Stop the Bloodletting, Fear no Fear

Wall Street and world markets did not get too cozy with the 700 billion bailout plan. The world has entered into a panic attack, as if the sky is falling any minute.

The fearful, or shrewd, decide to unload their stocks and stash away the cash until future recovery from the panic attack. Assuming no more short selling is permitted in this downright bearish market, few stockholders stand to gain anything, except earlier short sellers who are trying to buy back the borrowed shares and those who have plenty of cash on hand to buy values stocks in their new lows.

Even though I am not running for President of any country or club, but as a good world citizen, I must advise the panicking fellow citizens not to lose heart. Do not join the frenzy of dumping your shares. That will only exacerbate the irrational exuberance on the market and drive down the price more steeply.

I want to go one step further to call on the governments to immediately stop the bloodletting on the market by shutting down all trades until further notice, when people will have regained their mental sure footing.

The sub-prime mortgage debacle due to unshackled Wall Street greed has set off this unfortunate episode of economic downturn. The mere intensifying fear of common stockholders will only add fuel to fire, insult to injury, making the bad worse.

First is the Wall Street greed, now comes the Main Street fear. Greed and fear are twins that will do us in. Someone has said it well, the only fear that we need to fear is the fear itself. So fear no fear.

I am reading Daniel Coleman's classic book on "Emotional Intelligence". It is evident that panic selling is an emotionally unintelligent, knee-jerk reaction in this gloomy market. We must put a cork to the bubbling foam of fear. The government must stop the bloodletting.

Smile, Baby, Smile

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.

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.

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!

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.

Flash Like a Night Blooming Cereus (昙花一现)

When the Beijing Olympic Games furled its curtain and its closing ceremony was rebroadcast by NBC, one precious night blooming cereus unfurled its petals under the dark cover of the night on the backyard deck of my home. It was before 10 pm. We took a few pictures of the elegant blossom. It smelled pleasantly aromatic.

It was a rare treat to us in four years. Last blossom was in the night of Aug.12, 2004, after five years of cultivation and waiting. We were rewarded a double blooming then.

Excited, I broke the news first to the grandparents whose tender and gentle care contributed to the blooming. Then I called Henry the King who went back home with his Queen and princesses after watching part of the NBC broadcast with us. The King said he was already disrobed, ready to retire to bed. Apparently, even such rare blooming could not hold back the King's determination. Earlier at my humble abode, I massaged the King's hard-worked shoulder while he lied down on the comfy lazy boy chair, to the hearty laughter of all princesses present. Admittedly, my service lavishly rendered on the King did not add an ounce of persuasion to lure him back.

Persistent, I phoned the Zhaos, to no avail. The jet lag must have taken a toll on them. I quickly figured out that there was no point in calling anyone else.

This morning the Cereus already folded up its petals. Soon the flower will wither and disappear. The night blooming cereus is like a fast replay of the 16-day Beijing Olympic Games. It is gone before we are willing to let. If the blooming remains four years apart (2004, 2008), we will expect the next one during the London Olympic Games in the summer of 2012. Frankly, that is no short wait.

The 100 medals won by Chinese athletes, together with the remarkable feat showcased by the luminaries such as Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt, will be long remembered in Olympic history's annals.

The night blooming cereus reminds us once again the brevity and beauty of life. Before we know it, thinning hairs are silver-lining on our balding head, rippling wrinkles are rolling all over our body, decaying teeth are losing their grips to our gum, and bulging belly appears long before we are belly up. Laugh about it, we may get a youthful kick back, however fleeting it may be.

The lesson? As the preacher said, remember the Lord in the days of our youth.

Halving and Pooling: A New Kind of American Dream

During the chill of economic downturn, my heart was warmed up a bit today by the Salwen story. The Salwen family in Atlanta, Georgia, downsized their spacious, 6500-sq ft home by 50% and donated half of the sale proceeds to help over 200,000 people in 30 poor villages of Ghana.

This concept of "halving", or scaling down by half, was the brain child of a young teen named Hannah Salwen and embraced by her parents and young brother. It represents a new kind of American dream.

Without realizing that I was similarly living this new American dream, I started doing this "halving" thing a few months ago. I decided to eat only one small bowl of rice for dinner, as opposed to two. That effectively cuts down my food intake by about half. Coupling this with no breakfast, I estimate that I have saved close to half of food resource every day.

This idea of halving every wasteful or undesirable thing can have a profound effect. If we lose our temper only half of the time, our home will be a doubly peaceful place. If we kill only half of the time idling or goofing around, we would have redeemed more time for serious and worthy stuff. If we lavish on ourselves with only half of budget and desire, we would have stacked up more to support the needy in the world.

Many have dreamed about communal living where a group of breadwinners pool their earnings to support each other in times of thick and thin. When one or more breadwinners are temporarily between jobs or permanently disabled, the pooled resource can easily support every family. This style of communal living has been tried throughout human history, from the patrilineal or matrilineal tribes, to the Essenes in Qumran community, to Jerusalem Christian commune (see Acts 4:32) in apostolic age, to the monasteries of monks, to Zinzendorf's Herrnhut, to the Opus Dei (exposed thanks to Da Vinci Code), and, unsuccessfully, Chairman Mao's commune system in China.

If you feel led to pool material resources and settle together in a new development, you are not alone. We may have to rekindle the right idea of right living in this global village.

In a very small step toward pooling, Jack and I have started car pooling to work. It saves gas and lessens air pollution. It augments our interactions and fellowship.

Care to pursue a new kind of American dream by halving? Care to pursue responsible communal living by pooling?

Halving and pooling may well be the mightiest arithmetic of subtraction and addition.

Let's go halving.

Let's go pooling.