Thursday, March 26, 2009

Building Blocks

The complex part of who I am is coming out in 2009....as it seems. I feel a little bit cloudy with my thoughts, almost intoxicated in vision and aimless in reasoning. I often wonder if there is a medicine for the attention disorder that I display. This year seems to be extremely tough for me with really no obvious logic or solid reasoning behind why I think this way. Well at least not on the conscious level. I often question my disoriented approach to life and the way I view things before me. I see what the general population of people do and yet I go do the opposite. Call it being rebellious or maybe just call it plain abnormal. It is a find line that can be cross either way. Maybe part of the reason is because I grew up in an abnormal sequence of stages to adulthood. But then at what point are you too old to say your childhood is the reason and the cause to your weirdness? I am not the type to pass blame on who I am because of my past misfortunes and the things that happen unfairly. Yet sometime I wonder how much of that is truly what I say to myself versus what I believe within me. They say a person always bring some sort of baggage with them. I just wonder how much baggage I've already dropped off versus how many I still hold on to. Well this is leading to nowhere with all this rambling.

On another note, I am starting to do my taxes for 2008 and planning the trip to Vegas to meet up with my friends. This time to Vegas I may have to buy an airline ticket. For some reason I feel extremely poor these days. Not that I am breaking the bank or anything. But I feel less adequate about my present finance positions. Usually I never say no to any trips that my friends suggest. If there is any trip that I do not make, it is because of time. Yet for the first time since I graduated from college, I have to give second thought to a trip due to money. Now that is weird for me. Maybe all this talk of the economy and people geting laid off spooked me. Nevertheless the proportion of what is needed to fund a trip is not equivalent to the effect of loosing your job. Yet I am concerned about why I am thinking this way. Maybe within me, there is a tiny voice that is saying that when June comes around I may be unemployed like many intelligent and hardworking people. I should be preparing for that day. Yet I find myself lack the motivation to search for a back up job or seek an alternative path. Maybe after all this year of being responsible, I actually want to just be irresponsible. The thing is that ever since I could remember, that is going back to when I was 5, I had to always worry about a backup plan for me in case no one can take care of me. I can still remember on one of my birthdays when I got locked out of my house. I was expecting people to be around or at least be home when I was returning back from somewhere. But then for some reason, neither my grandmother or my aunt were home. It is a strange feeling as a kid when you have that realization that no one knows where you are and you don't have the power to find out where other people is. Having to wonder aimlessly by yourself at the age of 5 at night is a very surreal experience. I still remember that night when I wondered why am I with them. What am I doing walking around and to where? How I am in a land of no where. The question of "now what" continue to circulate through my mind. It is funny what I can still recall. I thought I forgot about it, until I started to ramble on in this blog. Very weird. Well let just say it is funny what I can recall at 2 AM sitting in bed with insomnia. Well maybe this will help me sleep once I write this out.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Angry Middle Class Man....Sleep Deprived

What is a person to do when he can't sleep at night. Well for me I decided to write. I think part my my insomnia, aside from just getting back from Asia, is my uncontrollable pondering of the events that occurs each day. I can't help but to observe and wonder do I live in the land of idiots? This blog will begin to sound like someone with the ego that is too much to read or even understand. But it is written by me who had to go against what the majority all bandwagon on, to be the awkward one, to have to sit through the propaganda, to have the argument with people close to me, to be labeled, and of course now be the recipient of the mistake that the idiots made.

Obviously the biggest topic these days is about the economy. It is most frustrating for me to see things unfold even though I saw the accumulation of events that lead up to the crap we call the stimulus plan. I can say many things, but I think I pick one topic and that is about the AIG bonus to their executives. I think people should really check themselves if they believe that we should claw back the bonus given. Did we forget that the government gave the money to AIG? Are we still in a capitalism society or have we gone back to were the government decided on how they want to manipulate the market and have control over a legal corporation. If we go back in a time machine, if we were the observer of a country that did just that, controlled how much a person should receive from their company, then would we call them communist or dictator or socialist? When did AIG become a government entity? Indeed money were given, to bail that company out. Nothing in the bailout says you can only spend it on certain thing. It just says to help your company in this tough time. If anyone is to blame I don't think it should be on AIG, but instead on those who supported the bail out. Own up to the mistake that by giving a company money you are creating a system of protectionism and unfair competition. A company is still its own entity, it trades on a market, some fail while some succeed. We as investors that buy stock and invest in these companies do not say we have the right to claw back pay just because we don't like it. For that matter imagine if you were given money by someone and then that person says you can't do certain things with it. That person should sound familiar, its called your parent. When did government become so much involved in business. I thought their focus in on the citizens of the country. So I get angry when the politician and people, start jumping on the bandwagon by slamming AIG. You see the reason they say they are disappointed by what AIG did or by going on a talk show, is saying something. They screwed up. AIG had the right to, it may not be what I like to see, but they have the right to. As leaders of this country I expected them to have better foresight. Come on, who started all this and what do you expect. None had the balls to say make a change and stand up to the masses. We can all say let's change, but often fail to execute that believe. Unless we decided to be anti-capitalist, we have to let the market be free. Otherwise we are not very different from the country that we criticized in the past, except now we are just less prosperous and more bitter about our circumstances. The impact of the stimulus package and other things to help stimulate the economy are fill with some good and also some very dangerous pitfall for the future. In the short term there are some hype that will fill the media, just like our believe that change will happen (well dude things always change), but the impact on US's global competitive position is slowly getting banged up to a pulp. This is a major issue and the one change that is happending right now is a global shift. Watch for inflation, reduction in wealth, hyper dollar fluctuation, constant contraction of the market, and a prolong downturn in the economy.

One other thing, I find it funny that just a week after Mr. C ask Mr. O to be more positive about the economy, that now we are all the sudden hearing good things. Did something happened in one week that I missed? Read between the lines and then maybe you can see what the truth is.

So much complaining and not enough solutions. So here are my citizen micro-stimulus plan. I will post more when I can connect more dots.


1) Go buy something for yourself. But don't pay anything unless it is 50% or more off.
2) Don't buy a home unless it is at pre 2002 level or more.
3) Don't listen to you realtor or your broker.
4) Don't just read from one media source. There are a lot of bias and trash journalism.
5) Give money to an education institution but either you or you pay for someone to attend the class that they offer.
6) Be angry. But realize that in 10 years all this will be a memory and I would wonder why I wrote this so early in the morning.