Tag: Arizona

Unseen hands

that manipulate interest rates, oil price, appropriate and earmark budgets for the commons.

Adam Smith must be talking about the abstract “invisible hand” of a free market, while in reality, we all feel there are levers behind the scene with successive hands, tinkling and adjusting. Some are automated, by self-improving algorithms.

One example of the devastating works of this unseen hand was seven or eight years ago, when people in Southern California driving to Arizona and Las Vegas to buy houses. People who were NINJ (No job, no income).

The unseen hand that was supposed to regulate, didn’t.

Now, they uncover a bunch of Ponzi schemes. Quickly, these poster boys are put away, or at least, taken out of their nice homes in Colorado.

I do buy things to sustain. Hence, I am a consumer, but refuse to be called consumerist. I don’t follow the cult of purchase for purchase’s sakes.

I don’t buy to stimulate anything. If the economy can’t get cranked by itself (with 7 Billion of us buying things day in and out), then all the unseen hands in the world can’t help it.

At least, there is some good news from the Michigan Consumer Confidence Index. And Wall Street chart starts looks like a slanted V-shaped recovery. Let’s hope so. Rally, rally, rally. Oil price goes up. Confidence is up. So is the temperature.

If you don’t hit the store by 10AM, forget it. The USA weather maps shows red-hot regions in the South. It’s global warming. And we need those unseen hands to regulate the thermostat as well. I am not against hands. Just encourage them to tinkle with the right buttons, while letting the market regulate itself, in the noble Adam Smith tradition.

Use it

Safeway doesn’t feel safe. Desert is now full of people ( from the media to law enforcement).

Last weekend Arizona shooting reminds me of “Under The Banner of Heaven” which revealed the intersect of religious occult and gun culture in the region.

It also highlights young people’s plight to make a name for themselves (in this case, committed a high-profile act of violence). On the contrary, it brought to mind an already high-profile figure trying to go the way of Buddha.

At least, Prince William tried to go rough even just for one night (to draw our attention to the plight of homelessness a year ago).

http://abcnews.go.com/International/prince-william-sleeps-streets/story?id=9401023

Whatever makes you sleepless at night, use it.

In “Unwanted”, a Vietnamese-American dentist-turned-author recounted his plight as a half-breed coming of age in post-war Vietnam. He turned tragedy into triumph (instead of having the raw stuff floating around day in and day out at his dental practice), rejection to acceptance.

We have heard of constructive criticism, tough love etc….

Now we hear about civilized discourse.

Immediately after a crisis, American went shopping, this time, for the same gun (sales went through the roof).

Hello? we each have our own hangup. Use it!

After being dropped cold-turkey into the 76 winter storm at Penn State, and got added into a Journalism class, I was told I would never make it (thanks prof!). Use it!

The closing shot for “the Social Network” (the movie) shows our protagonist press

“Send request” to friend his own girl friend. He built Facebook hoping to sign up just that person.

With all the energy (boosted by Energy Drink), the cheering at Superbowl

(and toilet Bowl), we as a nation have a lot of pent-up passion. Use it.

And for the 15%, mostly men,  the majority of whom in the now over-saturated construction sector, we can use the muscle. We have read about floods in Haiti, Australia, Vietnam, Brazil … which need infrastructure rebuilding. Can we put 2 and 2 together: we buy your stuff, but you hire our men.

Use them. Was it just me who see dots unconnected, and people unlinked?. I will turn on the TV to hear what President Obama has to say at the memorial service for the victims. I hope to hear his constructive ideas on how to turn tragedy into triumph, hopelessness into helpfulness. Tragedy? Use it.

Edit 1: The President concluded with “in the child’s eyes” inverse pyramid speech structure. He helped the nation to visualize a possible America, a new American Century, worthy of our children’s expectations. For me, it just seemed like yesterday that I watched the Twin Towers collapse live, on TV. Today they are burying a 9/11 baby. What a waste! Unless we all conspire to “use it”.  At least, we had a precedent in Mothers Against Drunk Driving movement (remember exhibition of  what’s left of a DUI car wreck?) That’s the power of visualization. The transforming power of “use it”.