is true only in the same sense that euthanasia fulfills the definition.

The dreaded individual mandate 2 is the root of the problem, because complying with PPACA requires everyone (with narrow exceptions for undocumented aliens and certain religious objectors) to buy and keep a compliant health insurance policy. The mandatory and significant costs of even the cheapest Obamacare-compliant plan premiums first raise an affordability concern, but the premiums are no longer a discretionary expense. Insurance premiums now must be paid before truly essential but not mandated expenses like rent or food, indeed before any other expense! The financial pressure on low and middle-income Americans is obvious — at least if you are law-abiding. The PPACA will reduce disposable income, coerce a recalibration of priorities of expenditures and induce economic stress on middle-class and low-income Americans. The “trap,” as I call it, is the allure of government subsidies for people based on income…more

Thanks
Ziad K Abdelnour