Executive View by Marshall Loeb: Rise of the Role Model

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Protectionist pressures may intensify because South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore are becoming new Japans. Their advances have been nurtured by the West's aid, so it would be doubly tragic if the West tried to throttle them with tariffs and quotas. If protectionism bursts out, Whitman warns, "the worst casualties would be the least well-off countries. The industrialized countries would muddle through. But all economies would grow more slowly, and that would exacerbate the issue of income distribution. It's a lot easier to redistribute a growing pie than a stagnant one,"

Yet her native optimism persuades Whitman that sense and sanity will ultimately prevail. She is hopeful that the world trade negotiations, now grinding slowly in Geneva, will reach a creative conclusion by their Dec. 15 deadline. Such talks are a classic chicken game, and nothing is ever decided until the last 24 hours. What happens in the final hours may well determine whether the world economy springs ahead or merely limps along in the 1980s.

And what ever happened to those gerbils? They weathered the trip nicely, thank you. So did their mistress.