#2-3 Asia's lonely hearts [Aug 20th 2011]

#2-3 Asia's lonely hearts [Aug 20th 2011]

Aug 28, 2011 10:00-12:00   Iidabashi Café Di Espresso

Members: 8 people
Ogawa, Ono, Iino, Nagao, Tomozawa, Tahara, Sotani and Yokoyama

Articles:

[Leaders] Asia’s lonely hearts

[Leaders] [Intellectual property] Patent medicine

[Business] [Google’s takeover of Motorola Mobility] Patently different

[Finance & Economics] An unpalatable solution

    This week’s our study group was an innovative experience. 8 members came to join and it was the maximum size we have experienced thorough our group. 3 new comers came to join this time. Tahara is my old friend and works for a hedge fund, which headquarter is located in Singapore. He sent me a message on twitter that he wants to join with us. Sotani is a friend of Tomozawa and she is investment analyst. Yokoyama is a dietitian working for a hospital. They each have a very clear-cut personalities and I had a fun discussing with them.

    The first article Ogawa chose was a sensational one especially for Asian youngs like us. “Asia’s lonely hearts” points out “a flight of marriage”, instead of a divorce or a late marriage, is more common among Asian young people. The article insists that burdens that Asian women carry is heavy, and then they don’t want to or hesitate to get marry. We mainly discussed about what politics can do for the issue. Japanese legislation doesn’t acknowledge de-fact marriage as a normal one and a legitimate child is inferior to a normal one when it comes to inheritance and legal issues.

    Secondly, we discussed about patents on two articles from leaders and business section. Both articles focuses on Google’s recent takeover of Motorola Mobility. The attraction for Google is its portfolio of 17,000 patents, with another 7,500 in the pipeline. The article insists that the patent system has been stifling innovation rather than encouraging it so our discussion mainly focused on how to overcome this dilemma. Iino gave us an example of a pharmaceutical industry. He explained us that pharmaceutical manufactures were turning to be investment companies because it took huge cost to make a new medicine. Someone gave a good idea of two-story patent system, which is to separate patents of short term investment and long term one.

    Last article “An unpalatable solution” that Ono picked up is from Economic focus on Euro fiscal crisis. It verifies the possibility of issuing Eurobonds. We already picked up this issue last week so this week we more focused on concrete possible solutions. The Economist was skeptical about the idea of Eurobonds. It was more like bold bond reorganization. Other solutions are financial transferring and centralization of fiscal policy but both of them are inconsistent with reality because countries such as Germany and France would have an acute pain by these policies.

    We gathered in Iidabashi for the first time. An aiming café was closed so we had to change the place to discuss thirty minutes before start. Takase was registered on this study group according to our spreadsheet but we all didn’t know him so we couldn’t contact him. The café had a large space so we easily prepared our seats.