The Worst Fear Is Fear Itself

It has been headline news in recent weeks that gloomy outlook of economy is spreading everywhere. People worry that their investments will keep nosediving into the bottomless swirl and eventually dry up. What if we suddenly become unemployed because of the economic slump, will we have enough savings to pay the rent, mortgage, grocery and everyday essentials? What about family vacation, college education for our kids and retirement plans? Will they become unreachable goals due to the global economic slump?

Yes, fear has no physical presence, yet its psychological impact upon people is tremendous, not to mention the fact that it is contagious in a deadly way. If we keep on talking about how bad it will become, it can only become worse rather than better. Even though the statistics speaks itself very loudly that we are in recession, fear can only create frantic reactions from investors, which can only worsen the economic numbers and it does no good as far as improving the economy is concerned. For example, some critic says that GM stock will diminish to almost nothing. Doesn’t this create a scenario of shareholders dumping their GM stocks? And you can imagine that the result of it is catastrophic, because 2.9 million people’s jobs are in danger. By the way, I do not hold any stocks, so my judgement is impartial. The economic situation applies to real estate as well. If we keep saying that the real estate prices will dip xx percent next year, doesn’t it hold people off from buying houses? And when the housing industry (8.5% overall GDP) tumbles, along with auto industry (12% of manufacturing GDP), do you think we still have a chance as a nation? I am not saying that we shouldn’t worry about all these things. What I am saying is that excessive fear about these things will do the economy no good at all. In order to overcome the fear, a constructive rescue plan has to be implanted. In my opinion, keeping the jobs abundance is the foremost priority. On one hand the government has to come up with a plan to save big industries ( not to sacrifice tax payers’ money as an exchange, but ask the industries to slowly pay back), and on the other hand the government has to keep creating jobs, either through building infrastructure or so-called green jobs. I think only through these measures, we can finally see a ray of hope to conquer fear. Yes, we can, as Mr. Obama said in his acceptance speech.

A New Dimension of Democracy

Today is Nov 4, the day of U.S. presidential election being held across America, I feel obliged to write something before the first black president becoming a reality tonight. This will be unprecedented, and it proves to the world that the United States of America has reached a new profound level of democracy, where racial and ethnic differences being put behind anything else and only the qualities of a person being considered. This is a big change. It may not seem too big a deal to the Digital- Generation, however, it is truly unbelievable for the older generation, or even the Boomer Generation.

I always believe that only the people who have been through destitute themselves can truly understand what it means to build a strong and fair community where everyone can start with equal-footing. In a truly Utopia state, there are no such people who are classified as underprivileged- everyone is treated equally and given the best education as far as a person’s ability can absorb, of course, putting behind financial and a whole bunch of other factors.

I understand that the United States of America is still a capitalist country. But when capitalism gone too far, all we see is “greed-ism,” where investors or capitalists are looking for easy money. Investors used to enjoy moving their money from one place to another for a few hours and resulted in huge amounts of profit on the paper. When the system was built to attract investors with easy money on their minds, it will backfire- the recent financial storm and credit crisis are good examples. Who is at fault ? The system or the greedy people?  Well, I don’t like to point finger at the people and accuse them for wrong doing. Instead, I believe that people can be educated and our system can be innovated to the extent of peacefulness and fairness. I agree with Mr. Obama who believes in hard working and earning own share of capitals in a fair and reasonable way. Only success that comes from hard working will stay with us much longer and more enjoyable as well. The great entrepreneur of Taiwan, who recently passed away at the age of 92, said that he believed the prosperity of a nation is dependent upon hard work of manufacturing not the manipulation of financial market by a small group of people. The only way to avoid and prevent the financial storm from happening again is for us to go back to the basic- to find the good old passion of hard work. By the way, it is important to build a system where hard work prevails and the greed fails. I am very sure the Harvard-bred Mr. Obama knows exactly what to do starting Nov 5, 2008.