大卫罗德

更新：“我的道歉“。在此列的第一个版本，我混淆了两个不同的Camaro车型。以下更正版本。

上海当在好莱坞的变压器 专营权的第三电影在7月推出，广大的中国年轻人蜂拥到电影院-和雪佛兰经销商。 富丽影迷想买一个电影的半车，半机器人主角，亮黄色的叫“大黄蜂的雪佛兰跑车。 “

“每个人都知道大黄蜂，财，在上海雪佛兰销售和营销总监说：”理查德。 “我已经得到新闻界的家伙称之为大黄蜂，大黄蜂不。 “

今年夏天，雪佛兰经销商在中国销售了约350 400 鲜黄Camaros。一个独立的专门设计看起来像“大黄蜂”Camaro的模型全球售出2000台，但直到12月将不会在中国上市。 2000“大黄蜂”的近四分之一 Camaros公司销往世界各地。

中国观察家说，雪佛兰 不过， 可以在中国销售得多Camaros。雪佛兰建专门Camaros 每款Camaro在美国之后，才收到具体的订单，交货3个月的延迟受挫的中国消费者。

同时，交通费，以及中国的关税和货币操纵，使一个Camaro的成本大约在中国购买的两倍多-约$ 70,000 -因为它在美国

雪佛兰销售总监，财，淡化了交货时间，并说Camaro的销售表明，美国品牌在中国的腾飞 。

“崔京周说，”问题不在于我们如何得到更多的Camaros中国 。 但我们如何获得更多的产品-像大黄蜂-中国的启发和推动中国市场 “

雪佛兰“大黄蜂”的经验表明中国的新兴中产阶级的营销承诺和危险， 一些经济学家说，美国公司可以使用，以帮助振兴美国经济的一个战略。他们认为，如果中国的中产阶级开始购买更多的消费品，它可以在世界经济复苏发挥了核心作用。而且，如果美国公司可以穿透利润丰厚的中国市场，他们可以在美国创造急需的就业。

雪佛兰和其他美国企业在中国的过往记录，显示这种做法的现实。他们还提供了一个集一个核心问题的答案，我会反复检查在此列。中产阶级在中国和其他新兴市场国家的崛起是否一定意味着美国中产阶级必须缩小吗？

另外四名记者和我本人都对中国进行访问本周举办了由中国-美国交流基金会，非营利组织与中国政府密切联系的商人运行行程。 亨利基辛格和前财政部长鲁宾担任名誉顾问组，还组织退休的美国政府官员和军官到中国访问。路透是我此行的支付的全部费用。

中国提出了挑战，也为规模较小的公司。在闪闪发光的“中国财富”在上海的办事处塔21层，另一家美国公司正在试图建立自己的滩头阵地在中国蓬勃发展的的经济。

在公共和私营部门的伙伴关系，我写上个月，在保龄球绿色，肯塔基州的工程师购物商场转高，高科技孵化器设计了一个阀门，减少空气污染的柴油发动机喷出。今天，中国四大卡车制造商在采购阀门，遵守收紧空气污染法规。

Houman Kashanipour，美国公司的总裁，PurePOWER技术，说：“”中国市场需要这种技术 。 “我们希望这项技术在世界各地。”

，该公司是总部设在哥伦比亚，南卡罗来纳州，是政府支持的研究优势，制造精密的高端产品，并试图出口到世界各地的经济增长。该公司已经售出了10000个阀门和其他设备，以减少柴油车排放到一家瑞士公司。它也积极地在巴西销售其产品。

但其在中国的工作处于停顿状态。PurePOWER的母公司，卡车制造商Navistar公司，一直在等待中国官员18个月内批准其与一家中国公司的合资企业 。 的申请获得批准之前，PurePOWER可以不开始在中国的分销。

中国国家与美国的自由市场鼓吹者嘲笑政府的作用，起到了核心作用，创造，支持和扩大业务。除了私有化，廉价政府贷款和政府资助的大规模基础设施项目，推动了中国的繁荣。中国政府还要求外国公司创建合资企业与中国企业，公平或不公平，让本地公司学习宝贵的制造业和商业惯例。

“中国是一个非常大的市场，北京预测公司Dragonomics董事总经理克罗伯，”阿瑟说。 “，而政府已成功使用的杠杆点，市场规模从外国投资者，其他国家不能得到确切条款。”

与此同时，许多合资企业对外国企业的高利润。六年前，在中国推出的雪佛兰，是慢慢地赢得市场份额。去年，它在中国销售了创纪录的543700辆汽车。

总体而言，欧洲和日​​本的品牌已经比美国品牌在中国的声誉，但也可以有力的美国流行文化和营销。至于在美国，苹果的魔力iPhone的一个富裕的中国之间的身份的象征。早早在中国的品牌 - 如别克，肯德基和宝洁 - 很好卖。

这些成就表明，从美国政客对中国操纵货币的所有攻击，美国公司可以在中国找到利润。美国官员的关键是要找到有效的方式，支持开拓美国公司。

来自中国，“所有的政府是不好的”与“全业务是坏”在美国的政治辩论似乎荒谬的简单化。共和党人是错误的，相信自由市场 - 单靠自由市场 - 奇迹般地创造了蓬勃发展的公司。民主党人需要看到创新型企业的支持，作为政府的核心目标。

而金融危机导致许多发展中国家的人们相信中国的经济模式已经打得落花流水的美国模式，以令人眩目的贫富差距继续在这里。家庭收入50％的中国国内生产总值， 一个有记录以来的最低的利率。

而不是再投资基础设施项目的暴利，中国政府必须减少高住房，医疗保健，教育和一般家庭的养老成本。中国将花费更多的收入 - 推动全球经济增长 - 当他们对他们的未来更安全。

美国人，同时，应该承认，大规模的制造业将永远不会返回美国。新兴市场国家的劳动力成本都在上升，但仍成倍降低。公司，基地低技能的制造业海外，但保留其设计，营销和总部设在美国 - 并返回其利润的大部分的份额 - 可能是最好了一系列对美国糟糕的经济选项。

创新型企业会想方设法利润来自中国和新兴市场的中产阶级的崛起。 美国中产阶级需要更多的“大黄蜂”和PurePOWERS海外，并在华盛顿的思想 ，潺潺。

图文：访问者看起来在当地汽车展在沈阳，辽宁省2009年7月7日，通用汽车在雪佛兰Camaro大黄蜂。 REUTERS /李生

两百年来，中产阶级一直享有传奇在西方经济思想中的地位。首先，英国和美国的中产阶级，韦伯，马克思和许多其他人说，作为自诩发动机在整个19世纪和20世纪的经济增长和政治稳定。

当大量人口移动超出维持生计，他们投资于储蓄，教育和越来越多的高品质消费品的购买他们的过剩资本。节俭，教育和辛勤工作的一个重点，拉动经济增长的小型创业公司。

二战结束后的第四年对于一个了不起的舒展，这种模式在很大程度上证明了在世界许多地方的准确。美国，欧洲和日​​本的经济带动全球经济增长。世界上从来没有见过一个中产阶级喜欢的出现在美国。美国的收入，教育机会和家里的大小似乎注定要无情地增长一代又一代。

在惊人的短时间内，经济模式已经解体。在实践中 - 只是要求美国工人的实际工资已下降为几十年来 - 即使在理论上。

上个月，在英国经济学家查尔斯肯尼宣布的中间阶级“的重要性和据称神奇在经济增长中的作用是一个”神话“ 一个2010文件的布鲁金斯学会的霍米卡拉思辩称，在世界经济最好的希望是西方的出现一样，在中国和印度消费的中产阶级。和我的同事Chrystia弗里兰写了最近的专栏 ，描述企业如何越来越多地试图出售给在家的丰富和新兴的中产阶级，而不是囊中羞涩的美国中产阶级国外。

所有这一切似乎是灾难性的消息，美国中产阶级和明年的总统大选中的镜头瞬间夸张。政府监管和税收正在摧毁美国中产阶级，共和党轨道。华尔街和董事会的贪婪摧毁了美国的中产阶级，民主党人铁路回。

一个问题是，有没有美国中产阶级的普遍定义。美国政府一直没有正式的分类。学者使用的各种参数。和政客不断试图迎合一个定义模糊的中产阶级美国的混乱。

这就是说，有一个美国的中产阶级，至少有两种方法来定义它。一个是技术的定义：你的地图沿一个典型的钟形曲线的收入或一个社会的财富，选择在中心对称的部分，定义为中产阶级。在许多国家相比，“可以量化，”阶级“，随着时间的推移测量，细分，并与其他类的对比。

在较早的专栏中，我定义为60％的美国家庭每年约为30,000元至80,000赚取的美国中产阶级。这些数字是根据人口普查数据 ，分成五个组百分之二十的美国公众。

第二种方法是定义为中产阶层的经济预期。这些期望各不相同，从社会到社会。在美国，大多数美国人会说中产阶级的成员，包括负担得起的，现代的住房;获得高质量的教育和保健;和美国非常渴望自己的汽车。

是好还是坏，美国中产阶级的存在，检获世界各地的人们的想象。一个繁荣的中产阶级的想法是我们这个时代最界定不清但功能强大的的概念之一。

今天，世界大部分地区都希望美国中产​​阶级了。一个级别，这是不可持续的消费欲望。另外，它是一个类似于美国的社会契约，多数，不是少数，应蓬勃发展的积极传播。

在巴西，中国，印度和土耳其等国家，全球中产阶级正在形成。同样，没有通用的定义存在，但经济的证据越来越清楚。布鲁金斯学会的研究员卡拉思估计，到2020年， 世界上一半以上的中产阶级将在亚洲和亚洲的消费者将占到全球中产阶级消费占40％以上。美国人谁解雇发生在我们身边的变化范围 - 全球中产阶级市场的重要性 - 量刑经济无关。

一个中央悬而未决的问题是在其他国家的中产阶层的崛起是否意味着美国中产阶级必须缩小。研究人员正在划分。

卡拉思认为，美国和新兴市场的中产阶级蓬勃发展的同时。美国企业可以增加对新兴市场的中间类，特别是在亚洲， 高品质，高技术产品出口。

卡拉思说：“它有可能为美国中产阶级和新兴市场的中产阶级扩大在一起，”我在一封电子邮件。 “但是，美国需要扩大中产阶级的教育质量和基础设施的投资，使国内市场更加包容。”

Abhijit班纳吉，麻省理工学院的教授和发展问题专家，同意。但他警告说，美国公司必须竞争与印度和越南的制造商也试图出售给中国消费者。

没有足够的美国人相信，他们能够参与竞争并取胜。我们的政治文化是播种异议，没有战略。一个萎靡不振的美国中产阶级认为其社会打破。

虽然美国中产阶级的经济重要性可能会被削弱，政治权力的“中产阶级”的概念仍然是可怕的。越来越多的美国人认为，大多数是没有得到什么值得。新兴的全球中产阶级的成员有决心，以及获得的份额。解雇的中产阶级 - 在任何地方 - 的领导者，这样做他们的危险。

图片：车辆滞留在印尼首都雅加达9月19日，2011年的中央商务区的交通拥堵。 随着其人口为240万-世界第四大-一个快速增长的中产阶级和经济增长，印尼被视为后，巴西，俄罗斯，印度和中国的汽车制造商的下一个前沿领域 。 REUTERS / Supri

作为展现在未来的几个星期后的阿拉伯春天的第一次选举， 你会听到 “伊斯兰温和派”一遍又一遍的早期结果 ，在突尼斯的选举表明，伊斯兰温和派ENNAHDA党赢得的议席的数目最多的一个新的大会，将修改宪法，选择一个新的临时政府，并设置议会和总统选举的日期。预计票价在类似选举在11月也被描述为温和伊斯兰主义埃及的穆斯林兄弟会成员。而伊斯兰主义发挥的作用越来越大 ，在利比亚的过渡委员会以及。

伊斯兰主义政党坚持认为，他们放弃暴力，完全拥护民主和遵守选举过程。世俗的突尼斯人，埃及人和利比亚，以及一些西方学者警告说，伊斯兰党派的是一种特洛伊木马。一旦伊斯兰主义者采取 的力量，他们将拒绝放弃它，强行在所有三个国家实施保守的伊斯兰教。

引人注目的是来自美国和其他西方国家的首都沉默。

“尚未谈及的变化之一是多西是愿意接受的现实政治格局在突尼斯和埃及这样的地方，其中将包括伊斯兰团体的存在，”Dalia说Mogahed，导演阿布扎比盖洛普中心，整个中东地区的舆论调查。 “西方已经意识到，这不是我们来决定他们是否可以运行。”

伊斯兰一词通常设置在华盛顿敲响了警钟。亲美的独裁者，残酷的沉默，并相信无情地促进好战的伊斯兰主义者长期被关押。不过，在阿拉伯春天之后，他们是钻研到选举政治在现代中东前所未见的程度。

赌注是巨大的。如果强硬的伊斯兰国家的出现，今年秋天的选举中作为奥巴马政府的一个惊人的错误会被骂得狗血淋头。如果伊斯兰主持实际上理事，全国最大的安全威胁，美国面临的一个可能逐步退潮。

当然，对民主的期望很高，证明是错误的在过去。 1979年的伊朗人民革命翻镇压的政教合一的国家就是一个例子。哈马斯温和，因为执政是另一个“一般故障。不过，鉴于美国在该地区的影响力的减弱，禁止从选举的伊斯兰主义既是巨大的虚伪和不切实际的。

对许多美国人来说，拥抱民主的伊斯兰主义者的说法是新的，令人费解，很难相信。由于在20世纪70年代兴起的伊斯兰好战分子，强硬萨拉菲斯特伊斯兰恐怖团体实行主导美国媒体报道。事实上，对于大多数Salafists，民主本身的概念，亵渎神灵。相信，人类可能的规则本身藐视萨拉菲斯特的信念，即上帝的法律应定义所有的人类事务。大多数Salafists看到作为一个企图篡夺上帝的主权和政府，完全不与伊斯兰民主。

在阿拉伯春天，新的突出中东东欧的政治领导人和有关伊斯兰教与民主的关系的宗教学者之间的辩论，根据Halil易卜拉欣Yenigun，伊斯坦布尔工商大学，侧重于民主的穆斯林的看法随着时间的推移研究员。他说，辩论是没有新。

在下半年的¹⁹世纪，穆斯林思想家，在奥斯曼帝国的主要知识产权中心-伊斯坦布尔和开罗，以及印度和印尼-开始认为，自治与伊斯兰兼容。辩论是在以穆斯林为主的国家，新兴欧洲列强殖民部分。知识分子捍卫伊斯兰改革-制定振兴伊斯兰文明的政治变革和增加穆斯林的能力挫败西方侵占的一种方式- 或伊斯拉。

在土耳其，突尼斯和埃及今天，非Salafists解释为强调公正，问责制和宽容其他信仰伊斯兰教，据研究人员。他们对伊斯兰教的解释，强调统治者必须负责的人，非廉洁和公正，也赞同民主的概念。

Mogahed，阿布扎比盖洛普中心负责人说，9月在埃及进行的盖洛普民意调查表明，绝大多数人口看作是兼容的伊斯兰教与民主。虽然这个概念似乎新的西方人，它已被广泛接受在埃及，阿拉伯世界人口最多的国家和文化资本。

“当你真正看看普通老百姓，穆斯林民意只是没有这些问题，”她说。 “他们看到伊斯兰教与民主的概念，以确保司法和问责制，并给予人的角色和语音规则，他们。他们看到，教学这些值。“

许多温和的伊斯兰主义者和自​​由派穆斯林更加犹豫不决，调和伊斯兰教和西方风格，自由市场经济，根据Yenigun，土耳其研究员。伊斯兰教对社会正义的的重视，建立反对极端不平等。

“还有关于资本主义的深层次的保留，”他说

斯堪的纳维亚社会民主的比喻竞选活动期间在突尼斯，ENNAHDA，拉希德加努希，谁花了22年来，流亡在英国的领导人，他 ​​的经济眼光 ，并说，他希望效仿土耳其的伊斯兰总理埃尔多安的表现。

自十年前在土耳其的力量，埃尔多安积极拥抱自由市场资本主义，在全国人均收入近三倍。他的正义与发展党与庞大的社会福利计划，提供负担​​得起的住房，附近的全民医疗保健和糖，面粉，煤炭，甚至教科书免费分发相结合的私有化。该方案针对伊斯兰教的社会正义的呼吁。他们也很聪明的政治。

土耳其的整体进步是不可否认的，但埃尔多安是不完美的，正如我写了上周，他巩固他的权力，但仍然有改弦更张的时候了。

在突尼斯的选举结果不应该担心，我认为-并将继续争论-危险是不是伊斯兰教。这是专制。如叙利亚的世俗政权，已被证明一样专制的伊斯兰政权的镇压，像伊朗这样。伊斯兰教本身并不落后，也不与现代相抵触。沙拉菲主义是。

任务选举，个人的权利和保护妇女和少数民族的宪法，任何形式的国防是反对专制的最佳。民主原则和机构，而不是个别领导人，阻止权力的集中。西方国家现在必须信任它早已表示，支持民主进程。

图片：选民显示手指沾上摄影师后，突尼斯2011年10月23日，在投票站投下选票 。 REUTERS /阿尼斯米利

在土耳其东部的星期天早上一个大地震死亡1000人，并席卷破坏产生的图像和帮助惊慌失措认罪。立即派遣搜索和救援队和人道主义援​​助的行动，美国和欧洲的正确方向。

有一个核心的人道主义和道义上的责任，立即采取行动。美国搜索和救援队伍的快速反应，保存在过去的地震灾民。包括-四十三名外国球队来自美国的6 -拉123从废墟中活着的海地人在太子港王子在去年的破坏性地震。关于外援的玩世不恭的人应该记得，在应对国家灾害提供人道主义援​​助，是在保持对美国的好感的核心工具。

不幸的是，有一个普遍的看法在以穆斯林为主的的国家，美国人和欧洲人不太关心的穆斯林比其他信仰的成员死亡。美国人给减少到2010年巴基斯坦的洪水比他们2010年海地地震的受害者的受害者的援助。海地的相对接近美国可能是一个解释，但巴基斯坦的军事情报部门三军情报局庇护的阿富汗塔利班武装分子的怀疑可能是另一种。

正如我在说，过去的列，平均巴基斯坦人不应该受到指责该国的军事情报服务，海港阿富汗塔利班武装分子的行动，而不是由该国的文职政府控制。的人反对土耳其总理埃尔多安的批评以色列不应该责怪他的陈述，平均土耳其人。对土耳其的紧急援助，实际上会削弱美国人关心比穆斯林以色列人死亡的说法。一个席卷美国和欧洲的反应，应尽快安装在土耳其东部。

图片：救援人员试图挽救被困Tabanli凡2011年10月23日，土耳其东部城市附近村的地震后的人。 REUTERS /阿卜杜勒-拉赫曼Antakyali /阿纳多卢局

上个月，Davut多甘，和蔼可亲，51岁的商人从土耳其的安纳托利亚腹地，伴随着一个历史性访问后穆巴拉克埃及，土耳其总理埃尔多安。在某一天，多甘和259其他现金充裕的土耳其商界领袖宣布了853万美元的新合同。

“我们会去埃及下月​​完成交易，”多甘说，谁是开幕1000万美元的家具制造工厂。 “该工厂将采用两百余人。”

从欢天喜地的欢迎埃尔多安显示土耳其商人的经济实力，此行表明了土耳其的潜力，作为一个模型后阿拉伯春天中东。卡扎菲在利比亚和选举日（星期四） 在突尼斯的暴力致死本周末美国支持的独裁统治和专制伊斯兰：显示替代该地区的政府两次失败的车型的迫切需要。

虽然本周在土耳其的分析师，商人和记者的采访，透出若隐若现的悲剧。由埃尔多安在家中丑陋和不必要的专制威胁到天窗一个历史性的机会，重新界定伊斯兰教与民主制度的关系。

上个月他前往开罗，突尼斯和的黎波里期间，埃尔多安向全神贯注的观众，伊斯兰教与民主可以共存。已经接受了选举政治的一个虔诚的穆斯林，埃尔多安宣称，穆斯林可以虔诚和民主。而他在创造就业机会的成功，是迫切需要的，以防止后踺国家的不稳定和暴力。

“伊斯兰教与民主并不矛盾，”埃尔多安宣布在突尼斯举行 。 “穆斯林可以运行状态非常成功。”

在中东最受欢迎的领导人之一，埃尔多安穆斯林之间的可信度大大超过任何西方领导人。在过去的几年中，以色列挞伐，他自己变成一个民间英雄。

部分他的名气来自一个国家经济的爆炸。埃尔多安拥抱自由市场和十年前上台以来，监督的人均收入的近三倍。去年，经济增长8.9％，在世界上发病率最高之一。今天，土耳其拥有在中东增长最快的中产阶级之一。

随着他的经济成就，埃尔多安打破土耳其的军队曾经引以为豪的权力，推翻了1960年至1980年三个文职政府。今年六月，他的党赢得了50％的选票的第三个任期。埃尔多安的催促下，一个议会委员会开始起草新宪法的这一周，以取代1980年军事政变后起草的宪法。

Aykol，土耳其报纸专栏作家和频繁埃尔多安后卫穆斯塔法说，他的正义与发展党，土耳其缩写，正义与发展党，是在埃及，突尼斯和利比亚的伊斯兰党派的典范。在一本新书，“ 伊斯兰教没有极端：一个穆斯林的自由案件 ，“Aykol认为，可以有伊斯兰内部的自由主义和挑战伊朗的独裁解释，沙特阿拉伯和激进组织。

“我们可以说为其他伊斯兰政党正义与发展党模型 - 这是一个很好的模式，”Aykol通过电话告诉我从华盛顿，在那里他推广他的书。 “如果越来越多的伊斯兰主义的正义与发展党模型”，而不是伊朗的极权主义的例子，将良好的地区。“

多甘，商界人士前往埃及与埃尔多安，体现了正义与发展党是如何转化土耳其。他的家具公司是一家所谓的“安纳托利亚之虎”的蓬勃发展，公司从土耳其的安纳托利亚保守腹地上升。多甘的公司，Dogtas，开设了108时尚，宜家的商店，在全国范围内，以迎合向上移动，iPhone的挥舞着中产阶级的土耳其商人。

更多的宗教，带动和狠比伊斯坦布尔上流社会的精英，安纳托利亚公司帮助燃料土耳其的经济成长。多甘的父亲39年前推出的，该公司已在过去五年中经历了超常增长，销售收入和员工增加一倍至200万美元和1000分别。该公司目前出口65个国家和地区，并计划积极扩大在中东，它已经在伊朗的12间店铺，7个在利比亚，叙利亚5，在伊拉克的两个。

“我们希望在埃及大，”多甘说，他已与埃尔多安20出国旅行。 “正如我们在其他国家。”

然而，埃尔多安批评说，AKP和安纳托利亚老虎正在建设一个深受腐败的关系，最终将经济增长缓慢。政府正在转向利润丰厚的项目公司链接到党的高级官员，创造一个巨大的载客量轧机。

更惊人的是，埃尔多安是用经济增长来掩盖越来越专制。检察官被判入狱军官，记者和政府的对手，并指控他们策划政变。一些初始逮捕是合理的，根据土耳其分析师，但这项运动越来越像一个沉默的批评和报复那些谁被压迫的正义与发展党在过去的努力。

Soli Ozel, a professor of International Relations at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, said that Erdogan is moving toward “electoral authoritarianism.” Elections will be held in Turkey, but the outcome will never be in doubt.

Ozel warned that continued political and economic paralysis in the West could make the high growth and one party rule of China and Russia appealing to Erdogan and a new generation of Middle Eastern leaders.

“Unless the West gets out of its current economic malaise, it will be like the 1930s,” Ozel predicted. “Democracy will lose its allure. Authoritarianism is going to have a feast.”

There is another path for Erdogan. The drafting of a new constitution is an opportunity for him to strengthen Turkey, not his own rule. Increasing rights for minorities could ease the Kurdish insurgency, which has claimed 40,000 lives since the 1980s and bedeviled Turkey. Constitutional checks and balance that disperse power – instead of concentrating it – could restore faith in Erdogan's commitment to democracy. And the country's burgeoning middle class could be a source of stability for years.

Erdogan's grip on power need not be so iron.

PHOTO: Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, with a portrait of modern Turkey's founder Ataturk in the background, speaks during a news conference in Ankara October 20, 2011. REUTERS/Umit Bektas

Last Friday morning, a 24-year-old New Jersey woman told me why she joined Occupy Wall Street. Around her, balding activists in their 50s tried to rekindle 1960s-era protests. Young Marxists flew red Che Guevara flags. The young woman, though, was different.

She commuted to the protests, she said, while holding down two part-time jobs. She lived at home and helped her schoolteacher mother, who also worked two jobs, support her jobless, 60-year-old father. She asked to be identified only by her middle name – Susan – because she feared her bosses would fire her for attending protests. She didn't talk of revolution. She talked of correction.

“Like any great nation and country, there are also hitches in the plan,” she told me. “And things that need to be changed.”

Corporate America has gained the upper hand on the American middle class, she told me. A year after graduating from college, she was working as a part-time manager at two different retail chains in New Jersey. The companies use part-time managers, she said, so they don't have to pay benefits.

“It's their policy,” she said, “which is why I'm here.”

Beneath the online vitriol swirling between supporters and opponents of Occupy Wall Street lies a central question: Does Wall Street help or hurt the American middle class? A variety of forces are slowly gutting the middle class – and a paucity of values on Wall Street is one of them.

The problem is not every bank. It is a growing slice of the financial sector that has become a vast, computerized casino where staggering fortunes can be won or lost in minutes, with taxpayers left holding the bag.

Members of the middle class, of course, played as well. They bought houses they could not afford, dallied in day-trading and saved too little during an era of limitless credit.

“Finance had become the new American state religion,” University of Michigan Prof. Gerald Davis writes in his book “Managed by the Markets: How Finance Reshaped America.” “All the world was a stock market, and we were all merely day traders, buying and selling various species of “capital” and hoping for the big score.”

The middle class, though, is still waiting for its bailout.

As recently as twenty years ago, middle America saw the country's financial system as its ally. For decades after World War II, a carefully regulated Wall Street – and the American financial industry as a whole – helped create a growing middle class, according to Yale University political scientist Jacob Hacker . A stable financial industry was a vital part of a vast economic boom, reliably providing home, car and college loans to average Americans, as well as capital to the companies that employed them. Not every banker was malevolent; nor was every corporation evil.

The transformation of Wall Street and America over the last thirty has been meticulously documented . The traditional, Jimmy Stewart notion of American banks and business, where companies built products, reputations and payrolls over time, has been eclipsed by a byzantine, non-transparent and insider-dominated financial industry.

The middle class – for me the 60 percent of American household that make $30,000 to $80,000 a year – have seen their median household incomes shrink in real dollars since the Great Recession ended, while Wall Street salaries have surged . A new study by the New York State Comptroller cited by The New York Times found that the average 2010 financial industry salary was $361,330 — five and a half times the $66,120 average salary of other New York City private sector workers. Thirty years ago, financial salaries were only twice as high as those of other professionals.

Suspicion of Wall Street is not limited to the dozens of large cities where small protests have emerged. When I visited Bowling Green, Kentucky last week to gauge how the American middle class was faring in one small city, local businessmen lamented the role of the financial industry in the demise of several local companies. Executives used easy credit to rapidly expand firms, companies over-extended over time and eventually collapsed.

The anger in Bowling Green and Lower Manhattan is about excess: excessive risk, excessive ambition, excessive compensation. Companies should make profits, average Americans told me. Skilled executives should be rewarded. And businesses should be viewed as irreplaceable engines of economic growth.

Wall Street, though, should not be an all powerful force that pressures companies to live-and-die by their daily stock value. It should not assign inflated values to fledgling companies . And it should encourage, not deter, companies from developing, innovating and employing over the long-term. Most of all, the financial industry should be held accountable for its performance, like everyone else.

That core moral element – the sense that Wall Street is making money for nothing – is the financial industry's gravest threat. Recent surveys conducted by Edelman public relations found that Americans' trust in banks plummeted from 71 percent in 2008 to 25 percent in 2011, a dizzying decline of 46 percent. As this chart from the study shows, the public's trust in the technology industry, meanwhile, remained high.

The response to Wall Street in Washington has been ideological, petulant and tedious. The left has declared all Wall Street suspect. The right has declared the government – and nothing but the government – evil. The Volcker rule announced this week is an imperfect, but positive step forward. As much as possible, average Americans should be shielded from high-risk trading.

In another era, middle class Americans might be less incensed by the vagaries of Wall Street. The shift of retirement savings, though, from pensions to 401(k) stock plans has hurled middle America into the markets. During the 1929 stock market crash, only 2.5% of Americans owned stocks. Today, when 401(k)s and other financial products are included, the number stands at roughly 50% .

As a result, an increasingly volatile American financial industry is helping and hurting average Americans to an unprecedented extent. The middle class is more entangled in Wall Street than ever before in US history. And the American middle class is losing.

Photo: Men dressed in suits walk past members of the Occupy Wall Street movement as sleeping materials hang on a clothes line in Zuccotti Park near the financial district of New York October 13, 2011. Protesters with the Occupy Wall Street movement threatened on Thursday to block efforts to clean up the Lower Manhattan park where they set up camp nearly a month ago, raising concerns of a showdown with authorities. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

As the 10th anniversary of the start of the Afghan war is marked around the world, looking forward is more important than looking back. As I noted in an earlier post, staggering mistakes have been made over the last decade . While individual Americans and Afghans have performed heroically, the Afghan and American governments – particularly their civilian arms – have performed anemically. And Pakistan's intelligence service – the ISI – is the single largest impediment to stability in the region.

Looking forward, the advocacy group Global Witness is on the right track. In a statement , it said that Afghanistan's management of an estimated $3 trillion in copper, Iron, gold, oil, chromite, uranium and rare earths is the key to the country's future stability.

“The stakes could not be higher,” said Juman Kubba, a Global Witness official. “Get it right and minerals could be the catalyst for peace and prosperity; get it wrong and there's a massive risk they will be lost to corruption, or form a new axis of instability and conflict.”

After a decade of development efforts driven by short-term political needs in Washington and other western capitals, Afghans and Americans now have an opportunity to achieve the most important ingredient to success in Afghanistan: sustainability. If properly managed, the country's untapped mineral wealth can fund a robust economy, a strong Afghan army and a viable government.

For decades, if not centuries, Afghans have yearned for one thing more than anything else: the ability to control their own affairs. The country's strategic location has led great powers to battle for control of Afghanistan. Afghans, as a result, have developed a deep resentment of foreign meddling. The problem goes beyond the American, Russian and British invasions. Afghans are sick of Pakistan, Iran and India using their nation as battleground for their own proxy wars.

So far, the government of Hamid Karzai has handed the mineral wealth poorly. Hugely lucrative contracts for the extraction of copper have gone to Chinese companies. Many details of the agreements have not been made public. Global Witness is correctly calling on the government to disclose all payments by foreign mining companies to the Afghan government and implement the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative or EITI. Last month, President Obama announced that the United States will implement the EITI, a global standard designed to force energy companies and governments to publicly disclose how revenues from mineral wealth are used.

More contracts are expected to be rewarded between now and the departure of most American forces in 2014. It is vital that the Afghan government make those contracts as transparent as possible. Transparency will allow the country's journalists, activists and citizens to investigate whether the new revenues are used to ensure the creation of a sustainable, licit economy.

The current Minister of Mines, Wahidullah Shahrani, has shown admirable support for transparency. President Karzai must do the same. Washington must insist on the transparency Global Witness is demanding. Otherwise, Afghanistan will fall to the “resource curse” that has led so many countries to squander precious minerals and opportunities.

According to a study by researchers at Brown University , an estimated 33,000 people – Afghan, American and NATO troops, as well as insurgents and Afghan civilians – have died in a largely squandered decade.

If corruption, mismanagement and political posturing in Kabul and Washington continue to fritter away Afghanistan's mineral resources, instability will persist. When most US troops withdraw in 2014, an even more intense civil war will engulf the country. And the death toll from the decade to come will be even higher.

PHOTO: US military officer CPT Padraic Heiliger from Alpha Co, 2nd Battalion 35th Infantry, Task Force “Cacti” lifts a boy while on patrol in a village near Combat Outpost Penich in Khas Kunar district in Kunar province, eastern Afghanistan October 7, 2011. REUTERS/Erik De Castro

Update : Sorry, in the first version of this column I confused two different companies. The corrected version is below.

BOWLING GREEN, KENTUCKY–For decades, this bucolic corner of southwestern Kentucky depended on Corvette sales from the local GM plant for its economic life. Now, it's trying something different.

Last year, the state university opened a “Confucius Institute” that offers nighttime Chinese language classes to local business people. An American auto parts company chose to create 280 new manufacturing jobs here instead of Mexico. And government officials brag about the 19 companies from India, Japan, Finland, Germany, Israel and other foreign countries that have invested locally.

“We just came back from China,” Ron Bunch, the head of the Bowling Green Chamber of Commerce, told me as he escorted Chinese investors around town. “We're starting an Indo-Kentucky Chamber of Commerce.”

Even the town's old economy hallmark – the GM plant that is the world's only producer of Corvettes – is expanding. Fruit of the Loom, which is headquartered here, is slowly growing as well.

While the middle class agonizingly shrinks in other parts of the United States, Bowling Green, Kentucky boasts a growing number of jobs and a lower unemployment rate – 7.9% — than the national average of 9.1%.

“It's about not fearing globalization,” said Brian Strow, a former city commissioner. “But being an active participant.”

Bowling Green is reinventing itself. Pragmatic, diverse and not politically polarized, this city of 100,000 residents increasingly sees itself in a global context. It is slowly finding its way and providing a sign of hope for America's beleaguered middle class.

After working as a foreign correspondent and investigative reporter for The New York Times for the last fifteen years, I recently became a columnist for Reuters. The primary focus of my column, “The Global Middle,” will be the state of the middle class inside the United States and around the world.

While the American middle class has struggled in recent years, a new global middle class is emerging in countries like South Africa, Brazil and Turkey. Worldwide, an estimated 70 million people join an “emerging market middle class” each year, earning incomes of $6,000 to $30,000 annually. Economists predict they will surpass the Western middle class in global spending power within twenty years.

This column will examine which economic policies help create middle classes. What lessons from abroad, if any, can be applied to the United States. And whether growing middle classes overseas inevitably mean a shrinking middle class in the United States.

For me, and many others, the creation and preservation of middle classes is vital. Two decades of covering political, religious and ethnic conflict around the world has convinced me that the single largest instrument of stability in any society is a middle class. Whatever their nationality, members of the middle class tend to reject extremist leaders. They try to make governments more effective. And they often cherish the same values, particularly merit, justice and stability.

I plan to visit Bowling Green and other communities inside and outside the United States to see firsthand what is occurring on the ground. My goal is to move beyond political posturing, news media hyperbole and academic theory. Here in southwestern Kentucky, community leaders are trying to innovate, export and educate their way out of Washington's economic and political paralysis.

There are hurdles, of course. Over the last two years, only 2,200 jobs have been created in a community of 100,000 people. A taxpayer-financed, $25 million industrial park on the north side of town is attracting fewer tenants than hoped. And the desperate courting of foreign investors is a marker of the end of American economic omnipotence.

The Confucius Institute here is one of 74 that have opened on campuses across the US (and 322 worldwide) that are affiliated with a non-profit based in Beijing. Critics have said the Chinese government controls the organization and some have even accused it of corporate espionage .

And yet Bowling Green has few other options and a long history of welcoming foreigners. A refugee resettlement center since the 1970s, the city has large Vietnamese, Bosnian and Burmese communities. Thirty languages are spoken in local public schools.

The city defies traditional labels and limits. Neither Rust Belt nor rural, it has diversified from an economy dependent on Corvette sales to mix of services, technology and light manufacturing

While it is the hometown of Sen. Rand Paul, it is neither blue nor red. All local government offices are non-partisan. When party is identified, local Democrats are fiscally conservative. Local Republicans say government plays an integral role in economic growth. The local economic development philosophy is to add small numbers of jobs to existing companies, rather than courting potential white elephants.

“Our greatest strength has been staying the course,” says Kevin DeFebbo, the city manager. “There is a great practicality here.”

Lastly, the town has a college, Western Kentucky University , that is no ivory tower. Increasingly, the university is the region's economic engine. In 2001, the university and state purchased a 300,000 square foot local mall on the south side of town and turned it into a research center that holds laboratories, private companies and a high tech start-up incubator.

One of its fastest growing tenants is Pure Power Technologies, a spinoff of a local carburetor manufacturing company. the research and development arm of a local heating and garden tool manufacturing firm that went bankrupt in 2008 after losing jobs overseas and being bought and sold by a series of private equity firms 。 Today, it creates develops and designs diesel engine control systems. Its director travels widely overseas to drum up new business. president is a university graduate, as are all eighteen of its employees 。

“He's in Brazil today,” said Doug Rohrer, a former business executive who runs the center. “He'll be in China on Monday.”

What works in Bowling Green may not work elsewhere. Other communities lack the resources that exist here. But there is real change in this area. I will write more about Bowling Green and its efforts to fight back, and track over time its success or failure. For now, business people, local officials and teachers are engaging the outside world and succeeding. An odd mix of Corvettes, American pragmatism and foreign investment is helping Bowling Green's middle class claw its way back.

PHOTO: Corvette fans look over the new 2006 Z06 Corvette during its roll out for Corvette fans and the general public. REUTERS/John Sommers

By David Rohde
The opinions expressed are his own.

The death of Anwar al-Awlaki this morning is welcome news, but Washington policymakers should not delude themselves into thinking the drone that killed him is a supernatural antidote to militancy. Yes, drone strikes should continue, but the real playing field continues to be the aftermath of the Arab spring; namely vital elections scheduled for October in Tunisia and November in Egypt.

A series of outstanding stories by reporters from Reuters , The Washington Post , The New York Review of Books and The New York Times , have aptly laid out the stakes. Islamists are on the rise in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, but an extraordinary battle is unfolding over the nature of Islam itself.

“At the center of the debates is a new breed of politician who has risen from an Islamist milieu but accepts an essentially secular state,” Anthony Shadid and David Kirkpatrick wrote in today's New York Times. Common values, in other words, are emerging between the West and the Islamic world. These “post-Islamist” politicians argue that individual rights, democracy and economic prosperity are elements of an “Islamic state.”

Whether these politicians represent the most potent weapon ever fielded against militant Islam or a Trojan horse will emerge in the months and years ahead. More than any other figure, the new breed's standard-bearer is Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Pledging that conservative Islam is compatible with individual liberties, Erdogan holds the rise of his culturally conservative but economically liberal political party as a beacon for a new Middle East. Turkish critics, though, accuse Erdogan of a creeping authoritarianism masked by rapid economic growth.

For now, the “post-Islamists” should be taken at their word. The false Pax Americana of dictatorial regimes that once dominated the region is no longer viable. And the “post-Islamists” are a vast improvement over Awlaki and his ilk. For Awlaki and hard line Salafists, the only true “Islamic state” is one led by self-appointed clerics who rule by force and brutally regulate the minutia of everyday life.

At an astonishing rate across the Middle East, an internet-fueled communications revolution has implanted the ideals that the United States publicly espoused for decades, but privately failed to back. Washington is reaping a cultural amalgam that its rhetoric has slowly sown.

Recent opinion polls in Egypt show a desire for individual liberties while maintaining conservative Islamic culture, the electoral recipe that brought Erdogan to power in Turkey. A Gallup poll of Egyptians found that 96 percent of those polled supported freedom of speech and 75 percent favored freedom of religion. At the same time, more than 90 percent believed “Sharia” – or Islamic law - promotes justice for women, human rights, economic equality and a fair judicial system.

“Put simply, Egyptians seem to see no contradiction between the faith to which they adhere and the democratic ideals to which they aspire,” Dalia Mogahed, the director of the Abu Dhabi Gallup center wrote in an analysis of the polling . “Egypt tops the region in two things: Egyptians are the most likely to say Muslim progress requires democracy, and the most likely to say Muslim progress requires attachment to spiritual and moral values.”

“Working out the proper relationship between these two priorities,” Mogahed concludes, “will be the next phase of the revolution.”

The stakes in “the next phase of the revolution,” in fact, are enormous. If the “post-Islamists” are true to their word and respect electoral politics, their rise will represent a devastating blow to militant Islam. They will deliver the popular ideals of justice and accountability that hard line Islamists insist can only be emerge from clerical rule.

The West must not dismiss the “post-Islamists” as closet terrorists, nor blindly accept their saccharine speeches. Instead, it should highlight, defend and promote the ideals that Americans and Egyptians share: freedom of speech, freedom of religion and justice for women. Culturally conservative Muslims should not be confused with terrorists.

That effort, of course, is a long, complicated and arduous one involving diplomacy, effective economic development and a new way of viewing Islam. The missile strike that killed Awlaki was instant and seemingly satisfying: American technology felled one of militant Islam's most articulate spokesmen. But only electoral politics, economic growth and consistently applied American standards will render his words irrelevant.

Photo: Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born cleric linked to al Qaeda's Yemen-based wing, gives a religious lecture in an unknown location in this still image taken from video released by Intelwire.com on September 30, 2011. REUTERS/Intelwire.com

By David Rohde
The opinions expressed are his own.

Admiral Mike Mullen's blunt declaration on Thursday that a Taliban faction known as the Haqqani network acts as a “veritable arm” of Pakistan's military intelligence agency is a welcome shift in US policy. After a decade of privately cajoling the Pakistani military to stop its disastrous policy of sheltering the Afghan Taliban, the United States is publicly airing the truth.

Pakistan's top military spy agency, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), supported the Haqqanis as they carried out an attack on the American embassy last week, Mullen said during Congressional testimony. Last year, they arrested a Taliban leader who engaged in peace talks without their permission, according to American officials. And many Afghans suspect ISI involvement in the assassination this week of the head of Afghan peace talks that did not involve Pakistan.

The airing of the ISI's links to the Haqqanis is long overdue. To me, the ISI is a cancer on Pakistan. It is vital, though, that American officials punish the Pakistani military--not all Pakistanis--for the ISI's actions.

Dominated by hard-line ultra-nationalists obsessed with defeating archrival India, the ISI has killed Pakistani journalists who openly criticize it, harassed human rights activists and undermined efforts to establish democracy. A shadow government unaccountable to the country's weak civilian government, the ISI is widely feared by Pakistanis.

The agency is dominated by military officers wedded to a paranoid, antiquated and dangerous mindset the CIA helped foment during the 1980s anti-Soviet jihad, according to American and Pakistani officials. More ultranationalists than jihadists, ISI officers believe they are the true guardians of Pakistan. To them, the US is an untrustworthy and dissolute nation that is in rapid decline. India is Pakistan's primary threat. And militants are proxies that can be controlled.

Instead of blaming all Pakistanis for the action of the ISI, the United States must help Pakistan reform an out-of-step, out-of-control agency. Military aid to Pakistan should be halted until the ISI stops sheltering the Afghan Taliban. At the same time, civilian aid to Pakistan should be continued and even increased.

I have a clear bias when it comes to the ISI and the Haqqanis. In November 2008, two Afghan colleagues and I were kidnapped outside Kabul by the Haqqani network. Within days, they shifted us from Afghanistan over the border into Pakistan's tribal areas. There, the Haqqanis enjoyed a safe haven where they plan spectacular attacks on Kabul, hide from American troops and hold kidnap victims. After seven months of imprisonment, we escaped from captivity.

During my time in Pakistan's Tribal areas, I saw no effort by Pakistani security forces to confront the Haqqanis. Instead, Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban and foreign militants openly walked the streets of large towns, set off explosions during bomb-making classes and brainwashed young men into being suicide bombers. The Taliban operated the local police, schools and road repair crews. The Afghan Taliban fighters that the US thought it had defeated in 2001 had simply shifted a few miles east, into the tribal areas of Pakistan.

Pakistani civilian officials say the Pakistani military views the Haqqanis as proxies they can use to thwart Indian encroachment in Afghanistan. When American forces pull out of the country, Pakistani generals see the Haqqanis as a card they can play in the resulting vacuum. If peace talks do emerge, the Haqqanis can serve as Pakistan's proxies there as well.

The delusion of this approach is the ISI's belief that the Haqqanis can be controlled. The agency has lost control of militants it trained in the 1990s to attack Indian forces in Kashmir. Now known as the “Pakistani Taliban,” the militants have declared war on the Pakistani army and state, killing an estimated 2,100 Pakistani civilians this year, according to news accounts.

During my time in captivity, I saw repeated examples of the Haqqanis and the Pakistani Taliban working seamlessly together. Afghan Taliban derided the Pakistani army as an apostate force that was the enemy of any true Muslim. The ISI's obsession with India is prompting it to follow policies that endanger Pakistan.

One former American military official who served in Pakistan presented an even more frightening scenario to me earlier this year. He said that Pakistani generals might have concluded that the Haqqanis have grown so powerful in North Waziristan that the Pakistani army cannot defeat them. After coddling the Haqqanis for a decade, the ISI has created a Frankenstein it cannot control.