主题：【原创】四面楚歌之美国篇 美国金融之庞氏局 -- 井底望天

也许神仙驴和老广也会有独到的见解，这里先一并谢过了。

Wire: BLOOMBERG News (BN) Date: Sep 24 2009 12:01:21

Liu He as China’s Larry Summers Makes Politburo Appreciate U.S.

By Bloomberg News

Sept. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Two days after the collapse of

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. a year ago, an adviser sent by

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao met with a group of Harvard

University scholars to help shape his country’s response.

On March 30, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and

National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers separately

made time for the same man, Liu He, on the day the Obama

administration forced the ouster of General Motors Corp. Chief

Executive Officer Rick Wagoner.

Top-level access in Washington and Beijing gives Liu, a 57-

year-old graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, a

pivotal role in the U.S.-China economic relationship. His

mission was to convey American sensibilities on the depth of the

U.S. financial crisis to Wen, said Anthony Saich, a professor at

the Kennedy School who attended the Sept. 17, 2008, meeting in

Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was part of a fact-finding tour

that included stops in New York, Washington and San Francisco.

“He’s a very sophisticated thinker, very analytical,”

said Saich, who said the meeting also included Harvard

economists such as Jeffrey Liebman, now a White House budget

official. “He’s a key person in preparing reports that are not

only going to the premier but also to the general secretary of

the party,” President Hu Jintao.

When Liu returned to Beijing from the September trip, his

report was made available to senior leaders, according to a

person familiar with the situation whose job prevents him from

speaking about Chinese officials publicly.

While it isn’t known what Liu reported, a Chinese response

to the crisis wasn’t long in coming. On Nov. 9, China announced

a 4 trillion-yuan ($586 billion) stimulus, which helped the

economy ride out the worst of the financial turmoil.

‘China’s Larry Summers’

“Liu He is one of only a few Chinese officials who can

speak the language of international finance,” said Cheng Li, a

senior fellow at Washington’s Brookings Institution who met Liu

in March. “He’s China’s Larry Summers.”

Unlike Summers, a frequent guest on U.S. television talk

shows, Liu avoids publicity, operating within a secretive

decision-making apparatus inside the burnt-red walls of

Beijing’s Zhongnanhai leadership compound. At least 10 people

who know him say he is quiet and modest. He turned down four

interview requests for this story.

Liu’s title since 2003 has been deputy director of the

office of the Central Leading Group on Financial and Economic

Affairs. Participants include Wen, Vice Premier Wang Qishan and

People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan, according to

China experts and non-governmental Web sites.

Pensions and Currency

To generate ideas for the leading group, Liu convenes

meetings of economists, bankers and government officials to hash

out options on everything from pensions to the value of the

yuan, according to a Chinese economist who has participated.

The economist, who asked not to be named because of the

sessions’ sensitive nature, described them as freewheeling and

devoid of ideology.

“They will pick some hotel in a suburb of Beijing, all

these people would show up, and Liu will say ‘We’re interested

in exchange-rate policies, talk,’” said Victor Shih, a

professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and

author of the 2008 book “Factions and Finance in China.”

The leading group makes recommendations to the country’s

cabinet, the full 25-person Politburo or its elite nine-member

standing committee, led by Hu, 66, on whether to pull the

trigger on government policies, the Chinese economist said.

Top Members

Liu, who holds the rank of vice minister, also gathers

ideas from the Chinese Economists 50 Forum, a non-governmental

group he founded in 1998 that parlays academic research into

policy solutions. Members include Zhou and Lou Jiwei, the

chairman of China’s $297.5 billion sovereign wealth fund.

Liu spent much of his career in the State Planning

Commission, the agency that formerly set prices for everything

from bicycles to grain, according to his online biography. It

now writes industrial policy under a new name, the National

Development and Reform Commission.

A former soldier and factory worker who was sent to

Manchuria in the midst of China’s 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution,

Liu helped draft the five-year plans that underpinned China’s

economy. He has been a Communist Party member for more than

three decades, the biography says.

In a chapter from a 2008 book Liu wrote assessing China’s

30 years of economic openness, he praised the “grey area” the

country has found, moving toward a market economy without

“blindly” mimicking Western models.

No Extremes

“Liu’s economic philosophy is pragmatism,” the Brookings

Institution’s Li said. “He will not be obsessed with two

extremes. One is market fundamentalism and the other is the

previous planned economy, which completely failed.”

He has that in common with Summers’s great rival, Joseph

Stiglitz, a Nobel-prize winning economist at New York’s Columbia

University who served as chairman of the Council of Economic

Advisers under President Bill Clinton.

Stiglitz, 66, has praised China for its crisis response,

which focuses on government-funded investment in roads, bridges

and factories. At a May 13 forum in Beijing, Stiglitz said China

“has taken very rapid action to address the crisis” and may

emerge as “a winner.”

After the Cultural Revolution delayed Liu’s education, he

entered Beijing’s People’s University in 1978, earning a

master’s degree in economics, his biography said.

Liu studied management at Seton Hall University in South

Orange, New Jersey, in 1992-1993 and spent the next two years at

Harvard, earning a master’s degree in public administration in

1995, according to school records.

“One got the sense of an individual whose entire resume

had prepared him for his difficult tasks,” said Dennis Wilder,

who until January was Asia director at the White House National

Security Council and met Liu in March. Wilder now is a visiting

fellow at the Brookings Institution.

“He would be an extremely strong player in the game of

bilateral poker: well grounded in the technical issues, non-

polemic, and with an in-depth understanding of the United

States,” Wilder said.

• 请教驴兄一个人名。