It's 2005. A group of investment bankers visit a dimly lit New York club. One banker in his 20s makes more than a million a year packaging mortgages and sending them on to the big Wall Street firms. Two waiters arrive carrying four champagne bottles each with tiny sparklers. Everyone turns to look. Those bankers just ordered four bottles of Cristal at $1,000 a pop.
It's 2009. Tom Tseng, general manager of Chinese bicycle-maker Tandem Industries, tells a newspaper reporter that "China's ability to consume has reached a fairly high level & [while] in the U.S. people now only want to buy cheap things."
