Occasionally, the way in which a news story or a headline is written is more interesting than the story itself. Look at this one, filed from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, not long ago: "Alibaba's Jack Ma isn't the only China billionaire that says US has wasted its wealth".

Ma, chairman of e-commerce giant Alibaba, reportedly "made waves" by criticizing the United States for having spent some $14 trillion in the past 30 years on 13 overseas wars, instead of committing the money to more useful purposes.

But why did it take a Chinese rich man to say so to make it a piece of news? Hadn't anyone from the US ever done it before - to point out that the US really squandered its resources on things that don't yield worthy returns for its people?