The crying baby smiled, even without that expensive, $700 billion lollipop.
Possibly the timely festivity of the Jewish New Year is one cause for smile. Or perhaps the most irrational exuberance on record yesterday must be undone of its unnecessary damage, thanks to bargain hunters and day traders who search for their fortune in a beaten down market.
Wall Street reminds me of the chaos theory. The butterfly effect results from a runaway, yet unpredictable, domino effect. Let's say, a newsworthy rumor mill crops up somewhere in the message board and gets snowballing in a few hours or days. If more stakeholders subscribe to the veracity of the news, then a certain stock will trend up or down, depending on the nature of the news. If more and more people get a panic attack and start unloading their shares once tightly clutched to their chest, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: the price continues its free fall indeed. One may ask, Is this justified by the fundamental of the stock or the overall health of the economy? It is justified most of the time for certain stocks, sometimes for all stocks, but never for all stocks at the same time.
Is now the time for panic selling? Most pundits would say no. The reason is simple. Panic selling is always self-fulfilling and self-destructive. It initiates a chain reaction that implodes. In the end, it drives a company and its shares to obscurity or even dustbin.
It is safe to assume that many companies are valuable and worth investing. All value-inflated or deflated stocks require corrections from time to time. A stock market crash is hardly justified, unless most listed companies are grossly overvalued. The trouble is, value is in the eyes of the beholders. That leaves ample room for chaotic trading, especially when people get edgy and irrational.
So stay cool, baby. Grow up and smile often. Do not wait for the lollipop.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Monday, September 29, 2008
Crying Baby Syndrome
Wall Street has developed a personality of a crying baby these days.
When the news of a potential bailout plan first broke out, the sorrowfully crying baby liked it, and broke into a smile for a couple of trading sessions. The grandmothers and grandfathers on the Hill worked their socks off over the weekend to put finishing touches on a $700 billion bailout plan, shortly before a worrying world market opened while Wall Street the baby slept. Both the grandmother in the House and the grandfather-to-be in other House anxiously waited for the wake up of the sleeping baby, a little darling angel for a silent Sunday night.
The grey-haired grandfather-to-be even cautiously walked to the podium and shooed away the blood-thirsty mosquitoes flying around the baby after the gleaming dawn. The baby rose up from his slumber and, lo and behold, cried in hysteria, without waiting for the $700 billion lollipop from the grandparents. The House did not buy it and rejected it in the middle of his colicky crying, catapulting the baby into an ever louder howl, as if he is being weaned for the first time.
The fallout? All stakeholders have seen their paper wealth evaporated by another layer. My bank is being scooped up by another. Fortunately (or unfortunately, if you think differently), the balance I have is not even worth my worry.
Let the crying baby come of age and come to peaceable term with the harsh reality: no bailout for excessive greed.
The cows are still mooing in the green pastureland adorned with brightly yellow chrysanthemum. The birds find no reason to worry about another credit crunch for their lofty mansions in slight disrepair. The squirrels continue their due diligence of harvest in storing up for the incoming winter. Fossil fuel is no substitute for heating. They are counting again on their self-knitted fur coat to endure another cold season. The only layoff is happening with the once leafy corporation of forestry. Lots of green leaves will soon be served pink, red, yellow and purple slips.
Life continues.
When the news of a potential bailout plan first broke out, the sorrowfully crying baby liked it, and broke into a smile for a couple of trading sessions. The grandmothers and grandfathers on the Hill worked their socks off over the weekend to put finishing touches on a $700 billion bailout plan, shortly before a worrying world market opened while Wall Street the baby slept. Both the grandmother in the House and the grandfather-to-be in other House anxiously waited for the wake up of the sleeping baby, a little darling angel for a silent Sunday night.
The grey-haired grandfather-to-be even cautiously walked to the podium and shooed away the blood-thirsty mosquitoes flying around the baby after the gleaming dawn. The baby rose up from his slumber and, lo and behold, cried in hysteria, without waiting for the $700 billion lollipop from the grandparents. The House did not buy it and rejected it in the middle of his colicky crying, catapulting the baby into an ever louder howl, as if he is being weaned for the first time.
The fallout? All stakeholders have seen their paper wealth evaporated by another layer. My bank is being scooped up by another. Fortunately (or unfortunately, if you think differently), the balance I have is not even worth my worry.
Let the crying baby come of age and come to peaceable term with the harsh reality: no bailout for excessive greed.
The cows are still mooing in the green pastureland adorned with brightly yellow chrysanthemum. The birds find no reason to worry about another credit crunch for their lofty mansions in slight disrepair. The squirrels continue their due diligence of harvest in storing up for the incoming winter. Fossil fuel is no substitute for heating. They are counting again on their self-knitted fur coat to endure another cold season. The only layoff is happening with the once leafy corporation of forestry. Lots of green leaves will soon be served pink, red, yellow and purple slips.
Life continues.
Friday, September 19, 2008
In Time Such As This
Well, we all got a jolt, then a tremor, and finally a quake of another kind in recent weeks and days. In its wake, houses are foreclosed, investment accounts are shrunk, heads are spinning, minds are unsettling, and hearts are aching and broken.
The Wall Street capitalists tasted the bitter gall of excessive greed. They spit it out to the Main Street, and we all smelled the foul of it. The government is hurtled into a whirlwind, really a hurricane, of bailing out the distressed and bankruptcy-bound financial firms. Cataclysm-loving and havoc-wreaking short-sellers are sidelined for at least a day.
Now let's pause to take a much needed inventory. Inventory of life, that is.
Let's dwell on the value and self worth today. What we value can take on a collective meaning. So collective, it is really global. The global stakeholders can change the value of a stock in the twinkling of an eye. When more people feel it is overvalued, the stock goes south. The trouble is, the value can sink to a bottomless pit, unsupported by any fundamentals. Thus, whatever financial fortress we take refuge in may tumble down into a worthless pile of rubbles by the end of yesterday's session of trading. Still in doubt? Ask the Lehman Brothers over 150 years before present.
Our life's self worth can be so tied up with the value of our material wealth that we delude ourselves into categorical thinking that we are rich, poor, or just getting by. We often unconsciously fail to recognize the intrinsic value and worth of our life. We pity ourselves. Some of the fainthearted marshal their last ounce of courage only to end their misery in time like this.
Need not be so desperate! Fortunately, life is worth the living because of two compelling reasons.
First, our life is worth the dying of Christ on the Cross. In Christ, the Son of God, we find the greatest value and worth of our life. If God were a modern day IT guru, he might have easily reformatted or tossed into dustbin the virus-infected computers. God did not do that. The Son of God chose to become one of us, so that we may one day become like him. The more we find value in Christ, the more we have struck the mine of imperishable gold. I invite you to find value in Christ first, then yourself.
Second, our life is worth the living because Christ lives. The crucified Christ on Good Friday became the resurrected Christ on Easter Sunday. Such simple truth carries the greatest import to our outlook in life. Imagine, no amount of adversities in life can deter us from living in the shining rays of the blessed hope. Not stock crash. Not joblessness. Not sickness. Not even death. I invite you to go back to the first true dawn of new humanity, to the garden tomb site where Christ was once buried. The angel of light will tell us again as to Mary the Magdalene: he is not here, he is risen.
I invite you to spread the wing of faith and soar above the turmoils roiling in our midst. Let's gaze into the horizon beyond the sunset, brimming with light, and see in the lens of faith our heavenly home with our God. Let's have the true hope of eternal life, the hope that no politicians will ever be able to deliver. The audacity of hope, which is, Christ in us!
The Wall Street capitalists tasted the bitter gall of excessive greed. They spit it out to the Main Street, and we all smelled the foul of it. The government is hurtled into a whirlwind, really a hurricane, of bailing out the distressed and bankruptcy-bound financial firms. Cataclysm-loving and havoc-wreaking short-sellers are sidelined for at least a day.
Now let's pause to take a much needed inventory. Inventory of life, that is.
Let's dwell on the value and self worth today. What we value can take on a collective meaning. So collective, it is really global. The global stakeholders can change the value of a stock in the twinkling of an eye. When more people feel it is overvalued, the stock goes south. The trouble is, the value can sink to a bottomless pit, unsupported by any fundamentals. Thus, whatever financial fortress we take refuge in may tumble down into a worthless pile of rubbles by the end of yesterday's session of trading. Still in doubt? Ask the Lehman Brothers over 150 years before present.
Our life's self worth can be so tied up with the value of our material wealth that we delude ourselves into categorical thinking that we are rich, poor, or just getting by. We often unconsciously fail to recognize the intrinsic value and worth of our life. We pity ourselves. Some of the fainthearted marshal their last ounce of courage only to end their misery in time like this.
Need not be so desperate! Fortunately, life is worth the living because of two compelling reasons.
First, our life is worth the dying of Christ on the Cross. In Christ, the Son of God, we find the greatest value and worth of our life. If God were a modern day IT guru, he might have easily reformatted or tossed into dustbin the virus-infected computers. God did not do that. The Son of God chose to become one of us, so that we may one day become like him. The more we find value in Christ, the more we have struck the mine of imperishable gold. I invite you to find value in Christ first, then yourself.
Second, our life is worth the living because Christ lives. The crucified Christ on Good Friday became the resurrected Christ on Easter Sunday. Such simple truth carries the greatest import to our outlook in life. Imagine, no amount of adversities in life can deter us from living in the shining rays of the blessed hope. Not stock crash. Not joblessness. Not sickness. Not even death. I invite you to go back to the first true dawn of new humanity, to the garden tomb site where Christ was once buried. The angel of light will tell us again as to Mary the Magdalene: he is not here, he is risen.
I invite you to spread the wing of faith and soar above the turmoils roiling in our midst. Let's gaze into the horizon beyond the sunset, brimming with light, and see in the lens of faith our heavenly home with our God. Let's have the true hope of eternal life, the hope that no politicians will ever be able to deliver. The audacity of hope, which is, Christ in us!
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
A Father's Advice
Today is my son's birthday, as well as millions of others'. Here is my advice to Sam, and Sarah and Stephanie.
Feel the heavenly melodies. Our cosmos is sounding with harmonic strings at the deepest microcosmic level. Our cosmos is replete with constantly dancing galaxies at the grandest macrocosmic scale. In between, we breathe to follow the rhythmic tune of our heartbeat. We are star-gazers, grass-grazers, and mostly meat-eaters. Above all, we are musicians born to declare the splendid glory of our Creator. Feel the music in the air, like August Rush. Feel the hoofbeat of the changing seasons. Feel the distinctive chirps and coos of birds. Feel the ruffling along the path of a treetop-climbing squirrel. Feel the tiny local hurricanes produced by a fluttering butterfly. Feel the unfolding of the petals in a wild flower. Feel the dirt-cracking of a new bamboo shoot. Feel the brushing strokes of chlorophyll, carotenoids and anthocyanins in mother nature's photoshop. Feel the huffing and puffing of a gusty wind, or the bemoaning of a breeze. Feel the moonlight echoing the sunshine. Feel the shooting stars, God's fireworks. Feel the pulsating of life's happenings inside and outside. Feel your own sixth sense. Feel God. Compose new music with your own life-sized notes.
Feel the numbers and curves. Remodel and sharpen your sense of math. This world is short-sighted and tunnel-visioned, seeing numbers printed on the paycheck, and curves sported by beauties skin-deep. Go beyond that. This is God's world. God is the unrivaled mathematician. Think after His thoughts. Mind His games. Feel numbers and curves that do tango together. Paint your own artworks with numbers and curves in life's whatever vocation.
Feel the pain. Feel the pain of the victimized, the short-changed, the vilified, the abused, the handicapped, the disadvantaged, and the underprivileged. Feel the holy pain on the Cross. Feel the compassionate pain inside you to extend a helping hand. In a world of getting even or getting more, hunker down as an altruist and peacemaker.
The world will be a better place because of what you do as advised.
Feel the heavenly melodies. Our cosmos is sounding with harmonic strings at the deepest microcosmic level. Our cosmos is replete with constantly dancing galaxies at the grandest macrocosmic scale. In between, we breathe to follow the rhythmic tune of our heartbeat. We are star-gazers, grass-grazers, and mostly meat-eaters. Above all, we are musicians born to declare the splendid glory of our Creator. Feel the music in the air, like August Rush. Feel the hoofbeat of the changing seasons. Feel the distinctive chirps and coos of birds. Feel the ruffling along the path of a treetop-climbing squirrel. Feel the tiny local hurricanes produced by a fluttering butterfly. Feel the unfolding of the petals in a wild flower. Feel the dirt-cracking of a new bamboo shoot. Feel the brushing strokes of chlorophyll, carotenoids and anthocyanins in mother nature's photoshop. Feel the huffing and puffing of a gusty wind, or the bemoaning of a breeze. Feel the moonlight echoing the sunshine. Feel the shooting stars, God's fireworks. Feel the pulsating of life's happenings inside and outside. Feel your own sixth sense. Feel God. Compose new music with your own life-sized notes.
Feel the numbers and curves. Remodel and sharpen your sense of math. This world is short-sighted and tunnel-visioned, seeing numbers printed on the paycheck, and curves sported by beauties skin-deep. Go beyond that. This is God's world. God is the unrivaled mathematician. Think after His thoughts. Mind His games. Feel numbers and curves that do tango together. Paint your own artworks with numbers and curves in life's whatever vocation.
Feel the pain. Feel the pain of the victimized, the short-changed, the vilified, the abused, the handicapped, the disadvantaged, and the underprivileged. Feel the holy pain on the Cross. Feel the compassionate pain inside you to extend a helping hand. In a world of getting even or getting more, hunker down as an altruist and peacemaker.
The world will be a better place because of what you do as advised.
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