The visitor to the nation of Georgia continually encounters images by Niko Pirosmanashvili (1862-1918), known as Pirosmani and considered a master of naïve painting. His portraits of Georgians enjoying daily life a century ago—peasants, fishermen, musicians, even millionaires—pop up everywhere as restaurant murals and tourist mementos. And even occasionally as the original artwork.
It is noteworthy, then, that Pirsomani’s sense of the ordinary extended to a man in oriental costume holding the tether of a Bactrian camel. Tartar Cameleer evokes the Silk Road, suggesting that the commonplace extended to caravans passing through Tiflis (now Tbilisi). In view of the painting’s 1914 date, the cameleer image may have been nostalgic, but it is a vivid, if rustic, indication of Georgia’s longstanding role as trade junction between Central Asia and Europe.
From the perspective of global investment strategy, Pirosmani’s portrait of the camel driver conveys the cosmopolitan nature of the Georgian economy. His worldview prevails into the present day as Georgia looks both East and West to affirm its progressive identity.
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United States: The Demerol Economy
by Douglas Clark Johnson
08 September 2009
If the United States economy were a hospital, its patients would run the risk of addiction to the fiscal equivalent of Demerol, the high-powered painkiller. Whether the nation can maintain the current course of treatment without severe side effects, let alone withdrawal symptoms, is a quandary facing investors who are presented with a mixed set of economic and market symptoms.
Over the past year, the government has served as white knight to the auto industry, tried to stimulate the housing industry with tax credits, and pumped untold additional billions into the financial system. Congressional legislation meanwhile has been chock-full of spending programs in an attempt to amplify the wave of hand-outs. When combined with the Federal Reserve’s asset-purchase program, the total stimulus package has amounted to almost 20% of GDP. The figure is staggering by developed-world standards. …continue reading
Tags: asset purchase, economic improvement, interest rate policy, joblessness, stimulus package
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