The scars of the 2008 global financial crisis and the festering wounds of the ongoing European debt crisis seem to have obscured one simple textbook truth.

I am writing this post in the wake of Florian Biermann’s excellent piece on the role of culture in the economic life of Georgia. The debate itself is infinitely fascinating, as culture is truly one of those complex, stupendously vast concepts, which I find very difficult to grasp, let alone define or analyze.

Georgia’s growth performance since independence has gone through extremes, from an unprecedented -44.9 percent in 1992 to 12.3 percent in 2007. Although growth rates temporarily fell in the aftermath of the Russian-Georgian war and the world financial crisis they have since then recovered to 7 percent in 2011

This year, approximately 113 baby boys are born in China for every 100 baby girls; 112 boys per 100 girls in India, 111 in Vietnam. The looming social crisis stemming from the significant gender imbalance in the countries of East and Southeast Asia has been in the media spotlight for a long time.

Anyone who has seen an old American classic “Best Years of Our Lives” (1946) probably remembers the scene where one of the protagonists, Al Stephenson, a banker who just returned from the war in the Pacific, tells his incredulous colleagues: “Our bank is alive. It’s generous.