C to the "D" to the "H"

Cope.  If I were to sum up points in my life that were disappointing or just suck, I would say that is the magical mechanism.  People seldom understand the path that I've gone through and by no mean is this a sobering recollection or rant about how horrible my life is.  But this is really an examination of how we as human, decide to deal with things that just plain "sucks".  I later on came to understand this word when I had to deal with someone being an alcoholic.  To look back, the same word and its definition was catalyst that invoked the action taken to deal with how I gotten through many other things since my childhood.  From observing other people, that is also how I think they come to live another day. 

Irresponsible people in my life.  The act of making you feel less than a worthy human being.  The guilt of being born.  The disappointments of big events in life with no shows.  The missing support that is critically needed for a child to develop him or herself to the next stages.  These voids can be what breaks you or what make you stronger.  The fact is cope is really how we put our self back to a middle point where we can make a move.  I see cope is really not too far away from someone being a dope.  If you decide to move from "C" to the "D", you can easily become that informal, stupid and unresponsive person.  Some people decide to take the items that "suck", by coping (to deal) with less desirable outcomes in life.  While other people decide to move from "C" to the "H".   They decide to hope.  The decision to act and to look forward with desire or trust.  That person decided to cope (to make obsolete) by first cover the item that "sucked" and decide that more of the future is about what can not suck.  Either way it is how we as human decide to deal with those that did injustice to us. 

I am not here to say which one is right or wrong.  I just here to acknowledge that I decide to be happy and that I am to practice cope.  To at least be a point where I can choose.  I may not always choose the right thing every time time, but at least I am still able to make "THAT" move and things may not suck forever.

Super Fatty

Superman's only  weakness is Kryptonite.  It is the only thing that makes him feel so sick that he looses all that is in him.  He can be fighting villains or even have his head smashed against concrete, but nothing could ever make him feel so close to death to his soul as that green rock.  Regardless how small or what just happened before, the mere exposure of it will make him fall to his knees grasping for an escape.

So as a human being, do we all have our Kryptonite?  I know I have mine.  Do you forever run away and avoid it.  But every time when you open a box or a door or just whenever uncovered something will always grasp for a bit of air.  I often wonder if I can avoid my Kryptonite.  Is it possible?  In this world, doors will always open and be sure that annoying green thing may just be around the corner.

As a person I am disappointed at myself that I can hate my Kryptonite that much.  I am ashamed that I can not conquer what is so much a part of life, my life.  Kryptonite came from the same place where superman came from.  People are as much of you regardless how you avoid it.  So why can I not make it work, conquer that weakness?  To psycho analysis of myself, I have to say that it is why I have to always doubt the good.  If too good, then ruin the good.  Regardless what it is, it is a bit self destructive, because to look at myself I never can really allow myself to be at peace.  If it is bad, then I seek the perfect.  If it is good, then I seek chaos.  That is borderline the truth as to how I lived my life.  Sad it is.  But a bit true.  I don't deny it and therefore I can never really ever agree with people saying I am a nice guy or a bad guy.  I am neither.  Just a man trying to avoid Kryptonites.

Well tomorrow is another day.  You got to try to learn to fly.  Need to maybe find a better cape or bigger tights because the nurse called me a fatty.

If I owned a country

My reflection on my past posts has led me to wonder if  all I do is complain or only see the negative side of things.  Identification of the problem is only one part of the entire whole.  I try very hard to avoid the slippery slope of negative thinking.  So I figure I try to blog about what I feel would be my direction to improve the economy if  I had control to do so.  Answers, not more questions!!!  To begin, the first step to fixing something is providing a path and to avoid the pitfall of listing a bunch of plans which create multiple roads that will undoubtedly leads to nowhere or maybe by luck lead to somewhere that negate other plans.  So short and long term plan require a strategy.  Unfortunately many people in government seek the short term glory and even more people seek to recklessly start initiatives without looking at the consequences.

So first thing I would suggest and Mr. O to my surprise, started to push forward is the investment in infrastructure.  In the US, everything is much older.  If you are to compare US with the number 2 and number 3 economies of the world, we are overdue for an overhaul on how we transport, consume, and dispose things around us.  Just a simple cause and effect equation.  The people who develop the infrastructure will be relatively large in number.  They create tangible product that help create the support structure to create other type of business.  If efficiency is the requirement of business, then the well run infrastructure to support those requirements is that foundation.  Homes can be farther from place of work.  Business can reach other easier.  Family can explore beyond their backyard.  The benefit of that investment produces output that multiplies as well as spread across industries to income classes.  There are more benefits not mentioned, but this is the simple example.

Give people a break.  I believe having low taxes will stimulate the economy, not because it is the only magical bullet, but lower taxes work together with other initiative to collectively combat the local investment woes and the bleeding of talented resources out of US.  If US is to take a stance on continue high taxes, then other items such as medical service and transportation cost, and among other things has to be cheaper.  Stop the squeeze.  Looking at the top countries in the world today they fall into one of the two categories.  In HK, low taxes and along with other government bills make a place where international business want to be there and where local business have such a huge incentive to start their own business.  In reverse Norway or even Singapore or even Canada has relatively high taxes, but they support their citizen's life style in medical and world wide tax breaks.  I did not list everything.  But those mention make the citizen of those countries want to eventually go back if they are somewhere else or even the existing citizen to stay where they are.  Most expat Canadian do not have to pay worldwide tax on their earning.  Almost all Canadian I encounter says they will go back home to retire as well as they started to build their next egg back home along with home and other retirement plans.  Where for American, more and more are leaving the US, considering to renounce their citizenship.  I don't think it is the lack of love for the US, but more how the US choke the American spirit out of them.  Some of the young generation are looking to leave US because one of course jobs, which is a circular event of things mentioned here, but more so they are jumping out of US because even the most loyal dogs will leave its owner if he gets whacked by the newspaper everyday.  

Now the focus on science, arts, and mathematics.  US right now can not compete in the global economy.  Not because we have dumb people, but because we have excessive greedy people and government who will not provide a path to divert from the herd thinking everything relates to finance or law.  Also most of our government comes from similar world of discipline when they attend their universities and master programs.  Their background mirrors each other.  Last time I check that was suppose to be a bad thing.  The three areas mentioned need to be more encourage by US, not just by the government, but by its citizens.  Start encourage the kids to go into arts if they want to.  Allow them to aspire to be astronauts.  The bottom line is that the global economy requires less need for minds that think like entitle chiefs, but more like Indians that evolve into good chiefs.  The social benefit of having more people in art or mathematics will multiply.  They provide the balance of the mind in ways we design the architecture, they industry that bloom from area to area, and the ability to challenge the status quot on what is.



Bottom line, a re balancing of wealth and power is happening for some time now.  Similar to the re balance of your portfolio, it seems like in one part of the world things are in chaos, while another part is enjoying prosperity.  When I travel, I often compare how that country compares to the US.  These days I think we as US citizens needs to see things from a whole picture perspective versus how we are the big fish in the pond.  Other countries are exceeding us, we need to step aware from the imperialistic thinking, like the Romans, and find a way to stop the collapse of the empire.

I still think US is the best country in the world, yet my feeling is that it is like a sick person that I just want to avoid right now.  But I hope for it get better because I think US is still fundamentally stronger than most other countries.  Time is short.  Investment I mentioned are long duration.  I hope US like the champ that is is, to come back in the 11th round with a surprising TKO to win it all.  To allow its citizen to cheer again, to be proud where you are a citizen, and to be an example to the world of raising the social conscious to another level not understood yet by the rest of the world.

Phone the Universe

Karma, its definition generally understood by many and yet its detail meaning varies when compared among religious views.  I believe in it to the degree that it should exist.  With that understanding then people's actions or at least my action should be noted or even to have some self awareness of the cause and effect of personal acts within the universe.  That is not saying that I aways tries to do good or whether I am aware all the time.  But knowing that "it" is there as the foundation.  With that foundation, I hold to myself the continue balancing act of being self centered at times along with the idea that karma exist, the ying for my yang.
So today I wonder or actually these couple of years as I gotten older, I wonder if it really exist?  I question if to take the saying "what comes around goes around" as something that should be practiced.  I see bad deeds happening all the time.  Well let's not say bad.  But negative actions flowing by each day.  It exist since evil is what help us identify good, that I can understand.  But for example, at work I see how my manager acts without any ethics, moral, or simple consideration for people to serve her own interest.  Her action is not obvious, but her malicious action wrap behind the fake act of kindness.  Yet she is proud of her ability and often boast her willingness to get nasty on people.  So I wonder what came around for her?  Has the universe failed?  Is there a response?  I think it was not until I been in Hong Kong, I notice how there are so many negative action that could happen in a given day.  I see a prosperous location with opulent growth and yet I also see a society with a whole lot of walking dead spirits.  The weird thing about not seeing karma work is that I end up wishing bad things to people.  So that very act is negative and of along with other attitudes afterwards that stem from that vary thought.  So I hope I am able to find or maintain the meaning behind the actions which spring from the intention of an unenlightened being.  Because like the simple understanding of Buddhism, if that deed was done too casually or the intention behind it was not quite pure, that wealth so obtained sometimes cannot be enjoyed.  What I hope is that it is still alive both within me and within the universe in which I operate.  So in finding peace, I pray.

The sick knows the sick

I am still recovering from the singles and because I am really limited to only so many activities, I decided to finish a book that I just can’t seem to finish.  To my surprise, I completed wasting my time on the “too big to fail” book and just in time to catch up on news about how the market been taking a beating within the past couple of week.  Of course all this in sync with my growing interest in purchasing more stocks along with the combination of everything around me has in a way reignited my opinion about finance and politics.  As I said before, the biggest crimes are those made in the name of religion, family, and the act of hiding behind the purpose of serving the less fortunate.  Such example as in finance, where people are led to believe the reason the financial market is going through its turmoil is because of the short-seller, or the banks are too big to fail, or the reason we do this is to save the financial world just frustrate me how people allow themselves to have curtains of lies pulled in front of them and in the expense of so many innocent people.  It is a long and twisted set of explanation as to why I think so.  But I have to point out a few examples.
For one, I think the idea that the short seller are to be blame for market crisis is a basic tactic of placing blame onto someone to distract the truth.  How is short seller different from any participants in the market?  Their strategy is betting on the market to go down, while we have the long buyers wanting the market to go up.  Equally when short need to cover their position, their action will cause the market to go up or vice versa.  Any volume drive a direction in the market, not the position.  We allow the traders to push a stock market up by having them contact their clients.  How is what they are doing any different from the shorts?  The same people who is calling people manipulating the market should really bring themselves out to face same judgment of how the are a hazard to the financial system.

From reading the book, you can not ignore that Wall Street bankers are separated from reality or even have an almost omnipotent attitude of each other.  It is a large fraternity with actions by a small individuals who are without care of anyone else and yet their full display of recklessness gone ignored.  People these days for some reason give so much power and praise to the fat and stupid.  In the same pool, you have the lawyer and other wannabe investors thinking they actually deserve all they are receiving.  Someone how what they have in their wallet is actually an indication of who they are.  Majority of them has the attitude that what they do is some how special and thus they rightfully deserve the money they made and eventually lead to the construction of their superiority complex.  Why the harsh word for this population is because I feel like nobody want to stand up to it because for some reason in society having money gives false power.  For example if you look at the government, in which most people agrees (including the bankers) lack any sense of urgency get things done and lack the ability to put aside their self interest.  Also to blame for the turmoil that the US is facing.  I didn’t make this up, the news and rest of the world says so.  Yet to examine this, the backgrounds of these governments consist of lawyers and bankers.  Again proves my point about how we look at the short seller wrongly because people stop thinking, but instead listen to people to tell them what to think.  But even scarier is that there are more bankers and lawyers being manufactured out from the once Ivy League school.  White collar crime are on the rise in parallel, while frequency of financial fiasco occurring more often, and everyone agrees the world is worse off then it was 10 years ago.  If you were to check other countries who are prospering, their leaders came from engineering and humanities background.  Their background and their building block in discipline is to actually construct and produce something to benefit something or someone.  You see that “thing” to completion and not just look at number, but the whole picture.  It is not a mystery why Asia has been gaining economic strength.  Their leadership and background are very different from the western culture (Europe/US).  At one point, the US labor make up pretty much the same.  Check out how all empire fail.  Trends always the same from producing labor to not producing labor.  Technical skills are highly regarded and eventually serve them when they come to leadership.  The reverse is true where the whole life of a banker is to look at numbers and completely ignoring the elements behind those numbers.  But this will change for Asia as well since doing little to get a lot is contagious and inviting.  For the time being, their foundation is so different.  All this rant from a hater?  Actually no.  I strongly want the US to be better.  But to be better we have to change and bring up what is wrong.  It takes some real self reflection and less on blame.    I only wish it could of happen sooner than to wait 3 years later.  The banks and law firms has a role to play, but for the past 20 years we given so much power to these complimentary services that we failed to ignore the fact that we operate on the tangibles assets and wages distribution is heavily misaligned in today’s society.

This entry is becoming longer than I thought.  So I cut it short by bring out one last point.  Entitlement is contagious and it creeps up on you.  I see this in US and now I am seeing this in Asia.  Major downturn will always happen and also very predictable.  What is so lacking in today’s world is the need to be socially conscience versus acting like you are socially conscience.  What is damaging to US and Asia today is the inability to be a little less imperialistic.  I continue to see blame pass on political parties, pass onto race, pass onto other countries, and pass onto other people.  But above it all the blame is more within themselves.  It the critic do this, they will surely be more forgiving to themselves and will maybe a little bit more forgiving to other people.  I find I am repeating the same comments I made 3 years ago when Obama came into position.  But this is not about Obama, but about the delusional idea that plague many parts of the world today.  I do think there is a greater shock awaits that people are not aware of.  People often say things are not like they once were.  There is a reason, mental state of the society is a bit ill and some therapy is desperately needed by the citizens of the world and I just hope it will not be too late.  Well if it is too late, then hopefully I am not around to see it.