By Monday, January 12, 2009, most guests had left the Double B pig farm and things settled back into the normal routine. The Presidential Triumverate was on its way back to St. Kitts, each member on a separate O.U.T.R.A.G.E. plane with his own entourage of staff members (in the event of one plane crash, there would still be two surviving Presidents). Colin Powell, John McCain and Barack Obama were obsessed with China, and telecommunicated with each other during the flights.
"We've got a tiger by the tail," said Powell, "and we need to bring China into the loop. To deny that the Chinese are becoming a world super power is foolish." Economically, China had emerged as the fastest-growing consumer market in the world. In the cellphone industry alone, China's demand had creted an explosive growth market that had attracted millions of investors, including hundreds of thousands of American speculators. Ahron Bronfman, publisher of Growth Stock Guru on the Internet had made some bold statements in the early years of the 21st century which were proving to be right on target. "In China," he wrote at www.growthstockguru.com, "the telecom boom is just beginning - and it will be the biggest boom in history!" His newsletter predicted that over 600 million Chinese would subscribe to mobile communications services by 2010 - 44% of China's total population. In 2006, Chinese users sent almost 240 billion text messages, a 47% increase over 2005. "Don't let underperforming U.S. markets keep you from achieving chartbusting returns," Bronfman warned, "Fuel your portfolio for explosive growth....in the hottest sector of the hottest economy on the planet...a future $336 billion market, growing three times faster than the Chinese economy!" At www.GuangzhouGlobalTelecom.com (GZGT), Bronfman's clients were encouraged to "diversify your portfolio with emerging sectors and gain exposure to a hot Chinese company that trades on the U.S. stock market". China was about to become the largest cellular communications market in the world, and Bronfman's clients were notified of a projected 500% in revenue growth by 2009. Panasonic, Motorola, LG, Nokia, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom had all formed a telecommunications partnership that would dwarf the American and European cellular markets. Bronfman picked GZGT as the one stock in which to invest above all others, worldwide. "Their emergence just in this one industry is astonishing," Powell said. "We can't ignore the vastness of this powerful new market, especially since our own American markets are in turmoil."
Obama posed a different perspecitve. "China also has its problems," he advised, "environmentally and socially. Just in the past two years, China's two largest lakes have been plagued with toxic algae that destroy fish and plant life, and has threatened to wipe out entire villages. Lake Taihu's pollution was so bad it forced residents in nearby Wuxi City in Jiangsu province to turn off its tap water supplies due to the horrendous contamination. Chaohi Lake in neighboring Anhui province has seen over 15 square miles of its surface covered with green slime. Officials candidly admit that 70% of China's waterways and 90% of its underground water supplies are polluted. Just last year authorities ordered towns around Lake Taihu to shut down all polluting factories and meet new water emission standardsby the end of June, 2008. As of today - seven months after that deadline - they've been unable to control the algae. It's just one environmental crisis facing that nation, and they're crises are far greater than even the United States' environmental issues. I believe this gives us a doorway into developing cooperative efforts with the Chinese that will help rebuild America's economy and solving China's pollution problems as we work together for a mutual good."
McCain added his two cents' worth when he said, "O.U.T.R.A.G.E. has all along focused on more equality in our own country. We have decried the pros and cons of capitalism, rejected the idea of socialism, but -at the same time - wrestled with how to establish a true democracy which is ruled by the people, of the people, and for the people. We want to create a more equal playing field for all Americans so that the rich don't keep on getting richer and the poor continue to stagnate in their pool of poverty. China has the very same set of problems. There are overnight billionaires creeping into its society; yet there are still millions of people moving into the cities in search of a better life, who end up working at menail jobs for forty cents an hour.
China is right now going through what America went through at the turn of the last century: millions of people struggled to stay solvent while the Rockefellers, the Carnegies and the Vanderbilts got filthy rich off the sweat of those 'common' people's brows. In America, the Great Depression brought it all to an end, and - for a few years - we all worked together toward a better national prosperity. Then we suffered through a World War that kept us united as a nation. It was only after the War was over that we got fat and lazy. We started 'looking out for #1' without caring about those poor souls on the lower rungs of society's ladder. We carelessly rejected the idea that we should give any regard to our environment, and polluted like pigs in a mud-filled pen. We forgot about being compassionate toward those of lesser fortune, and focused on our own gluttony until - by 2003 - we were ripe with audacity and ready to attack another sovereign nation that in no way threatened, provoked or attacked the United States, all because we wanted the money that nation's huge oil reserves could bring us. I don't see China as any different: just a half-century behind America. As its society becomes more cosmopolitan, the economy will afford more luxuries to a greater pool of people. Just as Japanese today are destroying the ocean's inventory of sushi because they're willing - and able - to pay $90 a plate for the delicacy; just as Americans squander billions of barrels of oil just to feed their hunger for gas-guzzling SUVs; so will the Chinese people find their own obsessions. Soon a well-to-do middle-class of Chinese consumers will be demanding more seafood to fill their bellies, more oil to fuel their cars, and more poor people to provide subservient labor. The Chinese rich will get richer; the rest of the country will fold into a semi-comfortable middle-class society that will find it more and more difficult to survive paycheck-to-paycheck. And those who are above that fray - those who earn even a little bit more than the verage worker - will concern themselves only with themselves, unwilling to part with their million-yen portfolios just as we Americans don't want to errode our own million-dollar fortunes in order to help America's hungry, sick, elderly, disabled, underprivileged, disadvantaged, poor, unemployed and homeless.
I propose that we encourage China to join us in abandoning the use of the terms "socialism" or "capitalism" and begin to build on a new vision of what I would call 'Equilateralism'. Of course, it has to be more than just a catchphrase; it must entail a vivid new commitment on behalf of the two greatest nations on Earth - to ensure that all of their citizens are afforded truly equal opportunity. No more distinction between 'rich' school districts where the high schools have Olympic-size swimming pools and state-of-the-art classroom while 'poor' school districts suffer broken windows and overcrowded classrooms. We have to find a way to 'equalize' everything. Bring uniformity and consistency to our societies so that everyone has the same kind of chance for success and prosperity. True, some people will still utilize their opportunities to the best of their abilities while others will not take such lucrative advantage. But we all should be able to start out on an equal playing field. For too many years, that hasn't happened in America, and it's not happening in China. We can no longer afford to allow the most wealthy, powerful and influential people of either country hold all the best cards. I think we need to move both countries toward a new dream of 'Equailateralism'."
By the time all three Presidents had their say, the planes had all landed safely in St. Kitts and