conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know a description for a book titled After Words about Beaverton, Oregon, Gold with the genre: Christian Books & Bibles, Christian Living?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: the author, the beloved pastor of a large congregation in Beaverton, Oregon, battled leukemia for more than twenty years until his death in May 2003. His books include the Gold Medallion winners God Works the Night Shift and Just in Case I Can't Be There. Right with God was the 2003 National Day of Prayer theme book. Ron is survived by his wife, Joyce, and their two married sons.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know a plot for a book titled After Words about Beaverton, Oregon, Gold with the genre: Christian Books & Bibles, Christian Living?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: After Words (film): A librarian who is vacationing in Costa Rica meets a younger man.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first five paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: After Words
  Australia, like every other country, also had to think about the great unanswered question of the information age. Will the digital revolution result in a fundamental diffusion of power within societies and between economies? Or will it deliver instead the sort of concentration of power that accompanied the industrial revolution a century ago in the form of robber baron capitalism?
  By making direct relationships between producers and consumers possible in a way we haven't experienced since the first appearance of the mass market, the digital economy is squeezing out the middleman. E-commerce over the internet will generate an estimated $300 billion annually in the next five years. But will the large simply get larger?
  The United States is home to three quarters of the global software industry. It is set to dominate the initial stages, at any rate, of the electronic commerce industry. What place can the rest of us find for ourselves?
  This region has been through a harsh, and in some ways unnecessary, economic crisis. I have been consistently optimistic about the speed with which it will recover and the new strength its economies will have when it does so. The IMF and World Bank reforms were administered too bluntly, especially in Indonesia, but they will make these economies enormously competitive as growth resumes.
  Asia's economic crisis had many causes. But a central factor was the global capital spending boom of the mid-nineties and the excess productive capacity it produced. As capital spending surged, capacity utilisation rates began to fall. And because Asia produced the low-tech products like steel, ships, cars and commodities that were the part of world output most sensitive to economic cycles, it happened most sharply here.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: After Words
  Australia, like every other country, also had to think about the great unanswered question of the information age. Will the digital revolution result in a fundamental diffusion of power within societies and between economies? Or will it deliver instead the sort of concentration of power that accompanied the industrial revolution a century ago in the form of robber baron capitalism?
  By making direct relationships between producers and consumers possible in a way we haven't experienced since the first appearance of the mass market, the digital economy is squeezing out the middleman. E-commerce over the internet will generate an estimated $300 billion annually in the next five years. But will the large simply get larger?
  The United States is home to three quarters of the global software industry. It is set to dominate the initial stages, at any rate, of the electronic commerce industry. What place can the rest of us find for ourselves?
  This region has been through a harsh, and in some ways unnecessary, economic crisis. I have been consistently optimistic about the speed with which it will recover and the new strength its economies will have when it does so. The IMF and World Bank reforms were administered too bluntly, especially in Indonesia, but they will make these economies enormously competitive as growth resumes.
  Asia's economic crisis had many causes. But a central factor was the global capital spending boom of the mid-nineties and the excess productive capacity it produced. As capital spending surged, capacity utilisation rates began to fall.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know five more paragraphs? Start with the sentence 'The Reinhart and Rogoff study reveals that after a financial crisis, public debt rises by an average of over 80 per cent within three years; that is, it nearly doubles'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Reinhart and Rogoff study reveals that after a financial crisis, public debt rises by an average of over 80 per cent within three years; that is, it nearly doubles. This arises from the collapse in tax revenues from lower growth, the cost of the fiscal stimulus put in place to avoid a recession, and the direct public cost of the financial bailouts to banks and major industrial companies. And the higher taxes normally imposed later to deal with the growing debt have a further deleterious effect on growth.
  This is, Australia being the exception, pretty much the picture of the advanced countries: North America, Britain, much of Europe and all emerging Europe. Fortunately, many emerging markets, particularly those in East Asia, are in better financial shape.
  The way for advanced countries to stabilise their economies, other than by more profligate borrowing and more government debt, is to earn their way back to more balanced growth—and this means a big rise in net exports: import replacement and exports.
  But for this to happen, the surplus countries like China and Germany must more strongly expand domestic demand. That is, move the driving character of their economies away from a preponderant reliance on investment to one of more consumption.
  To get out of the general bind—to allow the debtor states to grow again—the surplus countries must facilitate a global adjustment in the balance of payments. But that facilitation has not been forthcoming. Germany wishes to continue running current-account surpluses with modest levels of domestic demand, while seeking to punish other European states which rely on its vendor financing. Germany wants people to continue buying its products but not borrow German savings to do it. It labels those states as profligate, yet relies on them to buy its prestige motor vehicles and machine tools.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last four paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Australia's terms of trade, remarkably, are 40 per cent higher than the average of the last 50 years. And they look like continuing for at least the next decade or two. The vast reserves of Australia's mineral and hydrocarbon endowments are sufficient to meet current levels of production way into the future.
  So, in a very ordinary world, Australia has been set up to do well. Not only do the structural reforms of the 1980s and 1990s and the elevated terms of trade continue to work in its favour, it also has low levels of government debt, a solid and viable banking system and, through superannuation, an accumulation of A$1.2 trillion or 110 per cent of GDP. This savings pool, designed to meet the need of retirement incomes, is unique among countries of comparable scale and size. The problem of ageing that is now to beset the United States and the countries of Western Europe will, in large measure, have been met by the Keating government's universal superannuation system in Australia.
  As in everything, leadership is key. Australia's economic position dramatically improved with the adoption of a set of structural changes radically conceived and politically constructed. Conceived not by way of some bureaucratic masterplan or process of increments, but by imagination and insight.
  Leaders must sketch out the landscape and then move the nation forward. Those who do not want to do this, who baulk at exercising power or accepting responsibility, do not deserve to have the jobs.