Years of Poems and Spirits

Too tired to do any work tonight. Not sure what I am working for or why I am working so hard for it (the word is that we may run out of money next month). But I am too tired to even contemplate that. Maybe this is a good excuse to catch up the long list of reading that I thought worth writing something about.

Xin Jiang Riot

NYT article about the first riot, in Guangdong, that preceded the June riot in Urumqi. I always wondered why, given rich labor pools all around it, bosses in Guangdong needed laborer from Xin Jiang? As I told anyone who’d listen, I strongly suspect that the motive was another sinister/disastrous result from the constant pressure of “low price” (aka The Smiley of Wal-Mart). As the economy tanked, the competition intensified and the installation of the new Labor Law, the bosses are looking for even cheaper labor that can be effectively managed. The non-Chinese speaking citizens from Xin Jiang fit this profile perfectly. After all, they are like virtual prisoners outside of Xin Jiang.  Another thing in the article that drew my attention is that the local government in Xin Jiang organized labor migration to “combat high unemployment”. However, Xin Jiang is booming. If the jobs were distributed fairly, what high unemployment is there to talk about? As a Uighur intellectual points out, when Chinese work with foreigners, the arrangement is that the foreigners take management jobs but leave the Chinese to fill in the rank-and-file. But when (Han) Chinese come to Xin Jiang, they not only take the management positions but every other job too. He says Uighur youth can’t even find hard labor job to make a living. Some one answered saying that many poor Hans are not better of than Uighur. It is a sad world. But I have little doubt that the minority policy lacks transparency and Uighur participation.

The Financial Crisis

I used to enjoy making comments about macro-economy until the financial crisis scared me crap-less. I believe my last rant was a Dec. 2007 posting when someone in the MBA program forwarded an article critical of Greenspan. Then the summer came, a series of events came so close to each other that I didn’t know what was going on. It was like a football player, when reacting to an interception, was blindsided by an opponent.

A year has passed.  I finally feel like maybe I can say something again. Recently, read David Wessel’s “In Fed We Trust” and a detailed account on NYKr. Both are written by highly competent journalists and are wonderful reads. For example, James Stewart told of a story that “a financial titan” called Geithner in the middle of the crisis. He was so shaken by the series of events that his voice quivered. After they hung up, Geithner thought about something, called the guy back right away and told him, “Please don’t call anyone else. If others heard your voice, they’d be scared shitless”.

And reading those accounts, I don’t doubt the truth of the story at all. It was total chaos. There was so many crisis-triggered meetings, the word “meeting” was all over the pages. When the story said one of the main character did anything else, like when Paulson calling his counterpart in the U.K., for a moment, I wondered where he found the time to do so. When Lehman was going down, the Fed was having a board meeting. Bernanke was about to brief and consult his fellow region presidents when he was pulled into the next room to join an emergency conference call with Geithner and Paulson. He never came out. His fellow central bankers sat there waited, until some of them had to leave to catch flights.

And the Wall Street bankers were even less fortunate. They wished they could be as busy as the central bankers but they weren’t. Since the situation was so chaotic, even those CEOs were left in the dark. John Thain, the Merrill Lynch CEO, was urged to seek help from BoA’s Ken Lewis. He went in with a proposal selling a 9.9%  stake and came out (in less than 24 hours) sold the entire company and felt gleeful. Similarly, when Goldman’s Blankfein was sent to see Citi’s Pandit, each thought the other was on sale (neither uttered the famous word “Nuts” though). AIG’s CEO was given a contract to sign (he wasn’t allowed to negotiate the terms) which stated that the government would own 80% of the company. As his lawyer read the contract, he joked, “You are going to be a federal employee tomorrow.” Then Geithner and Paulson called. After taking the call, the CEO came out and told his lawyer, “You are wrong. I won’t be a federal employee. I was just fired.”

Those stories certainly lightened the mood while reading. But the subject is, for the most time, a very heavy one. I am interested in the financial market because I believe it is the ultimate playground for Economic Man and, ultimately, for Reason. When a priest chooses a fund for his 401K, even he has to learn to trust PE and forget about God for a second.

Still kind of confused at what to say. So many things have been going on … some of them worth writing, some not.

Several times when I was about to put down something, I asked myself, Who am I writing to? Who am I writing for? Then I realized that is not how I write when I really had something to say.

Started with MF in mid June. What intrigued me was the fact that I could be in a position to build knowledge–knowledge about other people: what they like, how they react to promotions, how to group different people, etc. To some degree, in a wicked way, it gives me a sense of power. Therefore, although the position is not what I had in mind, I nevertheless went after it. I guess in the end, the crave for power drives every man’s decision. Except different people have different definition of empowerment.

Towards the end of July, Seattle had a few hot days this summer. On a whim, I decided to test my limit by riding in the mid-afternoon sun. It was an exhilarating experience–like when I was a kid, having fear of heights, I often got a kick out of stepping on the edge of a building roof or a cliff. Just to tease myself.

It was 98F that day and windless. The normal route was about 18 miles plus/minus. I bunked at 16.5. Until then, I was on pace and on time. But at the Fish’nChip place, I just lost it: my head felt light and exploding. Even as the pain seemed never ending, I was waiting for hallucination to kick in. Alas, it never did.  But the waiting game was intriguing.

Remember on our trip to Xin Jiang, our driver told us the story of a girl customer he picked up once. It was on our way to another ancient ruin. We just drove around the Flaming Mountain, off the brand new, leather-smooth highway, passed the clay statues and other photo props next to the ugly sign “火焰山”.  At the back of the Flaming Mountain, was another mountain range, almost in parallel to it. It was very bare so the man-made stairs from the bottom to the top could be seen far far away, carved on the endless slope like a giant zipper.

Anyway, the driver told us how that girl tried to seduce him. She sweet talked him and begged him to climb the stairs with her.  “走近天堂，感受死亡” is how she pitched. In the end, he found her through a binocular half way on that mile-long stairs, barely dressed, holding an empty water bottle, gasping for air.

Maybe it is just one of the fables a traveler picks up on the road (Oh … that trip!) But as I was gasping for air that afternoon and tried to hold on to my cookies, I thought of the story. Suddenly, I realized that the girl was so much more an existentialist than I ever was.

Talking about Existentialism, finished reading Camus’ The Stranger on the bus to Vancouver to join a family vacation. As I was afraid, I didn’t quite get it. Not that I didn’t pick up anything, but I felt a sense of powerlessness reading the 2nd part of the novel. As powerful as Meursault’s outburst in the end is, the very last paragraph summarized the whole book — Meursault felt content just to die in front of a large crowd. Sure. He may feel liberated because he is going to die. But that leaves me, who still has to live on, feeling totally depleted.

Nevertheless, I will never forget how Camus described “fate”–like a wind from years yet to live. Very moving.

It comes back to a full circle: when I went to school, I went with the questions of why. In school, I started to despise the why questions and indulged myself with hows. Now a year after school, I am back to the why questions again.

Well, that is  fate.

Had a busy first half of June. Trying to keep up with John M’s work. Started with Marketfish last week. A lot uncertainty for sure: the startup’s future, my own performance as the data guy. But there is anything that still excites, it is knowledge discovery. So I am looking forward to the challenge.

Notes from the usual water hole:

NYKr 2009.5.4 issue, “Money Talks”: A glowing profile of Peter Orszag.

Overall impression: a wunderkind, a master of budgetary details with a keen sense of politics and a eye for public communications. The author seems to be framing the Obama administration in much the same way as the term “The Best and the Brightest” did to the Kennedy administration.

Some highlights:

• Orszag tried hard to refine his message after being grilled by Jon Stewart. Another example, when called upon to explain the difference in budget proposal from the Congress, said if not twins, “they are brothers that look an awful lot a like”
• Harry Reid called him not a resident bureaucrat but a political “natural”
• A product of New England elite who interned for Tom Daschle while he was on the bench in Senate

Key: “Orszag has turned the OMB into something of a behavioral economics think tank“  Is B.E. to Obama what the Supply-side was to Reagan, or the Keynesian Roosevelt?

Why the Obama era is so different from the Clinton era:

• New assumption: deficit and GDP – the government can live with deficit indefinitely (a depart from the core Clinton legacy) Healthcare reform is deficit reduction.
• Rahm Emanuel vs. Being B.T.U.-ed: how the W.H. screwed up Congressional allies with a half-baked legislative push
• Advisers: Orszag vs. Stiglitz – Norway resumed commercial whaling but negotiated the 93 Middle-East accord. Stiglitz proposed alternative to trade sanction: to boycott Winter Olympic. W. Christopher: “Joe, do you realize that you are equating the killing of four ninke whales with the invasion of Afghanistan?” “You know, you are right. How about we just boycott those events we won’t win?” (the story that made my day)

Follow up on the 1989.6.4 thought:

This blurb garnered a surprisingly many accolades (three), so I thought it is worth noting:

I come to believe 1989 as a tragedy made up of a collection of mistakes.  It should serve as a collective lesson for the Chinese nation. Undoubtedly, the suppression of memories (of the massacre)  deprived my people of a historical opportunity to look into ourselves  and to move beyond past mistakes. However, I think some of us are  missing the obvious here: the key lessons from 1989 have been learned.

… (the usual challenge to the false promise of nationalistic revolution)

If one looks at 1989 in this historical context, it became less destructive in the long run. In a way, together with the Cultural Revolution, 1989 successfully eliminated any remaining fantasy on revolution in Chinese political thought. It forcefully transformed an intensively political nation to one that is more focused on economic development. Even the new political life, dare I say, is in general less violence-prone than the old one: the ruling are more sensitive to the dissatisfaction from below. The ruled are forced into other, more peaceful ways to alter the political course.

Just Being Flippant:
NYT calls the 邓玉娇 case a “Civic-Minded Chinese Find a Voice Online” Apparently, the writer doesn’t know anything about China, nor does he know the basics of civic society. A true civic society is based on trust, on solid foundation of widespread civic association (social capital). What happens in China nowadays is akin to moral vigilantism.  In other words, what happened to 邓玉娇 and what happened to 王千源 is just two sides of the same coin. We Chinese are “Judgmental Bastards” (thanks, Jay Leno).

The State of Chinese Elite:

Didn’t know there is someone actually studying the Chinese intellectual elite (Merle Goldman).  Really like to read her work and ask her assessment/characterization of contemporary Chinese “elite”.

Two stories really pissed me off:

1. The 方静事件. Lisa C has an excellent writeup on her blog. A news anchorwoman was suddenly accused of espionage by a journalism professor. And one of her guest on the show, an admiral in the navy no less, joined the rumor war from his blog.
2. Another terrible translation incident:
   

   “费尔班德”、“林T·C”、“赫萨”，这串洋味十足的名字，其实对应的都是学术圈名 人：费正清、林同济、夏济安。… 最近，一篇署名“高山杉”的文章在网上引起热议，它把中央 编译出版社于2008年10月出版的清华大学历史系副主任王奇所著《中俄国界东段学术史研究：中国、俄国、西方学者视野中的中俄国界东段问题》一书中几十 处名字谬误公之于众。其中最荒唐不过的，当属蒋介石(Chiang Kai-shek)被改名为“常凯申”。

更有甚者，孟子被译成“门修斯”

Here is what I wrote Lisa C:

I am totally astounded by the free-wheeling-ness of some of the elites. They are considered as elites because they are supposed to be experts in what they do. And yet they would go so far off what they are paid to do and to chase a 15min fame. There is a profound lack of professionalism, don’t you think? Here whether it is Drudge or Page Six, they do tabloid but they do their job really well. How many times you see an American army general engage in this type of speculation? That is totally absurd.

More – what do those stories tell us? Some hypothesis:

1. People venture out their profession because they don’t feel fulfilled at their job. In other words, the journalism professor and the naval admiral don’t feel like they are being compensated for what they can fetch in an open market
2. Can a State’s capacity being measured by the competency of its elites? Is there an index can track that? Or is it even trackable? If it ever is, my hunch is that the two are pretty strongly correlated.

Watching Iran

Looks like a train wreck. So many commentators have mentioned June 4th in the same breath. It will really hurt to see another June 4th happen again.

So much conflicting information … as I am writing, my mind drifted back to the days when we were on horseback in Brazil … wished life could have less conflict, violence, more appreciation and above all stand still.

What I don’t like:

• A movement that is made up of relatively homogeneous demographics: urban, secular, students, Tehran only. Similar pattern also found in Beijing 1989, Venezuela, Bolivia and Thailand

What I like:

• Obama’s handling of the situation. Someone said the politicians like to grandstand in moments like this. True professionals know better and wait. No question Obama has resisted as far as he can
• I am reasonably convinced that the election is rigged. The outrage on the street is genuine (not something made up by the lefties here)

About This Blog:

After a lengthy discussion with the Boston couple, I suddenly realized that this blog is my alter ego.  No wonder all this mess …